Joe Heschmeyer examines whether the Protestant Reformers were truly the bold, uncompromising figures that they’re commonly thought to be.

Transcription:

Joe:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery; I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I want to address today this idea that the Protestant reformers, I’m going to focus particularly on Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox for reasons that’ll become clear very soon, whether they really are the sort of uncompromising figures we think of them as because there’s this idea that these were people who were bold enough to proclaim the gospel or their version of the gospel in season and out of season, whether it helped their cause or whether it hurt them or even put their life at risk. And so I’m not addressing here the question of whether they’re right or wrong about their beliefs. We’ll leave that for another day. I want to particularly address sort of the hagiography around them. This idea of them is these great saints who are uncompromising and unflinching in their proclamation of the gospel because that is a very popular Protestant view and I can understand why it’s held by so many.

So for instance, Josh bi, the head of the Evangelical Ministry, G three Ministries, he can say things like We can be certain, we can be certain that Luther, Calvin, Knox, Tindale and other figures of the Reformation were not making decisions about defending the faith by calculating their career advancement and protecting their platform. Faithful men stand up, faithfulness, speak up. Now, to be very clear, I agree with B’S sentiment that we should, as I said before, we should preach the gospel in season and out of season to use St. Paul’s expression. But I’m fascinated by the number of people who try to prove that point by appealing to the alleged unflinching nature of the beliefs of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox. And B is not alone. Our old friend Mike Jenen, appeals to those exact same three figures as if they were these great heroic martyrs.

CLIP:

So many evangelicals today are compromising the very truths that the reformers were tortured and brutally murdered for defending. For these reasons, it will do us good to reflect on three of these reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, and also John Knox.

Joe:

For some reason it never seems to occur to the people who talk about them in this way, that none of those guys were tortured or brutally murdered. That just didn’t happen. The closest you get is in John Calvin’s Geneva where Calvin helps to make sure that Michael Cerveti, who was another heretic, was arrested and executed and then later defended himself on the grounds the state should have the ability to execute heretics and blasphemers. So you have Kelvin defending the practice not suffering under it. Nevertheless, these guys get treated so often as these uncompromising saints and martyrs by many Protestants, even going so far as a giant reformation wall being built with engraved images of them in Geneva in honor of the veneration of the birth of John Calvin. Now if you can’t see that image or if you want to know more about it, I’ll let my gender and explain it to you.

CLIP:

This reformation rises 30 feet high. If you can imagine. It stretches 325 feet in length. It was built in 1909 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Calvin’s birth.

Joe:

So all I want to do is look at all three of those guys, Martin Luther, John Knox, and John Calvin and just say, do they hold to their principles when it doesn’t benefit them? And we’re going to start with Martin Luther because Martin Luther is undoubtedly the most famous, both just he’s the most famous Protestant reformer of all time. Obviously he kind of starts the whole thing, but also he’s famous in particular for his uncompromising faith. Whether you love him or hate him, this is kind of a reputation that he has. Roland Baton in his famous book here, I stand a life of Martin Luther using a maybe apocryphal line. Luther is said to have used of the diet of verbs, talked about what drew him to Luther as a figure, and he said there were two things in particular. First, Luther’s willingness to defy both church and state in the name of reason and conscience.

And second, that he had these moments of self-reflection where he had to afterwards ask himself after taking this bold stand, are you alone? Right in a moment calling for decision. He took a firm stand and then undertook to convince himself all over again. That’s Payton’s view, that’s a very popular view of Luther. And to be sure there are plenty of moments that would kind of lend themselves to that, particularly if you read history a certain way. So in many of the movies kind of made to show the amazingness of Martin Luther’s life, you’ll have these powerful scenes taken from the diet of Verns focusing on Martin Luther saying this,

CLIP:

Unless I am convinced by scripture and by plain reason and not by popes and councils who have so often contradicted themselves, my conscience is captive to the word of God.

Joe:

Alright, so taken in isolation, I think that’s a pretty great sounding testament to an unflinching belief in his own correctness. Again, whether you think that’s good or bad, the reality is that Martin Luther is a little cage about what it would actually take to convince him. So diet of vers is kind of the end point of a fascinating sort of back and forth. Luther has over the course of two years. I want to focus on this in kind of three chunks just to give a little bit of historical background. People don’t often give when they hold up Luther at the diet of vers as this great unflinching principled individual. Let’s start with 1517. You’ve got an October 31st. Martin Luther releases a 95 thesis. The popular image is that he nails them to the door of the church in Wittenberg. That probably didn’t happen, but either way, he begins to question doctrines related to indulgences, non indulgences themselves in 1517.

By 1518, this really become a major kind of scandal in the church. And so he takes the opportunity to write to the Pope on May 30th, 1518 promising him that he’s got a bad rap. He says, I know mostly father that evil reports are being spread about me, some friends having vilified me to your holiness as if I were trying to belittle the power of the Keys and of the supreme Pont. So notice what he’s saying at the outset. He’s not attacking the papacy and he denies the charge of being a heretic and a renegade. Any promises him. He says, therefore, most Holy Father, I prostrate myself at your feet, placing myself and all I am and have at your disposal to be dealt with as you see fit. My cause hangs on the will of your holiness by whose verdict I shall either save or lose my life.

Come what may I shall recognize the voice of your holiness to be that of Christ speaking through you. So it’s a pretty bold proclamation that he believes a papacy is true and that he’s going to trust Pope Leo Thei to adjudicate this dispute that he’s in the middle of on indulgences that is then followed by some private correspondence. By January of the next year, we find him writing to the elector Frederick about how Magister Spel, that’s the German theologian and fellow Lutheran Spel had proposed that the matter be referred to the verdict of the Archbishop of Salzberg. So there’s this idea, maybe we could have the Archbishop of Salzburg sort of resolve this, but he says he doesn’t think the Pope would put up with a judge. You can’t have learned people and lay people and this trial on German soil adjudicating this sort of thing.

That’s what Luther and his allies are wanting. And he’s like, the pope’s not going to accept that. And then he says, and I too will not submit to the Pope’s verdict. Now that’s quite a change from him saying the exact opposite in May of the prior year. So this is by the way, before the Pope has issued an actual verdict in the case, while this is still pending, you see principled unchanging Luther going from saying he’s going to trust whatever the Pope does because the Holy Father to him saying he’s not going to listen to what the Pope says. And sure enough, in June of 1520, it takes more than two years for this to finally get sorted out. The Pope releases a papal bull exer j Dom in which he condemns several, not all but several of the things Martin Luther had been arguing for.

He goes through some of the various claims he was making and rejects some of them that then leads to Luther not doing what he said he was going to do. Now we haven’t gotten there yet because even though this is released in June, correspondence between Germany and Italy is really slow at this period of history. So before this even gets back to Martin Luther, before he’s had a chance to see this or read what the Pope has said or anything like this, we find him writing to George spell the Theolog Joy mission earlier saying to him in July of 1520, for me the D is cast and I despise Rome’s displeasure as much as her favor. I shall never be reconciled to her, let her condemn or burn me as she will. So notice this, he’s not trying to be reconciled to the church at this point.

He is saying instead, if I can get a fire, I shall publicly burn the whole papal code, this serpentine piece of treachery and make an end of the humility I’ve his or two displayed in vain so that the enemies of the gospel may no longer vaunt themselves on account of it. So one thing I would take from this again as a non Lutheran is yes, some of this humility appears to have just been an act. He promises to trust whatever the Pope says if he thinks it’s going to help him, and once he realizes it’s not going to help him, he just throws off the whole humility facade. Now, maybe that’s too harsh of a read, but look at just the sequence of events. He promises to trust the Pope. He then says he’s not going to accept the verdict. He doesn’t get the verdict that he likes, and then he announces very clearly, I shall never be reconciled to Rome, right?

There’s this popular image that, oh, he tried really hard to stay in the church and the church just excommunicated him. But no, he’s doing these childish things like taking the whole code of Canon law and as well as the whole papal code. This is what he refers to it as, and Exer J do when he gets sat and a bunch of other things and in December of that year has a big bonfire with the college students in which they burn all of these different church documents. That’s not someone trying to smooth things over with the church. So I listed the timeline right there. You’ve got Luther publicly declaring that he’s going to follow the Pope’s verdict. I been declaring it to the Pope and then privately saying he’s not going to accept the Pope’s verdict and then privately suggesting he doesn’t want to reconcile with the church.

That doesn’t look like a come what may in season and out of season principled position. It looks like saying different things publicly than privately, but understandably, people’s views do change over time. So it’s not completely infeasible that between 15, 18 and 1520 Luther’s views on the papa seed sour. That’s a completely reasonable proposition. I’ll accept that there certainly is a change and I just want to highlight that. But now I want to focus on a much narrower span of time, not two years, but really the span of about a week because now you’ve got the arrival of Exer J dominating. So we’re now in October of 1520. Luther receives the document on October the 10th. Again, this gives you some idea of how long it takes things to arrive because it was released on June 15th. It doesn’t get to him until October 10th. So one reason this whole process is as slow as it is, is just because mail is not fast.

So October 10th, he gets the papal bull saying that the Pope disagrees with him on certain things. On October 11th again to George Fallin, he tells him this bull condemns Christ himself. He doesn’t just say he condemns my view of scripture. He says it condemns Christ himself. And then he says, I’m going to act on the assumption that it is spurious, though I think it is genuine. In other words, he’s going to publicly pretend he thinks that this is a forgery even though he has good reason to believe it is actually from Leo ii and he does that. He pretends he doesn’t know whether the Pope really wrote it and everything else. This was another one of these sort of saying one thing privately and another thing publicly kind of moves, but then he laments that the Holy Roman emperor doesn’t take up arms against the Pope for disagreeing with him.

He said, would that Charles we’re a man and would fight for Christ against these Satans? And then he says in the same letter, I feel much freer now that I’m certain the Pope is antichrist. This is really important. It’s October 11th, 1520 and Martin Luther has decided the pope is actually antichrist. Why does that matter? Well, because eventually later in 1520 he’s going to launch what he calls against the incurable bowl of antichrist where he attacks Pope Leo as being antichrist and publicly denounces him. He says, I call upon you to renounce your diabolical blasphemy and audacious impiety, and if you will not, we shall all hold your seat as possessed and oppressed by Satan, the damned seat of antichrist in the name of Jesus Christ whom you persecute. That’s what he’s going to say by the end of 1520. I don’t know the exact date of that response and he’s already clearly thinking this privately because we see this from his private correspondence.

Contrast that with what he’s publicly telling the Pope at the same time. So this is October 13th. This is again two days after a private letter where he denounces his pope is antichrist. He writes to the same Pope Pope Leo thei in this false flattering tone. He says, I declare that I’m not aware of ever having spoken of you except with great respect. Now whether you love Pope Leo Thei or hate him, whether you believe the pope is the antichrist or not, can we at least acknowledge that this is not someone holding to a view in season and out of season and speaking truth to power or to any. This is someone saying to different groups of people what he thinks they’re going to want to hear as it suits him. So again, that’s the span of not even a week, October 10th to October 13th, 1520. Let’s then transition from that because in his correspondence to pop Leo ii, he does say to him that he wants to appeal his judgment to that of a general Christian counsel.

In other words, he’s of the view that this will be settled not by the Pope as he originally claimed, but instead he’ll listen to an ecumenical counsel and he doesn’t get an ecumenical council in his lifetime. Eventually the Council of Trent will resolve that he was wrong as well at an ecumenical council. But before that he does go to the imperial diet or court in verbs. And there you have that quote that you heard before, but now think about it in a new light because here’s Martin Luther who first declared he wanted to be judged by the Pope and then declared, no, nevermind. I want to be judged by ecumenical counsel. Now standing up and saying once he realizes neither is going to go in his favor, I do not accept the authority of popes and counsels my man. You are the one who suggested we adjudicate this with popes and counsels and now you’re saying you don’t believe in those things.

So you can see this reversal on papal authority, a total just dishonesty about his view on Leo the 10th and what he says about Leo compared to what he says to Leo. And then you have this total reversal on the role of ecumenical councils just between 15, 20 and 1521, not even in the span of a year, the span of about half a year. He does this 180 on the authority of ecumenical councils. Now people will say, oh, Luther’s views were evolving. But it’s hard to see in this someone of unbreakable unflinching of bravery and consistency or any of those things. So again, I mean obviously I’m coming at that as a non Lutheran, but those are just things that make me question the kind of popular narrative about him. So, so much for Martin Lutheran, I want to turn to a much lesser known figure. Now, John Knox, I’m going to let Mike Rin kind of introduce you to John Knox except to say that he’s a Scottish Calvinist who’s really influential in the creation of Presbyterianism in Scotland.

CLIP:

One of my favorite pictures of John Knox preaching his first sermon on Daniel chapter seven verses 24 to 25 at St. Andrew’s Cathedral. His preaching denounced rome’s false gospel and pronounced the Pope to be antichrist and the mass to be idolatrous, very bold.

Joe:

So that is very much the popular image of John Knox, that lover hate him. This guy is very bold, he’ll say whatever because he believes it’s the word of God and there’s not just what he says, but also what he does. So there’s this moment where he’s captured by the French and he’s offered this statue of Mary to venerate and instead he acts against it with this extreme reaction.

CLIP:

The French tried desperately to convert John Knox back to Roman Catholicism, even attempting him to kiss a statue of the Virgin Mary. Instead, John Knox resolutely refused and said Such an idol is a cursed, and he threw it overboard.

Joe:

So apparently John Knox hated the idea of religious images and statues regarding them as idols. And so of course Protestants have honored him by creating a giant statue of him in Geneva, Switzerland. But as Mike General will point out, that’s not quite right. They actually made two statues to him.

CLIP:

By the way, John Knox is the only man that’s mounted twice on the monument, not only here, but outside of this wall. You see a huge another wall that’s extending out 325 feet and he also appears there.

Joe:

Apparently religious statues are okay for me, but not for thee, but it’s actually not John Knox’s antipathy towards the Virgin Mary. I want to talk about. It’s his antipathy towards Queen Mary. So if you’re not familiar, Henry VIII dies. His son Edward ii dies as a teenager, and so that leaves the Tudor dynasty in the English crown in precarious hands. And so in at first the crown goes not to another male, but to Henry son, excuse me, daughter with Queen Catherine of Aragon. So if you remember the whole controversy over why the Anglican reformation happens in the first place, it’s because Henry the A thought he needed to have a son to pass on the Tudor lineage and then his son dies before reaching even the age of 20, and the Tudor lineage passes on to a woman anyway, the daughter he could have had if he had just never divorced his wife in the first place.

Neither here nor there, but there you go, Henry. And so that daughter was Queen, married the first who was loathed by Protestants because she was Catholic and because she fought against Protestantism often violently, she was given the kind of unfair nickname bloody Mary at a time when both Protestant and Catholic leaders often used civil force. Remember John Calvin talking about wise’s? Okay, for the state to do that in punishing heretics, apparently again, it’s okay for me and not for thee. So against this John Knox rails, but not just because he doesn’t like that she is a Catholic specifically, he does not like that she’s a woman. And so he writes in 1557 an essay or a treatise called the First Blast of the trumpet against a monstrous regiment, meaning government of women. And so it’s just him announcing that it is abominable before God for a woman to lead in any kind of context.

I’ll give you a little bits of excerpts from this, and this part does sound very brave except well we’ll see. So Knox says, I am assured that God has revealed to some in this our age that it is more than a monster in nature that a woman should reign and have empire above man. And yet with all there is such silence as if God therewith were nothing offended, then notice this point because Knox is totally aware that his fellow reformers are being cowardly and we’re going to see more evidence of that later, that they secretly think it’s not okay for a woman to be queen, but they don’t want to actually say that publicly, but Knox is willing to. He argues that to promote a woman to bear rules, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation or city is repugnant to nature continually an insult to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance.

And finally, it is a subversion of good order of all equity and justice. So it’s not even okay to have a woman to be mayor. Now, a whole lot of his argument turns on a single Bible verse, which actually appears on the cover of his treatise when you can fit your biblical references on the front page. Not a great sign usually, but his argument is from one Timothy two 12 where St. Paul says, I suffer not that woman usurp authority above man. Now stripping this of any context of what Paul is actually talking about, which is about pastoral leadership in the church, Knox instead argues that Paul is, well, really the Holy Spirit working through St. Paul is taking from woman all power and authority to speak to reason, to interpret or to teach, but principally to rule and to judge in the assembly of men. So don’t even think out loud if you’re with guys, don’t just his argument that what St. Paul means to do is just stop women from speaking in public, in men don’t speak, don’t reason, don’t interpret, don’t teach, and certainly don’t rule or judge.

He argues this not just on the basis of that one verse, but also because he thinks it’s obvious that women are too emotional to be leaders. He says, would God, the examples were not so manifest to the further declaration of the imperfections of women of their natural weakness and inordinate appetites and there follows a funny but very sexist treatment of how women are so emotional that they’ll kill themselves and they’re so driven by lust that they’ll do all of these crazy things. And so it’s a pretty wild kind of passage, not based on any scripture, there’s not even a citation in this part. It’s just knox’s view on women being irrational creatures. And then he says, for those that will not permit a woman to have power over her own son. So notice he doesn’t even think she should as mother have this kind of authority so irrational will not permit her.

I’m assured to have rule over a realm and those that will not suffer her to speak in defense of those that be accused neither will admit her accusation intended against man will not approve her, that she shall sit in judgment crowned with the royal crown usurping authority in the midst of men in plain language. Since you can’t trust a woman to give testimony in court or to testify against a man, how can you possibly trust her to rule a country? That’s the argument you can judge for whether or not you think it’s good. The one thing it has going forward, if anything is that it is at least bold seemingly, but then a very funny thing happens the very next year to the south, I present to you Elizabeth, your antied queen.

Yeah, the Catholic Queen Mary dies and her half sister Elizabeth comes to the crown. Now this creates a very awkward... Read more on Catholic.com