Podcasts about philipp melanchthon

Amy Mantravadi joins Caleb and Bruce to discuss her novel Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation. Amy was inspired to follow the lives and conflicts of Martin Luther, Desiderius Erasmus, and Philipp Melanchthon. The episode dives into the history behind the novel and the significance of Luther's The Bondage of the Will. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation, Book 1 of 2 by Amy Mantravadi 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation, Book 1 of 2 by Amy Mantravadi Junk Drawer Jesus By Matt Popovits Listen to 1517 Executive Director Scott Keith and Magnus Persson on the latest Re:Formera podcast Signup For Free Advent Church Resources for 2024 Clothed with Christ by Brian William Thomas More from the hosts: Caleb Keith Bruce Hilman  

Dr. Angela Rinn, Mainz, Evangelische Kirche: Gute Freunde können sich unterstützen

Disagree, agree, or have a question: Contact us through the contact page on our website; http://www.biblebulldog.com The Book of Concord. The Book of Concord (1580) or Concordia (often referred to as the Lutheran Confessions) is the historic doctrinal standard of the Lutheran Church, consisting of ten credal documents recognized as authoritative in Lutheranism since the 16th century. Martin Luther's quirky quotes. “May God punish you, I say, you shameless, barefaced liar, devil's mouthpiece, who dares to spit out, before God, before all the angels, before the dear sun, before all the world, your devil's filth.” From Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil, pg. 349 of Luther's Works, Vol. 41 “For you are an excellent person, as skillful, clever, and versed in Holy Scripture as a cow in a walnut tree or a sow on a harp.” From Against Hanswurst, pg. 219 of Luther's Works, Vol. 41 “You are like a magician who conjures gulden into the mouths of silly people, but when they open their mouths they have horse dirt in them.” From Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil, pg. 264 of Luther's Works, Vol. 41 The Book of Concord is a collection of 10 writings: The Apostle's Creed The Nicene Creed The Athanasian Creed. The Augsburg Confession: The Augsburg Confession is a key document of the Lutheran tradition that outlines the basic beliefs of the Lutheran Church. It was written in 1530. e Augsburg Confession consists of 28 articles that cover a range of topics. Some of the key points of the Augsburg Confession are: Justification by faith: The Augsburg Confession emphasizes that salvation is a free gift of God that is received through faith alone. The authority of scripture: The Augsburg Confession affirms the authority of scripture as the final authority in matters of faith and practice. The sacraments: The Augsburg Confession affirms the importance of two sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and rejects the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation. The priesthood of all believers: The Augsburg Confession emphasizes that all believers have direct access to God through Christ, and that there is no need for a mediator between God and humanity. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession: The Apology of the Augsburg Confession is a document written by Philipp Melanchthon, a German reformer, in 1531. It was written as a response to the Roman Catholic Church's rejection of the Augsburg Confession. The Smalcald Articles: The Smalcald Articles are a Lutheran confession of faith that was written by Martin Luther in 1537. The Smalcald Articles were written in response to the Council of Trent. They are a statement of faith that outlines the key beliefs of the Lutheran Church. The Smalcald Articles affirm the Lutheran belief in salvation by grace through faith alone and reject the Catholic belief in salvation through good works The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope: The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope is a document written by Philip Melanchthon, a German reformer, in 1537. The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope was written to clarify the Lutheran position on the role of the Pope in the Church. It affirms the Lutheran belief in the authority of the Bible as the sole source of Christian doctrine. The Formula of Concord: The Formula of Concord is a Lutheran confession of faith that was written in 1577. It was a response to divisions within the Lutheran Church and aimed to unify Lutheran beliefs and practices. Final thought from Martin Luther: “I'm fed up with the world, and it is fed up with me. I'm quite content with that. The world thinks that if it is only rid of me everything will be fine, and it will accomplish this. After all, it's as I've often said: I'm like a ripe stool and the world is like a gigantic anus, and so we're about to let go of each other.” (Martin Luther, Table Talk, 5537). --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/biblebulldog/message

The Augsburg Confession The confession of faith, which was submitted to His Imperial Majesty Charles V at the diet of Augsburg in the year 1530

Is It True, Or Is It Truly True? In this episode, we discuss election, true and false church, law, mercy, and why we can't stop judging the Gospel as we read Philip Melanchthon's 1541 commentary on Paul's letter to the Romans. SHOW NOTES:  Commentary on Romans by Philipp Melanchthon https://a.co/d/bY23Uqv   SUPPORT: 1517 Podcast Network https://www.1517.org/podcasts/   Support the work of 1517 https://www.1517.org/donate Warrior Priest Gym & Podcast https://thewarriorpriestpodcast.wordpress.com   St John's Lutheran Church (Webster, MN) - FB Live Bible Study Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/356667039608511  Gillespie's Sermons and Catechesis: http://youtube.com/stjohnrandomlake  Gillespie Coffee https://gillespie.coffee   Gillespie Media https://gillespie.media   Tin Foil Haloes https://t.me/bannedpastors The Withertongue Emails: A Pastor's Satanic Temptation, with Apologies to C.S. Lewis https://shop.1517.org/products/the-withertongue-emails-a-pastor-s-satanic-temptation-with-apologies-to-c-s-lewis   SUBSCRIBE: YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsvLQ5rlaInxLO9luAauF4A  Rumble https://rumble.com/c/c-1223313  Odysee https://odysee.com/@bannedbooks:5 Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/banned-books/id1370993639  Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2ahA20sZMpBxg9vgiRVQba  Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=214298  Overcast https://overcast.fm/itunes1370993639/banned-books  Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9iYW5uZWRib29rcy5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw TuneIn Radio https://tunein.com/podcasts/Religion--Spirituality-Podcasts/Banned-Books-p1216972/  iHeartRadio https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-banned-books-29825974/    CONTACT and FOLLOW: Email mailto:BannedBooks@1517.org  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BannedBooksPod/  Twitter https://twitter.com/bannedbooks1517

VOM SCHATTEN ZUM LICHT mit Pastor Mag. Kurt Piesslinger 2.Serie - DIE REFORMATION VERÄNDERT DIE WELT Der einst römisch-katholische Mönch Martin Luther fügt dem Papsttum den schwersten Schlag aller Zeiten zu. Luthers eifriges Bibelstudium erleuchtet den Pfad seines evangelischen Werdeganges. Obwohl er mit dem Tode bedroht wird, verteidigt Luther furchtlos die neue Erkenntnis. Die Reformation ist nicht mehr zu stoppen. Wie Luther in Deutschland so wirken Ulrich Zwingli und Johannes Calvin in der Schweiz und tragen das Evangelium in die Welt hinaus. 2.4 Fortschritt der Reformation in Deutschland Luthers Verschwinden nach dem Reichstag zu Worms führt zum vermehrten Lesen seiner Schriften. Luther schreibt eine Fülle von Abhandlungen, die das Papsttum rügen. Unaufhaltsam verbreitet sich der Geist der Reformation in Deutschland und darüber hinaus. Wittenberg wird zum geistigen Zentrum der Reformation. Unter Martin Luther und Philipp Melanchthon und einem ausgezeichneten Mitarbeiterstab werden Tausende von Studenten ausgebildet, die als Pfarrer und Lehrer Deutschlands Gefilde umkrempeln. Gottes Segen! Für Videoaufnahme: vimeo.com/119118702

Christian Nationalism is all the rage in the media these days. By some it is used as a term of derision, a smear, in order to silence debate. By others it is a vision of what their nation should be and strive for. In this episode, Ramirez and I seek to clarify its meaning and ask the question if Christians should take up the smear in the same way our fathers in the faith took on the name “Lutheran.”   Further Resources: Commentary on Psalm 82 by Martin Luther (Luther's Works Vol. 13)   The Chief Theological Topics: Loci Praecipui Theologici (1559) by Philipp Melanchthon (esp. p. 430-431)   "The Challenge of History: Luther's Two Kingdoms Theology as a Test Case" by Prof. Cameron MacKenzie http://www.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/mackenziechallengeofhistory.pdf   Peace, Order, and the Glory of God by Prof. James Estes   Martin Luther and Religious Liberty by Pr. David P. Ramirez https://www.academia.edu/89633865/Martin_Luther_and_Religious_Liberty   "The Impact of the Reformation on Political Thought: The Three Hierarchies as Foundation for Lutheran Political Thought especially as Pertains to Religious Liberty" by Pr. David P. Ramirez (Presentation at the 2017 Association of Confessional Lutherans)   Books Mentioned:   Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide for Taking Dominion and Discipling Nations by Andrew Torba and Andrew Isker https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Nationalism-Biblical-Dominion-Discipling/dp/B0BCRZSHM3/ audio book: https://shop.dissenter.com/product/cnaudio   The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe https://www.amazon.com/Case-Christian-Nationalism-Stephen-Wolfe/dp/1957905336/   Host: Fr. Jason Braaten Regular Guest: Fr. David Ramirez ----more---- Become a Patron! You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/ You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/ You can support Gottesdienst here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/make-a-donation/ As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support. 

Philipp Melanchthon gilt neben Martin Luther als eine der wichtigsten Persönlichkeiten innerhalb der evangelischen Reformation. Entscheidend war hier auch die Begegnung mit Martin Luther. Aus der gemeinsamen Arbeit an der Universität Wittenberg war eine innige Freundschaft geworden.

Most of us who have heard of Melanchthon at all tend to think of him as Luther's shy, soft-spoken sidekick. This is somewhat true, but it's a mere fragment of the big picture. If Martin Luther was the beating heart of the Reformation, then Philipp Melanchthon was its brains. You won't want to miss this episode of Great in God's Sight as we explore the life and contributions of one of the Protestant Reformation's most intelligent, systematic thinkers.  Enjoy the amazing artwork that was custom-created for today's story on our website, thegreatpodcast.org!

Today on the Almanac, we tell the story of Luther's (sometimes) right-hand man: Philipp Melanchthon. #OTD #1517 #churchhistory — SHOW NOTES are available: https://www.1517.org/podcasts/the-christian-history-almanac GIVE BACK: Support the work of 1517 today CONTACT: CHA@1517.org SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts Spotify Stitcher Overcast Google Play FOLLOW US: Facebook Twitter Audio production by Christopher Gillespie (gillespie.media).

Wolfgang Klein widmet sich in diesem Lebenszeichen einem Zeitgenossen von Martin Luther, der zu Unrecht in dessen Schatten steht: Philipp Melanchthon.

Dr. Cameron A. MacKenzie, The Forest E. and Frances H. Ellis Professor of Historical Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, joins Andy and Sarah to talk about Philipp Melanchthon, including his upbringing and formation as a scholar, how he got involved with the Reformation, his relationship with Martin Luther and the other Reformers, and his legacy of work that we have today. Find the "Commonplaces: Loci Communes 1521" and Melanchthon's commentary on Romans mentioned in this episode at cph.org. Find your copy of the Book of Concord at cph.org or read online at bookofconcord.org.

Melanchthon war Luthers engster Vertrauter und sein Co-Autor bei unzähligen Grundsatz-Schriften. Luther war der Charismatiker der Reformation, Melanchthon verstand es, das unterschiedliche Denken vieler auf ein gemeinsames Fundament zu stellen.

Er war Luthers Freund, sein Außenminister, der gebildete Feingeist an seiner Seite, kurz: Das Hirn der Reformation. Philipp Melanchthon lebte in einer Krisenzeit - wie einige Menschen den Zustand der Welt auch heute wahrnehmen. Seine Antwort auf die unsicheren Zeiten damals: Bildung und das Wagnis, den eigenen Verstand zu benutzen.

Cuando leemos sobre la Reforma protestante, personajes como Martín Lutero (1483-1546), Juan Calvino (1509-1564), Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), Ulrico Zwinglio (1484-1531), Guillermo Farel (1489-1565), John Knox (1514-1572), entre otros, son considerados como los hombres de la Reforma. Sin embargo, ¿las mujeres también llegaron a participar en el movimiento de la Reforma Protestante? Si es así, ¿quiénes son las más célebres y de qué manera aportaron a este gran movimiento? SÍGUENOS Sitio web: http://biteproject.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/biteproject Podcast: https://anchor.fm/biteproject Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biteproject/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/biteproject/ CRÉDITOS Conductora: Pilar Prieto. Guión: Ximena Prado. Adaptación del guión: Álvaro Dávalos. Edición del audio: Alejandra Narváez. Música: Envato Elements.

Today James and Jesse continue Reformation Month with discussion about Philipp Melanchthon & Heinrich Bullinger: 2nd Generation Reformers who succeeded two very well known 1st Generation Reformers. James also talks about pumpkin spice and we announce the winners of the Coffee Mug giveaway and the Theologian Bookmark Set giveaway!

Philipp Melanchthon nació en Alemania en 1497, estudió en Heidelberg y Tubinga. El discurso que pronunció al acceder a Wittenberg atrajo notablemente la atención de Martín Lutero, que ejercería una profunda influencia en él. En 1518 obtuvo la cátedra de lengua griega en la Universidad de Wittenberg. Lutero introdujo a Melanchthon a la teología, y éste, en cambio, enseñó a Lutero griego. Melanchthon fue quien motivó a Lutero a traducir la Biblia a un alemán comprensible para todos. En 1521 reemplazó a Lutero como líder de la causa protestante en Wittenberg cuando su mentor fue confinado en el castillo de Wartburg. En 1526 participó, con otros 27 delegados, en la unificación de las constituciones de las iglesias reformadas de Alemania. Durante el primer gran conflicto entre Lutero y la iglesia de Roma, en 1519, Melanchthon estuvo presente. Durante esta disputa con Johannes Eck, un avezado teólogo católico, Melanchthon le pasaba a Lutero papelitos con citas bíblicas que refutan la supremacía del papa. Cuando el reformador no podía aparecer en persona, Melanchthon actuaba también como líder de los protestantes. En 1529 acompañó a Juan de Sajonia a la Dieta de Espira y fue uno de los firmantes de la Protesta de Espira. Como representante de la Reforma ante la Dieta de Augsburgo, en 1530, presentó las Confesiones de Augsburgo, 28 artículos de fe redactados en colaboración con Lutero. Después de la muerte de Martín Lutero, Melanchthon se convierte en el portavoz de la reforma. Se mantuvo hasta el fin de sus días como el exponente más sobresaliente de la reforma en Alemania. Falleció en Wittenberg, el 16 de abril de 1560. SÍGUENOS Sitio web: http://biteproject.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/biteproject Podcast: https://anchor.fm/biteproject Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biteproject/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/biteproject/ CRÉDITOS Conductor: Giovanny Gómez Pérez. Guión: Giovanny Gómez Pérez. Edición del audio: Alejandra Narváez.

Ob im Bibelkreis oder woanders in der Gemeinde: Manchmal treffen unterschiedliche theologische Überzeugungen aufeinander. Aber wie geht man damit um? Wo hat jemand einfach nur eine andere, vielleicht sogar bereichernde Perspektive und wo vertritt jemand Irrlehre, der man widersprechen muss? Dazu bekommen wir wichtige Impulse von Philipp Melanchthon und beenden damit auch unsere Reihe über […]

Ob im Bibelkreis oder woanders in der Gemeinde: Manchmal treffen unterschiedliche theologische Überzeugungen aufeinander. Aber wie geht man damit um? Wo hat jemand einfach nur eine andere, vielleicht sogar bereichernde Perspektive und wo vertritt jemand Irrlehre, der man widersprechen muss? Dazu bekommen wir wichtige Impulse von Philipp Melanchthon und beenden damit auch unsere Reihe über […]

Enter stage left a new character at the dawn of the Reformation: the new professor of Greek at the University in Wittenberg: Philipp Schwartzerdt aka Philipp Melanchthon.

Luther werde heute vor als Vorbild für Zivilcourage gesehen, so die Mainzer Kirchenhistorikerin Irene Dingel in SWR2. So werde heute auch der angebliche berühmte Ausspruch Luthers vor dem Wormser Reichstag vor genau 500 Jahren verstanden: „Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen“. Es sei heute ein berühmtes Diktum für Aufrichtigkeit und Mut, so Dingel: „Da steht jemand inmitten seiner Feinde, und er bleibt bei seiner Meinung.“ Das berühmte Zitat sei dabei erst nach dem Tod von Luther aufgekommen, nach 1546, so die Leiterin des Leibniz Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz. Es finde sich erst im zweiten Band der lateinischen Ausgabe von Luthers Werken, in einer vorgeschalteten Biographie von Philipp Melanchthon, und sei so auch weiterverbreitet worden, beispielsweise über den Straßburger Theologen Ludwig Rabus. Trotz solcher erst nachträglich kolportierten Aussprüche sei Luther aber keineswegs eine Projektionsfläche für beliebige Äußerungen. Nur weil der Wittenberger Mönch eine singuläre geschichtliche Figur gewesen, früh heroisiert worden und ungeheuer populär gewesen sei, versuche sich letztlich jedes Zeitalter auf neue Art in seiner Figur zu spiegeln. So sei das berühmte Wort vom Weltuntergang, der ihn nicht hindern werde, ein Apfelbäumchen zu pflanzen, vermutlich erst im 18. Jahrhundert, womöglich sogar erst während des Zweiten Weltkriegs, entstanden. Aber, so Irene Dingel: „Jemandem so etwas zuzuschreiben hat ja auch einen wahren Kern: Tatsächlich war Luther jemand, der eine große Stärke aus der Hoffnung auf die Zukunft selbst erfahren hat, der andererseits aber auch um die Ängste der Menschen wusste.“

Jemand anderem den Glauben abzusprechen, das kommt im Jahr 2021 gar nicht gut an. Philipp Melanchthon hatte vor 500 Jahren jedoch eine ziemlich klare Vorstellung davon, was einen echten Glauben ausmacht. Und was nicht. Was sich auf den ersten Blick herausfordernd anhört, ist jedoch befreiend. In der heutigen Folge reden wir darüber. Dabei kommt Knut […]

Jemand anderem den Glauben abzusprechen, das kommt im Jahr 2021 gar nicht gut an. Philipp Melanchthon hatte vor 500 Jahren jedoch eine ziemlich klare Vorstellung davon, was einen echten Glauben ausmacht. Und was nicht. Was sich auf den ersten Blick herausfordernd anhört, ist jedoch befreiend. In der heutigen Folge reden wir darüber. Dabei kommt Knut […]

Vielleicht kann man den Unterschied an katholischer und evangelische Theologie an diesem einen Wort am besten erklären: Gnade. Was meint dieses große Wort eigentlich? Wir begleiten Philipp Melanchthon dabei, wie er hier die befreiende Botschaft entdeckt. Dabei erzählt Knut von Wespen, die sich in seinem Bierglas tummeln. Aber hört am besten selbst. Hier geht es […]

Vielleicht kann man den Unterschied an katholischer und evangelische Theologie an diesem einen Wort am besten erklären: Gnade. Was meint dieses große Wort eigentlich? Wir begleiten Philipp Melanchthon dabei, wie er hier die befreiende Botschaft entdeckt. Dabei erzählt Knut von Wespen, die sich in seinem Bierglas tummeln. Aber hört am besten selbst. Hier geht es […]

VOM SCHATTEN ZUM LICHT mit Pastor Mag. Kurt Piesslinger 2.Serie - DIE REFORMATION VERÄNDERT DIE WELT Der einst römisch-katholische Mönch Martin Luther fügt dem Papsttum den schwersten Schlag aller Zeiten zu. Luthers eifriges Bibelstudium erleuchtet den Pfad seines evangelischen Werdeganges. Obwohl er mit dem Tode bedroht wird, verteidigt Luther furchtlos die neue Erkenntnis. Die Reformation ist nicht mehr zu stoppen. Wie Luther in Deutschland so wirken Ulrich Zwingli und Johannes Calvin in der Schweiz und tragen das Evangelium in die Welt hinaus. 2.4 Fortschritt der Reformation in Deutschland Luthers Verschwinden nach dem Reichstag zu Worms führt zum vermehrten Lesen seiner Schriften. Luther schreibt eine Fülle von Abhandlungen, die das Papsttum rügen. Unaufhaltsam verbreitet sich der Geist der Reformation in Deutschland und darüber hinaus. Wittenberg wird zum geistigen Zentrum der Reformation. Unter Martin Luther und Philipp Melanchthon und einem ausgezeichneten Mitarbeiterstab werden Tausende von Studenten ausgebildet, die als Pfarrer und Lehrer Deutschlands Gefilde umkrempeln. Gottes Segen!

Readings* Psalm 91* Psalm 119:1–8* Job 12:1–25* John 5:30–47* Smalcald Articles, Part III ¶¶ Art. VIIICommemorationToday we commemorate the Birth of Philipp Melanchthon, Confessor. Philipp Melanchthon, an academic by nature, became one of the leading proponents of Lutheranism when he took up the task of drafting the Augsburg Confession that was presented to the Emperor on 25 June 1530. Earlier, Melanchthon had been encouraged by Martin Luther (who was under papal excommunication and an imperial ban, and so could not attend Augsburg) to take up teaching theology and Scripture. A fellow professor at Wittenberg, Melanchthon’s writings and reforms would have far-reaching and long-lasting impact.ReaderCorey J. MahlerCopyright NoticesUnless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from the Lutheran Confessions are from Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, copyright © 2005, 2006 by Concordia Publishing House. Used by permission. All rights reserved. To purchase a copy of Concordia, call 800-325-3040.Support the show (https://confident.faith/donate/)

500 Jahre ist es nun her. Ein Jubiläum. Der Reformator Philipp Melanchthon schreibt als erster Evangelischer ein kleines Büchlein, in dem er die wichtigsten Punkte des Glaubens zusammenfasst. Wer war dieser Mann? Und was können wir für unseren Glauben von diesem Büchlein lernen? Darüber reden wir. Die Folge ist der Auftakt einer ganzen Serie, in […]

500 Jahre ist es nun her. Ein Jubiläum. Der Reformator Philipp Melanchthon schreibt als erster Evangelischer ein kleines Büchlein, in dem er die wichtigsten Punkte des Glaubens zusammenfasst. Wer war dieser Mann? Und was können wir für unseren Glauben von diesem Büchlein lernen? Darüber reden wir. Die Folge ist der Auftakt einer ganzen Serie, in […]

As we sit in the Confessional Corner this month, we begin our look at the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. This month we look at Philipp Melanchthon's greeting to you, the reader, as well as the first article where the Roman theologians admit that we have the same understanding of the Trinity.

Reformator yang tenang, yg mampu menguasai diri dengan baik, dan tahu peran terbaik yg harus diambilnnya

Melanchthon deutsch: https://www.eva-leipzig.de/product_info.php?info=p2985_Melanchthon-deutsch-nbsp-I.html Falls ihr Anregungen und Themenvorschläge habt kommentiert gerne die Folge oder schreibt uns auf Instagram oder per Mail. studentenfutter.ccf@gmail.com https://www.instagram.com/studentenfutter.ccf/ Studentenfutter ist der Podcast der Calvary Chapel Freiburg.

Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Jean Calvin, Matija Vlačić Ilirik, Primož Trubar, Janez Ludvik Schönleben, Nicollo Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, Hugo Grotius, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paracelsus, Nikolaj Kopernik, Erazem Rotterdamski ... To so le nekateri izmed avtorjev prepovedanih del, ki jih hrani zbirka Narodne in univerzitetne knjižnice. Vsebinski in žanrski razpon teh dragocenih starih tiskov je širok: od protestantskih del do renesančne politične filozofije, od znanstvenih in psevdoznanstvenih del do leposlovja. O značilnostih knjižne cenzure v zgodnjem novem veku ter avtorjih in bralcih prepovedanih knjig na Slovenskem se bomo pogovarjali z raziskovalcem na Inštitutu za slovensko literaturo in literarne vede ZRC SAZU dr. Luko Vidmarjem ter dr. Sonjo Svoljšak iz Narodne in univerzitetne knjižnice, Zbirka rokopisov, redkih in starih tiskov. Oddajo bomo prepletli z odlomki iz strokovne publikacije In vendar so jih brali. Prepovedane knjige na Slovenskem v zgodnjem novem veku iz zbirke Narodne in univerzitetne knjižnice.

Ein Besuch auf dem Wochenmarkt, die Geschichte von Noah und der Arche und dazu noch ein Stück aus einer Predigt von Professor em. Christian Grethlein, einem der renommiertesten Praktischen Theologen im deutschsprachigen Raum und Gemeindemitglied bei uns, über die Handicaps von Philipp Melanchthon. Diese Folge erzählt warum der Regenbogen ein Zeichen der Zuversicht ist (1. Mose 9,8-13), Gott besonders den „müden und matten“ Kraft gibt und dass es schon viele vor uns geschafft haben, sich auf eine neue Normalität einzulassen.

Los primeros protestantes no se asignaron a sí mismos los diferentes nombres con los que los conocemos hoy en día, la mayoría de ellos prefirieron que se les llamara "evangélicos". Lutero por ejemplo, decía simplemente que sus seguidores pertenecían a la Iglesia. En sus cartas y documentos, los primeros reformadores usaron simplemente la frase "nuestras iglesias". Los nombres con los que los conocemos hoy, fueron designados principalmente por sus oponentes, o también por las escuelas doctrinales a las que se afiliaron. Así por ejemplo, los luteranos eran seguidores de la doctrina de Lutero, los calvinistas de los postulados teológicos de Calvino, etc. A los Anabaptistas se les asignó este nombre porque "re-bautizaban" a sus miembros. A los protestantes en Francia se les llamó "hugonotes" al parecer porque se veían obligados a reunirse por la noche, y se corrió el rumor de que se reunían en honor de un fantasma llamado "le roi Huguet". Pero el nombre "protestante" excede todos los apelativos anteriores, y contrario a lo que se podría pensar, se refiere más a un término político que a un nombre religioso. De hecho, el origen de este nombre puede carecer de profundidad y ser relativamente irrelevante, a pesar de su importancia. El 31 de octubre de 1517 Martín Lutero publicó las 95 tesis en la puerta de la catedral de la ciudad alemana de Wittenberg. Este hecho originó una serie de confrontaciones religiosas en las que se vieron involucrados varios principados y nobles alemanes, así como una gran cantidad de sectores populares. En 1521 el Papa León X excomulgó a Lutero y pocos meses después el emperador Carlos V sancionó el Edicto de Worms, declarando a Lutero prófugo y hereje y prohibiendo sus obras. Pero, pese a la orden imperial la reforma se siguió extendiendo. En 1524 los territorios de Carlos V se vieron amenazados por el Imperio Otomano. Lo que llevó al emperador a convocar una reunión en la ciudad de Espira en 1526 que resolvió dar cierta libertad de culto a los seguidores de Lutero a través de una suspensión del Edicto de Worms. La decisión fue utilizada por los príncipes alemanes seguidores de la Reforma para expandir aún más el nuevo movimiento y establecer la Iglesia luterana. En 1529 Carlos V volvió a convocar a la Dieta Imperial en Espira, esta vez con la intención de dejar sin efecto la tregua de 1526 y restablecer el Edicto de Worms para acabar con el luteranismo e imponer de nuevo el catolicismo en el Imperio. A la Dieta asistieron representantes luteranos y católicos. Pero la reunión finalizó sin ningún avance. Durante ese mismo año,  varios príncipes firmaron y enviaron una carta en forma de protesta en contra de la intención de Carlos V. Por este documento, llamado "la protesta de Espira", los partidarios de la Reforma reciben el apelativo de “protestantes”. A pesar de las diferencias en su teología, las ciudades del sur de Alemania alineadas con el reformador suizo Ulrico Zuinglio se unieron a los demás territorios alemanes seguidores de Lutero, y firmaron con ellos la "protesta". Luego de la Protesta de Espira, Lutero y Zuinglio se encontraron en Marburgo en 1529, donde discutieron sobre sus coincidencias y diferencias, con la esperanza de unificar los dos movimientos. Casi simultáneamente, el emperador Carlos V convocó a una nueva Dieta en Augsburgo donde los luteranos presentaron las Confesiones de Augsburgo, considerado como uno de los textos básicos del protestantismo y redactadas por Philipp Melanchthon, discípulo de Lutero. En 1531 los Estados luteranos formaron la Liga de Esmalcalda, que se enfrentaría en dos guerras contra el emperador Carlos V que finalizarían con la Paz de Augsburgo, que dividió el Imperio alemán en dos confesiones cristianas, luterana y católica, y que otorgó a los príncipes alemanes la capacidad de elegir la confesión a practicar en sus estados. Mientras tanto, en 1529 había comenzado la separación política de la Iglesia de Inglaterra bajo el reinado de Enrique VIII, separación que se completaría en 1536 y que se incorporaría al movimiento protestante. En la misma década, el francés Juan Calvino se instaló en Ginebra y desde allí las ideas protestantes se difundieron por Escocia, Hungría y Alemania. A pesar de las variaciones de pensamiento dentro de los seguidores de la reforma, el término "protestante" se adhirió al grupo en general de manera progresiva. CIBERGRAFÍA Origin of the Word 'Protestant': http://bit.ly/2LTFNbn (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F2LTFNbn&redir_token=UJ7AWA_iYvRp-cdj9IKfYp_96ml8MTU4NjU0NzI3MEAxNTg2NDYwODcw&event=video_description&v=9HxwsmVRDRY) Protestantismo: http://bit.ly/2LX8ogj (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F2LX8ogj&redir_token=UJ7AWA_iYvRp-cdj9IKfYp_96ml8MTU4NjU0NzI3MEAxNTg2NDYwODcw&event=video_description&v=9HxwsmVRDRY) _________ Puedes seguirnos en nuestras redes sociales: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biteproject/ (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fbiteproject%2F&redir_token=UJ7AWA_iYvRp-cdj9IKfYp_96ml8MTU4NjU0NzI3MEAxNTg2NDYwODcw&event=video_description&v=9HxwsmVRDRY) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/biteproject/ (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fbiteproject%2F&redir_token=UJ7AWA_iYvRp-cdj9IKfYp_96ml8MTU4NjU0NzI3MEAxNTg2NDYwODcw&event=video_description&v=9HxwsmVRDRY) Inscríbete a nuestro newsletter: http://biteproject.com (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Fbiteproject.com&redir_token=UJ7AWA_iYvRp-cdj9IKfYp_96ml8MTU4NjU0NzI3MEAxNTg2NDYwODcw&event=video_description&v=9HxwsmVRDRY) Voz en off: Josué Castellón (https://twitter.com/josuekstellon (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fjosuekstellon&redir_token=UJ7AWA_iYvRp-cdj9IKfYp_96ml8MTU4NjU0NzI3MEAxNTg2NDYwODcw&event=video_description&v=9HxwsmVRDRY) )

Readings* Psalm 91* Psalm 119:1–8* Job 12:1–25* John 5:30–47* Smalcald Articles, Part III, Art. VIIICommemorationToday we commemorate the Birth of Philipp Melanchthon, Confessor. Philipp Melanchthon, an academic by nature, became one of the leading proponents of Lutheranism when he took up the task of drafting the Augsburg Confession that was presented to the Emperor on 25 June 1530. Earlier, Melanchthon had been encouraged by Martin Luther (who was under papal excommunication and an imperial ban, and so could not attend Augsburg) to take up teaching theology and Scripture. A fellow professor at Wittenberg, Melanchthon’s writings and reforms would have far-reaching and long-lasting impact.ReaderCorey J. MahlerCopyright NoticesUnless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from the Lutheran Confessions are from Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, copyright © 2005, 2006 by Concordia Publishing House. Used by permission. All rights reserved. To purchase a copy of Concordia, call 800-325-3040.Support the show (https://confident.faith/donate/)

Philipp Melanchthon was more mild tempered than Luther. Even still, his intellect and leadership skills left him with a reputation as one of the most articulate spokesmen of the Protestant Reformation.

In the EIGHTEENTH in our Wingin' It series on the life of Martin Luther, Wade and Mike sit down to discuss the path to the Leipzig debate. (Well, actually they sat down to discuss the Leipzig debate, but if you've been listening to this series, you already knew that was at least one episode away.) Before the Leipzig debate, however, they need to discuss Philipp Melanchthon's arrival in Wittenberg. The importance of Melanchthon to Luther and the Reformation would be difficult to overstate. We hope you enjoy; and if you're just finding this series on the Life of Luther, you can find the whole series right here. Let the Bird Fly! is supported by the 1517 Podcast Network, which is part of 1517.org. If you haven't done so yet, stop over there and check out the other great podcasts in the network, as well as all of the other excellent content they offer. If you'd like more information on the Apologetics course Mike will be offering with Dr. Kerry Kuehn in the Summer of 2019, you can find all that information right here. And if you know someone who might be interested, make sure to share! And as always, if you are enjoying the show, please subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or TuneIn Radio. You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. You can also follow our Telegram Channel, where we post our new episodes as well as other content that we think you might enjoy. And, of course, share us with a friend or two! If you’d like to contact us we can be reached at podcast@LetTheBirdFly.com, or visit our website at www.LetTheBirdFly.com. Thanks for listening! Attributions for Music and Image used in this Episode: "Slow Burn" by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. “Not Drunk” by The Joy Drops is licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International License. Image: "Portrait of Luther" by Lucas Cranach the Elder is in the Public Domain.

25.8.1518: Philipp Melanchthon kommt an die Universität Wittenberg

An der Seite Martin Luthers verhilft Melanchthon der Reformation zum Durchbruch. Evangelische Theologen vermuten, dass die Reformation ohne ihn womöglich steckengeblieben wäre.

"Sei ein Sünder und sündige kräftig, aber glaube noch stärker und freue dich in Christus, welcher der Sieger ist über die Sünde, den Tod und die Welt!" [Martin Luther in einem Brief an Philipp Melanchthon vom August 1521]

Vi snakker med Ragnar Andersen om Philipp Melanchthon og hans innflytelse under reformasjonen

Philipp Melanchthon steht bis heute im Schatten Martin Luthers. Zu Unrecht - denn ohne ihn wäre der evangelische Glaube nicht das geworden, was er heute ist. Schließlich verfasste Melanchthon 1530 das berühmte "Augsburgische Bekenntnis". Autorin: Elke Endraß

Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon are the odd couple of the Reformation, inseparable in the religious revolution they inaugurated, and yet in personality chalk and cheese - and there's no doubt that it's Luther who is the cheese: volatile, colourful, impassioned; ripening majestically but also suddenly going off, like one of those goats' cheeses in the middle of France that could easily double up as an explosive device. Luther has priority in terms of being older, and by force of personality. Melanchthon seems monochrome by comparison. It has been easy for history, outside of specialists, to forget him. But if Margaret Thatcher once said of her right-hand man William Whitelaw that "every Prime Minister needs a Willie", this is all the more the case with true revolutionaries. Revolutions seem to need an odd couple: Robespierre and Danton, or Marx and Engels. Melanchthon is hardly a household name these days but he is (if you like) a revolutionary's revolutionary. Intellectual, serious, endlessly patient, he kept clearing up the mess that Luther left around him. Professor Brian Cummings, from the University of York, tells his story.Producer: Rosie Dawson Part of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution.

John Calvin stated that Romans was “an open door – a wide open gateway into all of theology.” Philipp Melanchthon confessed that Romans “is a compendium of all Christian doctrine.” Paul wanted to go to Spain. He planned to go to Jerusalem first and drop off the collection. In Romans 1: 1-15 we have the Introduction. In Romans 1:16-17, the theme of Romans is announced that the righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel for salvation to all who believe. The problem is stated in Romans 1: 18 - 3:20 that all have sinned and are under the judgment of God. In Romans 3:21 – 4:25, the announcement is made that God has justified sinners through Jesus Christ. In Romans 5:1 - 8:39, the Gospel is considered more deeply. Trusting God is the theme of Romans 9-11. The implications and life of believers is shown in Romans 12 - 15:21. The Letter concludes in Romans 15:22 – 16:24. The Doxology is found in Romans 16:25-27.

John Calvin stated that Romans was “an open door – a wide open gateway into all of theology.” Philipp Melanchthon confessed that Romans “is a compendium of all Christian doctrine.” Paul wanted to go to Spain. He planned to go to Jerusalem first and drop off the collection. In Romans 1: 1-15 we have the Introduction. In Romans 1:16-17, the theme of Romans is announced that the righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel for salvation to all who believe. The problem is stated in Romans 1: 18 - 3:20 that all have sinned and are under the judgment of God. In Romans 3:21 – 4:25, the announcement is made that God has justified sinners through Jesus Christ. In Romans 5:1 - 8:39, the Gospel is considered more deeply. Trusting God is the theme of Romans 9-11. The implications and life of believers is shown in Romans 12 - 15:21. The Letter concludes in Romans 15:22 – 16:24. The Doxology is found in Romans 16:25-27.

The Lutheran Inquisitor - #61

The Lutheran Inquisitor - #60

The Lutheran Inquisitor - #59

Introduction Apostle John was exiled to the island of Patmos, and he had a vision of a door standing open in heaven. And the voice of Christ beckoned him to come up. "Come up here," it said. And at once he was in the spirit, and a good thing too, because you can't make that journey without some divine help through the Holy Spirit, and he went through the doorway and there in heaven, he saw a throne and someone seated on it. Dear friends, that heavenly throne is the central reality of the universe. It's the central reality of your life, it's the central reality of this church, the central reality of every nation on earth, whether they acknowledge him or not, that throne is the throne of God, and the God who sits on that throne is absolutely sovereign, rules over everything all the time. And we need to know that because we live in uncertain times now, we're going through various trials and difficulties and people may wonder, "Is human history spiraling out of control? Are we facing trials that we cannot overcome? Is history unfolding according to plan? What is going on?" So at the big scale level, there's economic uncertainty, people look at what's happened over the last year and a half with the New York Stock Exchange and with the gold and silver prices going up, and with all kinds of things, and they look at that and they say, "What's going to happen to the American economy over the next 30 years? Will the stock exchange experience another crash? What will happen in the future? What will happen to Social Security? Will it still be around when we reach retirement age?" So there's economic uncertainty. What about political uncertainty? Who's gonna control the future of our country? What direction are we going? Are we going to a bigger and bigger federal government? Are we going to lose freedoms that we've cherished as American citizens? Will those with an unbiblical agenda push through wicked laws that force us in painful directions? What's gonna happen with that? How will this nation address massive issues like care and concern for the poor and needy or healthcare or other things? Political uncertainty. How about international uncertainty? What will become of radical Islam? We know that there are cells, terrorist cells around the world that are plotting the demise of the West, will they succeed? Will the terrorists be able to obtain or threaten to use a thermonuclear device? What will happen if communist China becomes the most powerful nation on earth, militarily and economically in the 21st century? What will that be like for us as Americans in the West? So those are the big questions people wanna know about that. More personally and individually people ask questions as well. If you're in college, you may be wondering if you're gonna be able to get a job in your field or a job at all. Maybe your time of graduation is nearing and you're thinking about that. If you're single, in your 20s, wondering if God will provide a spouse for you, wondering who he or she will be and how the circumstances could even work, is there someone out there for you? If you're elderly, you may wonder about your health, or your relationship with your grown kids or your grandkids. All of these things, these pondering and things like they go through your mind, don't they? And all of them have the temptation toward anxiety, that you can start to be afraid of the future, be anxious about it, and that is precisely where the doctrine, a firm grasp on the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God is so vital for us. There are two great displays of God's sovereignty in the Bible, doctrinally. That doctrine of predestination by which God displays his absolute sovereignty over human salvation, and then there's the doctrine of providence, by which God displays His absolute sovereignty over daily life events in the ebbs and flows of history here on earth. Predestination and providence, these are two great doctrines, two great mysteries, two great displays of that throne of God that I began this sermon with in Revelation 4. Now, the book of Proverbs, I believe, has some of the most memorable verses in the whole Bible on one of those two, and that's the doctrine of providence, how God rules over everyday life absolutely for His own glory, and you know that really makes perfect sense as we've learned studying the book of Proverbs, it's a nitty-gritty, rubber meets the road kind of book that looks at practical everyday life and describes those kinds of issues. And so we're gonna look this morning at the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God over daily life as seen in the book of Proverbs. Now, this was gonna be one sermon, it cannot be. It's a mathematical impossibility. And as I looked at it, I was like, "Alright, we've got to go two weeks on this just because the verses are outstanding and what's the rush anyway." And you guys don't wanna be here till quarter to one now do you? Come on, be honest. So given where we're at as sermon listeners right now in America, maybe in the future, it'll be different, but right now we can handle only so much, so I'm thinking, we'll do this in two weeks, okay? Is that good with you? 'Cause it's what's gonna happen. So at any rate, we'll do that. So we'll just continue. But I want to look at just how sovereign God is over everyday life, and I was talking to... Actually talking to Herbert, right before he came up, I said to Herbert, I said, "How sovereign is God?" He said, "Absolutely sovereign." And God is... And I said, "Do you think he's more sovereign than we think?" He said, "Absolutely, he is more severe than we think." So my desire is to use this sermon and the next time I preach on this to ratchet up your sense of just how active God is in everyday life, so that you will lose your fear, that you will not be anxious, you'll be put on display by God, you'll go through trials and you'll go through it with absolute certainty that God is in it and his purposes are good, and people will be led to ask you, "What is the nature of this hope that you have?" Jesus taught this absolute sovereignty very, very plainly in many places, perhaps the most memorably in Matthew 10:29-30, he said, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny and yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered." Absolute sovereignty over the death of a sparrow, fluttering to the ground. The apostle Paul taught the same thing, Romans 8:28, a very familiar verse. “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” Or again, in Ephesians 1:11, he speaks of “the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” Not some things, everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. And so King Solomon gives us some of the most memorable statements in the Bible in this great doctrine of providence and how God actively rules over seemingly tiny events or even over great ones to achieve his eternal mysterious purposes. So we're gonna see the sovereignty of God pertaining to a variety of things. First in how God chooses to retain some secrets to himself and reveal some other things. How God has sovereignty over human actions, like the words of our mouths and the paths of our feet, how we may make many plans, but it's God's purpose that overrules all of that, and that's going to free us up I hope from that man-centered view of the universe that makes human free will and human decisions the hub of every wheel, and everything's revolving around our choices, which is just not biblical, and it's not helpful. We're gonna also see God's sovereignty over the decision of kings, how God rules over the decisions of kings, an incredibly comforting and incredibly challenging and deep doctrine. The next time I think we're gonna talk about God's sovereignty over seemingly random events like the roll of a dice. We're gonna talk about God's sovereignty over the outcome of major events in history, like the outcome of a battle, and God's sovereignty even over his enemies, no matter how powerful they may seem, so that's for next time. Taken together, these six categories give us just a sampling of God's providential control over human history. My desire is to strengthen you, to give you a sense of confidence as you face everyday life based on these verses. God’s Sovereignty over His Mysteries Let's start with this first one. And that is God's sovereignty over his mysteries. I want you to go over to Proverbs 25:2, I'll start there. And in this doctrine, I have in mind the fact that God decides what he's gonna tell us and holds back from us what he won't tell us. He reveals some things and he conceals other things, and it's to His glory to do so. And those things that are revealed, we should study and search out, and those things that he has concealed, we may not know no matter how much we study. And so Proverbs 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter. To search out a matter is the glory of kings." So this is a good place to start. God's sovereignty over earthly life is both a comforting and a distressing or disturbing doctrine to most of us, it's comforting because it means that we can look forward to the future with confidence. As someone once said, "I don't know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future." You've heard that kind of thing. What does it mean that he holds the future though? It certainly means more than he just knows the future. I think it means that he actually decrees and controls what that future will be, and that it's going to be a good future for you in Christ. That's very confidence-producing. It gives us strength. God has ordained it and he is sovereignly working it out. But the flip side is the doctrine is distressing to many. It brings up distressing questions that we have a hard time working through. If God is sovereign over all things, then why does such evil happen in the world? That's one question that comes up. Is God sovereignly responsible for a drive-by shooting of an innocent little girl who just happened to get caught in the crossfire? Is he sovereign over that? Could God have prevented that? I was watching a movie about a wonderful African-American neurosurgeon named Dr. Ben Carson and his story is really very inspirational about how he came up from poverty and from very challenging circumstances to become a neurosurgeon. Amazing man. But at a key juncture in his life when he was a young teenager, he had a very bad temper and he pulled out, just in a moment, a flash of rage, pulled out a Swiss army knife and stabbed his friend in the stomach with it, just thrust it right into the man's... In the young man's stomach. And the man bent over, the young man bent over, and there were multiple people standing around watching, "What did you do?" But then this young man stood up unharmed and there at their feet was the knife blade broken in half, it had hit the man's belt buckle. God had decreed other things than prison for Ben Carson. And he intervened there, though he clearly intended murder at that moment, he intervened and saved both that man's life, the young man's life, and Dr. Carson's life from going to prison. Now, okay, that's wonderful. In that case, what about when the knife blade doesn't break? What about when the bullet goes ahead and kills the little girl, what then? What do we say? It's troubling to some people, and they struggle with it. Some people go so far as to say God has nothing to do with those kinds of things. He either can't or won't intervene and just lets it happen. And so what really matters is the human choice in the matter, and that was just a lucky break for Dr. Carson. But that's not biblical, that's not what the Bible teaches. The Shack takes that approach, okay? God didn't do that, when your young daughter was abducted by that pervert and tortured and killed, God didn't do that, and frankly couldn't really have intervened, it's not his way to intervene, etcetera, well, look, that may be quickly kind of, in a superficial way, comforting, but in the end, it's poison, dear friends, it's poison because then there's this random thing in the universe and even God can't do anything about it or won't do anything about it, and he just tries to pick up the pieces. That's not the God that I know in the Bible. So it is a distressing doctrine to many. Other questions people ask, "If God's sovereign over all human decisions, then how does he hold sinners accountable for what they decide?" If they have no choice in the matter, if we're just robots, which the Bible doesn't teach at all, that kind of thing, I would have to say though I don't understand the statement, how you can reconcile that not only is God far more sovereign than we can possibly imagine, we are far more accountable than we can possibly imagine too. And in some sense, some mysterious ways, far freer than we can... We have the total freedom at any moment to act according to our heart nature, that shouldn't be comforting to you if you know anything about your heart, but we have the freedom to do what our heart dictates. We do have that freedom. So why doesn't God intervene? He does intervene, all of us willing to go to hell, not directly, but indirectly, and God intervenes. Why doesn't he do that with everybody? Why doesn't he save everyone? If he can do this with anyone, why doesn't he save everyone? These are questions that come up in people's minds. Alright, what does the proverb mean, Proverb 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter. To search out a matter is the glory of kings." God retains to himself many significant secrets. For example, we talked about predestination a moment ago, he retains to himself who is predestined and who isn't. We don't know who they are, we have no idea. His sovereign plan for human beings, predestination and reprobation, applied to this or that person, we cannot know. We also cannot know exactly how God uses human wickedness and sin for His own purposes, how he crafts that together for his own good, we don't know. We don't know how God can hold Judas accountable for the very thing that it was decreed he should do, even down to the 30 pieces of silver. We don't know how God can hold that. God alone knows and can explain that. We also don't know the question we wanna ask more than any other question. When we think about Job, Job went through terrible suffering, lost all of his children in one instant, lost all of his possessions, lost pretty much all of his health, terrible wave upon wave of trial. And if there's just one thing that Job wanted to know, it was why. Why? Why did this happen to me? It's the one thing God does not tell him. At the end of the book, he just gives him himself in all of his greatness and His power and His glory and His Majesty as a powerful creator, and he doesn't answer why. And isn't it amazing that Job doesn't seem to need to know why at the end, he doesn't need an explanation, certainly doesn't feel that God owes him an explanation. So God holds these things to himself, he doesn't tell us why. He doesn't need to tell us why. He never will tell us why. I think we'll just have God and we'll know that God's wisdom ordains certain things. Also we don't know the exact timetable, and many of the circumstances of Christ's return, the glory of God conceal that. Acts 1, Jesus in his resurrection body, instructing his apostles, getting them ready for a world-changing mission. And they say, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" And Jesus said, "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." So this is not for you, this is for you, that's what he says. He has the right to do that. Deuteronomy 29:29 says it best, I think. “The secret things belong to the Lord, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.” So we have these two categories: The things concealed, the things revealed to the glory of God. Now, in the proverb, it's to the glory of God to conceal the matter, but the second half it's the glory of kings to search it out. So we can play to some degree the role of kings and queens, we can search out what God has revealed. Let's search it out. Let's try to find out. We must seek to go, dear friends, as far as God has revealed and not farther. I fear that many Christians in this area of predestination and providence fall far short of what God has said about himself, they fear controversy, they fear that they're gonna get in a fight, probably even more, they fear that they will lose the fight, so they don't wanna get involved. And so they stay away from it. It's controversial. We don't wanna talk about it. Well, look, who made it controversial, God didn't, it was Satan that made it controversial and divisive and all that, these things are... This is our treasure, this is our inheritance. We get it all, all 66 books, all of it, and we get to treasure it, and we should search out what God has revealed, but not go beyond it. Philipp Melanchthon, who was a good friend of John Calvin's, he was Martin Luther's right-hand man and a successor in the German Reformation, as far as we know, believed everything Calvin did about predestination, but Philipp Melanchthon said, wrote in a letter to Calvin saying it's best never to mention it or talk about it. It just causes division. Calvin disagreed. Now, Calvin, if you know anything about him, absolutely hated any kind of theological speculation, but he wanted to go as far as God had in fact revealed. And I think we ought to do the same. We ought to study ourselves, study scripture, we ought to study what God has revealed and go as far as he has ordained. Secondly, let's look at God's sovereignty over human wills and actions. Look at 16:1, go back to Proverbs 16:1. You heard Herbert read it for us in two languages. So you get it twice. Now, you get it a third time. God’s Sovereignty over Human Wills and Actions Proverb 16:1 says, "To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue." So what does this proverb actually say? Well, it's talking about the capability that human beings have to make plans. We make many plans. This is, I think of the essence of our status as created in the image of God. We have the ability to plan ahead. A plan is an intended course of action, you peer ahead into the future anticipates what's coming, and you make... Take certain steps, set certain precautions or whatever, it's a plan. And frankly, planning ahead is a good thing in the book of Proverbs; it's something we ought to do. Proverbs 22:3 says, "A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it." The ultimate example of that, dear friends, has to do with the Gospel itself. If you're a Christian, you saw danger coming and you took refuge in Christ, amen? You saw it coming, you saw judgment day coming, you knew you weren't ready, you knew that you were a sinner and you could not face such a holy judge, and so you fled to Christ, in Jesus' blood shed on the cross as your refuge, and it is a sure and certain refuge. Maybe you have never done that, maybe you're here today and you have never fled to Christ, you've never come to Him for forgiveness, I'm telling you, danger is coming, I'm urging you to flee the wrath to come, and you ought to plan ahead 'cause it's coming. And the best plan of all is flee to Jesus, run to Jesus. Let Jesus save you. Call on the name of the Lord and you will be saved. So I'm just saying, "Look, planning ahead is a good thing. However, all of our plans are subject to the final review of the sovereign king of the universe, and he'll decide yes or no." That's all. You can go ahead and make your plans. You ought to, but he gets to decide finally, what will happen. It even comes down to your words, you plan a response and you end up saying this, many of the plans are of a man's heart, but the reply actually comes from the Lord. Wow, this actually goes beyond what Psalm 139:4 teaches, that says, "Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord." Well, that's just the omniscience of God, his fore-knowledge, God knows what you're gonna say before you say it. This says God actually ordains in some mysterious way what you're gonna say. From the Lord is the reply of the tongue. You may plan to say this or that to a person, but the words you actually end up saying have been ordained by God, that's what the proverb is teaching. There are supporting proverbs like Proverbs 16:9, just look a few verses down, 16:9. "In his heart, a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." Same kind of teaching, you make your plan, but the steps, the walking in the way represents all of life in the book of Proverbs. The way you live, your steps, and so you may make a plan, but God decides how you actually end up living. Look ahead to Proverbs 19:21, this kind of sums this whole thing up. Proverbs 19:21 says, "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails." We may make many plans large and small to orchestrate the events and paths of our lives, but God decides in the end what's going to happen. It's true of major life plans, when I plan to go to college, plan to get married, plan to have children, plan to have a certain career, plan to visit certain countries, plan to go on mission trips, plan to retire at the age of 55, you can make those plans, but all of those plans are subject to the overriding, overruling sovereign power of God, it's true on a daily level as well. Daily life plans, you may plan to go to Walmart and buy a new set of towels for the guest bathroom, and actually sometimes it even happens that way. Has that ever happened to you? You actually planned and it actually worked out that way. But so many times it doesn't. I may plan to go to The Streets at Southpoint to meet a friend for lunch. It may happen, it may not. I may plan to get to church early, have been doing that, planning for weeks, still waiting for that to happen, okay? That's a hard one. Doesn't seem to be the Lord's will for us to get here early. We'll talk about that another time, it's all very mysterious. But all of those plans are subject to the overriding will of God. I think James really sums up our disposition, our proper attitude in all of this, James 4:13-16. “Now listen, you who say today or tomorrow, I'll go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."” So first, you won't even be alive tomorrow if God doesn't will it. So when you wake up and it's another day, thank him for life, he gave it to you. But go beyond it. If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. Make your plans and say, "Lord, is it your will? Is this your will?" I will rest in this and you seek and you go and you live, alright? But it's ultimately up to God what you do. Okay? God’s Sovereignty over the Hearts of Kings Thirdly, we see God's sovereignty over the hearts of kings. Look over at Proverbs 21:1, "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases." Now, what does this mean? Well, this is just the last proverb or doctrine applied to kings and rulers, that's all, the same thing, only it's applied, very helpful, I think, and significantly to the hearts of rulers. Now, the image here is of an irrigation system, let's say coming from the Nile river with channels like troughs of water and sluice gates that control the flow of it. That's the image I get, at least. The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord like a watercourse, he directs it whichever way he pleases. So God Is like the gatekeeper and pulls up gates, puts other gates down, it's the best way that I can harmonize God's sovereignty over wicked things that he doesn't, in some way, decree to happen verbally. Like God gives us 10 commandments and then things happen contrary to his commands, how does that all work? Wicked things. How does God overrule that? I think what it is, is that the heart of the king is to do evil, he just wants to do evil, God lifts up sluice gates to have a certain specific kind of evil flow down that accomplishes his purpose. That's the best I could come up with. But the evil is the king's and he's responsible for it, God just controls the direction of it. Very difficult to understand that, but God is able to shape the thought patterns of the king. He's able to put thoughts in the heart and the mind of the king so that he behaves a certain way. Now, this is displayed all over the place in biblical history. Think about the time when David was fleeing for his life from his son, Absalom. Absalom had come to usurp the throne, to take the throne from David, David is running for his life, Absalom is succeeding in that revolt, he has taken over Jerusalem, David is running. And all it would take is just a sharp blow on David, and he'll fall over like a rotten fence post. It's very fragile, David's throne, at that point. Now, at that time, the shrewdest counselor in Israel was a man named Ahithophel. It says in 2 Samuel 16:23, "Now in those days, the advice Ahithophel gave was like that of one who inquires of God. And that was how both David and Absalom regarded all of Ahithophel's advice." Now, as David flees for his life, he prays this prayer, "Oh Lord, turn Ahithophel's counsel into foolishness." Praise that prayer. It's recorded right there in 2 Samuel 15:31. Now, what did that mean? Either make Ahithophel give bad advice, or make Ahithophel's good advice seem like foolishness to Absalom, either way, to accomplish God's purpose, David hoped, of restoring David to the throne. Either way, frankly, it would be a display of our proverb. As it turned out, just within the context of the success of Absalom's rebellion, Ahithophel gave excellent advice. He said, "David is exhausted, he is weary, he is worn out, pursue him tonight. Find him and kill just him, and there'll be no one left for Israel to turn to except you, it's done. Don't wait." But at that particular moment, at that key moment, suddenly for some reason, Ahithophel's advice didn't seem the best. Why? I'm talking to Absalom. Suddenly, it just didn't seem like great advice, so he asked for a second opinion. Remember at that time Ahithophel's advice was like that of God, they said. Just as like listening right to the mouth of God, except at this moment, at this key moment. So he asked for a second opinion, and along comes this man, Hushai the Archite who's a plant from David. So Hushai is there and he gives this advice. He said, "Now David, he's a cagey, wild fighter, he's probably already dug in, he's waiting for you to come. He's won lots of battles. I think you ought to wait. Bide your time, get stronger and stronger, you'll get stronger and stronger, he'll get weaker and weaker, and eventually you'll win." What happened? 2 Samuel 17:14, “Absalom and all the men of Israel said the advice of Hushai the Archite is better than that of Ahithophel. For the Lord had determined to frustrate the good advice of Ahithophel in order to bring destruction on Absalom.” Wow, he controlled Absalom's reaction to the two pieces of advice, which one seemed wise to him. The king's heart is like a watercourse in the hands of the Lord. He directs it whichever way he pleases. Oh, there's lots of examples. You know, Pharaoh, God hardening Pharaoh's heart. That's a clear example. God didn't just want one or two plagues, he wanted all 10, including the 10th plague, the plague on the firstborn. And so the Passover, the blood of the lamb, the Angel of Death passes over, all of it, a picture of the sovereign power of God, God hardened Pharaoh's heart to bring it about. But even that wasn't enough. God wanted the Red Sea crossing, so he hardens Pharaoh's heart again even after all the 10 plagues and out he goes so that God can show his might in the Red Sea crossing. But the king's heart is in the hand of God and he's directing it whichever way he pleases. Then there's Nebuchadnezzar, plain example, a mighty potentate, one of the great, great emperors of the world, a brilliant man, capable man, an architect, scholar, military conqueror, brilliant man, a tyrant. God gives him a warning, and when he doesn't take that warning, a year later, God turns his mind into that of an animal. So for seven years, he thought he was a cow eating grass, like that. And why did he do it? Well, it says in Daniel 4:15-17, "Let him the king be drenched with the dew of heaven. Let him live with the animals among the plants of the earth, let his mind be changed from that of a man, and let the mind of an animal be given to him till seven times pass by for him. The decision is announced by messengers, the holy ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know that the most high is sovereign over the kingdoms of men, and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men." The lesson is, God is sovereign over the minds of kings, he can do anything he wants with their minds. 2 Chronicles 36, God sovereignly moved King Cyrus to allow Jews to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. And probably the key example in all history is this one, the Jewish leaders, high priests, Annas, Caiaphas, all of them, Sanhedrin plus Pontius Pilate together agreed to kill Jesus. Acts 4:27 and 28, "Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and all the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had determined beforehand should happen." It was God's will to crush Jesus and cause him to suffer. Isaiah 53:10, Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and ... the LORD makes his life a guilt offering” Pilate did everything he could to let Jesus go. Did you notice? He wanted to let him go, but in the end, pressures came on him, his wife's dream, all kinds of things, the Jewish leaders, and in the end, he made that decision, he's accountable. And he is accountable too. This is part of the mystery, dear friends. You may say, "How can this be? If God's sovereign, how can he be accountable?" He is. Listen to what happened. You remember how Pilate, after scourging Jesus, scourging an innocent man, Jesus is standing there bleeding now, stands before Pilate, and Pilate asks him a question, Jesus will not answer. He said, "Do you refuse to speak to me? Don't you realize I have the power to crucify you and the power to set you free?" And Jesus answered, "You would have no power over me if it were not given you from above. Therefore, the one who handed me over to you is guilty of the greater sin." That's accountability, friends. Greater than what? Greater than Pilate's sin. Pilate sinned, scourging at that point, but soon, scourging an innocent man, that's a sin, Annas and Caiaphas sinned more said Jesus, greater sin. Well, there are so many examples of this, examples in secular history, like when Hitler left a third of a million British troops alive on the beaches of Dunkirk rather than wiping them out, so they're all rescued by all these ships that came across the English channel, what did he do that for? Why did he invade Russia? That was absolutely foolish. He had continental Europe by the throat, and some kind of a truce, a peace with the Russians. Why invade Russia? And if you're gonna invade, why go down and punish the Balkans first for a little uprising and then invade like in mid-June so that winter sets in before you reach your objectives, and most of those guys, those German soldiers died. Why didn't he declare war on the United States the day after the Pearl Harbor attack? I'm talking about Nazi Germany now. That was stupid. Probably the US would have focused on Japan and done nothing with Germany, I don't know, but it's quite possible. That was a stupid move. Why did he make all of these stupid decisions? Well, I don't know, I can't say ultimately, based on some scriptural statements, it was the Lord's will to frustrate him and cause him to fail, that's why. I know that none of those things were accidents, I just don't get the interpretation. God hasn't sent an angel down to say, "This is why Hitler did this or that." He didn't tell us, he just tells us in the Bible, God's sovereign over king's hearts, he turns them whichever way he chooses. I think the key concept for this in me is the book of Esther, this whole book never once mentions God, never once mentions the Lord, you never see him, he just doesn't even appear. You might say, "Why would it make it into the Bible? I thought the Bible was a book about God. I mean, why would there be a book that never even mentions him?" You know why? The lesson of Esther is I am here whether I'm named or not, and I rule whether you see me doing it or not, and so just, the king chances to read a certain book and something happens to happen a certain way, and then everything changes as a result. There's no accidents, dear friend, God is sovereign over the hearts of kings. So how can we apply this? Well, first of all, just be comforted. It's a scary thing to think it all depends on you. Isn't that scary? Sometimes I hold my kids and they got their little arms around my neck, I shouldn't even tell this story, this is a bad story, but anyway, at least I'm the one that looks bad, but anyway, and I just let them go and they hold on to my neck, but then they start to slip and they hold on tighter and they're filled with, yeah, their little heart's beating, it's all very exciting. [laughter] God holds us firmly. It's not up to us to hold on to him, he's holding on to us and he's holding on to the world, he knows what he's doing. Be comforted. Be encouraged. It's not up to you and your grip. I'm not saying you shouldn't grip Jesus, grab hold of him, yes, you should. But be encouraged, God is ruling. Secondly, I would urge you to pray for kings and rulers, those in charge, because God is able to influence their decisions, even if they don't come to Christ, and he can make them come to Christ. Even if they don't, God can influence their decisions for the advance of the Gospel, pray for them that they would make decisions that would be helpful for the advance of the Gospel. And finally, if I can just urge you as you face the trials of your life, trust in God, trust in what he's doing, don't be afraid, suffer well in front of the non-Christian world that doesn't have your kind of confidence and suffer well based on this doctrine of the absolute providence of God over daily life. Close with me in prayer.

By necessity due to time, we ended the last episode in the middle of recounting Luther's great conversion experience, where he realized the righteousness  God requires isn't one borne of good works, but is the righteousness of God Himself, which He gives freely to those who put their faith in the atoning work of Christ.Luther later wrote that he realized he wasn't he first person to believe that. Many of the saints of yore had come to that realization. So it wasn't salvation by grace through faith that initially set him at odds with the Roman Church. What got Luther in trouble was what came through the crack in his thinking made by that realization. If the Church was wrong about something as central and important to the Faith as how to be saved, what else might it be wrong about? The more he studied Scripture, the more he realized the Church had gone off the rails in many ways. The most obvious and egregious, to Luther's mind at least, was the sale of indulgences which at that very moment was going on in Germany.Since we covered the idea of indulgences in Season 1, we'll skip it here. Suffice it to say Luther regarded the sale of indulgences as a prime example of the abuse of spiritual authority. It seemed criminal to him that church officials would hold out the false hope to poor & illiterate peasants the idea that by buying a script of paper they'd have their time or a deceased loved one's time in purgatory lessened.Luther was so incensed he went on a campaign in Wittenberg to make sure no papal rep ever came there to offer indulgences to the citizenry. But when they set up shop in a nearby town and the people of Wittenberg headed there to secure their script, Luther ramped up his complaints.Where things took a decided turn is when he decided to go public with his criticism by posting them on the Castle Church door. Church officials and the pope stood to lose a lot of money if indulgences were nixed. They couldn't have some firebrand German monk running around poking holes in the theology of indulgences. Of course, it wasn't the monk that was running round, it was his words, widely reproduced on the new printing press, some of which seemed to be devoted to churning out Luther's prolific writing.It didn't take long before the Church realized it had to answer Luther's growing list of charges. His assault began by attacking indulgences but quickly morphed to far more weighty theological matters. Luther proved himself an erudite and persuasive writer. Luther first made the case for evaluating Church teaching based on the authority of Scripture rather than Tradition. Tradition was valuable, he argued, only in so far as it was a faithful witness to God's Word. When popes and councils take positions manifestly contrary to Scripture, as they sometimes did, necessitating a follow-up council, it was God's Word that was to regarded as the final court of arbitration. And while the learned, teaching authority of the Church was to be regarded with respect, it was up to each individual believer to determine for him/herself what God's Word said. If John Ploughman read in the Bible that there is One God and He alone is to be worshipped, no church official, no matter their title or how big their hat, could command him to believe something else.Roman apologists tried to poke holes in Luther's positions but found it difficult when all they could do was keep appealing to a Tradition Luther had moved many to distrust.And his ideas just kept coming. 1520 was an especially productive year. Beside a flurry of pamphlets, he produced 5 books. A Treatise on Good Works showed how faith in Christ was, in the narrow sense, the only good work God expected from repentant sinners. Any additional work the believer could do that God esteemed as good was enabled by God's grace. The Papacy of Rome claimed the pope was Anti­christ because, instead of leading people to Faith, he obscured the Gospel. His Address to the Christian Nobility of the Ger­man Nation was an ap­peal to throw off the spiritual, economic, and political tyr­anny of Rome. Babylonian Captivity of the Church declaimed the entire sacramental system of the Roman Catholicism. Luther could find only 2 sacraments commanded by Christ in the Gospels - baptism and Communion.These 4 books were polemics aimed at the Roman Catholic practice of Christianity. The 5th work he produced in 1520 was titled, The Freedom of a Christian. It's tone was very different. It was an attempt to explain how believers were saved apart from works, but for them. Everything Luther wrote was immediately in demand. So the presses kept pumping out book after book. That's what found their way to that table in that hall in Worms when Luther stood on Trial before the Emperor a year later.The Pope & Emperor's official rejection of Luther's ideas at Worms meant they thought,  the end of that troubling chapter. Obviously! I mean, that's what history had proven time and again.But not this time. All Worms did was to give birth to a movement that took of from Rome. Prior to that, the Western Church had shown a remarkable flexibility to keep reform movements within itself. Luther and his supporters broke that mold.Not long after Worms, while in hiding at Wartburg castle,  Luther came up with a new order for a church service. Then he translated the New Testament into common German. In 1525 he married the ex-nun Katherine von Bora & he railed against rampaging peasants who confused spiritual freedom meant permission for social anarchy.Luther, drawing heavily n the 4th C Church Father Augustine, put together some thoughts on the human will to refute those being promulgated by the humanist scholar Erasmus, whose recently completed Greek New testament was re-making Biblical studies.  Luther's ideas of what the church was and should look like slowly took shape. It no longer needed a priestly caste to aact as mediator between God and man since Jesus had already served that role. The veil had been torn. Priests only served to sew it back up.The final 20 yrs of Luther's life were not as packed with drama as the first 8 after he posted his 95 theses. It's safe to say, Luther was both the most re­vered and most hated in Europe. He continued to write, mostly sermons and Bible commentary. His favorite work was the 1529, Small Catechism. Using a simple Q&A format he ex­plained the Ten Commandments, Apostles' Creed, Lord's Prayer and several principles for Christian living.Also in 1529, Luther engaged in a debate with the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli at Mar­burg, in SW Germany. They agreed on most points, but fell out on the meaning of the Communion. Luther held fast to the idea that Christ was truly present in the elements while Zwingli regarded them as merely symbolic. Inability to resolve that issue in a belief and practice that would unite the two, it became Clear there'd not be a single Protestant Church to offer Reform in the West. There'd be several Protestant churches.In 1530 Luther's col­league, the brilliant but less loquacious Philipp Melanchthon, presented a list of Luther's theological convictions to special court at Augsburg. A document was drafted form it that was signed by several of the princes in attendance. This Augsburg Confession became the constitution for the Lutheran church throughout Europe.Four yrs later & after a decade of work, along with help from other scholars, Luther finally finished his translation of the entire Bible. That Bible, rendered in the common German of the time, became more important to Germans than the King James Bible was in England.  It became the standard for modern German.Because Luther was revered by so many, watched closely as a pattern for how a soul set free lives, something as simple as his marriage and family became a new template for human relations. Martin and Katie, as he called his wife, often had students and guests at their table for meals. They'd eat and hold forth on all sorts of topics, Katie contributing her keen intellect and wit as oft as Martin. The ease with which husband and wife communicated with each other, and the mutual respect they held each other in transformed many people's ideas about what a happy home looked like.Church historians find Luther an unstoppable dynamo who single-handedly reshaped the Church and his time's conception of Christianity. Roland Bainton, one of the best of Luther's biographers, said Luther did in Germany by himself what in England it took William Tyn­dale, Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, Isaac Watts, & decades of theologians to do. On average, Luther pub­lished a treatise, sermon, lecture, or commentary every 3 weeks.But listen, Luther's story isn't all roses and peach pie. The man cannot be regarded as a model for deco­rum. Once he felt safe behind a row of supporting German princes, Luther was often blunt to the point of being crude. He oft penned things that embarrassed his supporters as much as enraged his opponents.Hey, sounds a bit like a modern national leader on Twitter!For example, when parents began withdrawing their children from school because they no longer trusted the church to educate them, Luther wrote such parents were, “shame­ful, despicable, damnable parents who are no parents at all but despica­ble hogs and venomous beasts, devouring their own young.” On more than one occasion, Martin counseled civil rulers with troubled marriages to go ahead take a second wife. He justified that by pointing to kings of ancient Israel.We'd also have to say Luther was a troubled soul. He was constantly harassed by emotional turmoil, doubt, & depression. A modern might wonder if Luther was a manic-depressive. His rapid shifts of mood were legend. And gauged by his writings, he was something of a hypo­chondriac. He commented often on digestive problems.While there were times when Luther exhibited deep compassion & a profound humility, there were other times he readily admitted his desperate need of grace. He pretended to be no saint. Nowhere was on that more on display than in his grievous episode with the Jews in 1543, 3 yrs before his death. In the most extreme language, Luther called for the rulers of Germany to confiscate Jewish wealth, then expel them. His words were resurrected by an out of work Austrian artist nearly 400 yrs later and used to justify the Holocaust.Luther was certainly a flawed vessel through which truth flowed, but there was no gainsaying the power of that truth. More than anything, it was Luther's vision of God & his grasp of The Gospel that turned history into a new course.The moment of Martin's actual conversion was a long time coming, but once effected it had a remarkable impact. Those who were able to follow Luther's chain of reasoning out of a works-based system of religion into an intimate relationship with God based on His grace, discovered what he had – God's eternal “Yes” for those who come to the end of themselves and cast themselves utterly on Him. Luther put it this . . .Where man's strength ends, God's begins, provided faith is present and waits on him. When the oppression comes to an end, it becomes manifest what great strength was hidden under the weakness. Even so, Christ was powerless on the cross; and yet there He performed his mightiest work and conquered sin, death, world, hell, devil, and all evil. That's how all the martyrs were strong and overcame. So too, all who suffer and are oppressed overcome.Luther remembered the words Barnabas and Paul spoke to the Chris­tians in Antioch in Acts 14: “We must through many hardships enter the kingdom of God.” He often repeated the reminder, “We are Christians and have the Gospel, which neither the devil nor men can abide, in order that we may come into poverty and lowliness and God may thereby have his work in us.” He penned in the words of his best-known hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God:“And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us; We will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us."Luther's last written words summed up the es­sence of his vision of God. Closing out a brief essay he moved from Latin to German: “We are beggars. That's the truth.” But Luther penned that not in despair. He knew the cross meant God heard the beggar's cry.

His family name was “Black Earth,” as in the rich, fertile soil around his hometown. In German, Schwartzerdt. His first name was Philipp. He was born in Feb of 1497 at Bretten in SW Germany. His father was an armorer for an important German Count.Though tiny for his age, Philipp was brilliant. It seemed his body put all its energy into the development of his mind rather than his increasingly misshapen body. So at the age of only 10 he joined the scholars at the school of Pforzheim where he learned Latin, Greek and was introduced to Classical philosophy. When it became clear Philipp was something of a prodigy, his well-known humanist uncle Johann Reuchlin took a hand in his education as well. It was he who suggested the burgeoning young scholar follow the humanist fashion of the time and translate his German last name of Schwartzerdt into the Greek Melanchthon.When at the age of 11, both his father and grandfather died within a few days of each other, Philipp moved in with his grandmother. The next year, at aged 12, He entered the University of Heidelberg where he studied philosophy, rhetoric & astronomy. He quickly made his mark as a scholar of Greek, but was denied his master's degree for being too young. Shifting to the school in Tübingen, he continued his studies in law, mathematics and medicine.He was finally granted his Master's when he turned 19 and began studying theology. Under the influence of humanists like his uncle and Erasmus, Melanchthon became convinced true Christianity was something very different from the dry scholasticism of the Academics.When his attempts at reform were opposed in Tübingen, he accepted a call from Martin Luther to teach in the University at Wittenberg. At the ripe old age of 21, he took on the role of Professor of Greek. As he studied Scripture he became increasingly convinced Luther's ideas were theologically sound. There's a good chance the young Melanchthon helped clarify some of Luther's early ideas. He went with Luther to Leipzig for a debate with the Catholic Apologist Johann Eck in 1519. Though he only attended as a spectator, he inserted some of his own comments into the debate. Those comments were so telling, Eck felt the need to respond. After returning to Wittenberg, Melanchthon published an effective reply, basing his retorts in Scripture.When it became clear Philipp was a settled fixture at the University in Wittenberg and was proving himself an able assistant to Luther, the town's mayor gave consent for his daughter to marry him.In 1521, Melanchthon's lectures on Romans in the University became the basis of the Reformation's first volume on dogmatics, titled Theological Common Places. Seeing several revisions over the following years, the work dealt with themes like the relationship of the law and gospel, the bondage of the will, and justification by faith.From the outset of his tenure as Luther's theological side-kick, Melanchthon set a priority on educational reform. He advocated a need for fluency in Greek in theological training and a restructuring of universities along humanist lines. His plans were implemented in the reordering of the schools at Heidelberg & Tübingen, as well as new school at Marburg and Königsberg. Along with Luther, he called for each town to have a public school for the education of its young.In the last episode, we noted Luther's increasing cantankerousness as he aged. Some historians attribute this onerousness to his failing health and the constant pain his last few years saw him in. But even as a younger man, Luther was given to bouts of moodiness that swung between mania and depression, sometimes wildly! Philipp's even-keeled and exceedingly moderate nature seemed the perfect foil to Luther.Three famous painters gave their skills to capturing Melanchthon. Holbein, Cranach, and Albrecht Dürer, whose image seems more an attempt to capture Philipp's spiritual essence than his actual appearance. Contemporaries remarked Dürer capably achieved his goal. These images and the descriptions we have of him present a man who was likely not taller than 4'9” and somewhat misshapen. He was rarely in good health but was able to accomplish as much work as he did  because of his well-honed work habits and the extraordinary discipline he exercised. Though Melanchthon could have used his position to great personal advantage, he never accumulated wealth or possessions, but was known for his generosity and hospitality.His marriage was happy. He called his home "a little church," & peace was always found there by visitors. There was genuine affection between Philipp and his wife and 4 children. One visitor remarked on his stay with the Melanchthons that he happened by one of the rooms to see Philipp rocking a cradle with one hand while reading a book in the other.Master Melanchthon had many friends with whom he conversed often, frequently via correspondence, in which he reveals far more of himself and his ideas than he ever did publicly. In fact, he was so generous with his thoughts he frequently wrote speeches & treatises for others, granting them permission to claim them as their own.Melanchthon eschewed all jealousy, envy, slander, & sarcasm, though being the keen intellect he was, and dealing with oft times obstinate theological opponents he did we can be sure his witty repartee would have been entertaining. To put it succinctly, Melanchthon was The scholar's Scholar. We've probably all heard of, maybe even known, those people who have to be, or think they are, the smartest person in the room. With Melanchthon, he aspired to be, not the smartest, though there's little doubt he was, but his goal was to be the  noblest, the most honest & decent soul in the room. To that end he was brutal in his self-assessment, even to the point of acknowledging his faults to his opponents and critics.After the Diet of Worms and the obvious break with Rome it clearly meant, Luther seemed content to go his way and take the Church in Germany with him. Then, when other Reformers differed from Luther's positions on various issues, he seemed willing to split from them as well. Melanchthon worked hard at affecting a reconciliation with both papists and other Reformers, if only they would be willing to negotiate on the basis of Scripture. He & Luther took part in an meeting at Marburg in 1529 with the Zwingli and the Swiss Reformers in an attempt to find a common ground. The Colloquy blew up over their different understandings of the nature of the Eucharist. Melanchthon was able to hammer out agreement with Martin Bucer and Southern Germans on the same issue in the Wittenberg Concord in 1536. He contributed to the 13 Articles Lutherans and Anglicans agreed on 2 yrs later. Having achieved unity with Bucer, the 2 participated in discussions at Hagenau & Worms that eventually led to a monumental Colloquy at Regensburg of 1541.  It was there that Cardinal Contarini made a serious bid for reconciliation with the Reformers, When it became clear there were issues both sides could NOT compromise on, the split between Rome and Protestants was final.While Melanchthon seems a committed Ecumenist in these efforts, a decade later when Thomas Cranmer called for a Reformation-wide ecumenical conference in London, he was less enthusiastic. But there's good reason for that. He was being accused by hardcore supports of Luther of betraying the cause in weakening Lutheran teaching.And Philipp's desire for harmony ought not be understood as his being soft on error. As early as 1522, he argued with Luther's other assistant at Wittenberg, Andreas Carlstadt who, while Luther was in hiding at Wartburg, assumed control of the Reformation movement in Luther's absence. Carlstadt's attitude was that the reforms ought to go forward as swiftly as possible. The problem was, the nobles and rulers who were generally in favor of a break with Rome, found the pace of reform Carlstadt urged too much too soon. Even Luther advocated a slower pace. So he left the Wartburg to return to Wittenberg and dress Carlstadt down. Andreas stayed for a time but, frustrated that the Reforms he knew were needed weren't being enacted swiftly enough, he left to spread his ideas of Radical Reformation across German & Switzerland. He eventually landed in in the University of Basel.Along with Luther, Melanchthon was instrumental in formulating the 1530 Augsburg Confession defining the tenants of Lutheranism. In 1540, Melanchthon issued a revised edition of the Confession with edits many Lutherans found objectionable. He was accused by Matthias Flacius of selling Luther out after the great Reformer's death. Melanchthon adopted a more moderate view than Luther on predestination and the nature of the Lord's Presence in Communion. His supporters were scornfully called Philippists. These attacks caused the gentle and uncontentious soul considerable distress in his last years. But after his death in 1560, Melanchthon's essential unity within Lutheranism was vindicated and he was buried beside his friend.Between Luther & Melanchthon, the later was more the scholar while the former was more the man of action. The steady Melanchthon was the perfect foil to   the mercurial Luther. Their friendship owed much to that fact as each recognized the value the other very different style provided for the massive undertaking they'd assumed. While this may be over-simplifying it, we might say Luther was the face and voice of the Early Reformation while Melanchthon was its brains and heart. Melanchthon's role was best served when he was the quiet one behind the scenes. When Luther was gone and he was called on to step up and take the lead, he proved unequal to the task. Make no mistake, no one doubted his piety & integrity. It's just that he did not possess the force of character Luther had.Still, there's a case to be made that had it not been for Philipp Melanchthon, there wouldn't have been a Martin Luther and the Reformation as we've come to know it.So – the world would be a very different place.

https://storage.googleapis.com/communio-sanctorum/500Years-Part05.mp3As we come up to the 500 year anniversary of Reformation Day, when Martin Luther tacked his revolutionary list of exceptions to current church practice and belief to the Castle Church door in the German town of Wittenberg, we're faced with the realization that the Reformation embraced many more people than the popular telling of history enumerates. Many more.Who do we think of when we think of the Reformation? Martin Luther & John Calvin are the first two most would name. Then with a bit more searching of the gray matter, maybe Philipp Melanchthon & Ulrich Zwingli. There are, of course, dozens more notables who played important roles in the drama that was the Reformation. One of them is the focus of this episode – a man and name that ought to be as prominent in our knowledge of this period as Zwingli or Melanchthon –> Marin Bucer, the Reformer of Strasbourg.Before we get in to his story, a little background on the situation in Germany is a good idea.As moderns, we're used to thinking of history in terms of nation-states. Even as we think back to ancient times, we tend to cast the dominant empires as just very old versions of nation-states. That, despite the fact the modern nation-state of Western civ is a relatively recent invention. We must exercise caution as we review the history of Renaissance Europe and the period of the Reformation because it was this period of time that helped set the political climate for the eventual emergence of the modern world with its nearly ubiquitous carving up of the globe in nations with clearly defined borders.Voltaire once said, “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.” Yet, that's what we call that collection of principalities that formed a loose political collection from the 9th to the 17th C. In the 16th C, the Holy Roman Empire was politically centralized in name only. It was composed of several politically different regions that put a significant check on the Emperor's power. It was this division of power that made the Reformation possible, and helps explain why it took root in Germany rather than France or Spain. As the series we did in Season 1, The Long Road to Reform makes clear, there had been many attempts at reform of the Church prior to Luther and the early 16th C, but none had the Reformation's success precisely because they usually took place in areas that were governed by a single monarch dedicated to Rome.  The HRE Emperor Charles V was also Rome's guy, but he only held his office due to the endorsement of 7 German prince-electors, who regularly differed from him on various issues. These powerful Electors and the noble-houses they were scions of had debated for years about the desirability of breaking with Rome. Martin Luther was able to succeed where others failed precisely because he arrived at a time when enough of these Electors had grown fed-up with Rome's meddling, the Emperor was politically weak, and the common people universally recognized the corruption of the Church's upper echelon.Martin Luther's political region was Saxony, ruled by the powerful and well-regarded Elector Frederick III, known as Frederick the Wise. His successors, both named John followed Frederick's support for Luther. The powerful Landgrave, Philip of Hesse, nestled West of Saxony & East of the Rhine, was another avid supporter of the Reformation. That support will play a key role in later developments for both Bucer & Luther. The Emperor walked a political tightrope as he sought to balance the demands of his these tetchy electors, dozens of lesser principalities, and the growing number of politically powerful free imperial cities ruled by councils that often acted as sovereign governments. As if that wasn't enough, Charles V also had war on multiple fronts to deal with, France in the West, the Ottomans in the East, and Italy to the South. The Reformation leaders realized the time was ripe for them to sever ties with Rome since the Emperor needed their support to deal with the external threats. It was a political perfect storm for a religious movement to emerge.Martin Bucer was born in  the French region of Alsace, next to Germany, in the free imperial city of Schlettstadt. His family were coopers by trade – barrel-makers. Nothing's known of Martin's mother. His hometown boasted a well-known school where families of the Bucer social class sent their children. He graduated there in 1507 then, at his grandfather's insistence, became a monk-novice in the Dominican Order. A year in, he was made an acolyte in Strasbourg where he took vows as a friar. By 1510, he was ordained a deacon.Bucer then began studying theology in the Dominican monastery in Heidelberg 5 yrs later. A brief trip to Mainz saw him taking a course in dogmatics and ordination as a priest. In 1517, he returned to Heidelberg to enroll in the university. It was there that Bucer began to be influenced by the ideas of Erasmus and the humanists. It was also there at Heidelberg that everything was to change for him. In April 1518, Johannes von Staupitz, an Augustinian vicar-general, invited an upstart Augustinian monk named Martin Luther from Wittenberg to debate that monks increasingly troublesome views. This debate is known now as the Heidelberg Disputation. It's where Bucer met Luther for the first time. In a long letter to his friend, Bucer recounted what he learned, commenting on several of the theses Luther had posted, where then printed up and spread all over Germany. They were the points Staupitz wanted to dispute. But Bucer found himself intrigued by them, doubly so after hearing Luther's defense. He agreed & found in Luther's points much to connect with his emerging humanist ideas. The following year, Bucer received his degree, and while giving his disputation before the faculty of  Heidelberg, made clear his theological break with Aquinas and Scholasticism.Bucer's next step in joining the Reformers was his departure from the Dominicans. That story is interesting and reads like a novel.The Grand Inquisitor of Cologne was the Dominican, Jacob van Hoogstraaten. He launched an inquiry into the teaching and views of the famous humanist scholar Johann Reuchlin. Now, in some places, like Spain, once the Inquisition set its sights on someone, everyone else beat a hasty retreat, lest suspicion fall on them as well. Not in Germany. Things were different there precisely because of the much weaker political structure. So when Reuchlin fell afoul of Hoogstraaten, several German nobles took Reuchlin's side, forcing Hoogstraaten to back down. Thwarted, he now was compelled to prove his title of Grand Inquisitor was deserved ad set his sights on Bucer, who he felt was an easier and more vulnerable target. When word reached Bucer he was now in the Inquisition cross-hairs, he decided to leave the Dominicans. Friends in the Order expedited the annulment of his vows, which were officially severed in April 1521.Though the Inquisition was now technically not able to go after him, it could work to see the annulment of his vows reversed. So over the next 2 yrs, the nobles who'd back Reuchlin came to Bucer's aid as well. He went to work as a chaplain in the court of the Elector of The Palatine and lived in the city of Nuremberg, the most powerful city of the Empire. The city government was a major supporter of the Reformation and the city became something of a magnet for Reformers. It was there Bucer met many who shared his views. In the Fall of 1521, Bucer accepted an offer to become pastor at Landstuhl. The next Summer, he met and married a former nun named Elisabeth.The city of Landstuhl was the center of one of Bucer's noble defenders, Franz von Sickengen, a German knight of confused reputation. Sickengen seems something of an opportunist who sided with commoners when it served to increase his wealth and prestige, then to back nobles for the same reason. He was something of a political pragmatist who saw in the Reformation a way to both advance his personal agenda while giving vent to his loyalty to the German people. He'd built himself a virtually impregnable castle at Landstuhl; at least impregnable by medieval styles of siegecraft. It became the scene of his ultimate defeat in 1523 when in a battle with other German nobles artillery was used for one of the first times.Wanting to advance the Reformation in his capital, Sickingen sent Bucer to Wittenberg for further study with Luther and his assistant Melanchthon. He stopped in the town of Wissembourg on the way and was persuaded by the local reformer, Heinrich Motherer, to stay and work for a time as chaplain. Bucer went to work preaching sermons each day calling for immediate reform. His special focus was abuse in the monastic orders. He was an ardent advocate of the Reformation solas; Sola Scriptura & Sola Fide. He decried the Mass as a recapitulation of Christ's saving work. He lambasted the monasteries as turning the Gospel into a system of salvation by works. Summing up his ideas in six theses, he called for a public disputation with his opponents, of which there were not a few. But the Franciscans and Dominicans ignored his challenge. Bad move on their part because it seemed to say to the local townspeople that they were afraid of not being able to refute Bucer's charges of corruption. Those townspeople, further agitated by Martin's sermons, began threatening the local monasteries. That was too much for the bishop at Speyer who then excommunicated Bucer. In a sign of the way things would go across Germany in the decades that followed, the town council decided to support the now persona-non-grata Bucer, rather than jail or exile him, thereby serving Rome it no longer aligned under its leadership.  Events beyond the Wissembourg town-limits put Bucer in peril. His benefactor, von Sickingen, was defeated and killed during the Knights' Revolt I just mentioned. The Wissembourg council urged Bucer to leave. He fled to nearby Strasbourg. It was May 1523, and it's there that Martin Bucer had his greatest impact.Though Bucer arrived in Strasbourg as a political refugee with no visible means of support and no legal rights as a citizen, within 3 months he'd become a settled fixture and influential voice there. Upon his arrival, Bucer immediately wrote to Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, asking for a post there were he could help the burgeoning Reformation cause. Before he heard back, the reformist-minded Strasbourg city council asked him to assist their local pastor by serving as his chaplain. Bucer began teaching Bible and was so effective one of the local guilds appointed him as the pastor of St Aurelia's Church. Strasbourg couldn't have the pastor of one of its most influential church not be a citizen, so citizenship    was granted.Bucer was joined in Strasbourg by a team of capable minds all united by the Reformation Cause. Matthew  Zell, Wolfgang Capito, & Caspar Hedio. Early on, Bucer called for a debate with Thomas Murner, a monk who'd attacked Luther with biting satire.Though Strasbourg's council leaned toward the reformist camp, like so many German political leaders of this time, it tended to vacillate on installing Reformation ideas. They wanted to reform the Church but balked at implementing changes to the civil sphere that would set them at odds with the Emperor and his allies. Because Bucer and his Reformer pals had the ear of the masses, hostility toward the civil magistrates grew apace with their hostility toward the Roman clergy.That hostility boiled over when a local Augustinian leader denounced the Reformers & Strasbourg city council as heretics. Furious mobs broke into and looted local monasteries. Opponents of the Reformation we re arrested, including that Augustinian leader. That proved the crisis that moved the Strasbourg council to realize if could not longer vacillate. They asked Bucer to produce an official statement clarifying for all what their theological position was. He drafted twelve articles outlining Reformation doctrine. Missing were such things as the Mass, monastic vows, veneration of saints, and purgatory. He specifically rejected the authority of the pope but emphasized obedience to civil government. The opponents to the Reformation who'd been arrested were released and exiled, ending any and all hurdles to the Reformation in Strasbourg. And all this before the Fall of 1523, the same year Bucer arrived there.Strasbourg's reformers then set about to build a new order of service for their churches. As their basic template, they adopted the order already in use in Zurich by the churches influenced by Zwingli, then made some tweaks. In an ambitious move, they suggested that ALL churches of the Reformation adopt the same order and presented their proposal to the luminaries at both Wittenberg & Zurich.Before we carry on with Martin Bucer's story, we need to pause for a narrative sidebar . . .THE central debate Reformers carried on among themselves, and the cause that ended up producing several different Reformation streams, was the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, Communion, the Eucharist. Early on, a rift appeared between Martin Luther and the Swiss Reformers led by Zwingli.Avoiding an overly technical dissertation, let me summarize the 2 positions by saying that Luther adamantly affirmed a real presence of Christ in the bread and wine of communion, while Zwingli regarded the elements of Communion as symbolic memorials to Christ and His work.For long time listeners to CS, these views were rooted in the Christological debates of the 4th & 5th Cs we spent so much time on in both Season 1 and the Creeds series of Season 2. Luther emphasized the unity of Christ's person, saying His human attributes were infused by His divine attributes, so He was present everywhere, including in the elements of the Lord's Supper. Zwingli emphasized Christ's dual nature as God and Man and that His body, while real, was resurrected and sat at the right hand of the Father in Glory.At the Marburg C olloquy where Lutherans and the Swiss met to seek concord, they were able to agree to 13 articles, but when could not achieve agreement on the last, detailing this issue of the presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper. It's been told that in the discussions between Luther and Zwingli, as Zwingli waxed long on a philosophical treatise supporting his position, Luther took a piece of chalk and wrote on the table in front of him, “This is my body.” As Zwingli kept talking, Luther just tapped the table beneath the words.As one biographer on this says, at Worms, Luther had announced that his conscience was held captive by The Word of God. There at Marburg, he clung to the same conviction. He would not allow himself to be swayed from Christ's simple statement “This is my body” by the erudite and reasoned position of Zwingli.So intractable was Luther on this issue, and so suspicious did he become of Zwingli attempting to dissuade him, Luther went so far as to suggest the Swiss weren't Christians. But that wasn't something he regarded very long. Indeed, as the Marburg Colloquy wrapped up, Zwingli asked Luther to draw up a list of the things they agreed on as a standard for all Reformed churches. Luther and Melanchthon, really it was mostly the latter's work, produced a total of 15 articles that became the standard accepted at Schwabach in 1529. Lutherans and the Swiss agreed on all but the last dealing with the Lord's Supper. It reads thus . . .Regarding the Last Supper of our dear Lord Jesus Christ, we believe and hold that one should practice the use of both species as Christ himself did, [by “both species” is meant both bread & wine. Remember that the Roman Catholics only used the wafer. Reformers advocated using both bread & wine] and that the sacrament at the altar is a sacrament of [and here we see the distinct Lutheran doctrine of the real prese nce] the true body and blood of Jesus Christ and the spiritual enjoyment of this very body and blood is proper and necessary for every Christian. Furthermore, that the practice of the sacrament is given and ordered by God the Almighty like the Word, so that our weak conscience might be moved to faith through the Holy Spirit. [Then Melanchthon adds verbiage acknowledging the differing opinions of the Reformers] And although we have not been able to agree at this time, whether the true body and blood of Christ are corporally present in the bread and wine [of communion], each party should display towards the other Christian love, as far as each respective conscience allows, and both should persistently ask God the Almighty for guidance so that through his Spirit he might bring us to a proper understanding.This theological division not only caused massive theological problems, it produced a plethora of political problems. Those German princes who'd supported the Reformation had hoped for a religious harmony to support their break with both Rome and Emperor. A fractured Protestant church was both   weak. Bucer recognized this and worked feverishly to affect a compromise that would unite the Lutherans and Swiss. His efforts resulted in several important documents. His views of the Lord's Supper influenced Calvin, who also sought to affect a compromise between the two groups.Bucer's work toward that end began just a year after arriving in Strasbourg and continued for several years.  Bucer himself had abandoned a belief in the real presence of Christ in the elements after his own study. What troubled Martin was the insistence by both Luther and Zwingli on maintaining their positions in peril of their unity and the disharmony it engendered, allowing a rift that weakened them in the face of hostile parties. He asked for their unity to be based on what they agreed on, rather than disunity based on where they differed.Bucer's story goes longer, but unfortunately, not this episode, so let's wrap it up . . .He ministered in Strasbourg for 25 years, and while his attempts to reconcile the Swiss & Lutherans was unfruitful, he did achieve a shot-lived concord in 1536. But Bucer's reputation was dealt a terrible blow by his support of The Count of Hesse's bigamy that we've talked about in other places. It was Bucer who persuaded Luther to  support Philipp's secret marriage of a second wife. Along with Melanchthon, Bucer took part in the unsuccessful conversion of the Archbishop of Cologne in 1542.When the Protestant princes lost the Shmalkaldic War, the victorious Charles V convened a meeting at Augsburg to draw up articles known as the Interim. Bucer was “invited” to attend and be a voice for the drafting of the articles. When his edits were rejected, he was arrested and eventually coerced into signing them. But when he returned to Strasbourg, he attacked the Interim and continued his calls for reform of the church. The city council, now under close watch by imperial authorities asked Bucer to zip it. When he showed no sign of doing so they told him to leave.Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in England was watching events on the continent with interest. He invited Bucer & his pals who'd been booted from Strasbourg to come to England and help with the Reformation cause there. They arrived in April of 1549 and within days were introduced to King Edward VI. Bucer was given a position as a Professor of Divinity in Cambridge.In going to England, Bucer had great hopes of spreading the influence of the Reformation's objective of simplifying the church's liturgy. His reforms made little headway against the magisterial nature of the Church of England. His greatest influence is likely to be found in the second edition of the Book of Common Prayer which Cranmer asked him to review and edit.England proved to be an unhealthy environment for the now aging Martin. In 1551, his health finally broke and he died on the last day of February at the age of 59.In eulogy, one of his scholarly friends wrote of Bucer, “We are deprived of a leader than whom the whole world would scarcely obtain a greater, whether in knowledge of true religion or in integrity and innocence of life, or in thirst for study of the most holy things, or in exhausting labor in advancing piety, or in authority and fullness of teaching, or in anything that is praiseworthy and renowned.”Two yrs after his death, when Mary 1, AKA Bloody Mary came to the throne, as part of her effort to restore Catholicism, she tried Bucer posthumously for heresy. His casket was dug up, his remains burned, along with copies of his writings. When Elizabeth ascended the throne, she restored Bucer's legacy. A brass plaque now marks the original location of his grave.

Thu, 1 Jan 1520 12:00:00 +0100 http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10899/ http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10899/1/4Melan.48_1.pdf Melanchthon, Philipp Melanchthon, Philipp: Compendiaria dialectices ratio. Wittenbergae: Lottherus, 1520

Thu, 1 Jan 1531 12:00:00 +0100 http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11093/ http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11093/1/8Melan.92.pdf Melanchthon, Philipp Melanchthon, Philipp: De dialectica libri quatuor. Vvitebergae: Klug, 1531 0

Sun, 1 Jan 1533 12:00:00 +0100 http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11094/ http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11094/1/8Melan.94.pdf Melanchthon, Philipp Melanchthon, Philipp: De dialectica libri quatuor recogniti. Viterergae: Klug, 1533

Sat, 1 Jan 1538 12:00:00 +0100 http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11167/ http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11167/1/8Philos.356_2.pdf Melanchthon, Philipp Melanchthon, Philipp: De dialectica libri quatuor. Argentorati: Mylius, 1538 0

Thu, 1 Jan 1570 12:00:00 +0100 http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10905/ http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10905/1/4Luth.225a.pdf Melanchthon, Philipp Melanchthon, Philipp: Unterricht der Visitatorn an die Pfarherrn im Churfürstenthumb zu Sachsen. 1528. Leipzig: Berwaldt, 1570

"Der Haidplatz ist ein zentraler Platz in der Regensburger Altstadt. Der Platz geht auf eine langgestreckte Wiese westlich des ehemaligen Römerlagers zurück. Daher der Name Haidplatz, von der Heide. Die Form des später bebauten dreieckigen Platzes beruht auf einer Gabelung einer Stra�?e. Im Mittelalter wurden hier Ritterturniere abgehalten. Der Sage nach soll hier das Turnier zwischen dem Ritter Dollinger und dem Heiden Krako stattgefunden haben. Im 17. Jahrhundert versuchte ein französischer Chirurg den Platz auf einem Drahtseil, mit Feuerwerkskörpern behangen, zu überqueren und stürzte ab. Der Platz wird heute für zahlreiche kulturelle Veranstaltungen wie dem Bayerischen Jazz-Weekend genutzt. Bestimmendes Gebäude am Platz ist die frühgotische 1250 erbaute Patrizierburg �??Zum Goldenen Kreuz�??. Das Haus war anfangs im Besitz der Familie der Weltenburger, später folgten im 15. Jahrhundert die Zeller. Das zinnengekrönte Haus mit Turm und Hauskapelle war seit dem 16. Jahrhundert ein Gasthof und diente zahlreichen Fürsten und Kaisern als Herberge. Bekanntester Gast war Kaiser Karl V., der hier 1532, 1541 und 1546 abstieg. Während des letzten Aufenthaltes entdeckte er die Gürtlertochter Barbara Blomberg. Aus der Beziehung des 46-jährigen Kaisers mit dem 18-jährigen Mädchen ging Don Juan d'Austria hervor, dem späteren Sieger über die Türken in der Seeschlacht von Lepanto. Das mutma�?liche Geburtshaus von Barbara Blomberg befindet sich ganz in der Nähe des Platzes in der Tändlerstra�?e. Ein Denkmal für Don Juan von �?sterreich steht davor. Auch später verweilten hier Persönlichkeiten wie König Ludwig I. von Bayern, Kaiser Wilhelm I. von Preu�?en oder Kaiser Franz Josef I. von �?sterreich. Noch heute dient das Gebäude als Hotel und Café. Neben dem Goldenen Kreuz befindet sich am Platz das klassizistische �??Thon-Dittmer-Palais�??, das zuletzt im Besitz der Kaufmannsfamilie von Thon-Dittmer war. Heute sind hier Kulturreferat, Volkshochschule, Stadtbücherei, Deutsch- Amerikanisches Institut und das Theater am Haidplatz untergebracht. Im Untergeschoss befindet sich die 1968 freigelegte gotische Sigismund-Kapelle von 1270. Im Renaissance-Arkadenhof finden regelmä�?ig kulturelle Ereignisse, u. a. klassische Konzerte und die Regensburger Stummfilm-Tage, statt. Weiteres beherrschendes Gebäude ist die �??Neue Waag�??. Das ehemalige Patrizierhaus der Familie Altmann wurde 1441 von der Stadt erworben und beherbergte seitdem die Stadtwaage und die �??Herrentrinkstube�??. Die Arkadengänge stammen aus dem Jahr 1575. Im Erdgeschoss befindet sich im gotischen Gewölbe die steinerne Stadtmaus, im Vorraum eines Musikladens. Wer die Stadtmaus berührt, kommt der Legende nach auf jeden Fall wieder nach Regensburg zurück. Zu erwähnen ist auch der klassizistische Napoleonsaal. 1541 fand in der Neuen Waag das Religionsgespräch zwischen Philipp Melanchthon und Johannes Eck statt. Von 1783-1875 war hier die Reichsstädtische Bibliothek untergebracht. Heute ist es der Sitz des Verwaltungsgerichtes. In der Mitte des Platzes steht der barocke Justitiabrunnen, laut Inschrift von 1656. Die Figur der Justitia vom Bildhauer Leopold Hilmer ist von 1659, das Eisengitter datiert aus dem Jahr 1592. Audioguide Regensburg, Haidplatz, Version 1 vom 18. Juli 2008."