500th Anniversary of the Reformation

My guests are John Hannah to my left and Michael Svigel to my right and my topic is the 500th anniversary of the reformation. One of the very unusual things about this Table podcasts is that Dr. Hannah, as he is affectionately known, has been on our faculty longer than I have. I’m in my 35th year here at the seminary and he is in his 45th year here at the seminary. So Mike, how long have you been at the seminary?

These two gentlemen know a lot about the reformation, know a lot about history and theology so we’ve invited them in to help us think about, and to some degree, celebrate 500 years of Protestantism.

So John, start with you. How did you get interested in historical theology? What spurred you in that direction?

So I’m really interested in people, how they process knowledge, how they make decisions, why they make decisions. So it fit. It fit my discipline.

Mike, how about you? How’d you get an interest in theological studies?

I never really thought of myself teaching those classes, but followed in those footsteps.

Rumor has it that one day back in I guess 1517 if I do my math right –

So what in the world possessed Martin Luther to do that and go against the Catholic Church?

So for instance, one of the complaints in the 95 theses was, well look, if the Pope actually has this power to forgive everybody, why doesn’t he do so. So there are these things that you can see really get under the skin of the Roman Catholic Church, especially at the time of – nobody did this. Challenged the authority of the Pope, especially drawing on scripture and theology and tradition. So it was a protest. This is why they’re called Protestants.

Another site that I think we’ve all been to is the site of the stairs by – what is it – St. John –

When he got there he saw emptiness. He saw frivolity and that emptied his soul. Luther had a deep, guilty conscience. When you do what your teachers tell you or your father confessor and it doesn’t work, you become increasingly disillusioned. Of course, Thalpins gave him his job at Wittenberg as lecturer in Bible. There he got into Romans and Galatians and the Psalms. He found Psalm 22:1. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.

But Luther has many turning points so how to put your finger on it. I would say it’s gradual disillusion and gradual enlightenment until Melancthon, after the nailing of the 95, helped him to see clearly through the Book of Romans. It seems like Melancthon was the clincher, but he was well on the way.

So you have this constant, nagging feeling that – one of authority, doctrinal authority and how do we know this is true.

Of course Luther said – you know Luther – he said that the Book of James should be cast from a cannon and Melanchthon’s Loci should be placed in its place.

Interviewee2; Literacy rate is rising. The printing press. When Luther nailed the 95 he was an Augustinian Hermetic priest, a very rigid, right wing type and he was calling for a debate. He wanted the issues on the table and he got them. I think he lost all three of his debates, but he always picks up friends and it’s very enchanting.

Then we believe that he wrote a pamphlet of some kind about every two weeks of his life. So he was committed to casting the idea out even though it wasn’t polished and that was his theory.

Well that’s Luther and Melanchthon. Let’s come to the Swiss reformation and Zwingli. How does he come into the mix and then eventually we’re working our way, of course, to the famous meeting in Marburg.

So he’s being exposed to these teachings and his last pastorate was in Einsiedeln, a little town just not far from Zurich where there was a pilgrimage center to the black virgin, which is still in that church and he began to criticize that so he chafes.

The city of Zurich took him. He had a strike against him. He had a benefit. The great benefit was he’s a tremendous orator. Strike against him, he was known for his promiscuousness. The city took him for his preaching, but they didn’t know that he had come to reformation ideas. So they got a man that they didn’t know they had.

But without Erasmus, I’m sure there would have been another, but without the giant that he was, I’m not so sure humanly speaking we’d have a reformation.

Interviewee2; When the bottom line was drawn, he conceded his conscience.

I think the real issue is the obstinacy of Luther and the intransience of Zwingli who mutually just despised each other. One’s German, one’s Swiss, one’s more conciliatory and patient; the other is not. So you have these, like in life, you have these _______ personalities –

So we know there’s cataclysm coming. How do we survive. So Bucer is your grand biblical ecumenist in the best way and he orchestrates bringing these minds together, both reluctantly really. I think they were really shocked when they agreed so much until the last point.

So the issue I don’t think is the last point simply because later Lutherans did not all agree on the extremity of his view.

I think primarily thought the writing, publication of his institutes, which ingeniously they began translating and publishing in several different languages, you begin to have this international, multi-language in English, French, German, Latin obviously reformed or reformation theology. Maybe not that everybody was agreeing with it in whole, but there was a common point of departure. Held the thing together a little bit more cohesively so you could speak in terms of an international reformed theology –

I remember when I took my history course at the University of Texas and we went through the reformation that the two things that were put forward or two of the more prominent things that were put forward were the idea of – well, maybe there were three and this goes with the priest or the believer’s idea.

The idea of the priesthood of all believers which means that the religious experience for the person in the church is for everybody. That there’s no other mediator than Christ for the benefits and besides the priests or the believers, the way in which scripture was elevated by Protestants in contrast to the role of tradition, but tradition, if you read the reformers, they’re still citing a lot of historical material that goes outside of the scripture.

Then the third one is what I can only characterize as the popularization of the faith. The idea that this faith because of the priesthood of all believers, because the role of scripture is to play in faith and, of course, the emphasis on grace versus grace and works is another part of this, was it distributed the faith and made the faith relevant potentially to more people and put them on the same plain. Fair?

Interviewee2; I think so. I think when you look at what we call the Five Solas, they really are a statement. The reformation was a recovery. The reformers believed that what they were involved in was the recovery of a biblical gospel that had been encrusted with tradition and error over at least the immediate centuries. That’s one side of it.

But really it’s a massive cultural reformation that reaches down into life. So it’s huge. The very fact that it’s lasted up to five centuries, which I think now is waning. The world view is but gone, but that’s an enormous testimony to the power of their ideas.

Interviewee2; I would say that when we use the word, the Bible only, I think what they really meant because of the other three that follow it, is as it relates to the issue of the bind redemption. That this book explains what no other sources do.

Interviewee2; The sufficiency of scripture and the wonder of divine forgiveness. You can read it. You can trust it. That’s in a context of contrary voices. Certainly Holcot and Biel taught a practical Pleganism.

The Latin phrase, by grace. Are you saved through faith. That text could be understood as by grace are you saved through faith, my belief or through the faith. They would interpret that as through Roman Catholic faith. So is it by grace distributed to you through the church and the sacraments.

The way this was understood was, no, it’s by belief and faith and trust in Christ in the gospel alone. Faith is the sole means by which this redemption comes to you.

All those discussions are a part of this conversation it seems to me, which we still have within the Christian church about how this faith manifests _______ and what exactly are we talking about when we say faith alone.

Simply, I’ve always stumbled over faith alone. I think that’s a weak way in a way. The intent is to put the human factor into it, but the fact is you can’t choose an object that is infinitely unknown to you unless that infinite object is revealed to you. So that faith doesn’t make the object. Faith embraces the object that’s already revealed.

When I read Romans and I get to a summary verse, like Romans: 1:16 and 17, “For I’m not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God.” That word power is really about enablement. It’s really telling a story about God has enabled me to do something that I as a mere human am not capable of doing.

The passive voice of the Holy Scriptures would tell us that faith is a response to the revelation of the beauty of a dying savior and it grasps him, but how to express it, how finitude grasps infinitude using the language of finitudes, human language, is just really impossible.

So if we do have the real life of God, then it would seem to me that we would also have the character of God in finite form. So sanctification and justification are not dissected. They’re distinguished, but they’re not separated. All who are being justified so forth.

Interviewee2; Yeah. That he alone is the one that provides for us salvation. Faith doesn’t make salvation. Christ makes salvation.

Interviewee2; In the context of the reformation, it was taught people that Christ died a death that procured sufficiency of grace to save everyone, but he gave it to no one, but it’s a bank hanging in –

Interviewee; I try to avoid that. I think I need special permission to use concupiscence.

I even believe that the Roman Catholic Church improved their theology in the reformation, but not enough from the Pelagianism to a semi-Augustinian or semi-Pelagian position. So they did move, too, but we would say not enough.

The other dimension is I don’t need to confess my sins to a priest to be absolved. That’s this idea of he being that means of dispensing that grace. It isn’t merely I confess my sins, but in a sense, too, we are each other’s priests. It’s restoring this idea of the –

Without preempting that conversation, is that one of the social factors that’s at play here?