The Reformation, Its Causes, and Its Consequences

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm still Wo. On today's Stone Choir we're going to be discussing the Reformation. As many of you probably know, next week is the Reformation anniversary of what is observed as Reformation Day, also known as Halloween or All Hallows Eve. The recognized first Reformation Day, the day that's being commemorated is of course Martin Luther nailing the ninety five Theses in fifteen seventeen. And that has been marked as the beginning of what became the Reformation. Obviously at the time Luther didn't know quite what a firestorm he was going to be lighting by posting that, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. Today's discussion is going to be mostly historical.

1:29 Uh basically we want to The Reformation and what left into it and what came out of it. The books that have been written could easily fill multiple libraries, as Corey said before we started recording. They're men who have spent their entire lives dedicated to studying a small portion of the history of this. So in a couple hour podcast we're only gonna barely even scratch the surface on just the high notes. The specific overarching theme that I hope we can tease out of this and the second reason that we're doing a Reformation episode this particular week is that this is also the one-year anniversary of Stone Choir getting started. Uh, a year ago, last week was the first episode that we dropped.

2:15 And when we had decided that we wanted to begin doing a podcast together, Corey and I talked about talked about, you know, kind of the the reasons for it and what we we we hope to accomplish. And one of the things we'll be talking about towards the end that we wanted to do was not to be an overtly Lutheran podcast just for Lutherans. Like this isn't all about Luther. This isn't all about Lutheran doctrine. We do talk about it sometimes, and as we've said before, when we are discussing something that we know Lutherans believe one thing and others believe something different. We try to lay that out clearly and say like, here's the case for why Lutherans have historically believed this thing, and then you

2:57 know, maybe here's why you guys believe this other thing. One of the things that we uh often talk about is that it's okay for grown men to say we disagree or I think you're wrong and you think I'm wrong. That's a starting place for a discussion. It doesn't mean to need to be a starting place for finger pointing or whining or pouting or name calling. Logically, at least one of us has to be wrong. Maybe both of us are wrong. So for one denomination to say another denomination is wrong about something can in some cases be the beginning of a fruitful discussion. Now in the case of many of the things that went into and then came out of the Reformation, there hasn't really been much in the way of new disputes among us for five centuries.

3:43 Like pretty much everything important got hammered out in the 16th century. So the second part of the episode, the latter portion, is going to be discussing the ecumenical nature of the audience of Stone Choir. How, what it means that we have Methodists and Baptists and Lutherans and Reform guys and Presbyterians and Roman Catholics all listening to the same podcast. And also, incidentally, a lot of people who have either never had any church home or had left church a long time ago found Stone Choir and aldost almost immediately start going back to church. The fact that we can all find any common ground on any of these issues is itself interesting, and that's one of the reasons we want to do this episode is to talk about how is

4:33 it that we can agree on this stuff when we disagree on so many other things. So is we lay the historical framework for the disagreements in the past and how they shaped the various denominations today. I want to do it specifically in view of the fact that we can still have agreement on things today means that there's still common ground common ground among us, even among you know Lutherans and Roman Catholics who have basically no shared priors apart from Scripture. That'll be part of what we talk about down the road today. How is it the a Romanist who derives his beliefs from the authority of the prope and the magisterium and tradition, how can such a man reach the same moral conclusions as a couple Lutheran guys

5:22 who reject all that stuff? All we have is sola scriptura. How do we reach the same conclusions? There's something going on there that I think sidesteps a lot of the 16th century doctrinal arguments we've had. And so at the end of the episode we want to just kinda talk about where does this leave all of us today? Why is it that people from different denominations are listening, you know, to some random little podcast about theology and history and science and all these seemingly disparate subjects. And I think we're gonna we're gonna lay out the case at the end that the one thing that is binding us together, apart from adherence to scripture and belief in the one true God is the fact that all of our bodies, all of our church bodies

6:06 are being attacked by Satan in the same way with the same subjects. So that's a reason that Stone Choir has had kind of an eclectic set of subjects that we've tackled, things that have upset a lot of pastors who really have no business talking about those subjects because they're not equipped, they're not intelligent enough, they're not informed enough, and they don't have either the spiritual or the intellectual grounding to deal with these subjects because they're completely outside of their expertise and outside of their abilities. They get really mad and say, you can't talk about that stuff because we're the experts. And I think what we're all realizing in our own denominations is that the men who have been erected to be the experts for

6:50 us are in all cases failing to some degree. And it's usually failure from the top down. We're seeing the heads of virtually every church body today capitulating to the world religion, to the views and of this modern age in opposition to scripture. And the trick is that they're not doing it by saying what some of the very liberal denominations have done in the last fifty years. They're not they're not going full blown universalist, not yet. And they're not going full blown rejection of scripture, not yet. But what they're doing is they're saying, yes, our church body has a shameful fat past that is tainted by racism and sexism and slavery, and write down the list of all the ists and isms that every HR department in the country is also preaching.

7:42 The church bodies from the top down are all preaching the same things. And they've all capitulated, every single one of them. If you are listening, the people at the top of your church denomination are doing those things. And some of you object to it to some degree, maybe not to the degree that we do, Corey and I on Stone Choir, but at least some of it really has you nervous, if not angry, because you can see that there is a departure from the Christian faith, from the faith that we have all inherited from our fathers. So as we go through the history of what led into the Reformation and what came after it, it is in view and part of all of those things being our inheritance as Christians. That's another point that I hope to get across in this episode,

8:26 something that came up on Twitter this past week. A Protestant follower was arguing with me that we must credit all the cathedral building in the the 11th and twelfth centuries to the Roman Catholics, that somehow that belonged to the Pope. And we're gonna make the case today that that's completely nonsensical. It was not the Pope, it was not Roman Catholicism doing that. It was Christianity doing that. And yes, Roman Catholicism was the only Christianity in town, but they're not synonymous. And that's that's one of the chief problems that Roman Catholics have today, because there are faithful Christians in Roman Catholicism, you know quite a few of them listen, and I'm very grateful to be reminded

9:10 that there's still Christians there because on paper it doesn't look like it. And yet if there are men who can agree with us that you know these moral issues are a Afflicting all the denominations in the same way. We at least have some spiritual predicate and actual grounded common faith of some sort. And that's a place, if not for complete doctrinal unity, at least for mutual respect and recognition. And historically I think it also calls into question some of the claims that Rome in particular is made. I've said in the past on Twitter, and we've said on here, it's tragic to me. It makes me deeply sorrowful that when someone from Rome does decides that the Pope is a demon and that Vatican II was a

9:59 wicked overthrow of something good before. Because of the doctrines that Rome teaches, they think that their choice is either apostasy or pope. This pope, whatever, whoever the current pope is. And so if you don't go along with the current regime, you just have to leave the church. And the rest of us in Protestantism aren't faced with that. You know, if the Lutherans betray you, maybe there are other denominations that you can at least agree with some about, or vice versa. Roman Catholics, I think, are uniquely placed in a position where they're told unless I am fully on board with what the papacy does, I'm no longer Roman Catholic, which means I'm no longer Christian. And that's the that's the reason we're doing this episode fundamentally, there

10:47 is a Christianity apart from any particular church body. I'm not making some sort of pan denominational appeal to like let's all get along. I'm saying that where scripture is preached, where it is taught faithfully, even if the speakers are saying false things about some of the teachings, God's word is still efficacious all by itself. You can have Satan himself standing in your pulpit, and if he reads from the Bible, God is going to use scripture, God's words, even through the voice of the devil, to affect faith in believers and to cause faith to come to those who hear. Because the speaker does not have control over what God does with his word. And that's why that's why we have such a crazy audience.

11:33 It's why you know probably less than half of our audience is Lutheran. It's not that we're bad Lutherans, and it's not that we don't talk about the Lutheran approach to these things because frankly we believe that this is the historic Lutheran approach to Christianity. I think it's consistent with what has been done really to the last hundred, hundred and twenty years or so. And it's important for us to talk about these things today because the future for all of us is uncertain. You know, if our denominations are going down the tubes, we're all facing kind of the same question that the Roman Catholics do. If you have Bergoglio, if you have a demon pope, a Jesuit monster in charge of your church and you're told he's it, it's

12:14 him or nothing, that puts him in a bad place. The rest of us are in the same boat. We all have our Bergoglios. We all have them in the headquarters of whatever denominations are. Even if it's not a top-down thing, even it's just some boomer sitting there saying, actually, we need to worship the Jews as they are, that is going to do damage that will be insurmountable to those denominations. And so we're all faced with the task today of I must remain Christian, even if my denomination is losing its marbles, losing its bearings, maybe taking a departure from its historic confessions and maybe in some cases those historic confessions had errors that precipitated the current circumstance. And while they seem like they were okay historically, when push came

13:06 to shove today, they fall apart. And so I I want this to ultimately as we as we wrap up at the end to be hopefully an optimistic message because the unity of at least some agreement on some of these things across these denominations that we have with our listeners is the product of us agreeing about scripture, agreeing about who God is and what he says he should be doing and what he says he does for us. So So we're going to begin by talking about the events that led up historically to the Reformation. We're going to talk about what happened during and after the Reformation, and then where it leaves us today. So, for the history portion of this episode, we are going to go over five main controversies in the history of the church that

13:57 essentially form the chain leading from the ancient church to up to and into the period of the Reformation. And those five controversy will be the Monophysite controversy, the Photian Schism, the East West, otherwise known as the Great Schism, the Investiture Controversy, and then the Avignon Papacy, otherwise known as the Western Schism. So starting with monophysitism. This This was a controversy in the church relatively early on. This is in the 400s, essentially, is when this is happening. On the one side, you have Eutiches, Cyril of Alexandria, and a number of other men, but those are the two big names, and then on the other side you have Nestorius and later on Leo the Great, who is at this point the the Bishop of Rome.

14:55 And I think it's worth mentioning here, just as sort of an aside, he is called Leo the Great with sufficient warrant. There were good popes, he is one of them. Lutherans and others, particularly other Protestants, this is not as much of a problem in Lutheranism, but there's a tendency among certain Protestant groups to think that oh all of the popes were always corrupt and horrible and they weren't Christian and all these other things. That's just not true. For a very long time, for centuries, we had faithful men leading the Western Church. They weren't perfect. They had problems. Some were better than others. Some were not good men, but there were good men in there, and it's important to keep that in mind, and Leo the Great

15:47 is one of them. He is appropriately named in history, otherwise known as Leo I, since he was the first of that name. Worth remembering the name because Leo X, of course, is the one who is Pope when the Reformation starts. He is the one who excommunicates Luther. But anyway, dealing with this particular controversy, this controversy is over the nature of Christ, specifically the relationship or the nature of the divine and human in Christ. So the players again, Eutaches was the Archimandrite in Constantinople, he was condemned and deposed at the Council of Constantinople. He was eventually reinstated. There's a lot of that that happens in this controversy. Cyril of Alexandria was sort of the one of the theological powerhouses

16:36 behind this particular side, he claimed that Christ had one nature, a divine human nature. So not necessarily a mixed nature, but one nature. This is the controversy here. On the other side you have Nestorius, who claims that Christ has two natures. He overemphasizes the distinction ultimately the resolution says that both are wrong, and that is the stance of modern Christianity. But he was correct in asserting Christ had two natures, the human and the divine. Nestorius, for his part, his short biography as it were, he was the patriarch of Constantinople, he was put at that position in four hundred twenty eight, he was condemned at the Council of Ephesus in four hundred thirty one, banished to Egypt in four hundred thirty six,

17:27 and he died in Egypt in four hundred fifty one. He was eventually, of course, somewhat vindicated during the outcome of this, although his views again went too far. Leo the Great, again, Pope, he authored the tome of Leo, which really formed a lot of the theological basis for what would be the resolution of this controversy. He is credited with pushing through the Chalcedonian definition and then getting churches to adopt that. And that is the resolution of this controversy. It's called the Chalcedonian definition or the Chalcedonian Creed. And so the councils that are relevant here, first the council of Ephesus in 431, that was called by Emperor Theodosius II, that is the one that condemned Nestorius, promulgated monophysitism, and was plagued by political

18:23 and other corruption and intrigue. Then we have the Council of Ephesus, another one, in four hundred forty nine. This was dominated by monophysites. This is largely historically referred to as the robber council and seen as not legitimate for a number of reasons. It is largely rejected by the church and ultimately completely rejected by the Church. Then we have finally the Council of Chalcedon. This is the one that resolves the controversy. This was called by Emperor Marcion in 451. And this is what gives us the Chalcedonian definition. Now, you may not have heard this before. I'm going to read through it because it is a creedal statement of Christianity, of what you and I believe as Christian.

19:12 modern actual Christians, as Western Christians. Incidentally, the Eastern Orthodox can agree with this creed. This is before the schism between the East and the West Those who would not agree with this would be the Oriental Orthodox, they are the ones who split as a result of this, and they remain in schism today. Although notably, they are more meaphysite than monophysite. The difference between the two is the difference between the Greek words monos and my both mean one, but monos implies a alone or solitary, it is a more extreme sense of one. It carries a connotation that Meophysite does not, and so calling them monophysites may be a little uncharitable, it's probably unwarranted. They're still wrong, but they're not as wrong as they could be.

20:10 But to read through the Chalcedonian definition, or the Chalcedonian Creed, whichever one you want to call it We then, following the Holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead, and also perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body, consubstantial, or coessential, with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood, in all things like unto us, without sin, begotten before all ages of the Father, according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the manhood, one and the

21:02 same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, Inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably, the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one person, and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the creed of the Holy Fathers has handed down to us. Now, as you can see, this is just a statement of Christian belief. And this is another place where we can emphasize

21:58 the nature of creeds and how they come about in the history of the church. We have creeds as a response to heresies. We don't just make creeds because we feel like making a creed. Historically, the creeds in the church have been created specifically in response to a number of heresies. Usually it's not just one, usually multiple heresies are addressed. For instance, here in the Chalcedonian Creed, Arianism is addressed, Apollinarianism is addressed, Eutikianism, and obviously Nestorianism as well. These are all addressed in this creed. That is the point of a creed. It is the rejection of false teaching and the affirmation of correct teaching. That is why we have them, that is why it is important to retain them and to use them.

22:51 Now we don't recite this one, because we have the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, particularly the Athanasian Creed, dealing more extensively with the Trinity, and so we use those creeds. You could still recite this creed. This creed is still correct. It is a statement of Christian belief. I would like to pull out one more thing from this before we move on to the next controversy. You may have noticed that it says born of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God. The reason that we have that in there, the Greek word being theotokos, is that there was some agitation by certain parties to use the word Christotokos, which is mother of Christ, which is not incorrect in itself, but is incorrect in emphasis.

23:42 And the reason that it is incorrect in emphasis is because it creates a division between God the Son and God the Father that is not there and that we should not teach. It is in essence a denial of the full godhood of Christ, by saying, Well, no Mary is the mother of Christ, not the mother of God. When you say Theotokos or Mother of God instead of mother of Christ, you are afraid of the full divinity of Christ, and that is the reason that is in this creed. It is a rejection of those who try to minimize or teach falsely about the godhood of Christ. As you're listening to these disputes among Christians in church history, I I don't want people to take the message, oh no, I need to go back and have a strongly held opinion on the monophysite controversy.

24:37 You don't. The important illustration that these are providing as we go through what happened prior to the Reformation is consistent with what God records in First Corinthians eleven, where it says, But in the following instructions, I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you might be recognized. Now in this letter to the Corinthians, he was specifically dealing with the circumstances surrounding their communion practice, but I think that the principle

25:17 clearly holds more broadly. If within one congregation you can have such divisions and God says that it must be necessary for there to be factions, that those who are genuine might be recognized. How much more so will it be the case when you have collections of congregations? Or what you know, today we could all call denominations. There was different names for it at the time, but these were functionally national churches coming together with their leaders, discussing things on common terms as Christians, and working through disagreements about scripture. And you know, today we appeal and some appeal to the so called authority of the church fathers. These are all church fathers. Nestorius was a church father.

26:05 You know, he's he he goes way down the list because of his heresy, but the determining factor was scripture. It was not his senior seniority or his lack of placement or his lack of erudition. It was that he erred. He was a father who erred severely. And so it has always been the case within the church that there are disagreements that are permitted by God so that these things can be hammered out so that when the creeds were inherited by successive generations from these early disputes, we no longer have to worry. Every Sunday today, in many congregations, one of these creeds is going to be recited. And it is not only an important public confession of faith that we are all in agreement within a congregation, that we are in

26:56 agreement across congregations, you know, the apostles and I see creeds are spoken by many different denominations, because although we have some disagreements, we also at least have unity on who God is and what God has done as it's recorded in the creeds. Again, putting to bed those ancient controversies, but they're very live at the day in the day. It wasn't as though the creed just appeared and then everything was magically fixed. The creed was hammering out the dispute to the point that they could say this is what the church teaches. And importantly, the ultimate authority in those cases did not rest on the opinions of the men who spoke them and handed them down, but on their appeals to scripture.

27:42 As they made these arguments, they were appealing to scripture and to what earlier apostolic fathers had written and said about scripture. But ultimately, all of these arguments were always reasoned from God's Word. And so as we get into the Reformation, you see the same thing happening. So as you listen to this art, just keep in mind that these are historical quibbles because they were put to bed. But the fact that there were fights among Christians, I don't want to say it's a good thing because we should all be on the same page. We should all there should be no disagreement. And yet God says that there will be disagreement so that the genuine will be recognized. And how are they recognized?

28:23 Not by the authority of a man, but by the authority of Scripture. Because all the arguments that they made were ultimately rooted in Scripture, which is why everyone accepts them today. See if if the arguments for these creeds were made based on the authority of the men who wrote them, Lutherans wouldn't accept that most Protestants, probably no Protestants, would accept them today. They're accepted because they are in accord with scripture. So when these fights occur, it lets us, as men who are trying to be faithful to God, hammer out the disputes that is Satan trying to divide the body of Christ, which is the church capital C. As we go through this episode, we're going to try to be very particular when we say the church of always meaning all believers,

29:10 the elect, those who are living today who have faith, that is a superset of who's in any particular denomination. And one of the historical side effects of the consolidation of Rome is that as things go further on, the Western Church becomes synonymous with the Roman Catholic Church. But when we speak today, if we confuse the two inextricably, we create a situation where Protestants suddenly have to say, Well, I used to believe the Pope, but now I don't, so maybe I should still believe the Pope. And what we're trying to get across is that's nonsense. What we believe today is what Christians hammered out based on scripture. And it still accords with scripture, but it wasn't based on what these guys thought.

29:55 It was based on scripture and then their application of God gives given reason to derive truthful, defensible things about what God has said about Himself. That's the case in all times and in all places in the church. Ever since Pentecost, there have been disagreements among Christians. There will always be disagreements. That's not a source for panic. It it's a source for sorrow. We should all be in agreement. And it's good when we can agree about anything because hopefully it means that we can build a foundation to agree on more things. But the question in the Reformation is who's the tiebreaker? As Corey said, you know, it is important to have someone in charge. That was never not the case at any point in in

30:39 church history leading up to the Reformation. You know, James was the first bishop of Rome, Jesus half brother. Ansonelli wasn't Peter. And yet, you know, when Peter was obviously a very important apostle, Paul opposed him to his face publicly because he taught falsely. He rebuked him. Peter repented. They got on the same page because Paul corrected him and they agreed. That is part of the Christian life. If Peter and Paul can disagree, we can disagree too, and we can get past it by rooting those disagreements in scripture and then figuring out who is being genuine. There's even a bit of irony, perhaps, in the parties involved in this initial dispute in this particular controversy, because Cyril of Alexandria is a very

31:28 respected church father. His writings are still widely read and cited, and yet he is the one perhaps most strongly condemned by this council for his incorrect teaching. Just because a man is a church father, or is particularly orthodox or staunch with regard to the faith, in one or even many respects, does not mean that he cannot err. There are really there is not a single writer in church history who has not erred. Now, of course, I don't mean those who actually wrote Scripture. Scripture is without error. Scripture is inerrant. That is what Christians believe. But outside of Scripture, it is possible for all authors to commit error, and virtually all authors do. That doesn't mean there are errors in every single work.

32:24 There are works that are free from error. But if you read the entire corpus of an author, particularly prolific author, he is going to state things that are either untrue, Or at least unwisely stated. That doesn't mean he's wrong. That doesn't mean you can't read him. It means that you are to read him and compare him to Scripture, because Scripture is the standard by which we test all other theological, doctrinal, dogmatic works, because Scripture is God's Word, and God's Word is supreme over all else. The next two controversies are really related. They're distinct to some degree, but the one flows into the other, and they are related in so far as the one is sort of the prototype of the other.

33:15 These two controversies are the Photian Schism and the Great Schism, otherwise known as the East West Schism. The Photian Schism is named after a gentleman by the name of Photius, unsurprisingly, perhaps. This occurred in the ninth century, it was between the East and the West, as you can probably tell from the fact that it leads into the the Great Schism. This occurred for a number of reasons, but it was not a simple matter of theological differences. There were theological aspects, cultural, political, and you will notice as we go through these, culture always plays a part. Because there are national differences between peoples. One nation is not identical to another nation. The French and the Germans are going to disagree on certain things.

34:06 The Germans and the Italians are going to disagree on certain things. We're going to see that specifically actually in some of these controversies. The British and the Italians will disagree. Because nations have a national character. Nations have a culture. You're going to have differences. And just because you have those differences doesn't mean that one is more correct than the other when it comes to worship. You can have national differences in how you worship, and that's fine. God made the nations, He made them different. They are going to behave differently. A German church service is not going to be the same as a French church service, and that's fine. If you are teaching the same doctrine, you are holding the same

34:48 dogma, by all means, have different hymns and different customs, that is entirely fine. But back to this controversy, which, again, part of it is cultural. The leadership would be Photius on the side of the East, who was the patriarch of Constantinople, appointed to that position in eight hundred fifty eight, and then and then Pope Nicholas the First, is obviously the leader of the Western Church at this point, also appointed to his position in eight fifty eight. And so this schism was initiated in part by the elevation of Photius to patriarch of Constantinople. This was after the removal of Ignatius his predecessor. This was supported by the Eastern Emperor, but it was opposed by the Pope.

35:37 Because this is where the politics comes into it. The Pope actually did the right thing. He attempted to resolve this controversy. He sent legates to Constantinople in an attempt to investigate and resolve. They determined it had been done incorrectly, that is the removal of Ignatius in the installation of Photius. Unfortunately this was not resolved peaceably in the sense of without conflict, not in the sense of violence in this case. And so Photius and Nicholas mutually excommunicated each other. One of the first times that this happens historically, not the only time. The Eastern Orthodox, we can now properly call them this at this point in history, call the Council of Constantinople, notably the West

36:24 did not participate in this, so you can hardly call it ecumenical. This reaffirmed the appointment of Photius and anathematized Nicholas the First. Part of the controversy here, and part of how this leads into the Great Schism, which is next, is that there was some controversy over the Filioque. Now the Filioque had actually been added in the sixth century. This was against Aryanism, and also, incidentally, against Nestorianism. So this is centuries after the fact. This is notable. But I will get into that more in the next controversy, which we'll get into now, which is the Great Schism. This is the schism between the East and the West and the West. This culminated in ten fifty four, so not that long after

37:13 the Photian schism. The culmination was with the estrangement of the Western Church and the East, and of course mutual excommunications. The primary factors for this were theological differences, although this should perhaps go last, the Filioque, the disagreements over papal authority, historical the position had been that the Pope was first not the Pope at the time, the Bishop of Rome, was first among equals, and around this time and a little before the Pope had been asserting his authority more vigorously, and so there were disagreements in the East with regard to this. Partly theological but largely political. And of course there are also the liturgical and cultural differences which always play into these conflicts.

38:08 Now the aftermath of this, which is worth noting here, is that is that eventually the East falls, Constantinople is sacked and destroyed, and part of the reason for that is the breach between the East and the West. Now here I'm not saying necessarily that God was punishing them for what they did. I have advanced arguments along those lines in other places, that's not the point here. The issue is that because of the breach between the East and the West, the East no longer had the full support ready at hand that it once had from the West, and so when you have Muslim hordes invading, they get overrun. Would this have happened without the Great Schism? Probably not, because they would have had greater support from the West,

38:55 because they would not have been at odds with one another, and so they would have viewed each other more as brothers than as adversaries. But I said I would talk more about the Filioque, and that's going to go here because it's very relevant to this schism. The Filioque, as I mentioned, was added in the 6th century, and I should say what the Filioque is for those who are not familiar with the term or familiar with Latin, it just means and the Son. It's talking about the procession of the Holy Spirit. The Western Church rightly teaches that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. This is part of the Creed. In this case I mean the Nicene Creed. And so this was added in order to teach right doctrine against

39:44 the Aryans and against the Nestorians. The East initially objected on the grounds that it had not been added via an ecumenical council, and so they were objecting on procedural grounds. It would be the equivalent of today if you were in some deliberative or legislative body objecting to the way a vote was conducted. You're not objecting to the outcome or the ultimate decision, you're objecting to the procedures that were used to arrive at that decision, at that outcome. And so the East did not initially object on theological grounds. Today they object on theological grounds, because over time they entrenched themselves on their objection, and, in order to distinguish themselves from the West,

40:33 denied the Filioque. It is not that the West added the filioque, because yes, the West added the literal word to the creed against these heretics, but that is what Scripture teaches. That is what Christians believe. There are scriptural verses on this. We've gone over it before. Let me read those verses here. You can look up the specific verses, but it's John fifteen twenty six, Romans 8:9, and Galatians 4 7. So when we say that they added words to the creed, just like every other word of the Nicene Creed, it's quotations from scripture itself. So they were making again a theological argument from scripture in opposition to an emergent heresy. And as Corey said, the initial objection to Filioque was entirely procedural

41:28 and then later on they recconned it into being somehow religious, which means it is not scriptural because they're now rejecting scripture by rejecting the filioque. I think this is an important illustration of the nature of creeds. It's not that the Nicene Creed was a complete confession of everything that could possibly ever be said about the Christian religion, and therefore it could never be tampered with. They had an objection. I think it was a reasonable objection to the procedural manner in which the filioque was added. But in terms of doctrine, there can be no doubt that it is correct. And one of the, you know, this is the only time that words have been added to an existing creed, as far as I

42:12 know, but they had a choice. They could either make up a new creed to combat the heresy, or they could add and the sun, three words, one word in Latin because it's a compound. So they added the smallest possible amount to an existing creed. They didn't change its nature. They combated a heresy. And then others came along and complained about the paperwork and then say, you know, we don't actually believe what scripture says to begin with. So it's not the case that there's something wrong with a creed or with the specific Nicene Creed, either before or after. The creed was correct before this was added. It wasn't it was wrong. It's that it didn't address a controversy that emerged. And so when they found that there was a hole in the

42:56 specific statement of faith, the confession of the Nicene Creed, they plugged it with one word in Latin, three words in English. And that solved anyone possibly agreeing with the heresy. And so I think it's a great example of the function that creeds practically serve within the church. It is to define what we believe. Creed, Credo, is I believe. That's all it means. It's be it's the first words of the apostles in the Nicene Creed. I believe. When a church adopts a creed, when a church says this is what we believe, it is not adherence to the teachings of men. It is saying this is what Scripture says about God and this is what the church has taught about God ever since there were men disagreeing about what God was.

43:45 The arguments were made we side with the historic Christian church in these in these terms. And it's valuable because it is a benchmark against which all preaching can be measured. One of the great things about the way the creed is said usually either right before or right after the sermon is it is like a mirror being held up to the preacher. Whatever he just said, if it disagrees in any way with one of the creeds, there's a good chance that somebody's gonna notice. And that particular preacher on that particular Sunday may well be called to account, hopefully privately, by the man who said, I don't understand what you said in view of the creed. Now it's a it's a operation to pause and teach.

44:30 Hopefully the pastor got it right and the intentional listener misunderstood something that was said. But in the case where the pastor is stepping outside of this door Christian faith, it's right there. It's a big glowing sign sitting next to whatever the pastor is preaching, saying, Well, the historic Christian faith is this, this guy's saying this other thing. You people in the pews need to be paying attention and you need to hold the man in the pulpit account because he does not get to say whatever he wants. He is not up there speaking for God ex cathedra. He is up there speaking in the stead of God. And the preacher who disagrees with the creed by the smallest degree is not speaking for God but speaking against him.

45:12 So that's the reason that these confessions have been preserved within the church. They provide an invaluable function, and they protect the common man in the pews. The man who doesn't know the history of this stuff, doesn't know about Photius or any of these other old dead guys, doesn't care, but he knows that if a pastor says something that disagrees with the simple words of the creed that a child can memorize and should that is an occasion for the Christians in that congregation to take it closer what it's what's going on. And again, maybe the pastor's faithful and it's just something that was confusing. Maybe he should have said it better. Maybe the man in the in the pew doesn't have sound doctrine.

45:51 Maybe it's an area where the pastor needs to help him. But if there's a disagreement, that's a good thing as a Christian thing for a man to ask another man, this does not seem to be consistent with the historic teachings of the church. Help me understand what's going on here. It doesn't need to be an accusation. Initially, it shouldn't be. It's like, Pastor, I don't get it. The creed says this, and you said this help me understand how those are in accord, and they should be, and if they're not, then that congregation goes on to the next steps. So these are the inheritance of the entire Western Church, the entire church. It was a case until the East rejected the Nicene Creed, at least that portion of it, in in a act of recalcitrance.

46:35 These are the preservation of the faith that we inherit. And I think an overarching theme of what led to the Reformation, what leads us to this today, is that we are all inheritors of the Christian faith from our fathers and where they have erred, we need to get things straightened out, not to be antagonistic or disrespectful to them, but we have to get this stuff right because it's God's. And if the inheritance that we have received has been tampered with, these guideposts help us get it back in line. And if it turns out that our inheritance in some cases and some denominations was at some point earlier on corrupted, those are discussions that individual Christians in their congregations need to have to figure out

47:19 where was the error introduced and then what do we as Christians trying to be faithful to God's word, what do we do with it? So these are continuous discussions every Sunday, every year, every century, because the goal is always to act and to believe and to speak in accord with God's word. And the inheritance of sound doctrine must be preserved and defended at all costs. Because when you lose sight of this stuff, you very quickly lose everything. If you stop believing what's in the creeds, you will lose God because it is a confession of God. So these are treasures. And if you're in a body that rejects the creeds, find out why. Take a look at the history of the creeds. And I hope that you'll find that there was an error that

48:04 was made in your church body long in the past. And that's going to be in the Reformation. we're going to talk about some of those errors. But if you're in a place where your church is rejecting some of the historic Christian teachings, not Roman Catholic teachings, like you know, when when Rome and the East agree, that means it's not Roman Catholic by definition. It must necessarily be Christian. When all Christians in all times and places have agreed with this, it's Christian doctrine. I believe that your statement was correct. That is the only time that we've had a revision to the creed that was just the insertion of a word like filioque. However, before the handful of Eastern Orthodox listeners we Listeners, we have

48:47 rejoice over my statement. The Creeds have been revised a number of times, usually for the sake of clarity or to expand a particular point, and that is the case both with the Creeds as they are used in the Western Church and as they are used in the East. Notably, the East uses a version of the Nicene, actually the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed Creed that was promulgated in 381. That's obviously not the first Nicene Creed, because the first Nicene Creed was promulgated at the Council of Nicaea in 325. And notably, even the section on the Holy Spirit. The first version of the Creed as it was promulgated is very simple Kai Ace Tahagian Panuma, which is very simple, just means and in the Holy Ghost.

49:42 That was it. That was all there was to that section of the Creed, which says nothing about procession. That was added later on. In both cases, in the West and in the East. And so the very thing the East complains about the West having done, the East did at other times. The East did with the creeds as they recite them, and they were certainly not done according to ecumenical councils because the West was not present at those councils. tempted to read through the Nicene Creed, just because we have some listeners who are not going to be familiar with it, so I think I will go ahead and well read, recite the Nicene Creed. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, making God Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in

50:35 one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, who, for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end. And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of

51:24 life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets, and I believe in one holy Christian and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. And so as you can see, that is simply a brief statement of the Christian religion. Now, we have shared elsewhere and before citations to scripture for each one of these statements in the Creed, because the creeds, as mentioned, come from Scripture. They are a simple statement of Scripture meant both to teach Christians the faith and to affirm what Christians believe.

52:15 Because when we come together and we recite the creeds, we are giving our confession of faith before men, and also before God because God is always present. That's important. That helps us affirm not only that we are one in Christ, but what we believe about Christ, what we believe about Scripture, what Scripture says to us, the creeds are a vital part of the Christian life. This is also true, incidentally of things like the small catechism, which is just a statement of the Christian religion. It is a very brief summary of Christianity. It is a great introduction for someone who is new to the faith or for children. And I'm not just shilling it as a Lutheran, so to speak. There are Roman Catholic missionaries who will go out and hand out

53:07 the small catechism? Because there is no better brief statement of the Christian religion. Yes, the creeds as well, of course, but the small catechism goes into more detail on certain things. The small catechism includes the Ten Commandments and also incidentally the Creed. And so even those who are not from the Lutheran tradition will hand out the small catechism, because it is the best thing available to teach people the basics of the faith, and it was of course designed for fathers to teach their wives and their children. Primarily, of course, their children, because hopefully their wives would have been taught as children by their own fathers. To move on, though, to the next controversy, we have two more

53:53 controversies, and really this one leads into, again, because these are all leading one into the other, they form a sort of chain. This one leads into the next one, and the next one leads directly into the Reformation. And so the first of these two is the investiture controversy. If you know what the term means, you already know what the controversy is, and really that's the summary of it. This was during the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, the key figures involved in this were the Obviously, more than just these two given the span of time, these men were not alive for two hundred years. But the two key figures, on the one side, Pope Gregory VII, he sought reforms in the Church. However, in this case the reforms were an assertion of papal authority

54:39 with regard to appointment of bishops and church officials. On the other hand, you have Emperor Henry IV. He resisted papal authority, he insisted that the Emperor had and should retain, because notably the emperor did have at this time this authority, and right to appoint and invest church officials. Now for those who are unfamiliar with the term, investiture simply refers to the formal granting of the symbols of authority to a bishop or other church official. This is extremely important politically, culturally, and with regard to the church. The result of this was subsequent to the issuance of a papal bull, dictatus papai, which is just the dictate of the pope, in which he asserted that he

55:28 had exclusive authority to appoint bishops, he excommunicated Henry IV, and Henry capitulated. He did penance, otherwise known as the walk to Canosa, in ten seventy seven he went and asked the forgiveness of the Pope, recognized the authority the Pope had asserted. This was officially made the policy of the Empire recognized at the Concordat of Worms in eleven twenty two, and you may recognize the city name because it becomes relevant later on in the Reformation. If you aren't familiar with German pronunciation, you may call it Worms. This was where the Where the authority of the Pope, as it was at the time of the Reformation, really took form, so 1122. It takes some centuries before the Reformation takes place, but this is

56:19 where it begins. The consequences of this. Obviously, the Pope is strengthened. However, the Emperor and the Empire were both weakened. This becomes relevant politically, culturally, and in a number of other ways as well. Obviously, it's relevant to the Reformation. This saw an increase in the feudalism or the basically proto federalism of the Holy Roman Empire. It also saw an increase in church state tensions, which obviously grows over time and feeds into the Reformation. Now this largely affected the secular side of things, the left-hand kingdom. The next controversy largely affects the right hand kingdom, although as in this previous one, the left-hand kingdom primarily affected, the right hand kingdom

57:14 also affected, so the inverse is true here. The right hand kingdom is primarily affected, but the left hand kingdom is still deeply involved. And this of course is the Avignon papacy so called or the Western Schism. In thirteen oh nine, Pope Clement V, a Frenchman, that is notable here, was elected. He moved the papal court from Rome to Avignon, France, somewhat unsurprising for a Frenchman, perhaps. However, this meant that the French monarchy exercised a significant degree of control over the papacy. Now you can see how this would be a problem. Because earlier on, in the previous controversy, we have the Pope exercising authority over the Empire. Well now we have specifically the French monarchy exercising authority over the

58:05 Pope, which means that the French monarchy is in essence elevating itself above the emperor. And that is what the political aspect of this is. That's why you have these problems here. Now over the course of sixty seven years there are seven popes who reside in Avignon. Eventually the papal court is moved back to Rome, that is under Pope Gregory XII. Gregory dies in thirteen seventy eight, and that's where the fun begins as it were. There's a conclave, as there always is. Pope Urban VI, an Italian, is elected. Of course he wants to keep the papal court in Rome. There is another conclave, a rival conclave, because they some of the bishops do not like Pope Urban VI, and so they instead elect Pope Clement VII.

59:01 Notably, not a Frenchman as you may have been expecting, still an Italian, but a Medici. That's relevant for a number of reasons historically, you may be somewhat familiar with the Medici's. One individual you may not know was in fact a Medici, we'll probably get into this more in the latter part of this episode. Pope Leo X, who excommunicated Luther, who published the Talmud, also a Medici. But anyway, now you have two popes. You have Urban VI and Clement the Seventh. Different regions in the Empire recognize one or the other. At one point they attempt to resolve this by appointing electing a third pope. The other two don't step down. Well now we have three popes. So there are councils, other attempts to resolve this, the emperors are

59:52 involved, nobilities involved, some of the kings are involved. It's a very real mess that lasts for a very long time. Remember this began in thirteen seventy eight, in earnest, as it were, it began earlier with than that with the move of the papal court to Avignon, but it is not until fourteen fourteen when the Council of Constance begins, it lasts for four years to fourteen eighteen, and they elect Pope Martin V, that this schism ends. So this is a generation of chaos caused by these dissensions in the Church. The authority of Rome and the and the unity of church and the unity of the church are both irretrievably damaged by this. That is vitally important to recognize because that is part of what

1:00:39 sets the stage for the Reformation. This is a mere 100 years before the Reformation begins in earnest in 1517. And so keep in mind, that is the stage on which the Reformation plays out. However, there is another extremely notable event here, and a man who should not go unnoticed, who is condemned at the Council of Constance, and that man is named Jan Hus. Jan Hus was a Czech reformer. He criticized the corrupt practices of the Roman Church, primarily financial and moral practices. He advocated for the use of the vernacular, which is to say the common language, in readings of Scripture and in church services, and he advocated for the supremacy of Scripture sola scriptura, as we would call it, and do call it today.

1:01:34 Again, notably that's ablative, not nominative, but we've gone over that previously. At this council he is excommunicated and declared a heretic, and acting with perhaps uncharacteristic speed, the Roman Church burns him at the stake in July of fourteen fifteen. And so I will end this section on the controversies in the Church with a quote from Jan Hus. The Duke of Bavaria, who was present at the burning of Jan Hus, asked him if he would abjure, as they were actually literally building the pyre below him. And Hus responded, No, I never preached any doctrine of an evil tendency, and what I taught with my lips I now seal with my blood. He then turned to the executioner and said to him, You are

1:02:26 now going to burn a goose, but in a century you will have a swan which you can neither roast nor boil. Now for those of you who are not Lutheran, and even for some Lutheran listeners, you've probably not necessarily encountered an explanation of this quote before. Part of what you have to know is that Hus in the Czech dialect means goose. He is referring to himself as the goose that is being burned. You may have got that just from the context that he's being burned and he's talking about a goose being burned. But the swan has been interpreted historically as essentially a prophetic statement that Luther would be the one who would come along and take up this banner of Reformation in the church and carry it forward,

1:03:16 and try as they might, the popes and others would not succeed in burning Luther, because Luther died a natural death. He was not burned at the stake, he was not executed. He lived out his life, yes, at many times in hiding, essentially in captivity, house arrest as it were. He lived under the constant threat of being taken in chains to Rome and executed, all of these various things, because the most powerful men in the world wanted him dead. But God kept him alive to die a natural death after writing his final confession. And so that is the reference there to that swand, that's Luther, and they managed neither to roast nor boil him. And so as we finally get to the kickoff of the what's called the Reformation proper, it was just important for us to set

1:04:15 the stage that anyone who says, well, the Western Church was in perfect harmony and everyone agreed and there was no doctrinal disputes until this Luther guy came along and he started causing all this trouble. And he was a revolutionary and he wanted to burn the church down. No. Luther was a doctor of the church. When he posted the 95 Theses we're about to get into, he was doing his job in addressing controversies in the church. He was doing his job. Even if he was in error doctrinally, even if maybe procedurally it wasn't perfect, he by his vocation was supposed to be doing theology public. And the posting of the ninety five theses was a challenge to debate. The point was that those theses were to be discussed in the

1:05:03 future in that place. It was a public notice that let's go. These are what I consider to be matters of dispute. Even if he was a heretic, he was, according to his office, in the church, supposed to be doing theology. He wasn't a peasant, he wasn't some random guy who vandalized the church door. And so it's important to lay that out historically because as we look back on the beginning of the Reformation and the outcome and the aftermath of the Reformation, that's usually particularly what the Roman Catholics will say, but others say that as well. Like, you know, you know, they won't say everything was just hunky dory because they know the councils prove what an absurdity that is, but they will lie about the degree of equanimity that occurred

1:05:53 within the church. For example, you know, one of the most common claims is that Luther removed books from the Bible. He changed the canon. The fact is that there was no canon of Scripture in the West until Trent declared it, three decades later. And I believe I waited until after he was dead. So it wasn't until Trent that there was an official canon when Luther discussed which books should be in scripture, he was again doing his job. He was doing what theologians had been doing since the earliest days. The there was a generally accepted list of books that for some it included the Apocrypha and for others it didn't. When he engaged in the theological debate, as a theologian, saying, I think that there's a good argument for these books and I think

1:06:43 there's a good argument against these books, he was doing his job. And so I hope that that context will be carried through everything that happens after, because if you portray him as a renegade and a rebel and just a bomb thrower, then yeah, he caused a bunch of trouble. If, on the other hand, you view him as a Roman Catholic priest who was doing his job by discussing theology according to his do vocation, then what happened afterwards takes on a different tenor. And all this has to be couched in, as Corey said, the political terms of the day. You know, one of the disputes that I mentioned earlier, somebody was arguing about cathedrals on Twitter, the difference between a twelfth century cathedral

1:07:31 bit and m built under Roman Catholic authority and, for example, the basilica that was also built by Rome, is that when the basilica was built, it was built with money that John Tatzel was extorting from the German people on behalf of the Italian people to build a new giant cathedral specifically for the Pope. It was so it wasn't a cathedral in a city or a region, it was a new throne for the Pope, and it was being used it was being built with extortionate money derived from an ethnic target. That's what literally happened. So I don't know if you've ever been on a civil jury before, but when you decide civil liability versus criminal liability. If you say that you know the defendant is guilty of X

1:08:22 whatever, you also assign a percentage of guilt that they bear for whatever negative outcome there was. So I was 18 years old. I was on a jury for a a civil trial that involved a woman involved in a car accident. She caused injuries to someone else and the dispute before the court was was she guilty of causing the car wreck negligently and what degree of remuneration did she owe to the victim? And so as a jury, we found both that she was guilty, and I think we found that she was like 50 or 60 percent liable. So which meant that the total amount of the bills that were presented we held her liable for about half of it. That sort of percentage allocation is something that I think is is a useful idea, kind of a Bayesian approach to take to when

1:09:17 you're looking in history prior to the Reformation, how much of what Rome was doing was attributable to the Pope, to the Magisterium, to tradition, and how much of it was attributable to them simply being the Western Church. Because remember Catholic means of the whole. Catholic is a small C word. It's why you you'll never hear me call someone a Catholic as best I can help. I will always call them Roman Catholic, or if I'm being more brief, Romanist or Papist. Those are you know slightly more biting terms, but they're not meant hostily. I'm just not going to call you Catholic because that means universal. That means that you're the only Christians in by definition, I can't be Christian because I don't have the Pope.

1:10:01 So if Catholic means Roman Catholic and I am outside of the whole, then that means I'm outside of scripture. I'm outside of the church. I must necessarily reject that because I reject the Pope. You know, the good ones were in line with the Western tradition. The bad ones I don't have to worry about because they weren't my Pope. They were men who were in a position who made heirs. As Corey says, we're gonna get to Leo X, really bad pope, terrible pope, evil pope. And so when he did things, Roman Catholics must by definition say, Well, yeah, I have to side with Leo X because he was the Pope. The point of the Reformation is you don't have to side with a man. You have to side with God. And if the man who's put in charge doesn't side with God,

1:10:51 then you get a new man. That's that was the entire premise of the Reformation, not overthrow, not revolution, but when we are faced with controversies, let us Let us be faithful. And when the edifices, when the the dominant forces in the places of high power say no, we will not relinquish relinquish control, we insist on being evil, then that puts us today in the same boat that Luther is in. If the Pope is evil, he's still Christian. And if that means he doesn't get to be Roman Catholic anymore, well he's still Christian. And it doesn't really matter what the label is, it matters what scripture says. So as the rem as the Reformation kicks off, that is ground zero. What is a man supposed to do when he's being a

1:11:39 faithful Christian, even in the face of false teachings or disputes. You know, the false teaching emerged after the dispute was rejected with threat of execution. They made him an outlaw, so they're gonna kill him. Well, okay, that's pretty good indication of which side they're on. And that was an appeal to their authority, not an appeal to Scripture. Because of course Luther was arguing from Scripture, and that was the problem. We see that in our churches today, and for exactly the same reason. And so the history of the Reformation, the timeline of the Reformation really is a timeline of Luther's life beginning in fifteen seventeen. His early life is less relevant, although obviously there's some importance as

1:12:24 to why he became a monk, what he encountered as a monk, etc. But we're going to start in fifteen seventeen. This isn't to discount that there were other reformers, particularly the reform tradition was also taking shape at this time. But Luther began the Reformation in earnest, and Luther is the one who carried it forward. God used him as his tool in this particular task. And so thirty-one october fifteen seventeen, he posts the ninety-five theses, as was mentioned. Notably, he posted them in Latin. These were not something that he intended for the common man. These were not something that he intended to be taken and published everywhere. This was an invitation to debate, to discuss theological problems, to

1:13:17 discuss doctrine and dogma, and he even invited in the wording of the theses the Pope to respond to these should he Should he care to do so. But again they were in Latin. They were not in the vernacular. They were rapidly translated into the vernacular, although not by Luther, they were translated by others, and so that is part of what sparked the Reformation because these spread, far and wide, not Luther's original intent. But God had other plans. And so we have the spark of the Reformation here in fifteen seventeen. In fifteen eighteen, things moving actually fairly quickly here, although they move much more slowly later on, in April of fifteen eighteen, Luther meets in Augsburg with Cardinal Cachetan, who demands that he recant, presents

1:14:06 him with a bunch of his works. Luther, of course, says that he cannot recant unless something can be shown to disagree with the Word of God. In 1520, Luther is excommunicated, and that is with the papal bull of Exerge Domine, that's when Pope Leo X condemns Luther's teachings. Exerg Domine is a rise, O Lord, he's invoking God as saying that God is on his side because he claims to be the vicar of Christ on earth. Luther, for his part, in that same year publishes three of his key treatises with regard to Christian doctrine, but what Luther specifically is teaching, and those are to the Christian nobility of the German nation, the Babylonian captivity of the Church, and on the Freedom of a Christian. In the following year, in April, on the seventeenth, we have

1:15:04 the Diet of Vorms. We mentioned that city earlier, here is where it comes up again. This This is where Luther most famously, before both church and empire, makes his statement Here I stand I can do no other. You may have heard it in German Hirstehe Kandstandes. In May of that year, the Edict of Worms is issued. This is where Luther is officially declared an outlaw and a heretic. Now here I have to note something historically. I was tempted before to mention some legal niceties with regard to comparative negligence, but it's not really the place for that. Here, however, we have to make a legal comment. Because outlaw means something specifically in the historical context. A man who is declared an outlaw is outside the law.

1:16:00 This is something that was carried over from ancient law, particularly in this case, of course, Roman law, perhaps not surprising for the holy Roman Empire. A man who is outside the law has no legal protections. He may be killed by anyone, that is what it means, and in fact it heavily implies he should be killed by anyone who encounters him who can do so. This is a death sentence on Luther. That is what this edict actually says. Thankfully, for those of us who are Protestant, thankfully for the Church, Luther has some friends in high places, and so he is whisked away to Vartburg Castle, where he is held in safety as Junker Jorg, Knight George, and he translates the New Testament while he is

1:16:51 there. So he is being very productive. He in fact does that in a rather short period of time. And so this, of course, protects him from the emperor and the pope, both of whom at this point would like to kill him. Because the emperor, in this case, a Spaniard, sides with the Italian Pope. Again, remember Leo the Tenth is a Medici. And so Luther in hiding for three years in Vartburg Castle. In the meantime, you have objections from some of the primarily Germanic princes with regard to the treatment of Luther, the way that Lutheran doctrine is being handled, the way the Church is addressing these doctrinal disagreements and all of these various related things. This eventuates in there was an earlier declaration at the first diet

1:17:44 of Speyer. Basically early on one of the solutions, the timeline doesn't matter as much, but it's important to keep in mind what happened and the order in which they happened. So the timeline in that sense, but not the specific years. Earlier on, there was an attempt to compromise, and this was partly driven by the fact that the Emperor needed the German princes on his side, and the electors and others in the Holy Roman Empire, because he was currently attempting to thwart Muslim invasions, and so there were considerations of a political nature, and so he needed these men on his side in order to send him troops. And so one of the early interim solutions was what we today would basically call call

1:18:37 the religion of the head of state is the religion of the state. How that worked was a particular prince who controlled a particular area Co, I'm Lutheran, my territory is Lutheran, or I'm Roman Catholic, my territory is Roman Catholic, and those who did not want to be part of that church could move to the next territory over. That was the initial compromise. The Emperor went back on his word, which was both obviously a breach of his word and against imperial law, but he went back on his word, he affirmed the Edict of Vorms, the condemnation of Luther, and basically said that no, the entirety of the Empire is subject to the See of Rome, is subject to the Pope, you may not have your religion in your territory.

1:19:32 And so in 1529, at the second Diet of Speyer, that is where we get the term Protestant. Because a handful of German princes protest against this mistreatment at the hands of the emperor. They protest against the Emperor going back on his word, and not permitting them to have their own churches in their own lands. The next year, 1530, this is sort of where things start to get formalized. Yes, we have edicts and we have excommunication and papal bulls and all of these various things flying back and forth. But where things start to really take solid form is 1530, and that's with the Augsburg Confession. This is where the Lutheran Princes, and yes it was the Lutheran Princes, written, of course, by Melanchthon and obviously a great deal of

1:20:29 help from Luther, but written by Lutheran theologians, and then presented by Lutheran princes to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at Augsburg. This was presented as a formal statement of what Lutherans believe. There were other confessions also presented at this time. There was an exchange the Roman Church responded with a confutation. Notably they would not initially give the Lutherans a copy of this again against imperial law. Law. The German princes happened to have scribes who were very good at shorthand, though, and so we have several copies of it, word for word, which was convenient, because we responded to that, in this case, I mean we as Lutherans, responded to that with the Apology

1:21:15 of the Augsburg Confession, which was in large part a refutation of the things that the Roman Church had put forth in the confutation. Notably, the confutation is so bad that Rome doesn't even really speak of it these days. It's kind of been shoved under the rug. It was not a good document. It was poorly written. It said things that were clearly heretical. It was just Rome doing everything they could to condemn the Lutherans, these upstart German princes who would not obey the See of Rome. But 1530, Augsburg, with the Augsburg Confession. That is really where Lutheran doctrine, where the statement of the Lutheran faith is formalized, and the first real statement of what it means to be a Protestant.

1:22:01 What it means to be opposed to what the Roman Church had become, not the Roman Church per se, because frequently in our confessions as Lutherans we affirm that we would prefer to retain church government, as it stood, if only the popes would be open to reform, open to listening to the word of God. But this is the statement of what Lutherans believe, this is the initial statement of Protestantism. Now, it's worth noting, historically, this was not called just for the sake of religious issues, it was partly that. But it was also called because again, the Muslims were invading Europe at this time, as if that wasn't the case, basically for centuries, but they were doing it in earnest. And so the emperor had a very real problem on his hands.

1:22:52 He could not have this kind of disagreement at home, and also have to wage wars abroad, or really not even abroad at this point, but on the fringes of his own empire. And so he wanted, for his part, to resolve these issues. He was hoping that there would be a resolution at Augsburg so that they could move forward together. That is unfortunately not what happened because Rome was entirely unwilling to hear anything, to discuss anything, it was one hundred percent they simply wanted to burn Luther at the stake. And so that led to increased dissensions, this would lead to later political strife, and in fact the thirty years war and other things, but that's not the point of this episode. The last two points on this particular timeline would be 1534 is

1:23:41 when Luther completes the translation of the entire Bible into German. Earlier he had completed the New Testament, he did that very quickly. The Old Testament took a little longer. It's a lot longer, so of course it did. And then in fifteen forty six, Luther dies in Islaben, dying a natural death after suffering a stroke, shortly after preaching his last sermon. And as mentioned, Luther dies in fifteen forty six. Trent does not finish up until after Luther is dead. They wait until he is dead to make their response, as it were, to his doctrine. And notably on the subject of the Apocrypha and the canon, that Luther's translation included the Apocrypha. He simply put it where it had been historically, at the end

1:24:35 of the Old Testament, before the New Testament. He translated every word of it because it was an important part of church history. What he believed it was not, and what many believers going back to prior to the days of Christ, was that the Apocrypha was not inspired. Incidentally, the Apocrypha itself says it's not inspired. One of the early things it says is that all the prophets were dead. Malachi was the last prophet. There were no more prophets until John the Baptist. So the intertestamental period was a period of silence from God. But that didn't mean that the Jews stopped existing or that they stopped recording their history, and that's exactly what the Apocrypha was. It was recorded in Greek because again they'd forgotten Hebrew.

1:25:18 It was a testament of their life and times. It is a largely, almost completely accurate historical record. There are a few errors, there's a bit of false doctrine, but it is generally commended by Christians to this day as something that is useful. And I think one of the one of the needless matters of antagonism between those who hold to the 73 books and those who hold to the 66 is that A, it was a matter of historical dispute. the Jews in Jesus day did not recognize the Apocrypha as inspired. It is quoted in Scripture because it was part of their life and times, just as their pagan poets and philosophers quoted in scripture. That does not accord them the station of inspiration by God. That means that it was a historical record.

1:26:16 So those quotations don't automatically elevate something to scripture or the Bible would be way too short because there's a lot of stuff in there that is incorporated by reference because it existed at the time, not because God breathed it out. I think that when particularly Roman Catholics and and Lutherans and then others are viewing these things. The tough part about looking at the time of the Reformation is that when you distill it solely down to the doctrinal disputes you leave out the men, you leave out the human beings, you leave out the princes and all these these men of power, some of whom are trying to be faithful Christians, some of whom were being power hungry. When is that not the case?

1:27:07 That that's a that's such a tepid statement because even more so than Muslim invasion, that is true in every time and place. But when such things are occurring, when history is continuing to play out as it always does, that has an effect on what's happening. You know, when Corey seamlessly slid into calling them Lutherans, they were called Lutherans as a disparaging term of derision. Basically, they were treated as a cult. They were said, this is this these Lutherans, they're garbage, they're completely outside the church. This is a cult that has emerged. They have nothing to do with the Christian faith. It was branding. It was framing. And the reformers on the Lutheran side went along with it.

1:27:51 They basically gave Rome the finger, said, You want to call us Lutherans? Okay, we're Lutherans. What now? What next? Because they didn't have much else. I think it's important to look to those days in those terms because the going back to the problem of papal primacy w when you talk to Roman Catholic they will have all sorts of outs for explaining why a Pope can be evil, but then things can still go right. I can agree with that. I think any Christian can agree with that. I think the Cope is that it's very difficult for an internally consistent Roman Catholic to deal with their own history. Because I don't I don't think it's possible to be to be internally consistent as a Roman Catholic. And

1:28:44 as we start looking kind of today at the body of folks who listen to Stone Choir and agree with some what we say again, we have a lot of Roman Catholic listeners. I very much appreciate it. One of one of our listeners who has a big podcast was tagged on a I was tagged on a thread he was in where he had said something disparaging about soul scripture. Yeah, basically just kind of the standard Catholic view of scripture alone. And somebody else who listened, probably to both of us, tagged me in to get me to argue with him. And I didn't I wasn't interested in arguing because why why would I argue with someone who's well informed? He's a smart guy. I'm not going to change his mind. And so I thought about it for a while.

1:29:28 what can believers do today when we have such disagreements? I'm not going to change anybody's mind by at least someone who's well informed, by going back to the 16th century well of arguments, because they have already inherited all of the counter-arguments to the arguments that I've inherited, and vice versa. Like these are sixteenth century fights, they were hammered out. Here you go, pass down through the centuries. We have to be a bitter enmity with each other forever. That's kind of our inheritance. I don't want that to be the case. I don't think anyone really wants that to be the case. So the question is, what is the workaround for the post-Reformation world where we have these wild disagreements?

1:30:17 And as I was thinking about, you know, if if I were going to respond on that thread, which I didn't bother because I'm I don't I don't need to defend solo scripture, but I thought, what is an end run that I can do rhetorically around any argument that someone's heard before. And I realize the case is Stone Choir. Because here's a guy who is Roman Catholic, he's very knowledgeable, very intelligent, very devout, agrees with some of what we say. How is that possible for a Roman Catholic to agree with two Lutheran guys who have nothing but enmity for the Pope today, and I'm sure he does too, certainly Bergoglio is is cancerous by almost everyone's estimation. And those who like him are not Christian.

1:31:01 Full stop. You cannot be Christian and think that Bergoglio is Christian. Never mind a Pope. Like he's just he is so far beyond the pale, but he's such a Jesuit viper that he's moving the ball much further than anyone has before. And that's why Satan sent him. And so I really feel for a Roman Catholic listeners because the doctrine that Rome teaches puts them in a situation where there's almost no possibility for someone who is Roman Catholic to cease to be Roman Catholic without ceasing to be Christian. You know, there are lots of former Lutherans and former Baptists and former pretty much everything. You don't the the only former Roman Catholics you find are men or women who married someone of another faith and adopted the other

1:31:55 person's faith. Those are the only former Roman Catholics I've ever met in my life or ever heard of. Everyone else is not a former Roman Catholic, they're a lapsed Catholic. And the reason for that is one of the key teachings that On paper it's actually defensible, becomes indefensible when it is twisted. And that is extra ecclesium nulla salus or outside of the church there is no salvation. This is either true or false, depending on how you define the church. So I absolutely agree that outside of the church there is no salvation. What I disagree with is how we define the church. I believe, I believe that scripture teachers, and I believe in most of history teaches. In fact, you can look at the Wikipedia article for this term

1:32:46 and find many of the arguments that are made inside Rome, I can agree with for the most part, because they're talking about the capital C church in terms of all believers, all Christians, regardless of denominational affiliation. Now I don't say that lightly. I don't like, oh, you're just affiliated with a denomination. We are all inheritors of whatever our denominations teach. So it's important to be in a good one. Because if in your you're in a bad one, you're going to inherit crap and you're going to believe crap, and you're going to be in a situation where suddenly push comes to shove and you're not equipped to deal with tough issues. So the problem that I think is unique to Roman Catholics today

1:33:29 is that when they look at a wicked pope like the current one, they are effectively Protestant. They effectively have to say, well, not this one, but there's still Christianity elsewhere in Roman Catholic history. I agree with that. Corey agrees with that. I think one of the key differentiators in the Reformation that we'll we'll get to briefly is that things kind of bit went in four basic directions. They're kind of four large groups that exploded out of the Reformation. One, you have those who remained Roman Catholic. Two, you have the Lutherans. Three, you have what are today mostly called the Reformed. That's how we refer to them as Lutherans. And you have the Anabaptists. Those four groups disagree with each other mutually internally on a number

1:34:19 of things, but they can all be boiled down to the sacraments. There is no mutual agreement about both communion and baptism among those four groups. And so one of the things that came out of the Reformation is that in particular the Anabaptists, and then some of those that we would categorize in the Reformed body, although they don't necessarily call themselves that, basically adopted the view that if it was inherited from Rome in you know 1520 or whatever, pick your date of Reformation explosion. If Rome was doing it on that date, we reject it out of hand because it's Roman Catholic, that means it's bad, Pope bad, it's all bad, it's all evil. We want none of it. That's a strain. I don't know the history of it from that point to today,

1:35:10 but is very common today in American Christianity And it's a disaster because again, it goes back to the question: what is the church? You know, the Western Catholic Church was synonymous with the Roman Catholic Church. To what degree was the things that they did, and to what degree were the things that we inherited Roman Catholic, and to what degree were they Christian? You know, what percentage do you attribute guilt, if you want to look at it that way, but simply put But how much of what they were doing in thirteen hundred, fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred were they doing because of Roman Catholic distinctives, and how much of it was simply the inherited faith of the Western Christian Church.

1:35:54 As Corey said earlier, it's perfectly fine for church bodies in different times and certainly in different places to have varying customs of worship practice, of liturgy. But I think it's also important when you're discussing things in those terms not to disregard the inheritance. In the I use that term advisedly because Rome will call it tradition with a capital T and say that this is tradition, this was inherited, this holds the same weight as scripture because we've always done it. As non-Roman Catholics, we must necessarily reject that, or we'd have to be Roman Catholic. That's a clear dividing line. If tradition is your binding key, then we're on the outside. If, on the other hand, tradition

1:36:46 can be viewed as both advisory and hopefully salutary, then you will do what the Lutherans did. You know, when you look today at a confessional, conservative, liturgical, Lutheran church service, there are a lot of Roman Catholics who are envious. Because if they're a novosordo, if they're Vatican II crap service, we are still doing what their ancestors were doing eighty years ago. And you know, not in Latin, obviously, we're using the vernacular, but we're preserving the same liturgy by and large that existed in the 16th century. And it wasn't because it was binding upon our consciences as Christians, it was because it's the Western Church. You know, if we had split instead from Eastern Orthodoxy.

1:37:37 You know, we would have gaudy colors and big hats and whatever. And you know, if it's inherited, I guess you gotta be cringe. I don't know. Like it's it's one thing to say we gotta throw this thing away because a bad guy did it. It's another thing to say, well, unless we have a reason to change this, let's leave it alone. And that was 100% the approach the Luther and the Lutheran reformers took to the inheritance from a Roman Catholic tradition. We didn't see it as binding. We saw it as as a treasure as much as possible. We didn't want to lose any of it. And wherever there was something that was set aside, it was only for a doctrinal reason. And it's one of the key differences among Reformation denominations is that

1:38:24 many of the other denominations became iconoclastic. They you know, they some of them the Anabaptists were murdering people, they were burning down churches, they were destroying art. It was truly demonic. I completely side with the Roman Catholics in hating that. That never should have happened. It was purely evil. And it was done because they confused Roman Catholicism with Christianity. They thought, well, if if that's what Christianity is, I don't want any part of it. If that's what Rome was, and I know Rome is bad, I can't I can't do any of it. It's a category error. It's a framing error and it's a it's a catastrophic one. Because much of what Rome was doing wasn't wrong. Some of their teachings were wrong.

1:39:06 Some of the practices were wrong. For example, the Lutheran confessions describe the Mass on one hand as the abomination of the Mass, because they take a different view of what is happening in the sacrament of the altar, they do different things with it. We view that as an abomination, not because communion is an abomination, but because there are abuses that were downstream from heirs that crept into Rome that we necessarily had to reject based on Scripture. And so some of the disputes on the sacrament of the altar among Rome and Lutherans and Baptists and Reformed specifically have to have to do with what's going on in communion. We already did an episode where we talk about what goes on in baptism.

1:39:51 We'll probably do some point about communion because a number of people have asked and it's an important question. And as we said before, we don't we don't want stone Choir just to be us like teaching everything the Luther's Lutherans believe about all this stuff. On the other hand, we accept and receive that teaching gladly, and it's important. Certainly, if nothing else is a part of the historic conversation. And I think that one of the weaknesses that especially a lot of reformed guys have is that they know a little bit about Luther and Lutheranism, but because they simply see him as one among a whole bunch of sixteenth century reformers, the rest of whom they side with on most things. They just see him as kind of one voice among many.

1:40:36 And so it's very It's very telling that most of the five hundredth anniversary Reformation celebrations and movies and things that were produced in twenty seventeen were produced by the Reformed because they see Luther as part of the Reformed tradition to some degree. I think it varies by individual denomination, But as Lutherans, I we find that just insane. Like I I I don't get it. I'm thankful. I I don't get me wrong. I I don't I'm not saying stop doing that. But when a reformed guy sees Luther as part of his tradition, I have to believe that he's never actually read what Lutherans believe about this stuff, because the Book of Concord initially what was compiled between fifteen twenty odd and fifteen eighty in the Book of Concord,

1:41:27 beginning with the Augsburg Confession, what began as arguments with and against Roman Catholicism soon in ended up in a three and a four way fight with also the Reformed and the Anabaptists. So we had to had we had to dis dispute what everyone was saying simultaneously because the Pope wanted to lump the Lutherans in with the Reformed and the Anabaptists saying, well you're you're the ones murdering and and pillaging and burning down churches. And Lutherans, like, we're not doing any of that crap. We hate it as much as you do. And so was falsely attributing everything about the Reformation to the worst aspects of it. And then losing sight of what the differences were. And so, you know, if you are Baptist or Reform and you

1:42:12 care about church history, you really owe it to yourself to actually just read the book of Concord. We'll put the link in the show notes. It's thebookofconcord.org. The whole thing's there. It's out of copyright, it's free, you can read the whole thing. Those are the arguments that were made in the 16th century. So as we look at the state of the church today, capital C, all believers, believers in Rome in the Reformed and Presbyterians and Baptists and Methodists. Yeah. I had a uh someone talk to me on Twitter earlier today and she mentioned that in her small town the local Methodist congregation has just left the UMC because they're going down the tubes. Now, from my perspective on the outside, I find it a little

1:42:59 bit astonishing that there are any Christians left in Methodism because all I know is like the big ticket horrors, the the absolute abject, terminal Protestant apostasy that w is held out as like here's the end stage of the Reformation. You know No rainbow flags, you know, fake rainbow flags with six colors, not seven. all the usual hallmarks of total apostasy. When I think Methodist, that's what I think. I've actually used as a punchline in an earlier episode. When I hear from her that there are churches leaving Methodism or leaving at least the UMC specifically because of the those abuses, it's hardening. And she mentioned that, you know, the the Baptist churches there are probably going to be leaving the SBC for very similar reasons.

1:43:46 Because I said at the beginning, all of the church bodies, no matter how liberal or conservative, are all under the same attack today. Almost verbatim. Now I mentioned last week the quotes from Giles Corey's book The Sword of Christ, he had quotes from Russell Moore in the SBC in twenty seventeen talking about racism and anti Semitism and their battle with it, and it was virtually verbatim what Matt Harrison, president of the LCMS, said about Stone Choir earlier this year. So how's the Baptist and the Lutheran presidents? Well, he's the president, but he was he was very influential. I don't pay much attention to this stuff. So I I apologize when I'm ignorant of other denominations. I historically never paid that much attention, and when I did start

1:44:30 paying attention, I quickly realized how much trouble my own was in. So I'm not gonna worry about other people's dirty laundry and baggage when my own house is not in order. So sometimes I'm ignorant of the stuff that's just it's me allocating my scarce resources as I see fit. When Russell Moore and Harrison are in agreement on things that you will find in your HR department talking about DEI requirements. That's the world religion. That is the new global religion that is being pushed down the throats of all the churches simultaneously. And see, the SBC and the LCMS have major doctrinal differences on historic stuff on the sixteenth century stuff, just as we have major disagreements with the Methodists.

1:45:18 And yet, today, when the attacks come, they're not simply a replay attack of what happened in the 16th century. They're new attacks. They're attacks on sex, on headship, on right down the line, you know, racism, slavery, all these things that on one hand you have guys like MLK and Bonhoeffer as the patron saints of the new global religion who are 100% on board with Russell Moore and Matt Harrison across the board on all these things. And by the way, your HR department, they all have the same religion. And on the other side, you have Christians remaining in the pews saying, what on earth is going on here? One day I feel like my church just left me and I don't know what happened. I don't think I changed what I believe.

1:46:06 And that's the case for a lot of us as we're looking around, you know, Roman Catholics, chief among them. You know, when you were born, if you're listening today, Bergoglio wasn't Pope when you were born, he's the Pope now. You're stuck with him. And so what do we do as Christians as we're looking at these problems? And as I said earlier, I I take solace in the fact that so many people from different traditions are listening and agreeing with at least some of what we say. Not because I want people to agree with me, but because we're making arguments from scripture. And so if you agree with our argument from scripture, you're agreeing with scripture. You're agreeing with God. You're not agreeing with two random podcasters.

1:46:49 You're not becoming Lutheran automatically because you agree with us. And one of the important things that I I want to emphasize as we talk about where do we all go next is that I've said before it's very important to us that people are not People are not fickle about their beliefs. If you are Roman Catholic, I don't want you to stop being Roman Catholic because you listen to Stone Choir. Not automatically. I would like for you to stop being Roman Catholic because you agree that Lutheran doctrine is sound. But again, the problem with the teaching of Rome is that if you leave Rome, if you lose the Pope, you're not a Christian anymore. And that's why you're either Catholic or you're lapse Catholic, because

1:47:34 no one ever escapes. You're Your choice is either the Pope or hell. And that's a complete oversimplification. There are all sorts of outs, but that is the bottom line. In practice, forget what you find in the doctrinal treatises explaining how, well, yeah, you can yeah, the Pope can do this and then we're okay and everything's honky dory. When the rubber meets the road, when a Roman Catholic believer ceases to be a believer because of the hypocrisy and the wickedness in the administration of Rome, they don't change denominations, they lose their faith. And above all things, I don't want that to happen. And so that's the reason I specifically sing all Roman Catholics say, I don't want you to stop being Roman Catholic because the odds

1:48:16 are almost a hundred percent that you're gonna stop being Christian, which is the last thing I want. If you're a Roman Catholic and you agree with some of what we say, it means you're a Christian. Not that we're the benchmark of Christianity, but that the only common ground that we share is scripture, is the word of God. And the beauty of God and of his word is that it is uh efficacious in all times and in all places. And the fact that we have people in all these different denominations who agree with some of what we say when we argue from scripture, is that it means that scripture is being preached among you as well. Even if your pastors are getting some things wrong or your priests, even if there are doctrines that are in error, if you're in

1:48:58 agreement about what scripture says with us, it means that you have the Holy Spirit and that there's something there for God to work with. And in some cases, he's using our voices. In other cases, you know, it's the the ripples of what we have done already in the first year of Stone Choir will, you know, they'll they'll last for a very long time. I can say that with confidence because we know for a fact that there are hundreds of men who brought their families, children have been baptized for the first time, specifically because of hearing the things that we say. That doesn't that's not us doing it. Like, you know, we did the baptism episode recently, but we haven't talked a whole lot about baptism until you know just

1:49:39 a couple weeks ago. When someone hears what we're arguing and say, Yeah, that's the Christianity that I want. You're not adopting our views. You are realizing that there's something in scripture that in a very real sense goes beyond every denomination. Now I'm not uh me and my Bible under the tree person. That's I that's a disaster. The Reformation in large part was a disaster, but it wasn't a disaster because of the reformers. It was a disaster because of the persecution of Rome against faithful Christian men who wanted to straighten things out. So for everyone who listens to Stone Choir who is getting back into reading scripture, maybe reading it for the first time, who's, you know, if you're in a church and you're looking

1:50:27 at your church and you're finding some of the things that they teach aren't consonant with what you're seeing in scripture or what you're hearing in sound arguments from us or from others. Like there's an infinite supply of theological argument for these positions, most of them, anyway. If you look around, you know, for example, the lady on Twitter who said, you know, oh she's SBC, but probably it seemed that way. If you're in an SBC church or you're in a Methodist church or a Presbyterian church, and you're seeing that your leadership, not locally, but your leadership nationally is doing something that is tending towards apostasy or certainly towards what you find to be intolerable or false doctrine.

1:51:13 Honestly, I don't know where we go from here as Christians, like not as like a podcast or anything, but I don't know where we as Christians in current years were looking at the state of the church across denominations, seeing the same cancer spreading in so many places in the same way, at the same rate, and to the same end. I hope that everyone who looks at their own church and says, Well, I I don't actually agree with this anymore. Maybe in some cases the the only suitable thing that you can do is to find another local church that teaches something closer to what you now believe. In some cases, maybe maybe the first thing that everyone probably should do when it can be done, you know, charitably and and without

1:51:59 stirring up strife, is a talk about it, you know, with the other men in the convert congregation. You say, you know, I've been reading, I've been thinking about this. I think we should take another look at this church teaching. Now, that's you know, the the Roman Catholics will s will scream, well that's every man a pope. Well, we're individually accountable to God for our confession. You know, the president of the Missouri Synod or the president of your denomination or your pope is not going to answer on your behalf on judgment day. You are. Now he's going to answer for the lies that he told you, but that doesn't get you off the hook. If you believe the lies, you're accountable for that too.

1:52:41 And so it's important for us as we're looking at this stuff is to figure out how can I be faithful to God. And I honestly I think in some cases, you know, we in particular, frankly, I think there are a lot more Christians in Presbyterianism today than there are in Lutheranism, just based on the behavior that I've seen. I think that a lot of guys in the Presbyterian and Reform space don't agree with us about everything, but they don't hate us. They don't think we're not Christians. They don't need to call us Nazis. Even if they think that we're wrong about stuff or we go too far or whatever. That is much closer to Christianity than the man who doxes me and tries to kill me. That's just that's a simple basic thing.

1:53:19 If you disagree with a man, you don't try to kill him. I think that if you are, you know, Reformed Presbyterian, whatever, wherever you are, wherever God has placed you in your congregation, if you're looking around and you're seeing, I think that there's mistakes perhaps that have been made in the past in our denomination. Be honest about confronting how you got there. And it's going to differ for every denomination. For Rome, I think the the the line from Bergoglio back through Vatican II, I honestly I would hope that you would go all the back to Trent. I think a lot of things went off the rails at Trent. And it's something that doesn't get discussed a whole lot in Roman Catholicism today because it's just it's a given.

1:54:04 You have five centuries of history built on top of it. But if you have already become Protestant, if you're already willing to say, Yeah, that's not my Pope. That like he he might technically be the Pope, but the man is a demon. If you're there, then you have a duty to God, not to the Pope, not to the magisterium, not to tradition. You have a duty to God to figure out where did things go off the rails. And frankly, most people aren't equipped to answer that question by themselves, but collectively Christians should be discussing those things. And the answer is going to be different in every denomination. You know, the the denominations that trace back to the Reformation will have varying degrees of disagreement and certain inflection points.

1:54:48 And you know, we broke it down to those four basic categories, which is somewhat of an oversimplification, but not much. So I don't mean to be offensive by saying that, but pretty much everyone listening falls into one of those four buckets. And if you think that you're this kind of special little tiny thing, great. I hope you get everything right that everybody else got wrong because there's a lot of baggage. I want us wherever we are in our churches to work through this stuff out loud and hopefully cooperatively as much as possible. And I I don't know what's going to happen in the next five years. But when we we have listeners from so many different denominations agreeing on some big ticket stuff.

1:55:33 You know, even the baptism episode, there are a number of people who join Lutheranism because we describe baptism to them correctly for the first time. And if you disagree with, I don't want you to just pop smoke on your church and say, 'I'm I'm out of here.' I don't want anything that we say to sow doubt in people's minds. I I hope that our words sow faithfulness. And if in growing faithful to scripture, you find that your own particular church and congregation has issues, hopefully they can be fixed. You know, honestly, for me, I think the the best case scenario is if there are a bunch of Presbyterian guys who are listening to Stone Choir in their church and almost everyone's like, Yeah, this

1:56:15 is actually pretty good. I don't care if you start calling yourself Lutherans, but if we've gotten all these things right, maybe look at what the historic Lutheran teaching is on the sacrament. Because if you get the sacrament right, guess what? you're basically Lutheran at that point. I don't care what you call yourself. Call yourself Presbyterians for all I care. It doesn't matter. The label isn't important. Because the label it means whatever you want it to mean, or nothing, or whatever your opponent wants it to mean. The belief, the confession is what's important. If you don't confess the ecumenical creeds, start there. As we said earlier, we tried to make the case that the creeds themselves are a big deal.

1:56:56 And if your church body is predicated on rejecting them, find out why and find out if you consider that to be tolerable. And maybe it's something to be fixed. Because like it's you know, it's not just mouthing the words every Sunday. It's just do I believe this or not? Forget saying it, forget confessing it or anything that formal. When you look at those words, do you believe them? And if you do, why wouldn't you join seventeen hundred years of Christians in saying them out loud? I think that's the predicate. That's a basis for a lot of the conversation that we hope we can start in many different places. Not to be disruptive. There will be some disruption. It's not the intent. And you need to be mature about this stuff.

1:57:39 Don't go picking fights. Don't go neener near boo-boo. You're doing all this wrong suddenly because you heard some podcaster tell you something. Do some research, do some study, prayerfully consider what it is that you believe and what can be done within your church. And if the best thing for you and your family is to find a different church, a different congregation, a different denomination, and God's blessed you with one who's available, then you should do that if that's what your conscience convicts you of. I would never tell anyone to leave a Lutheran church. I would never tell anyone at this point to j join a Lutheran church because we've told you what they've done to us. And yet people are still streaming into Lutheran churches as a result

1:58:19 of Stone Choir. I'm not going to argue with enemy either. I can't tell you're doing it wrong. And there are other people who listen to us and say, I would never go to a Lutheran church because of what they did to you. I'm not going to argue with you either. You need to look to your circumstances and see what's right for you. And see none of this is a capitulation on doctrine. I'm not I'm not saying that I disagree with baptism or communion or anything else the Lutheran doctrine holds. I'm saying that all of us need to try to get our own houses in order. And if that's possible and it can be done in a way that doesn't harm consciences or drive people away, that should be our task. I would much rather that all the different denominations become more

1:59:01 faithful. And frankly, if that were to happen, you know, we believe doctrinally, you're all going to turn Lutheran. I don't I don't what you guys are doing. Why aren't you Lutheran to begin with? Well, part of it's the Lutherans have been incredibly terrible about telling people A that we exist or B what we believe or C why any of it matters. And this stuff does matter. This approach does matter. But there's no one simple direct solution for any of this apart from read your Bible, go to church, go to the best church you can find, talk to other Christians, hammer these things out, keep your head up, look out, look out in your community and look out in your congregation what's going on, and don't be surprised if

1:59:40 the new fights don't look like the old fights. And the crucial thing there is that if there's a new fight, that means that we need new arguments. That's another reason that we started Stone Choir, is that a lot of what we're dealing with today no one's ever dealt with. And frankly, the overwhelming majority of pastors are utterly unfit to tackle these subjects. They're simply not. They're not smart enough. They don't know enough about scripture. They don't have the right approach to do anything other than spout platitudes that they learned in seminary. they were handed a toolbox for fighting 16th century fights, and they bring that toolbox wherever they go. And when Satan changes direction, they attack it with the wrong tool.

2:00:21 Because they're not smart enough or they're not faithful enough. Some of them are just patently evil. We need to figure this stuff out for ourselves. And I want the pastors who can get the stuff right to do so. In some cases that's going to mean following to listening to men who can do a better job at this stuff than you. And I hope that we reach the day where churches are raising up men to be fit to do that in their own context. Pastors, elders, presbers, whatever you want to call them, I want those men to be faithful. It should have nothing to do with any what any particular man teaches. It should have everything to do with what scripture teaches. Because that was the point of the Reformation.

2:00:59 Luther opened his Bible, he read it, and he says, hey, what I'm reading here doesn't match with what the church is doing. One of them is wrong, and I know it's not scripture. I believe God. So we need to do something about the church. Every one of us, whatever denomination you're in, has some problems today, and they're getting worse. I can say that with absolute certainty. So I don't want to see a massive flight from one denomination to another. I would like to see us get our own ducks in order, sort this stuff out, and we're going to find that well I I I I think if you diagnose correctly, where the airs crept in, more of you will naturally become Lutheran. Like it's it's my sincere hope. But at the same time, it's not a goal, if that makes

2:01:43 sense. I don't I want us to be faithful, and I believe that being faithful means adopting Lutheran doctrine on some of these big ticket items. But frankly, the Lutherans are doing worse than some other denominations today when it comes to the new fight, because we have been so complacent, so set and resting on our laurels about 16th century fights that there's no one left who's actually competent to engage forcefully and clearly with the current issues. There are a few who are trying and some are doing an okay job, but frankly, even the best of them are kind of making a mess of a lot of it because they're either too afraid or they're still too wedded to some of the very things that need to be toppled because they're false doctrines.

2:02:28 So those are discussions for other days and a lot of it's, you know, from past Stone Choir episodes, but I personally am very thankful that after a year we have such a varied audience. I think it's it's a remarkable testament to me to the to the power of God's word. I'm thankful that the where the Bible is in the pews and it's on people's lips and in their hearts, they're still Christians. And we can recognize each other's voice, even you know, across the ether or the internet, simply by virtue of the fact that we're speaking the same language. That's part of scripture when we're called sheep and God is our shepherd. And we are told that God's sheep recognize his voice. When we speak from Scripture, that is God's voice.

2:03:12 That's not our voice. The word of God is from Him. It is our master's voice. And when there are sheep who recognize it across denominations, forget whatever vertical segmentation has occurred among different Christian groups. If we recognize the same voice, we're on the same team. Not completely, because obviously we don't recognize the same voice on every matter, or we would have complete doctrinal harmony. But insofar as we agree, we need to work together, even as just supporting each other, to try to make our own churches more faithful. And I I think that's one of the emergent hopes and properties of Stone Choirs to help us all wherever we are. I said if you're Roman Catholic, please keep being Roman Catholic and

2:03:58 just figure out where things went wrong. Because it wasn't with Bergoglio. It wasn't with Vatican II. When you unwind the airs, you're gonna get back pretty much to where Luther and the other reformers were. Things went off the rails a long time ago. I you can find Saint Peter Damien quotes, they're a thousand years old, decrying the sexual abuses in the Roman Catholic Church. A thousand years ago, long before any of the scandals in today's headline, those behaviors were already rampant. That is the fruit of a sick tree. Not a dead tree, but a sick tree. the things, the abuses that occurred then that occurred today have a spiritual root. And it wasn't simply that those behaviors naturally exist, as Corey said

2:04:45 in the past episode, there were things that Luther refused to even To even talk about because they were unknown in Germany. It was only Italian monks that were bringing that crap into Germany. And he didn't want his own people thinking about because it's too depraved. Those things don't naturally arise. They arise when Satan can take hold through abuses, sometimes small ones. Much of it lies at the feet of monasticism and the s the vows of celibacy that were forced on men men against their will because it's an unnatural thing. I'm descended from bishops, Roman Catholic bishops and nuns, because they didn't have vows of celibacy until much later. And then the abuses crept in. So if you're Roman Catholic, you know, I I'd like for you

2:05:30 to be Lutheran, but I honestly I would like even more for you to clean up Rome. Because if the Western Christian Church all got back on the same page, there wouldn't be any more Lutherans either. We would all just be Christian. As we said at the beginning, that's never gonna happen. Not before Jesus come back. it's an impossibility. Nevertheless, it should be our goal to figure out where we're getting things wrong and to try to get them right. Anytime you open the Bible, first you know, listen to God's word and test your own heart against it. What are you doing right? What are you doing wrong? You know, it's a blessing from God for him to teach us. And he is teaching us through scripture. So thank you to everyone who has churches where scripture's being taught

2:06:10 because you would hate us if that weren't the case. The people who hate us, their churches are not teaching scripture in the same ways you are. I hope that in the future Stone Choir can be something that is a a blessing to everyone who listens, even when you disagree with some things we say. These should be points of discussion that will make all of our faith stronger, all of our church is stronger, because the new attacks are going to continue. They're going to continue to escalate. They're going to get worse. They're going to become more horrific. And if we don't have a foundation that's based on in some cases new arguments, not not based on new principles. Like that there's a fundamental difference between a new argument and a

2:06:55 new principle. The principles are 100% scriptural, but the arguments sometimes need to be made anew. And it's okay for us to do that, but we have to be very careful because you don't want to be inventing new doctrine. That's a it's a it's a terrible position for us to be put in. That's exactly the position that Satan's putting us in, to have to tackle new subjects without the benefit of wise men who came before us and just handed us a book. We have an inheritance of faith, but we don't have an inheritance of some of these arguments. And so to together we need to work through those arguments so that we can get to the point that we can make sure the the Western Christian Church survives. Period. I don't care what it's called.

2:07:37 I just want to survive. And everyone who's listening is going to be a part of that. I would like to make a comment about something that is rampant, particularly on the right wing, but just generally in the West, because it is something to which human beings are prone. And that is the elevation of the concept of a denomination or a tradition, whatever term you happen to use for it, into essentially a sports team. We have this tendency as human beings to turn whatever sort of conflict we're in, even if it's minor, into a hard line black and white us versus them. That's not always wrong. Sometimes that is the right way to view things, particularly say if you're in a war, because that's the only way to view things

2:08:33 in a war, certainly, anything else is going to harm your efforts. But when it comes to religion and matters like this, when it comes to doctrinal disagreements or disagreements on dogma, theology, whatever it happens to be, we need to view things less as if we are opposing factions each waving our flag and we're going to fight regardless of what the underlying truth happens to be, and more as brothers in the faith who are looking for the truth. Now I know that some are going to say that it's ironic that I'm the one saying this as I've been particularly polemical at times, particularly on social media. But as I've mentioned before, you interact with people in different ways in different contexts.

2:09:25 I am one of the few remaining people who still holds to the ancient belief that you comport yourself in a different way, in a different place. And so you don't behave the same if you are having an audience with the king, or if you are crafting a tweet, or if you're recording a podcast. That doesn't mean that you're inconsistent, it doesn't mean that you're hypocritical, it means that different places call for a different tone, a different approach. And so on Twitter, yes, I'm going to be polemical because quite frankly, it's the point of Twitter. If you're not polemical at all, you're doing it wrong, unless you just happen to be reading it, in which case it's not a particularly bad source of news if you follow the right people.

2:10:11 But as a more important, more general, more salient matter. Right now what we are facing and what I think we've made very clear over the course of the past year, is the complete and utter destruction of Christendom. And Lutherans alone are not going to be sufficient to save the church. There aren't enough of us. And quite frankly, that is the case for every single denomination or tradition. And you may think, well, there are a billion of us in whatever this happens to be. And I know for instance that certain of the Roman Catholic listeners will be thinking that. The issue is that there are not a billion of you. Because the ones who matter are the ones who are still true, the ones who are still faithful to scripture, who are true to

2:10:56 God, and there are not a billion of you, because there aren't a billion Christians in any denomination. We are going to have to work together across denominational, across traditional lines, if we are going to make any sort of progress in saving the church from what is being done to her. This is going to be challenging for some of us. I am again inclined toward the polemical. Working across lines will take effort. It's something that does not come naturally. And this is going to be particularly so for a certain subset of listeners to this podcast, because there's probably a good five to ten percent of you who are inclined toward the polemical, who have read more about your particular tradition, who those who are steeped in

2:11:48 the arguments, those who have engaged in these materials and so are very staunch in what they believe, and are going to defend even minutiae. I'm not saying that minutia are unimportant because they are important. The minor matters count, because truth matters. And as Wo said earlier in this episode, if two men disagree, at least one man is wrong. But again, of course, we can both be wrong. But the point is that we have to work together. And so we have to find some sort of common ground. This is going to be particularly challenging for some traditions, some denominations, much more so than others, and as well mentioned, that is going to be particularly you, our Roman Catholic listeners, because you have the

2:12:36 challenge of centuries of inertia behind the false doctrine that has been brought into your church. That is very hard to overcome. I don't know that it necessarily can be overcome at this point. And so whether you stay in a Roman Catholic Church or you leave for a church that is truer to God's word, that does not have those centuries of inertia behind false doctrine. That is a matter of conscience that is between you and God. I know what I would do, and I don't think I have to say what I would do, because well you know. But we all face particular challenges. They're similar in some ways, they're unique in some ways. The Reformed are not going to face the same challenges as we Lutherans face.

2:13:25 Lutherans will not face the same challenges as the Roman Catholics, and the same is true of everyone else, Methodist, Baptist, whatever you happen to be. But fundamentally, there are a handful of things about which we all agree. I would hope we can all agree, and quite frankly, we can all agree because anyone who does not is outside the faith, in the true sense of extra ecclesium, outside the church. I would hope that we can all agree that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, and that He's the only way to the Father. That's our starting place. We can squabble about scripture, I wish that we wouldn't, but we will We can squabble about all these other things, but if we can have some sort of core on which we agree, we can at

2:14:16 least work together against the enemies of the church and Christendom. Yes, inevitably we are going to be back at each other as soon as those enemies are out of the way. But I would much rather be fighting intellectual battles because we should not resort to force of arms against our Christian brothers. I would much rather be fighting intellectual battles against other Christians than fighting the hordes of pagans invading us from the third world. And we will not get there from here unless we work together. We've mentioned the Creeds repeatedly. And the Creeds really are the basic The basic foundation, the basics of the Christian faith. If we cannot agree on the creeds, then there is probably no

2:15:06 hope of us working together. Now agreeing on the creeds is going to be particularly challenging, and in this case, I do not address myself specifically to the Roman Catholics, but to the Baptist listeners. Because there are going to be parts of the creeds that you will find are very Are very difficult to fit into your framework. Particularly for some of you, there will be the issue in the Nicene Creed of I believe in one baptism for the remission of sins. That is the teaching of the historic church, that is what we went over in the episode on baptism. That is what Christians have always believed. That is not entirely consonant with what your church has historically taught. You are going to have to resolve that for yourself because yourself

2:15:50 because you will stand before God and give an answer for why you believed one way or the other. Why you believe what the church is historically taught, and is in fact in line with what Scripture says, I invite you to go back and read every single verse on Baptism and then And then read that line in the creed and see if they agree. We never call you to believe us blindly, or even to believe the creeds blindly. You are to believe scripture, compare everything against scripture. Scripture is very clear. Test the spirits. And this is the case with all teachers. Regardless of how highly esteemed they are in church history, you are to compare them to the words of God in Scripture. It doesn't matter.

2:16:34 If it's Cyril of Alexandria, if it's Nestorius, if it's Origen, if it's Luther or Calvin or Tswingli, it doesn't matter which man, you are to compare his words to God's words. If they are consonant with God's words, then they are true, because he is speaking God's words after him. If they are not consonant with what God has said, then that man is a false teacher, at least in so far as what he has said disagrees with what God has said. And then you are left with the decision of whether or not you can follow that man that man. It depends on whether or not the errors he has made rise to the level where you cannot follow him as a teacher. Well and I don't agree with Luther on everything. Luther never jettisoned the belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary.

2:17:23 Neither one of us holds to that. It's not in our confession, so we aren't bound by it, notably, which is good, because we are in fact both Lutheran. I am unapologetically Lutheran. I believe everything that is written in the Book of Concord. That is what I mean when I say I am a Lutheran. My subscription is quia, it is because the Book of Concord is true. And so I agree with it because it agrees with Scripture. I agree with it because I have read through it and assessed every line in the confession, in every document, in that book, against what Scripture says, and I have not found a contradiction. If I did I wouldn't be Lutheran. And that is why my confession is quia subscription to the Book

2:18:05 of Concord. That is what I mean by Lutheran. And that is the point I want to make here. Our subscription, what we mean, what we declare, what we profess and confess as Christians, is a matter of doctrine, it is a matter of truth. It is not a matter of saying that I am Lutheran and so I'm going to waive this particular flag. Thankfully we don't have one because it probably would look as terrible as the so called Christian flag. Someone should make a good one. That's not the point. We're not cheering, we're not cheerleaders for a team. I believe and say I am Lutheran because that is shorthand for saying I subscribe to and agree with the doctrine that is in the Book of Concord. I agree with the historic Lutheran faith.

2:18:50 It doesn't mean I agree with any Lutheran body. Insofar as the body agrees with the Book of Concord, the body is Lutheran, and then we'll agree. But just because they call themselves Lutheran doesn't mean they are. And I will extend the same charity to any other Christian. Just because the ELCA, Elkah, say that they're Lutheran, doesn't mean there are. They're Satanists. I'm not saying there are no Christians in Elkah, but I am questioning why they haven't left. The same thing is true for other denominations. PCUSA, as I'm sure our Presbyterian listeners and other Reformed listeners know, is apostate. That doesn't mean that the OPC is. The same thing is true of every denomination. There are faithful Christians across denominational and traditional lines in basically every

2:19:39 body of Christendom. And I'll say that even of, say, the Oriental Orthodox, I am sure there are staunch Christians in that tradition. I am less familiar with them, so I don't know as much, but I am sure they have Christians there as well. And the reason for that is simple. Where God's word is read, where God's word is spoken, where God's word is proclaimed from the pulpit, it will not return to him void, because that is his promise in Scripture. And every one of God's promises is true, and so where God's word is read, there will always be true Christians. And so, even at the height of the problems of Rome in the Middle Ages around the Reformation, Europe was Christian. And Europe was Christian

2:20:26 because the Word of God was still read. And so what we have to do is move forward together as Christians. The challenge that I would raise for any of our listeners is go over the creeds. See if you agree with every statement in the creeds because that's what the historic church has always taught. That is what all of your forebears in the faith have believed. That is what the men who came before you, many of whom quite frankly knew Scripture better than those of us in the modern world, that is what they believed, taught, and confessed. And so go over the creeds. See if you can agree with what the creeds say, and if you can't, figure out why. Because quite frankly, your soul is in danger if you're disagreeing with

2:21:11 anything in the creeds. Because you are probably in a church that is teaching something falsely. Because you didn't get that idea from nowhere, that idea that disagrees with the creeds. And as Christian brothers and sisters, if we can manage to agree at the bare minimum on the content of the creeds, then surely we can set aside the other distinctives relatives at least in so far as they would cause conflict and work together in order to rebuild Christendom because that is our ultimate goal. Our ultimate goal is to make sure that we salvage the church, this shipwreck that has been created by previous generations, many of whom, over a course of decades, basically a century at this point, were

2:22:03 largely faithless. That is the challenge ahead, and that is an incredible task. It's one that quite frankly we cannot achieve on our own. We can achieve it only if God is with us. But certainly God is going to be there to support us, to see us through this. But we have to do our part. I'm not saying that it's works, so I invite those who are a little more inclined to the works side of things to not get too excited about my words. Yes, we affirm works, because works are necessary insofar as they necessarily follow and flow from living faith. But works will not save you, and works will not save the church. But as Christians we have to do them, and that is obedience to God, and God blesses those who are obedient to his

2:22:53 will. And so the bottom line is that regardless of whether or not we are polemical at certain times about certain things, and regardless of whether or not we have these disagreements, and I'm not saying set them aside, don't, you can still disagree, but there is a time and a place. You don't argue with your wife in public. You may have a disagreement with her in private, and that's fine, that's where you have that disagreement. Families, when they have disagreements, have those in private. You don't air your dirty laundry. We should be doing the same thing as the church, and in this case I mean the church universal. All believers, regardless of denomination or tradition, don't air the dirty laundry

2:23:37 publicly. Have the disagreements. And yes, by publicly I don't mean that you can't use Twitter. Obviously that's one of the ways we communicate these days. I am saying that we set those aside when we move into the public sphere, which is to say, when it comes to the political, when it comes to the left hand kingdom, if we are cooperating in those endeavors, we set aside these denominational and traditional distinctions that do not, or at least should not, hinder Christian cooperation. And I think that we have to found that Christian cooperation on the creeds. Because that is the bare minimum. That is a summary statement of what God says in Scripture. It is a summary statement of what Christians have always believed, and

2:24:27 it is a summary statement of the foundation on which we can rebuild Christendom, and then of course we can get back to bickering, as we will inevitably do until Christ returns.