Well, I'll just kick it off with the first one.
As we celebrate 500 years
from when Martin Luther nailed
his 95 theses upon the Wittenburg Cathedral doors,
we are undoubtedly speaking highly
of men like Luther, Calvin, Bucer, Zwingli
and the truths they heralded and established.
However, inevitably, conversation comes up
about, for instance, Luther's anti-Semitic writings,
or Calvin's involvement in the death of Servetus,
so the question is this:
How should we consider these men
who were so monumentally used by God
for great good,
and yet we see either glaring flaws
or blind spots in their lives.
How should be see them,
feel about them, if we find
genuinely troubling truths
about their personal lives
or even perhaps a doctrinal stance
they may have held?
Phil: My answer to that is the same answer
I would give if you asked about the list
of heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11.
You read that list in Hebrews 11
and it includes men like Samson
who in so many ways was a spiritual disaster.
He was dedicated by his parents
at a very young age
to live the lifelong role of a Nazarite,
which meant that he couldn't cut his hair;
he wasn't supposed to touch wine
or any of the fruit of the vine,
and he wasn't supposed to touch
dead bodies.
He did all those things.
And he ate the honey out of the corpse
of a lion and then boasted about it.
Just lived a profligate life.
Dishonored his parents because
he wanted to marry a Philistine girl
and they were appalled by that idea.
So he married a pagan girl.
That got him into a fight with her in-laws
in which he had to kill a bunch of them.
You look at his life
in terms of 21st century moral standards
and you say this man was a disaster.
He was an absolute disaster.
And yet, Scripture lists him
as one of the heroes of the faith.
And the answer is: we're all flawed.
Some of us are flawed more than others,
but all men are flawed.
And God has always used flawed men.
David committed adultery and murder.
And those are sins which admittedly
would disqualify a man
from leading the church today.
If I knew someone who wanted to be a pastor,
and he had committed adultery
and arranged for the death
of his paramour's legitimate husband,
I would say there's no way that man
can ever be above reproach.
Even if he's repented afterwards,
I wouldn't want to see him in a pastoral role
because he's not above reproach.
And that's the first requirement for a pastor.
And yet, the Lord kept him as king of Israel
and he is the one from whom
the Messianic line descended.
(Incomplete thought)
[The Lord] justifies the ungodly, right?
It's not that He throws out justice.
And it's not that He throws out morality.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
And in all those cases, it does.
But the fact that men have flaws
doesn't mean God can't use them.
And it doesn't mean that we shouldn't honor them
for their faith and their faithfulness
where they were faithful.
I think Calvin's flaws are often grossly exaggerated.
He didn't personally kill Servetus.
He simply said by the laws of the time,
what Servetus did - teaching heresy
and sedition and he was an anarchist -
was worthy of the death penalty
by the civil laws of the time.
And Calvin actually pleaded
for a more merciful form of execution
than burning him at the stake.
And it was the city council who said no,
we're going to burn him at the stake.
So, Calvin in that, I think,
is often portrayed as a murderer
and a bloodthirsty man,
when he was not.
If you know Calvin's character
and read his sermons and all that,
you find he's a much better man
than either Catholics or Arminians
want to admit.
It's true that Luther became anti-Semitic.
He didn't start out that way.
But as time went by,
he believed that once the Gospel was clarified,
and he had dug out the doctrine
of justification by faith
from under centuries of Roman Catholic tradition,
he believed that the Jewish people
when they heard the Gospel,
would respond,
and when they didn't,
he grew frustrated,
and wrote some pretty harshly
anti-Semitic material.
And there's no excuse for that.
There's no way to way
well, that wasn't really so bad.
It was bad.
And there were other things Luther did
that were bad.
He had vile mouth.
Now everything Luther said, even privately
was taken down by students of his
and published posthumously
in a collection called, "Table Talk."
And you'll find, most of the outrageous things
Luther said you'll find in his "Table Talk,"
not in his commentaries or his thoughtful writings.
So in a way it's not fair to Luther
to think that things he meant to be
in private discourse;
things where he might have been joking even;
things he didn't write himself -
other people took it down.
And if you've ever had other people
take down your words and tweet them,
they never get it exactly right either.
And whatever you say that sounds bad
is going to be exaggerated
by the people who record it.
So you do have to cut Luther a little slack on that,
but there's no question,
he was a flawed man.
And some of the reformers had pretty severe,
shortsighted flaws.
But we honor them nevertheless
for their faith and their faithfulness,
while we recognize their flaws
and say there's no way to justify that.
One of my favorite theologians
in America is R.L. Dabney.
He was a Presbyterian theologian.
And I firmly believe that he would be remembered
as America's greatest theologian ever,
except that he got embroiled in the Civil War.
He was a southern presbyterian
during the time of the Civil War.
He was the chaplain to Stonewall Jackson.
So he was actually in the military
and fought for the South in the war,
and when the South lost,
he became embittered
and never really got over it.
And some of his later writings also
are racist.
Just racist.
So much so that when the Banner of Truth
published his collected writings
on essays and stuff like that -
it's called "Discussions" -
it's actually my favorite set of books
of all the books on my shelf.
That's the one I would least like to lose
because there's some brilliant material
in there.
It was originally four volumes.
And when Banner of Truth picked it up
and published it,
they made it three volumes,
because there was so much racist material
at the end that they had to take out.
So they deleted half of volume three
and most of volume four
and put it in three volumes.
And I look at Dabney and I think
what a shame!
I mean, he was a product of his times.
And what a shame that he couldn't
rise above that and see beyond that
because he understood doctrine
and loved the Scriptures
and loved Christ,
and I'm sure his level of spiritual maturity
was far beyond mine.
So, I feel bad even criticizing him,
but you have to step back and look at that
and say, he, like all those reformers,
was a flawed man.
And sometimes our flaws outlive
and sometimes even overshadow
our good qualities.
It's one of my fears, frankly,
because I've put a lot of stuff on the Internet,
and over the years, some of the things
I've written on the Internet
have made people angry.
And I hope succeeding generations
don't look back and say
that the thing that stands out about me
is that I was a sarcastic
bad-mouther.
I recognize, I have flaws
just like those men.
And it's a shame when our flaws
overshadow our good things.
But I don't think that's the case with
the reformers.
I think the benefits of their ministries
really outshine their flaws.
The flaws are undeniable.
But just because you realize a man
has a serious character flaw
isn't necessarily a reason to
write off his legacy entirely,
if he's a man whom God used
in a mighty way.
And there are lots of biblical examples of that.
Samson being the one I cited.
David being another.
There are others who did heinous sins
and yet, Scripture commends them
for their faith.