Eric Metaxas: Martin Luther

[Music] Wow that is not appropriate thank you sit down that is inappropriate got as idolatry that is idolatry thank you very much thank you if you don't know what idolatry is you're probably not saved and we talked to me after class Wow welcome to Socrates in the city we are thrilled to have so many of you here tonight I have to tell you that Socrates is a little bit under new management first of all the person who runs my life ELISA Loeb heiress all the new management is under her in case you're wondering but the Kings College has really stepped up finally because you know you know that I've been bitterly waiting for many years that they would step up and and help me with this and I want to say thank you for finally heating God's call no pressure it's just God so you know take your time take your time no in all seriousness I am I can't tell you how thrilled I am they've they've run an amazing event as good as these events typically are this one is almost as good as those have been in the past and I want to say for your first try really could be better all right I got to start out obviously on a serious note we can't gather here without acknowledging the horror of what happened in Las Vegas the other day but it struck me it's important to bring this up upfront that the very reason we have always done Socrates in the city starting in 2000 hard to believe mm yeah we started this in 2000 and I remember after 2001 those events the whole point of this ultimately ultimately is to do what Socrates said we ought to do he said the unexamined life is not worth living and we need to think about the big the meaning of life yesterday my radio program there was this temptation to you know to get involved in the chatter of what's going on in Las Vegas what's the new thing what's the new thing with it the new thing is there's nothing new there is evil in the world people are broken and sick since the beginning of time human beings have been trying to answer that question is there a god and by the way if there is a god what kind of a God is he and what kind of a God could let this happen and how do i process that these are the most fundamental questions typically people only ask those questions when something like this happens right tsunami kills people and Larry King says to Franklin Graham where is your God when that you know like it's that have you heard of the Holocaust Larry King you know these things have happened before and so you know the murder of 59 or so people ought not to be the thing that makes you say oh I reject God because it shows you to be historically ignorant you should have rejected God a long time ago but the point is that if you think about these things whether you're a sincere believer as I am a devoted Christian you still have these questions and then people who reject God have these questions so I think that to try to make sense of these things that's ultimately what I tried to do in all of my writings and what I try to do what we try to do with Socrates in the city and in fact Luther nobody struggled with these questions more than Martin Luther his whole life was a picture of trying to figure out how do I make peace with this God I've heard about he seems to me cruel and judgmental what do I do and then he comes to this epiphany which we'll talk about later where he saw God in a different league but his whole story is our story it's the story of every human being trying to figure out how do I do this how do I make sense of this so I I did think it was important to say that tonight that's that's the idea behind pretty much everything I do and certainly the idea behind Socrates in the city to wrestle honestly with these questions so another word on Socrates in the city we are not only having Socrates in the city events when I'm launching a book although I would although I would prefer that but the reality is the reality is that we are going to be having now that the Luther book is done we can focus a little bit more on doing more of these events and now that Kings College has finally stepped up maybe we can have more events maybe we'll see but we will of course have more events it's been our intention all along to do that they're expensive and difficult to put together but we're trying to figure it out alright tonight as you can already guess our format is a bit different instead of me doing the interviewing Greg Thornbury who is the president of King's College will be doing the inner interviewing we try to get dick cavett he was not in town we tried to get Alec Baldwin he moved to Canada as you know we try to get a lot of people who are way more qualified than Greg and they all had an answer I purchased some land I must look at it my father passed away I have to bury my father all these excuses now if you're not getting these references you don't read the Bible and and finally we had to settle on Greg and I just want to apologize in advance he's just a kid I don't know if he's 24 25 whatever he's gonna do his best I'll try to do most of the talking Greg is in fact a president of the Kings College and it was Greg and a mutual friend of Greg's of mine Marcus speaker who really convinced me to write this book I was not convinced that I didn't really want to ever write another biography to be honest but they are the ones that convinced me to write the book so I dedicated the book to both of them although you understand there's always second printing so if they do anything that rubs me the wrong way I can dedicate it to you or you or you to anybody that you know you do me a good turn maybe you grease my palm and next thing you know your name is in there because I don't like some of the questions that Greg asked me tonight so keep in mind that you know everything's on the table I'm not taking anything off the table all right now lamentably I have to use part of this introduction to deal with a personal vendetta which brings us to the subject of my former friend mr. Richard Egan is rich here esra yeah there he is there he is rich hey you lost a lot of weight you're looking great rich the fact that you're here means you've already violated the terms of our agreement I want to say that up front do we have any muscle to bounce this jerk no all right so if it's fine he'll learn something here's the issue it's not a lot of money but $40 is $40 and I would appreciate before you leave tonight maybe I can get my money would that be okay if that's not too much but that's not the whole thing folks I gotta be honest this goes way back I'm very bitter in the late 70s rich and I were riding bikes together and he gave me a glass of kool-aid I believe it was the Hawaiian Punch flavor and they were there were quaaludes in it he put quaaludes in yeah yeah exactly and he stole my bicycle and it was a three-speed with a banana see and I dream about that bike rich and I gotta tell you in those dreams I come after you with a pair of nunchucks in these dreams and in the dream I am with the Noon chucks I just want to tell you that and I just had to get that off my chest I apologize I apologize perhaps I've said enough perhaps I've not said enough perhaps this will come back in the qat all right I guess I should probably mention Luther briefly although who's not fascinated with Richard Egan besides me so much happening in life that Richard you okay we still friends because I was I never was your friend I was never your friend I was never your friend tell you tell your lady friends that I have a legal order against you and that it's just because I'm gracious that you're even in the room all right I think we better talk about Martin Luther now this is actually true there's so much that happened in Luther's life I write about this in the book there's so much that happened in Luther's life that everybody knows that I discovered was absolutely not true that I was kind of astounded that's what happens when a legend kind of pops up it's almost like folklore tall tales I they're they're about seven things I'm not gonna mention them here but they're in the the book that everybody knows this and then you think that's not really true for example he he's always said to be poor the son of peasants the son of a minor absolutely not true in 2003 there was some archeology they discovered his family home is like three times bigger there's all this kind of stuff that I you know not being an academic but I just discovered these things that I'm glad to to set these things to rights in my book they people also say as if they know that he married a nun with the face of a narwhal which is not true you know what a narwhal is right it's a whale with a single twisty horn protruding from its head that it uses to spear prey like squid and things but then of course it has no hands to get the squid off of the horn so that it can eat it and and that to me is proof of the doctrine of the fall creation is not as it's meant to be I believe in the kingdom of heaven that Narwhal will have arms with which to pull the wriggling bleeding squid toward his hungry mouth in the kingdom all right what else Luther oh this is a big one you hear this all the time this is one of these things everybody says this is true not true Luther did not have wooden teeth it's simply untrue you even hear that his teeth sometimes were made from the teeth of hippopotami the teeth of rhinos or even I love this one from tabby cats that's straight on to the monastery grounds which they killed in order to provide big shot Luther with tiny sharp teeth because he would you'd capture birds with it with his mouth that is all so that's a lot of that is not true at all his teeth were as I can prove made from human teeth in fact they were made and this is weird from his own teeth somehow the teeth from which his own teeth were made actually never even left his mouth that is not that is not in my book but trust me on that one I just have one final thing to say one final piece of debunking if you'll bear with me and what choice you have really some of you remember the Poseidon Adventure in 1973 remember the wonderful theme song Maureen McGovern there's got to be a morning after we will you sing that with me No well anyway in that movie you'll remember Jack Albertson was married to the character played by Shelley Winters do you remember that some of you will remember that and if you look at the picture of Luther on my book and you and you know winter as Shelley Winters from that period you notice the strong resemblance between them people say that was not Shelley Winters that was Martin Luther but again that's another one of these things I can understand how people get there but it's simply simply not true in fact the whole thing was started kind of as a gag rumor Ernie Borgnine and gene Hackman they were real cut-ups on the set and they put that out there that that's Martin Luther but now we just know that got out of hand and I just want to say this has to stop okay it has to stop probably the most shocking thing of all I gotta end with this is that Martin was not his first name neither was his last name Luther so who was he really I suppose I'll leave that to my my friend Greg Thornbury to ferret out in the next few minutes so I'll turn the evening over to him thank you very much Greg [Applause] well what more is there to say really about Martin Luther after that about it after that wild introduction Eric this is a massive tall have you ever seen a tome that was not massive be honest yes I have pretty word aya I have seen I have seen tomes that are not massive okay but nearly 450 pages write of Luther scholarship and it reminded me almost of Luther's own translation of the New Testament while he's at the castle Wartburg in three months when did when did you write this when did this get done this is like did this drop out of the sky from Random House I have this is an amazing piece of scholarship first of all let me say how grateful I am to have you here Greg all joking aside you are qualified to be here thank and I'm very and I am I'm noted cap I'm thrilled I'm thrilled that that you could be here you you know that we're friends and if you're my friend watch out but but we're friends and I I'm very you're very kind to say those things when you ask me when did I write that I mean you know me and you remember when I was writing it I'm not James missioner with like staff who helps me write the book like where are those notes and I do all the research myself and I actually think would take more time for me if I had people doing research I'm just sort of quick and whatever but I don't know I mean I was asked that question today I'm a Dennis Prager show and I said that the the reality is that I'm a popular writer I'm not an academic and and that's why academics often hate popular writers because typically popular writers books sell and maybe are read there is jealous and so sometimes they're just kind of nasty and they hold you to this academic standard I can say that I know the different you don't need to be an academic to know the difference between what's true and what's not true and but I want to make it an interesting story so I make a lot of stuff up what are you gonna do you know what I mean I don't have ten year nothing what are they gonna do to me no but actually in all seriousness it's a it's a very different you are a senior fellow at the Kings now that's right demotius right no but I think that what's funny is that it's not difficult to tell the difference between whether something's true or not and it's fun for me to do that and to know that the burden on me is only to tell the story to get as many facts in that I think are interesting and important whatever to tell the story well it's very different and I and I ought to say this that anybody who writes an academic biography it there's there's a different standard and it's much more difficult to do that and I and I I would I'm not qualified to do that I never would do that and and I think that so I take my hat off to all the people who've written all of the academic biographies that I read and that give me the ability to write a book like this I mean there's so many of them and they're there many good ones that I that I read but I I I guess I just when I write I get hyper focused and I just dive in because you know there are these things called deadlines you know because you're just finishing a book a biography on Larry Norman which I suppose we'll have a Socrates Socrates in the city about I'll get to grill you but I mean you understand that is the biography of a man who there aren't a lot of books about him there are no books about him so you're doing original research that's a whole please there's always somebody there the the you're doing original research and that's very different so if you're doing original research in fact it would take much longer than it took me to do that well it's clear having read the book which was dedicated to me and Marcus speaker by the way I do have ought against you though on one point on that st. you know saying art against you so pretentious isn't that terrible well there is only pretense here involved in the when I got the page proofs it said to my friends Marcus speaker and dr. Gregg Thornbury without whom this book would not exist right that is not in the final print you know what in Jinan ecology of the book has changed you want to know why it's not in the final version because it could be rescinded my editor Brian tart who's here tonight refused to put that in there you know what I'll be honest there's a lot of good stuff in here that he just put his foot down and he said it's not going in the book so so if it's ever republished I'll change all that stuff but Brian tart he's the head of Viking I can't argue okay I'll take it up with him later now one thing before we we're gonna really get into the meat of the matter in just a few minutes but I want to say one of the things I loved about reading the book and you'll love about reading the book is that it's clear you were having a good time writing the book the first time that ever happened about there there is so they're essential genuinely even if you did not even if you were not interested in Martin Luther per se you would enjoy reading Eric Metaxas writing about Martin Luther because there are passages virtually on every page like this Jim one doubts whether Luke Luther was indeed conscious of the power of his austere cephalic structure or that he was even conscious of the austerity of his see phallic structure are not most severely shorn heads inherently austere nor does chronics earlier rendering of Luther's facial hair support the adjective jaunty in any case the moment was pregnant with drama and it seemed likely the clean-shaven speaker knew it okay now hold on a second oh but you didn't set it out that's not this but you didn't say thing that you read in a book no that way goofy aside I have to I have to say when you read all these books up there I want but I want to explain I want to explain what what that was I was reading a book and you read all these wonderful books but this book made this really truly pretentious point about Luther this this is basically after he's been to the Vaart Borg and say all hell has broken loose down in Vinton burg and he returns so it's like Moses returning to find them worshiping a golden calf or something he returns to Vinton burg hey thank you and he and he's upset at what has been going on in his absence and so he decides to give eight sermons in a row it was Lent and he's going to give eight sermons in a row it's a big deal and so the author of this other book over-over described the situation as though Luther had shaved his beard and his head in order to have this like theatrical effect but the reality is no he'd been disguised as a knight with a beard and his hair and now he was just you know he he restored his tonsure they cut his hair and they cut the beard whatever so he just he's being himself right but but the description was about is something about him being aware of his austere so the power of his austere cephalic structure and I thought that's like the dumbest thing I have to comment on it so I did I did very little of that kind of thing in the book I think that's the the only example other than the goofy eric erickson biography from 1958 which i mock as much I wish I could have mocked it more because it's terrible let's actually start there because that book was read by most seminarians yeah in the in you know throughout the 60s 70s and 80s yeah it formed the impression of who Luther was as this crazy oedipal sex-crazed scatological crazed you know really deeply mentally disturbed person right so that's one of the myths that you actually the MS that you mentioned we're funny and but there that is a mood and so but but that okay when I can survive the Eric's Erickson book and my impact that it had on reforming people's impression of Luther and how is the eric erickson who was a psychoanalyst yeah how is that impression wrong well let me just tell very briefly kind of like the early luther life story to put this in context for everybody Luther was born into like a normal family in 1483 and his father was a businessman he was not a miner like they they always say he kind of played up his humble roots and Luther oh he said I'm the son of peasants I'm the son of miners and what I think nonsense he's like you know that that's like the guy who who's a lawyer in New York but he says but I write poetry on the side or I play guitar on the side it's cool it's cool I didn't sell out I didn't sell out and right so Luther would often play up like he was this humble peasant and this Annette but the fact of the matter is he was not he grew up in an almost upper middle-class family and his mother and father were 100% normal and I got to tell you the fact that eric erickson to be a kind of what's the word trendy Freudian thinker in the 50s right where every movie and everything was was tinged with Freudian garbage okay he takes Luther and writes a Freudian biography of Luther and here's the worst part it's all wrong it's not that I don't like it it's wrong and as not an academic but but somebody who cares about truth I'm offended like that somebody would take this view and spin it out and it's so trendy and so popular that it catches on and everybody's talking about Luther is really repressed he has incredible constipation because he's repressed and he has this and that it and I thought to myself not only is this not interesting I mean or I should say it may be interesting but it's not true his father was not an abusive father but they paint the picture they you know when people cherry-pick quotes and they they will say like oh you know his father or a Luther wrote that my mother beat me for having filched a single nut til the blood flowed right okay well I got to tell you something you're like in 1490 when this happened that's what mothers did nuts were expensive and you beat the hell and if you've got big problems with that you know you're a typical modern that can't bear these things but the fact of the matter is this was utterly normal and if for doing that he became Martin Luther there would be like millions of Luther's from that period because that's what everybody did so so that book actually I was I was in fact I gotta say I was astounded at how bad it is when somebody twists truth when people do that kind of thing I think it's it's not cute or interesting it's a horrible thing and that's the worst example because you have tons of people who have read Luther through that lens because that book was popular and I think historians owe the world at least the truth one of the reasons that you point out why that is such a particularly grievous sin on Erickson's part is that Martin Luther's shadow that he casts upon Western civilization is so large that the record needs to be set straight so how is our life in this room different today in America in Western civilization because Martin Luther walked the face of the earth in what ways I'm gonna pass on that one that's uh Oh Alec Baldwin showed up good that's good the fact of the matter is that because of you and Marcus a bunch of friends actually Joe Laconte who I think is here a number of friends actually we're telling me about how important Luther was in what he did and the more I began to understand this the more I thought this is crazy like this is this is unbelievable this this happens to me almost with every book I read like I discover these things and I am astounded at what I discover but then I'm further astounded by the fact that I didn't know this stuff it's like it's it's so important and I thought so then I have this burden to tell everybody you've got to know this story this is it's it's it's sick that we don't know the story and so the story of Luther his influence I mean I think I could say this without being hyperbolic abut it sounds crazy that apart from Jesus of Nazareth there is no figure in two thousand years more influential in history than Luther that that sounds crazy but I promise you unless you know you can pull somebody out of a hat I can't imagine anybody other than Luther and the why it is to answer your question Luther was he grew up at a time when you know today we talk about speaking truth to power right it's like if you think you're cool you speak truth to power well in medieval world truth and power were melted together into the single institution of either the church or the government or the two of those things were melted into one so the government your prince or your king or your Duke whoever Emperor and your church defined truth there could not be truth apart from what they said which of course is the reality today in a place like North Korea right and we in our day can't even conceive of that like we think well of course that if the corporation or the government or the church gets something wrong somebody's gonna pipe up or somebody's gonna write a book or somebody's gonna wit we live in a world where we value truth and we look at power with the jaundiced eye as we should if we're honest and if we believe in the doctrine of the fall which I mentioned earlier in the narwhal passage the the fact of the matter is that Luther took the world from a place where there was and could never be the slightest daylight between truth and power and drove a wedge he himself was the wedge between them and suddenly we live in a world where we can question authority and of course he did that and I would argue that that led if every freedom that we have freedom of religion the very idea of pluralism the very idea that we could coexist that a Jew and a Christian and an atheist and a Muslim could coexist violently disagreeing but coexisting and saying but we can live together that very idea of pluralism didn't exist Luther by being incredibly obstinate and courageous it's as if the world broke on the rock that was this rock headed monk and the future emerged and the world we have lived in for the last 500 years he by his stand at forms and so on he made it possible and it's it's crazy to think that literally democracy the United States of America none of these things could have been possible before Luther set the stage for that though for those that might not know the story the diet of worms Luther standing before Emperor Charles the fifth Oh what was it in that moment that he did in said that really was the the turning point all right freedom of conscience and and before I say that I want to be clear just to be clear that you know we're celebrating the 500th anniversary I didn't say that in my comments this is the 500th anniversary of something that happened on October 31st 1517 we believe it was around there someplace but it's five hundred years since the moment when he nailed the 95 theses to the to the castle church door in Wittenberg okay four years later we have this event called the diet of forms the Germans pronounce it forms we pronounce it worms and so we say the diet of worms and we snicker but but the fact is that what happened in those four years it's very important I think to say that when Luther nailed the 95 theses to that door this is one of the things that I did bunk in the book right we look at it retroactively Lee as though he were standing against the world and saying to the Pope I'm gonna stick a thumb in your eye mr. Pope and I'm gonna nail this to the door and read this and whatever in 1517 what what we say started the Reformation 500 years ago this month he was doing nothing of the kind he was a humble monk who loved the church and and was trying to raise an issue gently about this thing called indulgences and saying this has gotten out of hand we need to look at this we need to have a theological disputation we need to begin to deal with this because the faithful are being driven away from the church they've lost respect for the church they see the corruption and say so he so that happens in 1517 that leads through no plan of Luther's to him being branded a troublemaker and so suddenly he is pushed into debate after debate and he writes things which he thinks is just for a small group of people and somebody gets a copy of it and they publish it in German and it gets out and so it's it was like it became he became a celebrated figure who was perceived by many as a rebel and a troublemaker and it was because of all of that which was not his intention that he was called to appear at the Imperial diet which was held that year in the city of warms which is what you asked about and so imagine every year the Holy Roman Emperor okay this incredibly powerful figure actually he didn't appear at a lot of the diets but but he would he was supposed to be there if he was not off waging war against the Turks or something and he he he would be there but even if he weren't there all of the nobles alive in the Holy Roman Empire 300 something nobles Prince's Dukes Archbishop's all of this power was arrayed it's kind of like a g8 summit or something like that right a lot of security and there there there and they thought we will summon this monk this troublemaker to answer for his sins here in front of all these people this maybe there's not quite 300 people here but imagine people dressed even more splendidly than you even wealthier even more powerful assembled there and this humble monk comes into this room to give a count it's it's it's like something out of a movie or out of a it's something you'd make up that it's the powerless monk representing truth coming into the room of power beyond power unthinkable power and at that point because of the past four years he had been forced to say things that he never intended to say like he he'd been forced in these debates now eat Greg knows all this better than I do but basically he'd been forced to defend himself and back this up and back that up and in the course of doing that he had said more and more that he he didn't want to say but kind of a cat got out of the bag and for example he said that church councils and the Pope can sometimes make a mistake and that if they do it's the scripture it's the Bible that has to be the golden rule that we we would say that this is gonna be correct we're gonna correct ourselves based on this and so so to say at the height of power and corruption of the Church of that day and I write this as a very pro Catholic non-catholic but you we all know and any good Catholic knows that that was not the finest hour of the of the church and at that moment to suggest the Pope or the church council could be wrong if you were a nobody like a monk it was unthinkable so he walks into the room and they say to him are these your books they had all his books there this is like ice like a kangaroo court right are these your books yes do you recant them you revoke the revoke oh the Latin right do you do you revoke do you recant this and Luther said I you know in his mind he was thinking I was hoping that we would have a dialogue we would have a conversation and I could humbly point out what points I was making and by the way if I'm wrong you would have an opportunity to correct me and to tell let me know where I screwed up but they basically said no revoke or and he said I can't do that I you have to show me where I'm wrong I've written 40 books there's a lot of good stuff in these books he you point out to me the thing that I have said that's wrong and I'll try to defend it or or not but they were this is the harbor they refuse to do that they basically said shut up or we'll declare you a heretic and burn you it's a sad thing because it need not have gone in this direction so his famous line he says unless you can show to me plainly by the scriptures where I have made a mistake I'm stuck I can here I stand with what I've said I can do no other amen but he didn't say it boldly like he's flipping the bird to the Pope but it's funny I say that because honestly it's often portrayed historically that way like he was you know like that he was not that way he became that way in latter years but at that moment I think it's the purest example of a man utterly devoted to God and truth doing his best to represent God and truth in you know you know in a horrible environment of sheer power it's like Joan of Arc standing with her accusers it's like Jesus standing with his accusers it's one of those moments in history that deserves to be famous as it is let's talk about what lead Luther to the diet of worms which was his struggle to find peace with God which is really the whole basis upon which the entire Protestant Reformation happened why couldn't Luther find peace with God is a faithful monk who was practicing the faith who was scrupulously following all of the the rites and regulations of his Augustinian order that he became as monk why could he not find peace with God and what wasn't that for Luther was his breakthrough when did the heavens apart for him and how I have my own question my question is why is this candle not lit I've been wondering too late okay I gotta say that is the question what what you what you just asked Greg it is the question this is a man whose father wanted him to become a lawyer he gave him the finest education and one of the things I write in the book where I'm sort of proud of myself because nobody else really ever focused on this he didn't just suddenly decide I'm gonna become a monk I mean it's always that's one of those myths like he's portrayed like there's a thunderstorm and he gets scared and he he thinks he's gonna die and he says saint anne saved me if you saved me i'll become a monk clearly that's not what happened clearly for a long time before before that moment he'd been thinking about his salvation he'd been thinking about what he had been taught about God and heaven and hell and the devil he'd been thinking about these things and in that moment he he thought it's an amazing thing he thought he had seen lawyers he knew some lawyers who had just passed away and theoretically on their death beds they had said that they had regretted living their life this way who knew what lay ahead for them maybe they were going into the clasps of of demons forever and they were horrified and Luther thought I don't want to end up like that I want if there's a way to get to heaven if there's a way to avoid hell if there's a way to do it right I want to do it I'm not gonna waste my life being a lawyer because my father insisted that I do that and until you make partner the hours are horrible and so right so so Luther makes this very brash rash decision to enter the monastery because he actually believed that if I go to a monastery and this is part of the problem that that one of the things that he ends up dealing with is that there was this false idea at the time now this exists today as well not just in the Catholic Church in the Protestant Church in many places right if you become a Christian you go right away you become a pastor or you're a second-class citizen that's not right but and in those days if you really want to be sure you're going to heaven you'd better become a monk or a priest or something so he dives into that and decides I'm gonna pray harder and I'm gonna do everything right I'm gonna fast I'm gonna do it but the killer was confession he knew that if I die with an unconfessed sin the tiniest unconfessed sin is heavy enough to drag me to the bottom of hell for ever and ever so most people didn't take it that seriously but Luther was intense obsessive honest and so he drove his confessor insane for hours sometimes at one point for six hours confessing every stray thought for example thoughts not not like oh I lusted or something no thoughts like I prayed really really really hard and I had a flicker of pride over having done that and that pride is a sin and I need to confess that I mean imagine you know all these thoughts over of a week so he was driving himself insane trying to do the right thing and getting no peace and no peace and no peace and his confessor johannes finished outfits was getting angry with him and saying you know martin you you don't you hate God you think God hates you you're getting it all wrong he was trying to explain it to him but Luther really wouldn't have it and Luther was very rare at that time in being a real student of the Bible there were hardly any Bibles in existence at the time obviously the printing press had just been invented and people didn't study the Bible and as a result of their having been no Bibles for for 15 centuries people may do with glosses on the text and other books and so on and so forth and so he was somebody who read the Bible and I think he thought that some place in this book which has only really become available now when he was a monk it had just sort of become possible to study it at this depth he thought I think perhaps in here I can find the key the golden key to save me from this hell because he was like a gerbil in a wheel he never got closer to God and I think a lot of people feel that way which is why I think the story is important that we feel like I do this and do this and do this but I still feel guilty but I'd it's it's the normal human state but Luther said something's wrong here if I'm working this hard and not getting any closer maybe we're all making a mistake maybe there's another way and he discovers around 1507 the same time that he I'm sorry 1517 the same time that he nails the indulgences to the to around that same time he has this epiphany reading the the book of Romans about grace and about God's righteousness but you know many of us have heard this but that but that Jesus came to earth to pay the price for us so if you think you're gonna pay the debt that you owe god you're wasting all of your time God has paid the debt for you already and so if you say yeah yeah I get it but there's no but either God paid the debt for you and the money is in the bank with your name on it or he didn't but nobody was thinking about this people were thinking you've got to try harder you've got to be better you've got to work harder and pray more and do this and do this and he saw that they were all on this gerbil wheel of you know trying to in a sense pay the debt that we all owe God and he said a is an infinite debt I can't pay it B I've just discovered God already paid it so what am i doing and this was such a revelation it blew his mind and because he had suffered so much let me say this because he had suffered so much trying to please this God that he thought this this judgemental horrible God that suffering was so real to him that when he discovered the truth of what we call the gospel the good news the Jesus already paid the debt he said I'm not going to back down there are other people out there suffering as I was suffering in darkness and misery and I don't care if you burn me at the stake I'm going to bring this truth out because guess what it is true it's not like a path that I found I found something called truth so it's it's obviously a dramatic story because in a weird way it's everybody's story at least that's my thinking the doctrine of justification by faith is the you know the passage in Romans 1:17 for the righteousness of God has revealed from faith to faith just as is written the just shall live by faith and this of course blows the doors wide open Luther is living in a time with a very corrupt Church and you might want to reference that's the level of the corruption it's actually hilarious I mean there's a lot of funny stuff I think in this story in this business give us some por ejemplo what yeah poor emplo I have to say when I wrote my Bonhoeffer book part of what made it I think interesting is the Nazis right because if you just talk about Bonhoeffer it's sort of boring but then you understand what he's dealing with and it gives some setting some next for His goodness and I kind of thought with this book I really need to you know find out who was the Pope and what was going on or whatever so Pope Leo the 10th was the Pope and you can't even believe the level of lunacy like Pope Leo the the tenth wasn't even one of the really bad Pope's to compare with the Medici Pope's who were wicked satanic evil people he was just like a really fat hedonist who didn't care about anything except his own pleasure and whatever it was so it becomes comical that he was like I mean I guess the point that what happened just so we understand it is that the Vatican had become basically like a political state and so the way Venice or Florence would conduct itself was effectively how the head of the Vatican would conduct himself like the prince of one of these wealthy Italian city-states or States and and so the money that was spent it just becomes mind-boggling I mean one poor emplo is that the king of Portugal to curry favor with the Vatican sends an elephant to as a gift to the Pope Leo he names it hen oh and it becomes like his best friend and Hanna at one point falls ill as elephants are want to do and any was a smoker but but Leo was so distraught that he had all the papal physicians trying to deal with this now they they really had no clue about the constitution of an elephant so you can imagine you know but at one point they gave him a they gave the elephant an incredibly powerful laxative and basically it didn't work and the laxative contained a significant amount of pure gold which was believed to be an effective laxative I don't know I've never tried it I'm not that wealthy but there were poor people giving their widows mites into the coffers all around Western Christendom and the the papacy was so out of touch I mean this is the look this is why I'm for small government right the the the people inside the beltway so to speak are so out of touch with Joe Blow in middle America it's exactly the case here you have incredible wealth and they have no idea that people are trying to live their humble lives out there and so so this Pope was was an incredibly lavish spender I mean there's some things I won't go into because they're too elaborate but I I just thought I had to tell that story because here I picture a Luther fasting suffering in in the cold thinking that that any any deprivation is gonna bring him closer to God you see these people living these lives and then you see the Pope and company living like you know no one we've I mean it was really like Roman emperors like Caligula or something which of course when Johann Tetzel comes into Vidhan barrack where Martin Luther is is a parish priest and says you know if you just pay a certain amount of money once you the copper in the box springs a soul from purgatory Springs like that's the thing that makes Luther go on the warpath against indulgence right which leads to the 95 theses yeah it's the cool 'evil of corruption I mean imagine I mean I have to say like you try to think how did this happen right because it's not like a bunch of evil people got together and thought how can we screw the church up I mean good people and bad people mix together in an institution over time we know that absolute power corrupts absolutely every time there is power that's concentrated this is what happens and here you have power concentrated and they start realizing hey we need money indulgences are providing money let's let's have more indulgences preached and and so they're sending people out like this guy Johannes Tetzel who were very effective hucksters to kind of like you know try to get people to spend their money they lost sight of the fact that this is wicked that this is not business this is not caveat emptor you're talking to the sheep of the church and you're a priest and you're telling them that if you throw a couple of bucks in the the the box you can prevent the horrific suffering of your old father in purgatory I mean imagine how manipulative that was that they would preach about you know your parents are suffering the agony z' of the Damned in purgatory and you have money in your hand you could solve that problem instantly how dare you sit there twiddling your thumbs when spending this money could alleviate the agony of your dead grandmother your dead mother what's wrong with you people I mean they're preaching this and people are sweating and this went on and on and on or not Luther of course was outraged and he said something must be done about it but this was the level of of corruption now let's let's end on a little criticism of Luther or let me be the Spanish Inquisition nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition so let me let me come back on Luther a little bit here 500 years later one of the great criticisms of Christianity is the argument from confusion that there's so much schism there's so much debate there's so much differentiation between you know Luther opens this Pandora's box where there's now it just in the United States alone over 40,000 Protestant denominations that all have their various different views and they excommunicate one another and of course now the separation between the church and there's this scandal of unity while the Protestant Reformation as we've heard tonight was understandable perhaps necessary and certainly warranted to what extent was it lamentable and do you think that Luther thought that it was lamentable because it did split the church yeah he didn't want to split the church and I think that everything that his detractors said would happen happened they said if you determine what truth is then he's gonna say he knows what truth is the next thing you know everybody's gonna be determining what truth is that is itself a fact and that's exactly what happened but you're talking about the price of freedom in other words we can have unity we can have low crime we're all gonna move to North Korea there will be no dissent there's now imagine if there's North Korea and the the little rocket man is not crazy I just wanted to say little rocket man tonight it's imagine he's not crazy imagine he's right but not to have the freedom to dissent is a problem if you don't have the freedom to dissent we live in a country in America here where you have the freedom to be stupid you have the freedom to get stuff wrong you have the freedom to say I think same-sex marriages is not a good idea you have freedoms that people can disagree with you but it doesn't matter you have that freedom and I want to say that the price of freedom this is the price of freedom if if Luther had not done what he did look I don't think the Reformation was a wonderful thing it's what happened it could have it could have gone another way I think a lot of wonderful things came out of it but the best thing that came out of it was this concept of freedom that goes beyond it we're not talking about subjectivity we have the freedom to be stupid and subjective and get stuff wrong we all have that freedom it doesn't mean there's no such thing as truth there's still the same thing this truth still exists but now and I we can end on this because we're just about out of time but we're we're we're now at a point where Luther said you are all responsible for your relationship with God you can't put it on somebody else you can't put it on the church said this it's good that you are yourselves responsible and you have to take responsibility you can't say the priest said or the preset at the end of the day God's gonna hold you responsible it doesn't mean that you're not going to say I'm concerned about III you know if the priest said something but the point is that we human beings can't just say my father raised me this way my father raised me to be a bigot my father raised raised me to hate Jews my father raised me or a you can't you are responsible in the time of Luther everybody said well this is what we're taught he said no we need to have freedom we need to have the ability to say this is right this is wrong we need to make our own decisions and here's the bottom line we are all responsible before God we're not responsible to ourselves we're not like hey I'm gonna have my own truth gut we're responsible before God and so there's something beautiful and terrifying about that and I think we need to we need to understand it's beautiful and it's terrifying but the point is it's what God thinks about truth and how you live your life not what some institution says or something like that and I think that Luther he did something it's kind of like the Felix culpa we could debate it all day long was it happy was it good I don't know but I but here we are we can do no other ha god help us amen would you please join me in [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Socrates in the City

Views: 42,404

Keywords: EricMetaxasSocrates, Eric Metaxas, SocratesintheCity, Socrates in the City, Gregory Alan Thornbury, Martin Luther, Protestant Reformation, Reformation, 95 Theses, Wittenberg Castle, Germany

Id: S4AkaSlpEng

Length: 55min 51sec (3351 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 23 2018