September 20, 2017 with Chris Rosebrough on “The Protestant Reformation: Why it Was Necessary & Why it’s Still Needed”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 20th day of September 2017.

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And today we have back on the program someone who I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing last time,

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Chris Roseborough, a confessional Lutheran and pastor of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota, which is a part of the

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American Association of Lutheran Churches, and he runs Pirate Christian Radio and hosts the

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Fighting for the Faith podcast. Today we are going to be addressing the Protestant Reformation, why was it necessary, and why is it still needed?

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Chris Roseborough.

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Thanks for having me back, Chris. And in studio with me again is my co -host, the

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Reverend Buzz Taylor. Yes, Chris, and Chris, it's good to be back. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please always give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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If you live outside the USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a matter. And so Chris, before we go into the topic, for those of our listeners who have not heard you on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio before, tell us something again about Kongsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota.

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Sure. Kongsvinger is a church that's over 130 years old. It's a small rural congregation.

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We have farmers in our congregation, and I'm just the current pastor, and they've had a long history of pastors who have served that congregation over the past almost century and a half.

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And so it's a great place, great people, and it's just such an honor to be able to serve them.

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And you are a part of the American Association of Lutheran Churches. That is correct.

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AALC is a conservative confessional synod, a small congregation, small synod maybe of about 60 or so congregations that have held on to believing that the

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Bible is the inspired and errant word of God and sole authority when it comes to our doctrine and life.

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And it was formed from a group of congregations that jumped out of the liberal

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Lutheran churches that ended up forming the ELCA. Well as the saying goes, it's not your grandmother's

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Lutheran church if your grandmother was a leftist or communist. And tell us about Pirate Christian Radio.

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Sure. Pirate Christian Radio is an online internet radio station, talk Christian radio station, really dedicated to sound

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Christian theology, apologetics, and looking at the topics of the day in light of what

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God's Word says. And Fighting for the Faith is the podcast you host. Tell us something about that.

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Sure. That's a comparative theology apologetics program where we do the work of actually comparing and contrasting what today's most popular pastors and preachers are speaking and telling us and to see if the doctrine that they're teaching is actually congruent with what

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God's Word says when we apply just sound biblical exegesis and context and proper hermeneutics.

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If anybody wants to find out more about Pirate Christian Radio, just go to piratechristian .com

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and preferably do that after the program is over and you can find out more about Chris and his podcast and we'll be repeating that information later on as well.

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But before I even go into the topic again, the Protestant Reformation, I saw the other evening what

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I thought was an excellent program even though all of the participants were not necessarily biblically orthodox.

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There were some who were very biblically orthodox. It was kind of a mixture of guests or should

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I say featured speakers on this program. I'm assuming, judging by some of the locations where some of them were from, meaning the schools and so on, that some of them may have been more towards the liberal side of things.

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But everybody who was a participant in this documentary was basically sticking to the facts of history.

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So I never found myself wincing or cringing or yelling at my television set.

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But I'm speaking of the documentary, Martin Luther, The Idea That Changed the World. I was wondering what your thoughts on that were, if you saw it.

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I have seen it. I actually got to see a preview of it before it was actually released.

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And it was a very fascinating documentary. I agree with you. There were some pretty interesting people that they interviewed.

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I think of some of the Roman Catholic fellows that they interviewed. And you're right, they actually gave a proper history.

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They didn't pull any punches and properly described what was going on in the

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Church during the medieval period, which ends up creating the environment from which the

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Reformation comes up. And it's a very fascinating historical set of circumstances, really in the centuries leading up to the

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Reformation, where the Church completely drifted in its doctrine and its theology and taught some really, really strange things.

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Now, Rome still teaches those, but the medieval culture of the time,

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I mean, this was the majority belief. I mean, pretty much everybody believed all this stuff.

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And it created all kinds of despair within Martin Luther, which then leads to his great discovery of the

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Gospel. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's a great documentary, at least worth the watch, as far as getting an overarching view of the history of the

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Reformation, at least up to Martin Luther. Yeah, the

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Roman Catholic, or at least the only one that I was certain was a Roman Catholic that participated, was

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Archbishop Timothy Dolan. And he was speaking with such passion, like he was empathizing and relating to Luther.

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And I was thinking to myself, I'd like to get this guy in the show just to ask him, well, if you think this was such a an important event in history, and you seem to empathize with Luther's struggle on how he could be made right with God, even though he continued to sin,

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I want to ask him, well, how do you feel about that? How do you feel about being right with God in the midst of the fact that you sin?

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Is it just because of your rituals and rites that wash that away, that anxiety and that fear?

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But right now, obviously, I don't have the opportunity to ask him that, but who knows, maybe in the future.

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But it was interesting just to see him never say, of course, this was an edited documentary, so they never had anything negative he had to say about Luther.

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He actually did admit that the Church of Rome in the 16th century was corrupt. He actually said it a couple of times.

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Yes, he did. And by the way, if anybody wants to check out where they can find out more about that movie, you can go to newluthermovie .com,

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newluthermovie .com, and there's some excellent people on that documentary as well. It's not just people from aberrant backgrounds, but like Dr.

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Carl Truman of Westminster Theological Seminary, who has been on this program, Iron Sharpens Iron, was a part of that.

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And there were folks from Concordia Theological Seminary who spoke, and others.

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So I do highly recommend it, because as I said, and as Chris Roseborough also said, in spite of the diversity of theological backgrounds represented in the documentary, they were just speaking about the documentable facts of history about Luther.

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So I think a very highly recommendable program or documentary. Well, we are now going to enter into the reason the

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Protestant Reformation began. And if you could give us some background on Martin Luther, obviously, he was raised a

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Roman Catholic, and so on in Germany. Tell us about whatever you know, in regard to what led him into the priesthood.

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And when the his heart and mind began to be troubled, in fact, even tormented, in regard to his ongoing remaining sin, and so on.

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Just tell us something about that background, so we can have the setting from which the Protestant Reformation sprang.

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Sure. I would recommend, if people want to actually do a little bit more research on this, before we get into the topic proper, a good book, probably one of the best on Martin Luther, the name of it is

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Here I Stand. And it was written by a fellow by the name of Roland Bainton. And he tells the history of Luther, almost like a novel format.

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So it's an easy read. But when you read Bainton's work, for instance, he does a very good job of painting a picture of Martin Luther as a tortured soul.

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This is a fellow whose father came into wealth because of his trade.

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I think he was into mining. And he puts his son through law school, and it was a hope that Martin Luther would become an attorney, and then become wealthy, maybe become a burgher, and take care of his father and his mother in his old age.

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That was the expectation of Martin Luther. But Luther is a tortured soul, because the picture of Christ, kind of the predominant picture of Christ in Medieval Roman Catholicism, is depicted, and you can see this on some

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Roman Catholic cathedrals still in Europe to this day. But the main picture of Jesus is him riding the rainbow, coming in judgment.

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And so what's going on kind of within the psyche of Roman Catholic, Medieval Roman Catholicism, is this idea that there's these demons that are going to take you and drag you into hell, and there's

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Christ sitting on the rainbow saying, you haven't lived a righteous life. And these pictures of Jesus as the judge really torment

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Luther so much so that he at one point was traveling from one place to another, and up comes one of these summer thunderstorms.

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And what ends up happening is that lightning strikes a tree near him, and it's at that point that Luther basically says, you know,

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I promise to become a monk. Because he saw that as like God sending a thunderbolt to nearly kill him.

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And the solution then to Luther dealing with Jesus the angry judge who's going to come riding in on the rainbow, is that he is going to do his best to strive to be the best monk ever.

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In fact, in Bainton's book, Roland Bainton actually has this wonderful line about, if anybody could have ever been saved by their monkery, it would have been

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Martin Luther the monk. So he becomes an Augustinian monk, and literally as a monk he excels in it.

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And he thinks that he's got to deprive himself of comforts like blankets at night, and food, and he's wearing out five or six confessors a day confessing his sins, and really striving to save himself by what he's doing.

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Of course, before he goes into the monastery, his father is quite cross with him, because he sees this as Martin Luther kind of leaving his duty to take care of his parents in his old age.

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He's very cross with this idea. And Luther literally has the kind of chutzpah to tell his father that it would be better for him that Martin Luther leave the world and become a monk, and that he could do more good for him by praying for him, and fasting, and all of these other religious duties.

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And so, you know, but Luther is, you can literally, in his monk phase, say that this is a man driven by the terror that accompanies the fact that we recognize from God's law that we just don't measure up.

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That daily, we sin against God in thought, word, deed, by what we've done, by what we don't do.

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In fact, one of Luther's confessors, Stalfitz, he literally says to Luther, he says,

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Luther, why are you stressing about all of these little sins that you keep confessing? And he said, just love

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God. And Luther said, well, that's my problem. He says, I don't love God, I hate him.

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And so Luther, you know, literally, he kind of takes medieval

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Roman Catholicism and lives it out to its logical conclusion by leaving the world, locking himself up in a monastery, living an austere life, feeding his body, depriving his body of the things that it needs.

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And, you know, and later in life, he says that many of the health issues he had had to do with just how severely he treated his body in the monastery.

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But ultimately, he finds no comfort, he finds no assurance of his salvation, and if anything, being a monk has not driven him closer to God.

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It seems to have driven him farther away from Christ, because he cannot figure out what it is that he needs to do in order to feel like he finally has peace with Christ, the one who will ride the rainbow and come in glory to judge the living and the dead.

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And so you cannot understand the Reformation without first understanding that Martin Luther literally took the whole work system of medieval

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Catholicism and tried as best as he could to earn his salvation through his works that Rome had set up for him to do.

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By the way, if anybody listening wants to get a hold of Here I Stand by Roland Baten, you can go to CVBBS .com,

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CV for Crumlin Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com. The only two nice hardback editions

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I know of in print right now are published by Hendrickson Publishers and also by Abington Press, A -B -I -N -G -D -O -N

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Press. So just ask CVBBS .com

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if you want a nice hardback to look up one of those editions of Here I Stand. And I saw the movie, a different movie, that I really enjoyed.

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I don't know how accurate you believe this one was, but the one that came out in 2003 starring

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Joseph Fiennes as Martin Luther, did you see that one as well? Oh yeah, yeah,

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I'd seen all of the editions of that, yeah. Did you enjoy that? Did you think it was historically accurate?

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Mostly. I mean, there was some theatrical license taken at a couple of places, but such is

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Hollywood, you know? Yeah, well, that's actually what I was going to ask you about. Do you think that the... because I think it makes a theological point here.

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During Luther's torment as a monk, because of the fact that he knew that every thought that he had was tainted with sin, he could not escape sin, he could not find peace, he was flogging himself and doing all kinds of things to torture his own body, taking ice -cold showers and sleeping outside and all kinds of things like that, or I don't know if there were showers back then, maybe baths, but the movie depicts him almost as if during that time he was either going insane, or he was demon -possessed, or he was being tormented by demons.

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Do you think that that was an exaggeration, or do you think that that was somewhere close to what Luther was going through?

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I would say that the movie depiction of him kind of being tormented by demons may be overstepping the actual historical event, but it makes a point, and the point theatrically that's being made is that Luther himself, in the midst of all of this, is tortured.

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And that's really what it comes down to. These man -made doctrines of medieval Catholicism, they torture a soul and keep from them any assurance of salvation, and always paint

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God in a light where he is only stern judge, he's never loving, or kind, or father, or anything of that nature.

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And as a result of it, the German term for what

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Luther experienced, and there's not quite an English translation for it, is affektum.

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And it's that kind of torture inside of the soul that he's experiencing.

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And so the theatrical movie itself kind of depicts him in a way that may be overstepping it, but it's in the right ballpark, and it's trying to find a theatrical way of describing the affektum that Luther went through.

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And so I think it makes a valid point, although it's depicted theatrically, but it still, it gets you at least in the right place to kind of begin to understand what exactly he had gone through.

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And so I believe, before he nails his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, does he not make a pilgrimage to Rome?

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He leaves Germany and goes to Rome, and he finds out just how filled with debauchery and wickedness the church was, not only with priests seemingly routinely visiting, prostitutes, and the sale of trinkets, and idols, and relics everywhere.

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And he was becoming more and more dismayed, and I believe it was a big surprise to him when he visited

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Rome. He was surprised at the open wickedness. Am I right there? Yeah, no, that's absolutely correct.

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And it's important to note that, you know, Luther walks there. He walks there from Germany and walks back, and his expectation is that upon arriving in Rome, you know, he would find a city full of saints and people who are striving and excelling in their good work.

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And he's really expecting the holy city to be a place that will kind of give him a big boost to continue in his hard labor and work as a monk.

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And what he finds there is the exact opposite of what he expected. I mean, he really did not expect to see what he sees.

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It was a city literally full of brothels. The priests were clearly just doing it, going through the motions.

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There were priests who would literally have the job of, you know, saying masses on behalf of the dead.

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Why? Because families paid for those masses to be said in order to lessen the time that somebody spent in purgatory.

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And they still do. They still do that. Oh yeah, they still do. I mean, and he was, in fact, they can make the point of noting how

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Luther was actually quite shocked at how quickly they could say a mass. He actually had the opportunity to say a mass while he was in Rome, and literally the priest who was there with him, officiating with him, said, could you pick it up a little bit, please?

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And what he also noted was that there were priests who, despite the

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Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, that during the time of the Eucharist, as they were saying the mass, they would actually say words like, bread you are, and bread you will remain, wine you are, and wine you will remain.

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These were totally unbelieving priests who were just going through the motions to make a buck.

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And it's so clear. And this kind of rattles Luther. It really kind of shakes him to the bone.

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And it's one of those things that really stands out, you know, in the years leading up to the

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Reformation itself. So you're saying that these priests were doing mock masses. They were just, because they were militating against their religion's own belief in transubstantiation.

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Oh yeah. I mean, they made no effort to put any kind of facade about their unbelief.

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They were just going through the motions. And this actually kind of gets to one of the main doctrines, or concepts, that the

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Roman Catholic Church held to at the time, and still holds on to. And it's the

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Latin phrase is ex opera operato. And their sacramental theology basically says that the sacraments work by the working of the work.

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That's what ex opera operato means. So it doesn't matter if you believe or have faith. As long as you go through the motions and take the

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Mass and have the Eucharist, it works ex opera operato. So what Luther found was a

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Roman city filled with people who had no faith. Well, Roman dogma doesn't require you to believe.

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It works by the working of the work. And so what he saw in Rome was also the logical consequence of Rome's dogmas that had cropped up in the medieval age.

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Yeah, I have heard from my friend Richard Bennett. Richard Bennett, I don't know if you're familiar with him.

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He is a former Roman Catholic priest who became a

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Calvinistic Protestant, and still is. Runs a ministry called Berean Beacon. But he has told me that nothing frightens the

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Church of Rome like an ex -priest, because they believe that those priests, those former priests,

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I should say, can still bring about the miracle of transubstantiation with bread and wine, and they are fearful that they will do things to those consecrated

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Eucharists that would be satanic or blasphemous or something. But it's amazing to me that they actually believe it.

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It's such a superstitious view that no matter what an ordained priest does, he can never lose that so -called power.

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Yeah, and this has to do with the sacrament of ordination. This is how they talk about it.

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They believe that when a fellow undergoes ordination, and you have to understand that you have to be ordained by a fellow who was ordained by another fellow who was ordained by going all the way back to Peter, right?

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So they believe in apostolic succession when it comes to ordination, but if anybody undergoes the sacrament of ordination, then that person experiences, and they talk about it in this way, an indelible change, or they receive an indelible mark, which then makes them worthy to be able to consecrate the elements and transform them, you know, transform bread and wine into the

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Body and Blood of Christ. And so the emphasis is then on the change of the priest that has occurred to him, that then makes him worthy to do these things.

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And so you're right, an ex -priest, in their way of thinking, is a very dangerous fellow, because that indelible change can't be undone.

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And so they have a power that an average layperson doesn't have, which kind of begs the question, where in Scripture do you find any of this?

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I mean, this is just man -made mythology. Yeah, I know, and in fact, a lot of what you said makes perfect sense when you think about why the

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Church of Rome will put under discipline or even excommunicate someone for ordaining priests outside of the official connection and communion with Rome.

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Like, for instance, when Bishop Lefebvre split because of his belief that the

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Church of Rome had become apostate, you know, he began ordaining priests, and they, you know, basically were saying that he was committing an illegal act by doing that.

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I don't mean illegal in regard to the law of the land,

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I'm talking about the law of the Church. But it makes sense now, the way that you phrased it, that they have to have a pedigree in their ordination.

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Yes. And so from there, when Luther returns, very disgruntled and dismayed over what he has experienced in Rome, how long after that did he nail his protest to the practice of indulgence of the 95

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Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg? So it's not too long after that, but you have to understand that the head of the

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Augustinian Monastery, where Luther was, was literally looking for a way to get

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Luther outside of himself, as far as his thinking, because he thought that Luther was obsessing about his own sins and stuff like that.

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So he came up with this idea of having Luther study and become a doctor of theology, and it just so happened he received a call to be a professor of theology at a newly established academic institution in Wittenberg, Germany.

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And he became a lecturer on the Psalms, and one of the early things he did was lecture on the

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Psalms, and it's during that time that he begins to lecture on the

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Book of Romans, and in his lecturing on the Book of Romans and working his way through the text of Romans, he comes to that kind of pinnacle text there in Romans chapter 3, talking about the righteousness of God.

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And the way he understood the righteousness of God as a Roman Catholic, you know, and a

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Medieval Roman Catholic, is that the righteousness of God is the standard to which he must aspire.

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But as he's working his way through the Book of Romans, the history books talk about kind of Martin Luther's Tower experience, where he comes into contact with what

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Romans actually says regarding the righteousness of God, and it flips his paradigm, and for Luther, the way he describes it, it was like as if he was born again.

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I mean, this is how he describes this experience. But let me kind of walk you through the text, and for the purpose of properly understanding, we'll take a look at it in context.

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Could you do that as soon as we return from the break, because we have to take our first break. Oh, I'd be happy to. Sure, no problem. Okay, we're going to be going to our first break.

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If anybody would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

30:17

Don't go away, we're going to be right back with Chris Roseborough and the Protestant Reformation. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

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Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylor, South Carolina. But on top of that, you're going to be leaving there, you're going to be leaving that luncheon with a sack, a very heavy sack filled with brand new free books that I have personally selected from nearly every single major Christian publisher in the

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Amway salesman is not going to show up, there's nothing hidden about this, it's just to bless you who are in the ministry.

36:53

So if you'd like to attend this, it's going to be held at the Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which is quite a spacious banquet hall that they rent out for weddings and other special events, and we look forward to seeing you there if you can make it.

37:07

Please register, it's free registration, but please register by emailing me at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

37:13

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We are now back to our discussion with Chris Rosebro of Pirate Christian Radio, and he is discussing the

37:23

Protestant Reformation, why it was necessary and why it's still needed, and you were just about to read something from an important text that relates to our discussion today.

37:34

Yes, it's Romans chapter 3, and I'm going to start at verse 9, and this is just such an important text for all

37:42

Christians everywhere, and this is the one that begins to unlock salvation by grace through faith alone for Martin Luther.

37:51

Here's what it says, what then, are we Jews any better off? Well no, not at all. We have already charged that all, that both

37:59

Jews and Greeks are under sin, as it is written, none is righteous, no not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God, all have turned aside, together they have become worthless, no one does good, not even one, their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive, the venom of ass is under their lips, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known, there is no fear of God before their eyes.

38:33

So you notice that Romans 3 paints a very bleak picture of all humanity,

38:39

Jews and Greeks alike, and that is that we are all under sin, that none of us actually seeks for God.

38:46

So then the text continues, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God, for by work of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

39:08

And here is the key text, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets say bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, or you can say declared righteous by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

39:35

God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. So you're going to note here that here this text explicitly talks about the righteousness of God, but it talks about the righteousness of God is not something that we attain by our good works, our prayers, our fasts, our beating of our bodies in a monastery, no, it's discussing the righteousness of God as given to us as a gift by grace through faith.

40:04

And Luther, the whole time he was a medieval Roman Catholic, thought that the righteousness of God was the standard that he had to attain to, and that God gave him the grace in order to climb that ladder so that he can finally attain the standard of the righteousness of God.

40:20

But here this text is talking about the righteousness of God given as a gift, that God declares us righteous and justifies us by grace through faith, not by works of the law.

40:34

And it's at this point when Luther works out biblically what the biblical text reveals regarding what the righteousness of God really is, and that it's given to us as a gift by grace through faith, that then all of a sudden everything begins to unlock for him.

40:53

And he no longer sees God merely as judge. He begins to see that God is loving, he's kind, he's merciful, he's slow to anger, he's abounding in steadfast love, and he pardons sin, and that salvation is given as a gift, not as something that we earn by our good works, or our fasting, or our mass keeping, or any of this other stuff.

41:20

And what's interesting is that Luther doesn't initially see that this puts him in complete conflict with the

41:28

Roman system. And so what ends up happening then from there is that Luther, now understanding rightly what the scriptures reveal about our salvation as being given as a gift, he then sees a complete conflict with the whole concept of Roman Catholic indulgences.

41:49

Now, if you don't know what these indulgences were for, this was the great fundraising scheme that was being used to build

42:04

St. Peter's Basilica. Yeah, the fundraiser at the time, they didn't sell candy bars.

42:16

They literally sold indulgences. And at this time there was a very well -known indulgence seller by the name of Tetzel.

42:27

And Tetzel would set up shop, and he actually had to set up shop across the river, because there was a special indulgence that was given to Frederick the

42:39

Wise. And so they didn't want these indulgences to conflict. So Johann Tetzel sets up shop across the river from Wittenberg, and his spiel kind of went something along the lines of this, is that there's your mother, and she's burning in the fires of purgatory, and you can do something to spring her from purgatory, because the

43:04

Pope has given me an indulgence. And if you act now, you can spring your relatives out of purgatory.

43:15

And there they are, they're sitting in the flames, in agony, and they're crying out to you right now, please spare us, have mercy on us, free us from the flames of purgatory.

43:27

It's a paltry amount of money. Please give them the money to set us free.

43:32

And he had this little slogan, and the slogan went, when a coin in the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory springs.

43:41

I am wondering if anybody tuned in late and they heard you just going through that depiction. They must have thought that Iron Sharpens Iron went through a radical transformation or something.

43:53

So Luther, hearing what Tetzel's saying, and there were folks that were literally, no joke, they were heading across the river to buy indulgences, because they thought that it was a license to sin.

44:06

So if some fellow wanted to go to the bar and have a week -long spender, he would buy an indulgence, and if Luther saw him staggering in the streets and unable to walk, and said, you drunkard, put away your bottle, the guy would actually pull out his indulgence and say, ah, look,

44:27

I have an indulgence. You know, it's interesting in some ways that is a proto -modern evangelical heresy of easy -believism.

44:45

Yeah, and evangelicals give it away for cheap. I mean, the

44:50

Roman Catholics of the day, they would charge you a pretty penny for that. Well, I mean, some of the word -of -faith healers do, too.

44:57

Yeah, they do. And so Luther, I mean, Luther at this point, you know, basically with his new understanding of what

45:06

Scripture reveals in Romans about the righteousness of God and salvation by grace through faith, notes that indulgences are contrary to faith.

45:15

And so he decides to pen 95 theses, and you've got to understand,

45:22

I mean, there's so many people who depict this event as if it's some brave, heroic moment, you know, that history is going to change.

45:31

There's Martin Luther with a stoic face taking these 95 theses and nailing them to the castle church door of Wittenberg, and he's going to change the world.

45:42

No, that's not exactly how this went down. I mean, the church door was kind of like the ancient, the medieval world's version of, like, a kiosk, okay?

45:52

So, you know, people would put up, you know, put up on the kiosk, you know, I'm missing my cat. If you've seen my cat, would you please bring it back to me, or...

46:00

Or a bulletin board. Yeah, it was a bulletin board. And so he was a professor in an academic setting, and so the purpose of the 95 theses was a call to basically debate the topic of indulgences.

46:14

And so the theses were, like, the debate point. He was putting up, you know, what he believes the

46:21

Scriptures teach, and, you know, and, you know, in contradistinction to the way indulgences were being sold and taught in the whole doctrine itself, and it was basically a call to have a public debate on this topic.

46:34

And what ended up happening, and Luther was really kind of unaware of this at the time, is that he really just struck a vein, and some unknown people took down the theses, took them over to the local print shop, and there they had the

46:52

Gutenberg Press, which, I mean, was a revolutionary invention of the time. It was as revolutionary as the internet was in our time.

47:02

I mean, I can, you can remember the days before the internet and after the internet. Same with the Gutenberg Press.

47:07

So somebody took this down and took it over to a print shop, and they ended up typeset, you know, putting this in Gutenberg Press typeset, and rolling off a bunch of copies of this.

47:19

And no sooner does that happen that it gets translated into, like, six different languages.

47:25

And literally, in a matter of weeks, all of Europe was reading the 95 theses.

47:32

But that's not what Luther set out to do. I mean, he, he, you couldn't try to do this if you wanted to anyway.

47:40

It was just kind of like the providence of God, the sovereignty of God, meets with the moment where this fellow who has been, his eyes have been opened by the

47:49

Scripture, just, in all true Christian honesty, wants to debate this topic and take a look at this, this issue.

47:57

And it just hit the vein, and it spread like wildfire throughout all of Europe. And how does

48:04

Pope Leo get a hold of this? Well, somebody gets him one.

48:11

He was not very happy, because concurrent with his receiving the 95 theses, you know, who is this

48:21

German monk, you know, is the question. But this has an immediate negative impact on the sale of indulgences.

48:30

So, you know, so Tesla's got to check in with corporate headquarters and give a sales report, and it's like a reverse hockey stick.

48:38

You know, rather than sales going up, sales have plummeted. All of a sudden, people are not buying indulgences like they were.

48:44

And somebody's got some explaining to do. It really kind of messed everything up.

48:51

And the Roman Catholic Church never recovers from it, because this then gets people asking questions, and questions that can't be answered.

49:03

And they're not satisfied just getting the status quo answers from the Pope and from Rome. And now people are beginning to look into that mysterious book that they've never really read and has been kept from them, kind of locked up in Latin.

49:19

And that's the Bible itself. And, oh man, I mean,

49:26

Luther literally turned the world upside down at this point, because the whole world was kind of locked under the medieval system.

49:36

Now, I have said, even about the current state of Rome, that you will never be disciplined by the

49:44

Roman Catholic Church or excommunicated unless you are somebody who is really globally known, and you are relentless in doing something or saying something or teaching something that is contrary to their belief.

49:57

Now, going back to the 16th century, why is it that Luther, and we'll get to this point when we return from the break, the

50:07

Diet of Worms and so forth, or Diet of Worms, but why is it that he is considered such a danger, where you have priests, as you were saying before, doing mock masses, seemingly fearlessly and so on?

50:22

Does it go back to what I just said about even the modern -day Church of Rome, where pretty much you could get away with anything unless you're globally known and notorious about something?

50:33

It's part of that. Keep in mind, Luther then, because of his writings took off.

50:42

I mean, he was probably one of the first best -selling authors in all of history. In fact, probably, arguably, the first New York Times best -selling author was

50:51

Martin Luther. There was no New York Times, but I think I can make the point. And Luther actually begins to write prolifically.

51:00

And he doesn't write long, religious, multi -volume, systematic theologies.

51:06

What he ends up doing is writing a bunch of kind of tract -length theological works, almost kind of like, you know, 40 -50 page theological treatises, looking at the doctrine of good works, or the

51:23

Babylonian captivity of the Church, on different topics. And Luther's works sell like hotcakes.

51:33

I mean, anything that Luther writes is going to be an immediate best -seller.

51:38

It's going to be translated into multiple languages. And so Luther begins to kind of examine four of the common people of the time.

51:48

He starts to, you know, do the comparative work. You know, Rome says this, the Pope says this, but God's Word says this, and he begins doing exegetical work in these very short little tractates.

52:01

And so, you know, the best way I could put it is that he kind of doubles down and raises the stakes.

52:10

And in so doing, I mean, it begins to really reverberate through all of Europe, and begins to have serious consequences, to the point where you have monks leaving monasteries, you have

52:25

Roman Catholic priests leaving the Roman Catholic priesthood, and marrying women, and marrying ex -nuns, and I mean, everything is totally turned upside down.

52:39

The whole system of medieval culture is turned on its head, and Luther keeps churning out these theological works, and engages in the process of kind of catechizing the everyday peasants of Europe.

52:57

And that's part of what leads up, then, to the big, you know, showdown at the Diet of Worms.

53:04

We're going to get to that showdown when we return from our break. If you would like to join us on the air, we already have several people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but I'd like to have

53:15

Chris bring us through some more pivotal and vital points of the Reformation before we take your questions, or should

53:23

I say before I read them, but we are accepting your questions now, so please email them if you'd like to have your question read and answered on air.

53:32

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

53:42

USA. Don't go away, God willing, we are going to be right back after these messages with more of Chris Roseborough and the

53:49

Protestant Reformation. Why was it necessary, and is it still needed? Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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And with your questions, our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.

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01:02:39

Welcome back. We are, if you just tuned us in for the next hour, continuing a discussion that we began an hour ago on the

01:02:49

Protestant Reformation, why it was necessary, and why it's still needed with our guest Chris Roseborough, a confessional

01:02:56

Lutheran and pastor of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota. He also runs

01:03:03

Pirate Christian Radio and hosts Fighting for the Faith, a podcast on theology.

01:03:10

And if you would like to join us on the air with a question regarding the Protestant Reformation, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

01:03:17

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. But before I go back to Chris and our discussion,

01:03:25

I have some important announcements to make in regard to special events that our sponsors are having.

01:03:32

First of all, we have coming up on September 29th and September 30th, which is a

01:03:38

Friday and Saturday, the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York, in cooperation with the

01:03:44

Long Island Spurgeon Fellowship, present the Gospel of the Reformation, a 500th anniversary celebration, featuring my dear friend

01:03:51

Dr. Tony Costa, who is professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

01:03:59

And this is a free event. If you would like to register, it's a free registration, but they want to have a headcount as soon as possible, you can go to WOTChurch .com,

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W -O -T, which stands for Word of Truth Church .com, W -O -T Church .com, or call them at 631 -806 -0614, 631 -806 -0614.

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Then after that, on Sunday, October 1st, the aforementioned

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Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary will be speaking at the Sunday morning worship service at 11 at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, New York.

01:04:40

And if you want more details on how to get to Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net, hopereformedli .net.

01:04:48

God willing, I am going to be on Long Island that whole weekend, from Friday to Sunday, with an

01:04:53

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitor's booth, so I hope to see many of you there on Long Island, New York at this event.

01:05:00

Then following that is the event that I mentioned earlier, the Iron Sharpens Iron radio pastor's luncheon, which is going to be held

01:05:09

Thursday, October 26th from 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

01:05:19

Our keynote speaker is Pastor Bill Shishko of Reformation Metro, New York, and host of A Visit to the

01:05:24

Pastor's Study. And every man who attends this event is going to be leaving with a very heavy sack of brand new free books.

01:05:32

If you would like to register for this free pastor's luncheon, just send me an email, actually, to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:05:40

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line, and we will get you registered immediately.

01:05:47

And then, coming up in November, from the 17th through the 18th, the

01:05:52

Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology is being held at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

01:06:00

The speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant. The theme is

01:06:05

For Still Our Ancient Foe, a line from the classic Reformation hymn by Martin Luther, who we're talking about today,

01:06:14

A Mighty Fortress. And if you would like to register for that event, go to alliancenet .org,

01:06:21

alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology.

01:06:28

And God willing, I will be there as well with an Iron Sherpens Iron exhibitors booth. And then last but not least, from January 17th through the 20th, the

01:06:37

G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia. The theme is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship.

01:06:44

The 17th is exclusively a Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, and the 18th through the 20th is exclusively an

01:06:50

English -speaking edition of the conference, featuring Stephen Lawson, Votie Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B.

01:06:59

Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, and Justin Peters.

01:07:10

If you'd like to register for the G3 Conference, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com, and please greet me at the

01:07:17

Iron Sherpens Iron exhibitors booth if you attend. And please tell all of these organizations, if you contact them, that are running these events, that you heard about those events from Chris Arnsen on Iron Sherpens Iron Radio.

01:07:30

And now, once again, I have to come to you with a hat in hand and a rattling tin cup, asking for money.

01:07:39

It makes me very uncomfortable to do that, but the advertisers who keep Iron Sherpens Iron Radio on the air through their hard -earned money have asked me, for a long time before I broke down, to make public appeals for donations and new advertisers.

01:07:54

If you really want this program to remain on the air, then please send a check of any amount you can afford by going to ironsherpensironradio .com,

01:08:02

click on support, and then you'll see an address where you can mail a check of any amount that you can afford made out to Iron Sherpens Iron Radio.

01:08:10

Please never, ever siphon money out of your regular giving to your local church where you're a member, and hopefully you are a member of a local church, otherwise you're living in disobedience.

01:08:20

But please never siphon money away from your giving to that church, and please never take food off of your family's dinner table if you're struggling to make ends meet, because those two things are commands of God, providing for church and home.

01:08:32

Supporting my show is not a command of God, but if you are blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, then please consider using some of that extra money to help us remain on the air, if indeed you love this program and do not want it to disappear from the airwaves.

01:08:47

If you'd like to advertise with us, we could surely use your advertising dollars, so as long as what you're advertising does not militate against the theological position of Iron Sherpens Iron Radio, please send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail dot com, chrisarnsen at gmail dot com, and put advertising in the subject line, and we will try to work out an ad campaign according to your budget as soon as we can.

01:09:11

And well, now we have returned to our discussion with Chris Roseborough of Pirate Christian Radio on the

01:09:17

Protestant Reformation, why it was necessary and why it's still needed. Before we go into the

01:09:22

Diet of Worms, I wanted to clarify something I said earlier. I didn't mean to give the impression earlier in something

01:09:30

I said that there were no people that were gruesomely persecuted and tortured and martyred by the

01:09:38

Church of Rome who were not famous scholars like Martin Luther. There were men, women, and children martyred by the

01:09:46

Church of Rome. But how do you think that that came about primarily when, on the one hand, you had priests openly mocking the mass, and then you have also perhaps lesser -known people who were even women and children being martyred by Rome?

01:10:01

Did that primarily come about during and after the Reformation? Those martyrs, those thousands of martyrs that, where the streets ran red with blood due to Rome's persecution of Protestants and others?

01:10:15

Yeah, most of the martyrdoms that occurred at the hands of Rome are going to be after the launch of the

01:10:24

Reformation. Right. Although there are some notable martyrs prior to the

01:10:29

Reformation. Johann Hus is one. Yep, Johann Hus. And you're going to note this, is that the distinction you were making, the one that you're just clarifying, is that here you have priests who are unbelievers who are making a mockery of the mass, and Rome doesn't do anything to them.

01:10:49

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And you'll note that Rome selectively persecuted.

01:10:56

You know, if you're an unbelieving priest but you're still saying the mass like you're supposed to and bringing in revenue for Mother Church, you're not going to be persecuted.

01:11:05

But if you're questioning the power and the claims to having absolute power by the

01:11:13

Pope, you're claiming that the dogmas of Rome are contrary to Scripture, and you're questioning the system's primary dogmas that are bringing in all of this revenue, now all of a sudden that's a horse of a different color.

01:11:31

And those people who are out there publicly preaching and teaching contrary to the system itself, the power of the

01:11:41

Pope himself and the whole money -making schema set up by Rome, that's the kind of thing that could get you killed.

01:11:52

And Luther came close to losing his life, and it took some pretty brave people to protect

01:12:01

Luther, and there was a time when Luther literally was on the run, and he was living in exile and living at a castle, having been absconded by one of his protectors.

01:12:15

And so Luther knew this very well, and it became more difficult, the more popular

01:12:20

Luther became, it became more difficult for Rome to actually move against him.

01:12:26

And so he was one of these people that they knew at some point that had they taken

01:12:32

Luther's life and given him a martyr's death, that it would have led to a revolt in multiple countries.

01:12:41

And so at some point it just became expedient to let Luther let his life run out naturally rather than to move against him, and so that's probably the reason why

01:12:54

Luther ultimately wasn't martyred, but some of the fellows who were buying into and believing the biblical doctrine of salvation by grace through faith alone, that these men experienced martyrdom during the time of the

01:13:12

Reformation. Yeah, it seems to me that Rome has always held an infinitely higher level of importance to loyalty than to anything that you believe or do.

01:13:26

And since Luther was such a prominent figure that was starting to create serious ripples globally, and people, you know, leaving the church and so on, that's probably the real reason that his life was at risk of being taken from him, am

01:13:43

I right? Yeah, that's correct. In fact, it was immediately after the Diet of Worms that Luther had to disappear to the castle

01:13:52

Wartburg, and he didn't plan his exile at that time.

01:13:58

It was planned for him by others. Now, when he is standing trial, as it were, with his books on a table in front of him that he was being commanded to renounce, take us through that experience that Luther had.

01:14:15

Sure. Luther was called to the Diet of Worms, and you have to understand how the government of the

01:14:23

Holy Roman Empire worked at the time. So Germany wasn't

01:14:29

Germany the way we understand Germany today. It wasn't a nation -state in that sense. It was part of a broader nation -state called the

01:14:37

Holy Roman Empire, and the emperor was a fellow by the name of Charles, and Luther was called to basically give an account of his theology and his writing.

01:14:50

And he had, at that point, hoped that he would be able to be given an opportunity to defend the doctrines that he was preaching and teaching and writing about, and to be able to defend them from Scripture.

01:15:06

And so he went there with one expectation, but it didn't really play out that way.

01:15:12

So upon arriving at the Royal Diet, he was brought into the

01:15:18

Royal Hall itself, and he found all of his works, all of his pamphlets and books and things that he had written that had become such bestsellers at the time.

01:15:28

They were all stacked neatly on a table, and Luther was basically asked one question.

01:15:35

Do you renounce what you've written in these books? And he wasn't there to dialogue with anybody, and that kind of caught him off guard.

01:15:47

And he realized he was in quite a dangerous situation. And for him to be called to just, without any debate, without any discussion, without an open

01:15:57

Bible, called to just renounce everything he had written, and to have to do so in the presence of the

01:16:05

Emperor, and, I mean, this is—he realized, how do they put it in Korean? He was in deep kimchi.

01:16:12

And— By the way,

01:16:17

I happen to love kimchi, but anyway. Yeah, so he was in danger.

01:16:23

So he asked to have a day to think about and consider what is being asked of him.

01:16:30

And kind of surprisingly, they gave him that extra day.

01:16:36

And so he had an opportunity to kind of think on this, pray on this, and consider what it is that he was going to say.

01:16:43

And so it's the second day that he's there that he makes his famous speech, and there's kind of a—there's the historical speech, and then there's kind of the speech of legend.

01:16:54

And I think Bainton even kind of picks up on this fact. But Luther, the next day, basically bravely stands his ground, and notes that his books are of different types.

01:17:11

Some are written for children, some are just explanations of what the Scripture says, others are theological tracts, and others are kind of like apologetic or polemical works.

01:17:22

And to be forced into a situation where he has to just recant everything that he has written, without making any distinction or nuance or whatever, would force him to go against his conscience.

01:17:39

And he makes—the nub of his speech is to go against conscience is neither good nor right, and that nobody really can force him to do so.

01:17:50

And so that was kind of the gist of what he said historically.

01:17:56

And the myth that comes up around it then is that Luther kind of adds the final flourish, the final touch in his speech of the

01:18:04

Diet of Worms, and he says, Here I stand, I can do no other. And it's probable that he didn't actually say that, but that's the legend that comes around it.

01:18:15

Here's Luther making a stand that he cannot and will not go against his conscience, and that the

01:18:22

Emperor and Rome and the Pope and none of these people there have the authority to force him to do so.

01:18:28

And it was a brilliant speech, and at that point, you know,

01:18:33

Luther knows that he's got a cadaval, and it's on his way out of town, on his way back to Wittenberg, that he's actually picked up by men kind of dressed up like highway robbers or whatever, and these knights actually pick him up and take him to an undisclosed location at the time, because there's basically a price put on Luther's head.

01:19:06

He is now a man who anybody who finds him can kill him on the spot, and so he has some very wealthy and well -placed benefactors who protect him and take him out of the public eye for a time after that.

01:19:23

But a very pivotal moment in history that the government and even Rome itself does not have the authority to force

01:19:30

Luther to go against his conscience, and he will not allow his conscience to be swayed by anything other than the written word of God, and so unless he can be shown that he's an error from Scripture—that was another key part of his speech—that he would not go against his conscience and could not go contrary to the word of God.

01:19:49

Yeah, he wasn't just saying, I'm not going to disagree with these brilliant thoughts that I've developed.

01:19:54

He was saying, prove it to me from the Scriptures that I'm wrong. Yeah, that's right. And then they wouldn't even try.

01:20:00

No, no, he was just ordered to recant everything regardless of whatever it is he's written, regardless of whether it agrees with Scripture or not.

01:20:09

That was not the point of the Diet of Firms. And I heard from at least one scholar in a documentary that I saw—not the one that we were just speaking about earlier—but

01:20:20

I had heard that there is some theory that some eyewitnesses slash earwitnesses, obviously, to the speech said that Martin Luther, after he concluded the speech, muttered under his breath,

01:20:37

Here I stand. I don't know if that has any credence with you or not, but I've heard that that is a plausible theory in regard to where that phrase came from.

01:20:47

And so here, yeah, I think that he says it somewhere in there, but it's not part of his bold speech where he kind of takes his stand.

01:20:57

And him muttering it under his breath is probably true. And it's fascinating that later in Luther's life,

01:21:05

Luther actually signs autographs. I mean, it's kind of interesting. Luther is one of the kind of the first major celebrities of the modern era.

01:21:13

Yeah, that documentary that we were talking about said he was the first like rock star of Europe in history.

01:21:21

Yeah, and so later in his life, I mean, there was already, how shall

01:21:27

I put this, kind of like Luther junk. You know, this souvenir kind of thing.

01:21:34

Luther bobblehead. Yeah, exactly. And some of the Luther junk of the time, you know, had the phrase,

01:21:42

Here I stand. And, you know, Luther would, you know, sign his autograph or something to the equivalent of, you know, in the medieval times to some of the stuff with people who would visit him or find him on the street or whatever.

01:21:55

So the Here I stand portion of his speech, clearly in his lifetime, he recognizes that he says those words, but it's questionable about where he said them.

01:22:08

So if somebody hears him say them under his breath, that's probably true to history.

01:22:14

But the way the legend kind of spun out is that he says those words as part of his speech and kind of defiantly says,

01:22:23

Here I stand. I can do no other. It was probably more along the lines of, Oh my goodness, here I stand. Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say.

01:22:30

Well, wasn't it also true that when he was making his defense that it wasn't this bold, like, you know, defiant person, like, you know, duking it out with him, but he realized the situation he was in and the whole thing was sort of practically under his breath because he knew.

01:22:49

I mean, it was like, yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah.

01:22:54

I know exactly what you're saying. So, you know, Luther wasn't trying to be a heroic figure and he, at the

01:23:02

Diet of Worms, he was quite shaken to his core. He wasn't of the mindset of just defiantly just putting his foot down.

01:23:11

That was really not it at all. And what he said, he had to say quite carefully and deftly because he knew that his neck was on the line.

01:23:20

So, yeah, I would tend to agree with his story and say he probably said it there, but it was under his breath, like saying,

01:23:26

Oh my goodness, here I stand. I don't think I could do anything other than that. You know? Well, I hope that his kidnappers, quote, quote, were actually rescuing him, at least whispered in his ear early on in the act.

01:23:39

You know, we're here to rescue you. Don't worry about this. Otherwise, he might have had a heart attack. I mean, it's pretty scary kind of a thing.

01:23:49

We're going to go to our final break right now, so I don't want to cut you off in mid sentence. And after we wrap up some things,

01:23:57

I'd like to take some of our listener questions. We've got a number of them, actually. If anybody else would like to get in line, do so right now so we don't run out of time before we have an opportunity to read your question.

01:24:08

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away.

01:24:14

God willing, we'll be right back with Chris Rose, Chris Rose, bro and the Protestant Reformation.

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01:30:06

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes of the next half hour or so, we have been and will continue interviewing

01:30:15

Chris Roseborough of Pirate Christian Radio on the Protestant Reformation, why it was necessary and why it's still needed.

01:30:22

Our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

01:30:29

I would suggest that you send an email quickly because we are running out of time. Chris, we've already discussed the

01:30:36

Diet of Worms and we've discussed that now Luther is safe and hiding and he is, this is at this point where he starts translating the

01:30:47

Latin Bible into the German language, is it not? Yeah, actually, you know, so Luther begins work while he's, you know, basically incognito.

01:31:01

He begins working on a translation of the Bible into the common

01:31:07

German language. And which is a radical,

01:31:13

I mean, radical idea to actually be for somebody who is a layperson in Europe at the time to actually be able to read the

01:31:22

Bible in their own language. I mean, in some places in Europe, I mean, it's considered an act of treason at the time.

01:31:31

But Luther puts together the German translation of the Bible, gets it into the hands of the and most of the time he's working on it, he's working on it while he's in exile.

01:31:46

You know, and this kind of sets, you know, this just explodes, you know, onto the scene, this

01:31:54

Luther Bible, and makes it so that people can fact check what they're being taught by their

01:32:02

And it becomes, you know, the ability to read the Bible in your own language is a core part of the

01:32:09

Protestant Reformation, even moving forward to this day. And we take it for granted, but, you know, you think of Tyndale and others,

01:32:18

I mean, who were martyred, you know, for doing the work of translating the scriptures and bringing it into the vernacular of the people they served.

01:32:27

I mean, at the time, this was absolutely unheard of. So this is really where he starts to have the veil fall off of his eyes, the scales, as it were, like the soul of Tarsus fall off his eyes, and he starts to really discover the gospel while translating the

01:32:47

Bible, does he not? Well, a good way to put it is that he has the morrow of the gospel already in place well before the

01:32:56

Diet of Worms. And as a lecturer on the scriptures at the college, the university there in Wittenberg, he's clearly had a lot of stuff fall off of him already at this point.

01:33:09

But one thing is very clear, is that in, you know, that Luther, early

01:33:14

Luther compared to later Luther, there is theological development. There is a kind of a slow falling away of the scales that were over his eyes, and so the later

01:33:28

Luther is far more theologically skilled in understanding scripture, and that clearly comes about through his tenacious work in working with the biblical texts, translating them into German, preaching on these texts.

01:33:43

And so you can see development, you know, so early Luther, the guy who wrote the 95

01:33:49

Theses, if you were to read the 95 Theses today, you know, and here we are, we're coming up on the 500th anniversary of the posting of the 95

01:33:57

Theses, there's stuff in there that we as confessional Lutherans do not agree with.

01:34:03

It demonstrates that Luther still hadn't really connected all of the biblical dots.

01:34:10

And so if you read the 95 Theses today, you sit there and go, man, there's a lot of stuff here that's still really

01:34:16

Roman and medieval in its outlook. And that's the early Luther. He was a monk.

01:34:21

He was an Augustinian monk. Yeah, he has the gospel right, and he knows to challenge indulgences, but his theology is still really not good.

01:34:33

Oh, so you would think that he actually knew the gospel or embraced the authentic gospel when he nailed the 95

01:34:39

Theses to the castle church door? Yeah, but it's kind of like having square one of your theology right, but not seeing how it plays out with the rest of the stuff.

01:34:50

And so, you know, he clearly at this point is challenging indulgences on their biblical merit, and rightly so, and he has a concept of the gospel at this point, and I was contrary to it.

01:35:04

In fact, there's a wonderful Theses in the 95 Theses where he says that if the Pope has the authority to forgive sins by, you know, by issuing these indulgences and just spring people out of purgatory, why doesn't he just spring everybody out of the kindness of his own heart, you know?

01:35:22

Why is he charging and kind of piecemealing it? And so you can already see in the 95

01:35:28

Theses, Luther has some good theology, but it's really mixed with some nasty medieval

01:35:34

Roman theology. But the Luther who died later, you know, as his theology developed, the more he's in contact with the biblical text and the more he sees

01:35:45

God's mercy and grace, and that even the Old Testament is teaching salvation by grace through faith alone.

01:35:52

That really takes all of that stuff, drives it out of him. So later,

01:35:57

Luther is a very well -developed theologian, and a very skilled exegete as opposed to the early

01:36:05

Luther. And you routinely have Roman Catholic apologists quoting

01:36:11

Luther to show that he favored their views more than Protestants realize.

01:36:18

And I'm assuming that maybe not all of it, but a lot of those citations are from the earlier

01:36:23

Luther. Because I think it's been very aptly said that when somebody quotes

01:36:31

Luther, you have to ask them, which Martin Luther was this? Because of the fact that he was one of the first reformers, and it took decades to shed a lot of those things that he had ingrained in him.

01:36:44

Yes, that's absolutely true. And the Roman Catholic theologian who would somehow put

01:36:49

Luther into the Roman Catholic camp is engaging in sophistry. There's no way around it.

01:36:58

I mean, you know, and so they can sit there and say, well, look what Luther said. It's like, yeah, when did he say it?

01:37:03

And you know, if you want the definitive work on what confessional Lutheranism, you know, believes, teaches, and confesses, you read the

01:37:12

Book of Concord. And there's several really great documents of Martin Luther's in our Confessions.

01:37:18

For instance, the power and primacy of the Pope. And in that document, in the

01:37:24

Lutheran Confessions, I mean, Martin Luther makes a very, very compelling case that the office of the papacy is the office of antichrist.

01:37:33

And so that doesn't sound like somebody who's sympathetic to Roman Catholicism at all. And the small called articles are equally acidic when it comes to, you know, knocking bad

01:37:46

Roman Catholic dogma. And so, you know, the Roman Catholic guy who tries to make it look like really

01:37:53

Luther's part of us, yeah, no. You're engaging in trickery, and you're trying to capture weak minds who may not know better.

01:38:04

Now, typically, what they cite are his prayers that reveal the fact that mariolatry was still a part of his life.

01:38:16

Of course, they wouldn't call it mariolatry. But did Luther ever shed completely what we would call heretical mariolatry?

01:38:26

Um, Luther held, and Luther believed and held to the kind of the pious tradition that that Mary remained a virgin the rest of her life.

01:38:38

And so, you know, is that part of mariolatry? I would say that's a pious error regarding Mary.

01:38:47

And does it put you outside of the kingdom? No. No, it doesn't reach the level of idolatry, though. Right.

01:38:52

Yeah, no, no. I mean, Luther did not pray to Mary. You know, once the

01:38:58

Protestant Reformation gets going, he stops all of that nonsense, and kind of puts Mary in her proper place is a good way of putting it.

01:39:06

Now, he so piously hangs on to the idea that she was Semper Virgo, but that's not actually part of, you know, the

01:39:15

Lutheran confession. And so, you know, we look at Luther and say, yeah, that was a pious belief and a tradition, but you can't back it up from Scripture, so there's no reason to hang on to it.

01:39:25

But, you know, we don't pray to her, we don't, you know, it's belief that she was a, you know, a perpetual virgin is not a requirement.

01:39:35

In fact, there's a whole, you know, most confessional Lutherans don't believe that. But Luther kind of held on to that idea, but we basically say that, yeah,

01:39:45

I mean, that's actually touching on idolatry, that's more of just a pious belief regarding her.

01:39:51

The Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. Well, as long as we're talking about which Luther wrote what, that brings into question,

01:39:59

I don't have a lot of Lutheran works in my library, but I do have the house postals, and what is the other, the church postals?

01:40:07

Where would they fall in line? Okay, so Luther's postals, kind of fascinating, because some of the sermons that are held up as model sermons, you'll note that in some of the versions of the postals that Luther still is struggling with the

01:40:26

Roman Catholic hermeneutics, which basically said that biblical texts have to be interpreted four different ways.

01:40:33

And so when you read Luther's postals, he'll do exegesis where he actually exegetes the text and works in the historical sense in what the text actually says, and then he'll talk about his spiritual sense.

01:40:48

And so when you read those sermons like that, you have to sit there and go, what is he doing?

01:40:54

He's actually still kind of hanging on to the Roman Catholic idea that there's a spiritual sense, there's a historical sense, there's a doctrinal sense, and I forget what the fourth is.

01:41:02

And we look at that and go, that's kind of fascinating, but no, that's actually contrary to good hermeneutics.

01:41:09

And so his later sermons, he doesn't do that. But what's really funny is that when you read the postals and you read his spiritual interpretation of the text that he's preaching on, he'll always spiritually interpret it in light of salvation by grace through faith alone, and tweak it and kind of shove it up the nose of the

01:41:30

Roman Catholics who are hanging on to the spiritual sense as well, and so he retools the spiritual sense and lines it up with the

01:41:37

Gospel. And then later, Lutheran theologians and pastors, they recognize that that's no proper way of doing hermeneutics and exegesis, and they lose that altogether.

01:41:48

So when you read the postals of, like, Johann Gerhardt, he doesn't do that at all.

01:41:54

So you always have to read Luther kind of this way, is that Luther is a sinful human being, there's clear development in his theology, and the more he comes in contact with Scripture, and he has to be judged according to Scripture just like anybody else.

01:42:12

And we have no problem with Lutheran saying, listen, there are many times that Luther was just totally out for lunch, or he was grinding too hard on the act and ended up messing things up.

01:42:26

Luther is an interesting read, he's actually quite entertaining at times.

01:42:33

The polemical chicanery that he engaged in from time to time was quite over the top, and the modern reader might be shocked.

01:42:44

Didn't he even admit to that at the Diet of Worms? Yeah, yeah. Let's just put it this way,

01:42:50

Luther was kind of prone to engage in potty humor. And you had a famous woodcut of him bending over in front of the

01:42:59

Pope. Yeah, and so Luther had no problem playing to kind of the unwashed masses at times, and so you could sit there and go, is this appropriate for a...

01:43:14

I mean, and so the idea then is that Luther will always have to be judged according to Scripture, and there are times when

01:43:23

Luther gets it wrong, and there are times when Luther's hermeneutic is not correct either. You know,

01:43:29

I'm not a big fan of his treatise on good works, because I argue that he actually is not engaging in sound exegesis, although his conclusions are correct, how he arrives there is not good exegesis.

01:43:44

So you have to be critical of Luther in those senses. Yeah, and of course some of that stuff would not be appropriate for a children's coloring book.

01:43:55

No, no, not at all. Having that with like Lutheran high school kids, all right, today we're going to be planelgraphing

01:44:04

Luther's argument against the Pope here. All right, we better get to some of our listener questions before we run out of time.

01:44:14

Joey in Clifton, New Jersey says, I was recently in a course in which the professor mentioned that post -Reformation

01:44:23

Lutheranism, typified by Melanchthon, Mueller, and Piper, held to total depravity and yet seemed to believe that God's grace is resistible in some sense.

01:44:34

Can you please clarify this? More specifically, can you please clarify where post -Reformation

01:44:40

Lutheranism may differ from Martin Luther's views on two points, specifically election, conditional or unconditional, and the scope of the atonement, limited or not?

01:44:49

We did touch on this the last time you were on, but if you could read it. Yeah, okay, so one of the things you have to understand in Lutheran theology is that after the death of Luther, there's a wee bit of a split, and that isn't resolved until the

01:45:09

Book of Concord is kind of put together in its proper form, and in the formula of Concord.

01:45:14

And so there's a need within Lutheranism to kind of hammer things out and do so in a way which requires them to be critical of even somebody as well beloved as Philip Melanchthon.

01:45:29

So you kind of have to go with, like, around the time of 1570, that's when kind of post -Lutheranism takes its final form with the formula of Concord in the

01:45:42

Book of Concord. And then if you really want to understand how Lutherans have understood the issue of election,

01:45:52

Lutherans do not discuss election apart from the means of grace. And so I'm looking for a particular...oh,

01:46:00

here it is. If you go to a website, the name of the website is bookofconcord .org, and along the left -hand side you'll see a list of different documents.

01:46:08

If you want to understand how Lutherans understand election, the

01:46:14

Saxon visitation articles are well after the life of Luther, so they're 1592.

01:46:19

They're technically not part of our confessions, but it's an interesting historical document that confessional

01:46:27

Lutherans would point to today in demonstrating how they distinguish themselves from Calvinists on the issue of election and the sacraments.

01:46:38

And so the Saxon visitation articles of 1592, you can find them at bookofconcord .org.

01:46:46

And so when it comes to election, Lutherans are very skittish about talking about them apart from the means of grace.

01:46:54

And if you were to talk to somebody like James White, he would rightly point out that Lutherans kind of focus on mystery, because when it comes to election,

01:47:03

Lutherans hold to two things that seem contradictory. And that is, number one, that God elects and chooses, which is most certainly true, and at the same time, everybody who ends up in hell, it is their fault, not

01:47:18

God's. Now, that seems contradictory, but there's biblical text that makes both statements clear.

01:47:24

So the question then comes up, how do you resolve the contradiction? And Lutherans say, we can't, because we don't have enough data.

01:47:32

And so what we basically say is that both are true, and we don't know how to resolve the conflict, and we believe that Calvinists have gone beyond Scripture in solving the conflict using logical syllogism, and then coming up with the doctrine of limited atonement.

01:47:50

We would say that's not the right way of solving the problem, we don't know how to solve it, and so for the

01:47:57

Lutherans, this then becomes what we call the crux theologorum, or the theologian's cross. It's kind of like the ultimate unsolvable theological question, and we just basically hold two seemingly contradictory opposing concepts, that God elects, and everybody who's in hell is culpable, and that it's their own fault.

01:48:19

And we say that the mystery that solves this is within the mind of God, and he has not revealed it in Scripture, so we have to say we can't answer the question at the moment.

01:48:31

And of course, Calvinists all believe that everyone in hell is there because they deserve to be, and that they willingly chose to rebel against God because they were not given hearts of flesh, and did not follow

01:48:45

Christ in repentance and faith because they had not been given hearts of flesh, but they are still culpable, as you said.

01:48:52

And the other issue is, we touched on last time, was

01:48:58

Melanchthon, after the death of Luther, trying to make some kind of a peace treaty to accommodate

01:49:05

Rome's view of the will, which certainly his view seems to be a departure from the bondage of the will that was a part of the great debate that Martin Luther had with Erasmus.

01:49:17

Yes, and we have no problem saying, after Luther's death, Melanchthon drifts.

01:49:24

And Melanchthon is actively looking for a way to kind of resolve the conflict with Rome, and he ends up making some theological compromises which that Scripture does not permit.

01:49:38

And which is why confessional Lutherans, they only confess the unaltered

01:49:45

Augsburg Confession, and they do not believe that the altered Augsburg Confession that Melanchthon later tried to kind of monkey with reflects the proper understanding of Scripture.

01:49:57

So yeah, unfortunately Melanchthon, in his zeal for trying to kind of repair the breach and find a way to kind of bring this conflict to an end between the

01:50:10

Protestants and the Roman Catholics, he oversteps his proper role and ends up basically making compromises that Scripture does not permit.

01:50:23

We have Susan in Scottsville, Kentucky. This is really going to be applicable to our next interview with you, but her question is, why is it a

01:50:34

Reformation still necessary? Hasn't it already been accomplished? What more would be done?

01:50:42

Yeah, I would say stay tuned. I would argue that take a look at the

01:50:49

Church today, and we are in dire need of a Reformation today, as medieval

01:50:56

Europe was in dire need of a Reformation in their day. And I'm not pointing to Rome right now,

01:51:03

I'm pointing to American and Western evangelicalism. And to kind of begin to lay some of the cards on the table, that there are doctrines today that people are holding to, that they're being taught in their non -Roman

01:51:16

Catholic evangelical megachurches, that are every bit as mythological and man -made as the dogmas of praying to the saints, of indulgences, of purgatory, the primacy of the

01:51:32

Pope, and all the like. And you sit there and go, really? Are you sure? It's like, yeah, I'm absolutely sure.

01:51:37

Do you attend a church where your pastor says that he is a vision -casting leader, and that your job as a

01:51:45

Christian is to hear directly from God so that you can learn your purpose? You're believing doctrines that are just as man -made and made up as any of the dogmas of Rome of the ancient world and today, and that we are in dire need of Reformation at the moment.

01:52:01

We have Josh in Aquabog, New York. Does Pastor Roseborough believe

01:52:06

Rome is a true church with some false teachings, or a false church with some true teachings?

01:52:12

If the latter, why call ourselves Reformers when they are to be condemned and departed from, not

01:52:19

Reformed? I believe that Rome, for the most part, is apostate, and they are a very, very dangerous false church with a false head.

01:52:31

And if you believe Roman Catholic dogma, yeah, you're not even a

01:52:37

Christian. And so you can sit there and talk about the need for Reforming, but the need for Reforming always kind of begins at the top, if you would.

01:52:47

It begins with a call to the Pope to step down and to basically get back to the position that he was originally in, which is the

01:52:58

Bishop of Rome, and all the dogmas that they claim that the Pope has the ability to voice onto the

01:53:06

Church, and if you don't agree or believe them that those are mortal sins, those all gotta go, and get back to Scripture and Scripture alone, which teaches salvation by grace through faith alone.

01:53:20

So you can talk about, you know, this is an apostate Church, and the need for Reformation would require a tearing back and a deletion and removal and a repudiation of all of these dogmas that have crept in, that are man -made in origin, that they claim are apostolic, and that the

01:53:41

Pope has the right to teach these things, which, you know, no, no, they've all gotta go.

01:53:47

If you want to talk about the need for Reform, ultimately the Reform looks like them jettisoning all of that stuff and getting back to what

01:53:56

Scripture believes, teaches, and confesses. Now, does that mean that there are no Christians in Roman Catholic churches?

01:54:01

No, there are Christians there, but it's not because of the Roman Catholic dogma. It's in spite of it, and it speaks to the efficacy of the preaching of God's Word in the

01:54:10

Gospel, because even Rome, from time to time, will actually read out a biblical text where the

01:54:15

Gospel is clearly taught. Yes, there are a number of people that I have met personally, including my mother on her deathbed, who was

01:54:24

Roman Catholic all of her life, and then before departing this earth, embraced, or made it evident,

01:54:33

I should say, that she truly believed in the finished work of Christ as her only hope for salvation.

01:54:39

I don't know how long prior to her deathbed experience, and I'm talking about six weeks, not a few minutes, but I don't know how long prior to that she had this understanding, but she had a clearly biblical

01:54:51

Gospel, and she also renounced prayer to Mary and the saints, which was quite a remarkable evidence to me of her truly becoming regenerate, because that was a preciously held tradition of her entire life, praying to Mary and the saints.

01:55:09

So she was trusting only in Christ, and she never said, I am no longer

01:55:14

Roman Catholic. She never said, I am now a Protestant, or never formally converted to Protestantism in that sense, but she was a

01:55:22

Catholic who had the true Gospel, and entered into eternity with Christ. We have

01:55:29

RJ in White Plains, New York, who said, could you please list, at least in America, what you believe would be the biblically orthodox and therefore safe synods within Lutheranism, which to join?

01:55:46

The two I would point to would be the Missouri Senate and the AALC. Those are the only ones that I can in good conscience recommend.

01:55:55

There are others that are conservative -ish, but the problem is that those conservative -ish synods that broke off of the

01:56:06

ELCA, they still ordain women. And I cannot see any biblical justification for that, and the exegesis, if you can call it that, that you engage in to arrive at the belief that somehow women can be pastors in the

01:56:23

Church, that method of reading Scripture literally undoes

01:56:29

Scripture itself. And so although they've kind of reset themselves as a conservative -ish synod,

01:56:36

I cannot, I won't even mention their name, because I can't recommend them, although there's some good pastors in that synod.

01:56:45

So the two that are confessional, that, you know, our

01:56:50

Missouri Synod and the AALC, there's also an ELF Synod. Very small, very small, but those guys are, the

01:57:00

Evangelical Lutheran Synod, those guys are, they're really good. We're not in all -term public fellowship with them, but that's another group that I could recommend.

01:57:11

Now I've heard that the Wisconsin Synod is even more conservative than the Missouri Synod, is that true?

01:57:16

Yeah, and funny enough, that actually kind of creates the nub of the problem between the two.

01:57:23

They may be conservative, overly conservative, in a way where they will separate with people that without any actual biblical justification for, but with the

01:57:37

Wisconsin Synod, I would say that there are many good congregations there, and I'm really praying that Wisconsin and the

01:57:45

Missouri Synod are able to hammer out their differences, because when you read the history of what leads to the split there,

01:57:53

I would say that it's kind of an overzealousness on the part of Wisconsin when it comes to, you know, deciding that, you know, who they have to disassociate with, and that was an unnecessary move on that part.

01:58:09

Well, we are going to have, God willing, Chris Roseborough return next Wednesday, the 27th of September, so I hope you join us then.

01:58:18

Also, if you are Lutheran, you might especially want to tune in as well on October 4th, which is another

01:58:25

Wednesday. Brian Wolfmuller is going to be our guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and then on Thursday, November 9th,

01:58:34

Matt Richard, I know who is a friend of Chris Roseborough, he is going to be returning as our guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and I want to make sure that you have all of the important contact information.

01:58:47

For Kongsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota, where Chris Roseborough pastors, go to kongsvingerchurch .org,

01:58:55

that's K -O -N -G -S, V as in victory, I -N -G -E -R, church .org, kongsvingerchurch .org,

01:59:02

and for Pirate Christian Radio, just go to piratechristian .com, piratechristian .com, any other contact information you care to give?

01:59:10

No, that's perfect, yeah, you have piratechristian .com, kongsvingerchurch .org, that's how you find them.

01:59:16

Great, and I want to remind you, go to cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com, for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, for that half -price sale on all hardback commentaries, including the new commentary on Revelation by Richard Phillips.

01:59:30

I want to thank you, Chris Roseborough, for being our guest today. I look forward to your return. I want to thank the Reverend Buzz Taylor for being my co -host.

01:59:36

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who wrote in questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater