[Music]
well with the great profit and pleasure
I've been reading recently Alec Y Rees
new book called Protestants the faith
that made the modern world a lot of
books are coming out now because it's
the 500th anniversary of the beginning
of the Reformation and I've been reading
a number of them and I think his book
stands out for its lucidity and its
Verve and its energy in some ways it
reminded me of Brad Gregory's book the
unintended Reformation and Gregory
looking at it more from the Catholic
side Reilly from the Protestant side
what I most appreciated though it's
toward the beginning of his book is his
portrait of the undisputed founder of
the Protestant movement namely Martin
Luther now I'll confess to a certain
fascination with Luther over many years
I started reading and probably when I
was in college I've read a lot of his
books and articles and sermons etc and
then for about ten years when I was a
teacher Mundelein seminary I taught a
course kind of graduate level course in
the theology of the sixteenth century
which involved reading an awful lot of
Luther say what you want about Martin
Luther he's one of the most beguiling
figures of the time I mean he was
cantankerous he was pious he was
brilliant he was deeply anti-semitic he
was wonderful and he was exasperating I
mean all at the same time and I think
it's why people keep coming back to
Luther with a certain fascination giving
to his writings even though I disagree
with massive amounts of what Luther says
it's hard not to like his literary style
he's one of the rare people from the
time of Augustan on who's able to write
in latin with an awful lot of Verve and
energy his works kind of crackle when
you read them so anyway Luther I've been
fascinated by it for a long time well
Ryrie it sort of prompted me to squint
at Luther in a somewhat new way looking
at Luther with fresh eyes he uses the
categories of fighter and lover you know
Luther quite obviously was a fighter
look he took on the roman curia took on
the Pope he took on the Emperor took on
the electors of the Holy Roman Empire he
took on the inquisitors etc etc Luther
was a very pugnacious figure and there's
no doubt that he bequeathed to
Protestantism this fighting spirit I
mean from Zwingli and Calvin all the way
through Karl Barth you can see the sort
of you know protesting side of
Protestantism so that's true but Ryan
says I think he's right about this that
that's only to see a comparable part of
the picture because Luther was also and
primarily a lover and what he themes
here is he's somebody who fell in love
radically with God so we know the story
well that Luther the pious Augustinian
monk after you know many many years of
striving and striving striving through
all sorts of spiritual exercise and
moral excellence to be pleasing to it to
adjust and demanding God in the famous
Tula madness the Germans call it at our
experience Luther felt this breakthrough
of grace that he's justified not by his
own heroic effort but by the sheer grace
of God accepted as a gift in faith and
this was mediated to him by by the Bible
the great text especially of st. Paul so
Luther fell radically in love with the
God who would radically expressed his
love for him and there's the heart if
you want even the mystical heart of
Protestantism now trace that as well
from everyone from John Wesley through
slyer mocker all the way up to
contemporary times you can see this
mystical affective dimension of
Protestantism now here's why I say this
caused me to squint at Luther in a new
way because I'll use another standard
set of categories often religious
experience is analyzed according to
either the mystical or the prophetic
right so mystical is experiential it's
often T the kind of you know priestly
sacramental side of things then there's
the prophetic which is very word
oriented it's
challenging and cetera cetera well in
almost all the characterizations Luther
falls on the on the prophetic side of
that divide and indeed you can find a
lot of things in Luther to justify just
that move but Ryrie prompted me to think
I don't know maybe that's not really
adequate to it that if anything Luther
falls on this more mystical the the
lover side of the equation you know now
why do I say that help me to see it
differently well think about someone now
who's in love who's fallen in love what
do they do and what do they sound like
well consult the high Romantic poets or
consult even a teenager talking about
his first crush they tend to use words
like forever and only and always
something that's over-the-top that's
exaggerated in the speech of people who
have fallen in love and if I might bring
this up to date look at my great hero
the Nobel laureate Bob Dylan who's a
distant spiritual descendant if you want
to Martin Luther because in the late 70s
Bob Dylan becomes an evangelical
Christian he writes a song not long
after his conversion called saving grace
to lovely song and includes the line I
look around this whole world and all
that I'm finding is the saving grace
that's over me now mind you this is the
same Bob Dylan who a handful of years
before had talked about desolation row
who had talked about unmasking the
executioner's who had talked about
pellets of poison poison flooding our
waters and so on so forth this is a
sharply prophetically critical Bob Dylan
who in the wake of his own experience of
grace can say all that I'm finding all
that I see is the saving grace that's
over me that's the way people in love
sound now listen to Martin Luther the
great SOLAS the three solos of the
Reformation right
so Lafitte a my faith alone
gratia Sola by grace alone scriptura
Sola by the Bible alone what what is
that but the sort of excessive
extravagant over-the-top expression of a
powerful mystical experience
now does that hold up to strict scrutiny
no I would say is it in line is it is an
expressive of an experience yeah
powerfully so correct in the strict
sense no of course not I would say now
here's my plan
can we look at Luther's great statement
the solos of the Reformation and say
yeah
good right in the measure that it
expresses this experience of grace and
at the same time can we look at the
Council of Trent which offers a sharp
theological correction I would say of
Luther's language Trent that looks now
at the relationship between faith and
works between Grace and and our effort
etc etc in a much more careful manner
and can we say yeah that's right and I
just wonder I miss kind of speculating
here is whether saying yes to both those
things might actually represent a step
forward in the ecumenical conversation
you
[Music]