in the last lecture we looked at the charismata in the medieval church we looked at this cessationist thesis that basically says this if spiritual gifts remain throughout the early church they certainly died out in the medieval period because of all the superstition uh the rise of the medieval roman catholic church and all its doctrinal problems and all its problems uh with corruption and practice so certainly things that out then and all the crazy saints miracle stories we have that are certainly fabricated right for economic gain we discussed that thesis and hopefully though i provided many sort of provocative miracle stories we were able to unpack that and hopefully disarm that thesis certainly benedict didn't think the miracle ceased nor did francis yes francis thought the church was corrupt and need renewal but god worked through medieval saints and missionaries and monks and mystics and worked through them in remarkable ways and even if we put a strainer in for some of the craziest perhaps exaggerated or embellished miracle stories you still have a whole lot to work with from that period so now let's go to another thesis we're going to explore as we look at the reformation this cessationist thesis goes like this the charismata if it remain through the medieval period it ceased with the protestant reformation with the cessationist theology of luther and calvin and this thesis is often proposed by charismatics actually certain kinds of charismatics typically arminian charismatics as well as catholics who basically argue we've been we've been charismatic the whole time protestants are the outliers because after the reformation they they began sort of spinning these hyper cessationist theories that have infected protestantism and even catholics so this thesis is an interesting one that i think has some interesting points to it because many of the strongest cessationist writings period do come from protestant thinkers or protestant at least culturally protestant people so let's take a look at this and turn this over again and examine it and hopefully by the end of our discussion uh question this thesis undermine it a little bit first i'll say there is some truth to the notion of protestant cessationism as a thing let's talk about luther for a little while in his context and we're picking right up where we left off for the medieval lecture we get to luther right luther is a 15th 16th century figure right he nails the theses to the door of wittenberg in 1517. it's like early 16th century but he was born in the 15th century so though we consider him an early modern reformation figure his whole world he was steeped in what you might see is sort of a medieval world he wouldn't have seen any disjuncture between you know saint francis who was just a couple centuries earlier than him and him he was in that world he's kind of one of these remarkable historical figures where kind of after him things are different but he was you might say born and raised in medieval superstitious roman catholicism and here's the reality luther grew up in a world of a ton of superstition right you had a laity that was not well discipled who did adopt and kind of had this mishmash of pagan and folk and all these different beliefs kind of mixed in with their catholics that's absolutely true it's not that different today in american christianity i might add it was also very corrupt right the church leaders it was particularly bad in the 14th 50th and 16th centuries church leaders were the church hierarchy had become wealthy and corrupt and greedy and there's just tragic stories that was part of the reason why luther was so provoked as a catholic monk seeing the corruption in rome there was a great deal of corruption church leaders especially specifically don't think like your parish priests think like your bishops and your archbishops abusing their authority really greedy becoming very wealthy even some monasteries becoming very wealthy and monks were getting kind of this bad name for being fat and wealthy and lazy and in particular church practice and economy was centered on this cult of saints and this perceived spiritual power of their relics and the church kind of was able to monetize this was able to gain monetarily from this just think about kind of the way this logic works right say you're a small town in germany and you're a low to medium level pilgrimage site right because you have some sort of martyrs relics in your church so people from a the kind of the local region come there because there's this expectation that miracles might happen at very least they want to see it right but when you have people from other regions coming to your pilgrimage site what does that do for the local economy right what does that do for the church offerings so if you think about the logic there if you're if you have a pilgrimage some sort of relic and a side of pilgrimage you can quickly see how for not so spiritual reasons you might want to acquire other relics that kind of raise the profile of your pilgrimage raise the profile of your church of your village because many local economies were boosted by and it's really an old form more spiritual form of tourism right people from other places are coming to visit they're spending money they're staying there they're buying things they're giving to the church so there was this pretty sophisticated and complex economy of saints relics and because of that medieval period so many forgeries were occurring right you'd have three right hands of peter in different churches um uh you'd have you the joke was you know there were multiple burial sites of the same apostle in different places there was lots of forgery lots of corruption there's stealing right one one uh one maybe uh political figure would steal the rally you know he'd raid he raided another town he'd win a military victory he'd steal the relics and take it back to his church got lots of terrible things going on if if i gave what i would see as a sort of a sympathetic theological rationale for the sanctity and the power of the relics of the saints at least in the logic of the medieval person you can see how it gets corrupted really fast and by luther's time it's really corrupt but also when you think about you know i talk about saints in kind of a loose term but but in order to become canonized officially by the church this was formalized later in 18th century was already kind of understood to be the case in late medieval period you had to perform a miracle after your death if anyone is familiar with the process of canonization you have to perform two verifiable miracles after your death in order to actually become considered to be a saint luther of course was skeptical because if anyone really wanted a person to be a saint you'd fabricate two miracles also the catholic church was so invested in signs and wonders they believed that sometimes if you were being in you know if you were at an inquisition session and you were being tried for heresy in order to kind of show that you really were a true teacher not a foster you had to perform miracles for them and then finally when you think about luther's context luther had this strong conviction about the priesthood of all believers and the ability for any christian who's justified by faith to enter with boldness of the throne room of god with no mediation of any saintly figure or clergy member dead or alive and because of that range of contextual corruptions that luther was really really frustrated and angry about and because of this theological conviction he had about the priests of all believers he really came on strong against a lot of these practices particularly the cult of the saints the use of relics for sort of mediating miracles and luther's main point is we're all filled with the same holy spirit why are we doing all this stuff it's it's it's a mess so let's look at luther the cessation so look at some of his writing some of his main teachings that sort of framed him as cessationist in many ways sort of catapulted or progressed is thinking within process and luther's main thesis and you see this come out in his commentaries and other theological writings is that after this initial preaching of the gospel the most this won't be you know unfamiliar to you but luther was one of the first to articulate it this way after the initial preaching of the gospel by the apostles which were certainly accompanied by signs and wonders this just wasn't really necessary anymore signs and wonders miracles charismatic they weren't necessary because the real miracle that the holy spirit does and continues to do is to change lives by the gospel he argues that the preached word and the administration of the sacraments those two things are the power of god and all these other you know physical healings and supernatural manifestations that's not necessary you have the wording of the sacrament that's where the real miracles happen in many ways luther tried to spiritualize the notion of miracles saying yes jesus and the early apostles wrought physical healing miracles but what we do now is even greater right it's the greater works of john 14. the greater work the greater thing in jesus name referred to this with his own bible the great thing is that your names are written in the book of life right yeah it's great that guy was blind now he sees but what's really remarkable is that he was spiritually blind now his eyes have been opened to the reality of the messiah so luther had this very strong notion that physical healing miracles things that kind of happen to our bodies where matter changes that's real but it's not really necessary anymore because the greater miracle the greater thing the thing that really is that jesus is really all about is transforming our lives and our souls and taking us out of darkness into light and spiritual blindness in a spiritual sight so for luther it wasn't so much um that he thought theologically these things are impossible he thought they were not necessary and there was something greater that we could set our eyes on and i think he's right i think there was obsession with going to this pilgrimage site or visiting these relics because i have some temporal needs that need fixing i want a blessing and luther's saying what really matters is your salvation right and luther is obsessed with justification by faith he's obsessed with emphasizing faith and not works he's obsessed with saying we all have access to the holy spirit as christians not just that saint who lived 500 years ago who's did great things and his bones are buried there you've accessed the holy spirit right now where you are so luther doesn't write about miracles in principle he writes against them as not necessary but he doesn't really rule them out all together but again there's a strong force to his arguments and you think about the time he's writing he's just taking a baseball bat to all these catholic practices that had been i think legit you know luther had a legitimate argument they had been utterly corrupted and were unhelpful but let's talk about luther if we talk about either the statistationist which there is there there's an argument there's also luther the charismatic that's much less known in church history let me just give you a few examples i could go longer uh but there's fascinating things to consider about luther first and we'll talk about kind of the way he's struggling with this luther believed that god still spoke to people through dreams prophecies and visions and direct revelation by the holy spirit and now i'll give you a quote this spirit of prophecy still remains within christendom yet however not to the same extent as it was with the apostles so here he's not saying that it's ceased he's saying the spirit of prophecy is still here he's writing in the 16th century but he's saying i don't think it's to the same extent it was then but it's still here it's interesting as luther actually argue he gives significant cautions and how you just discern what dreams or visions from the holy spirit which ones are just kind of like well you know you ate something bad last night and which ones are demonic right there's there's there's this is really good this is kind of like ah you just missed it this one's like this is the monk but what's interesting is because luther had such a reflexive skepticism about spiritual abuse about about lording over your spiritual power as a leader over people um and leading people astray he was so concerned about that he actually said i don't actually want to receive i know they exist i know of times where they've happened but i don't want that kind of direct revelation from the holy spirit he said i don't want to be deluded into pride i don't even and he said i don't even want to have to kind of do the wrestling to discern whether this is of god or if this is of the devil i don't i don't want to think about it so luther in some sense was a little gun shy because of the context that he was raised in and he basically again again this won't this will be familiar to you but luther is the one who really argues so strongly i have the word which is special revelation from god right breathe by the holy spirit we have the sacraments right we administer the sacraments in worship and they mean something we have power i don't need any direct revelation from god i have so much revelation to work with here right that's what luther argued he feared the extraordinary and extra biblical revelation even if it lined up with the scriptures because it's so extraordinary because it's so uh newsworthy would compete or would be preferred over right the the meat and potatoes preaching the word which is interesting right think about the didache right all the way back to the first century where the author there says don't despise your local church pastor i know you like it when the traveling prophets come they give you some remarkable words and they bring excitement but don't despise the pastor who just preaches from the scriptures i think that dynamic's there you can see it in the first you see in the 16th century and luther was still a little bit concerned what's interesting though is luther actually granted that miracles still might be necessary in some of those frontier pioneering missionary works right because that's where he saw them really necessary when the gospel's spreading in those early apostolic ages and he admits like if you're on kind of a a frontier mission that's probably when god might do that again so it's an interesting part where luther is actually conceding that it's very sort of for him intellectually and theologically plausible there are circumstances where that's really neat it's not needed it's like it's not in here in wittenberg but it might be needed if you're a missionary to the the the muslims in turkey in the ottoman empire that's an interesting point where you know luther kind of opens that door but let's go one step further because luther uh practiced things that you wouldn't think he might considering kind of his you know purportedly cessationist doctrines we know from history it's just fragmentary not a ton but luther believed in and practiced healing prayer and the laying on of hands hyatt tells one story there are actually several interesting ones from luther but i'll i'll recount it a little bit right luther had a co-laborer named frederick myconius myconius was he lived about over 100 miles from wittenberg but he was very close to luther and luther heard these on his deathbed and was he wrote him a letter and uh it's quote and high but our our record is just it's so good he writes his long letter to the end he says this which seems so on the one hand it seems so luther in his personality but not kind of what you expect from someone you think is a cessationist he said this i command thee in the name of the lord god to live because i still have need of thee and reforming in the work of reforming the church the lord will never let me hear that thou art dead but permit thee to survive for this i am praying this is my will and may my will be done because i only seek to glorify the name of god. so luther writes this letter pretty late in his life and he tells this guy yo you're going to outlive me and they're both old men now so luther's letter arrives to uh frederick michonius and what's remarkable is frederick reads this letter and he says this he says felt like it is a quote uh i think that i heard christ say to me lazarus arise see if luther writing a letter where he sort of speaks these commands not like well i hope if it's god's will you might be healed he speaks a command i command you be healed through a letter and he sort of gives this weird kind of prophetic utterance you're going to outlive me i know you're under death bed we're both old men you're actually going to live longer than me and that's exactly what happens frederic michonius recovers completely and lives on many many years after this healing that's not the only time one of luther's closest associates was philip millenthal there's a time where melancholy was very sick and luther also prayed for him for healing and he was healed and there was a great little letter late very very late like a year before luther dies and luther writes a letter to one of his pastor friends and talks to him about how to do healing prayer in the church and the way you see it done in james 5. which really makes you wonder what was sort of the the the typical sort of charismatic church practice of luther because he clearly had the expectation that we're going to pray for people and they're going to recover one more fascinating thing again i could go on there's a lot more there uh one more fascinating thing luther might be sort of characterized in kind of the way i'll say it kind of sort of gospel coalition charismatics are right they're open but cautious uh they say they're charismatic to the seat belt on and some of you may say that's me other than i say take the seatbelt off whatever whatever your view that's kind of like where luther is right he's actually practicing he has his struggles he has his concerns he has his cautions he has his caveats he has his he's like no we need to stick with the word and you know not be not be chasing charismatic fantasies but then the end i'll give you one more luther believed in and practiced exorcism right luther's famous for having his own struggles with demons and fighting devils and prayer and fasting but we may not know that wasn't just luther's kind of like private mysticism when he was reviving catholic church liturgical practices and baptismal rights and kind of their manuals for lutheran churches he was trying to scrub out superstition and false teaching from catholicism and kind of create a lutheran protestant church in germany it's interesting luther retained the right of exorcism in the lutheran church he didn't say ah that's all garbage he retained the rite of exorcism in the church and he often combined it with baptism whether it was infant badgers or adult babies he combined exorcism and it remained there and i love when luther's writing about baptism particularly infant baptism he talks about how seriousness the moment of exorcism is when baptizing an infant and this is just a stunning it's a very luther s is anyone's right a lot of luther he's he's such a such an interesting person his prose is so like punchy he just i wish you know wish you could have a chat with luther go back in time but he says this about the right of exorcism for infant baptism how serious this is how it wasn't like just some sort of some sort of like a formality he says this remember therefore that it is no joke to take sides against the devil and not only to drive him away from the little child but to burden the child with such a mighty and lifelong enemy those are words from a person who actually believes in angels and demons actually believes in spiritual warfare and i would dare say many 21st century professing charismatics don't have as supernatural worldview as allegedly cessationist martin luther you're saying he's like when you baptize and and perform this right of exercising for this young child take it seriously because you're about to do something in the supernatural and you're going to make an enemy yes you're you're speaking the word of deliverance but you're also going to make an enemy of the devil for that person for the rest of their life don't do that lightly i love um i love lutheran in general i love lutheran liturgical formulations uh probably because luther wrote some of them but uh when the priest is in baptizing infant the priest would say something like this depart thou unclean spirit and give room to the holy spirit right we don't do we don't do that in our evangelical age dedications i wish we did that's what they do when they baptize kids babies in lutheranism um and a great part when you're when you're actually baptizing adults right someone uh someone who can talk back not a baby before you confess your faith in the apostles creed in the lutheran liturgy you're asked three questions and i absolutely love these and when it's pastoral theology i'm going to like encourage everyone to adopt lutheran practices you say this you ask the person about to be baptized you're about to get in the water you're about to either sprinkle them or get in the water do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy god and you say i renounced they ask you the next question do you announce the powers of this world that rebel against god you say i renounce them and then you say do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from gods they renounce them and then they ask you to repeat the apostles creed but isn't that remarkable there is this expectation that at the moment of your baptism there's something demonic that needs to be broken out of your life luther believed in that i wish we did more one more fascinating example again much to say on june the month of june in 1546 is just four months after luther's death johannes bugenhagen i'm sure president incorrectly who was the pastor at wittenberg after lucifer's death performed an exorcism at saint mary's church and there's a fantastic historical account of this exorcism taking place in a lutheran church in luther's lutheran church by his successor and it gives us a little glimpse into the fact that it's very likely that luther practiced exorcism uh in wittenberg in his church uh this is not and and he trained people to do so we don't have a lot of evidence evidence that we it's the guy he left his church to does an exorcism right after he leaves and even if it wasn't super frequent or even if they thought the most that was handled at baptism it just gives us this glimpse into a slightly more charismatic martin luther than you may have been expecting may have been you may have received from your uh church history classes the reality is that they're they're these reformers even if they had certain cessationist theologies or sort of the momentum of their teaching or sort of luther's overreaction against some of the the real corruption of the roman catholic church kind of had a ripple effect that i think in some sense had negative consequences down the road you were to meet the man you'd be quite surprised at his uh charismatic practice and sort of the charismatic um emphases of luther hyatt talks about other more fringe you might call them radical reformation protestant groups who in many ways are much more charismatic than the typical reformed products did you think about the anabaptists who were much more open to direct revelation from the holy spirit they were very prophetic uh they believed that spiritual gifts and the holy spirit kind of was equally distributed whereas luther believed in the priesthood of all believers he still believed in having a degree of church hierarchy but some of these radical anabaptist groups kind of flattened the whole thing again kind of like the montanists kind of like the waldensians you have these groups they're often kind of more peripheral groups they often irritate the heck out of everybody you probably wouldn't like them either um they're often even if the mainstream had invited them back they think the mainstream's too far gone uh but a lot of these radical anabaptist groups were very charismatic uh and at least look retrospectively putting that that title there uh yeah lots of other problems um lots of things to commend you can look at you can look at some of hyde's examples now then he has this great chapter on the french prophets make sure you read that again remarkable things a lot of these things happening in france right a lot of french huguenots french protestants have have more interesting practices uh more remarkable accounts of things going on but i'm going to speak very finely when thinking about processes about quakers because they're an interesting group there have never been a large group but they are pretty early in the protestant era the 17th um you think about the 17th century just you know a century after the reformation and they're a group of originally english non-conformists who didn't really want to be part of the church of england uh and other places didn't want to be part of the catholic hierarchy and when you think about the quakers i'm just pulling them out to sort of one specific example of a kind of radical protestant group that had remarkable remarkably charismatic practices you can look at many others but when you think about the quakers they had a very strong commitment to the priesthood of all believers that was kind of the foundation they were protestant in every way and that in that thing and because of that they avoided and rejected all church hierarchy and professional clergy like again it's this question of human participation they believed in all believers having an equal access to the holy spirit and what that resulted in this is this is kind of fun just to think about just to imagine some of you may be familiar with this others may not be that affected their gathered worship what they did is they called them waiting worship or silent worship and they would all gather together often in a circle and they didn't have a pastor they didn't have any need of the service they would just wait in silence and wait for the holy spirit to speak directly to someone that person might sing a song that person might uh read a scripture that person might speak a prophetic word right they saw themselves restoring kind of back to this first century think you know you know first you know thing first entry corinth right that's what they imagined they were doing you could also get hints of this kind of practice in the dignity right that's the way they uh worship that's the way they gather they were um very egalitarian they hated hierarchy and they just believed that they called it the inner light right the holy spirit would speak to them on the inside and do something and speak through them and minister to the community through them quakers were committed to non-violence they were somewhat anarchists not and they believed everything should go they didn't believe in anarchies and everything falls apart they didn't believe in sort of buying into the governmental structures of the day whether the church governmental structures or the political structures which why they're often persecuted a good many of them ended up in pennsylvania in the united states set up communities there today some quakers are are pretty liberal theologically and all basically atheists are almost new ageish with the way they think but a majority of pricing quakers are actually evangelical theologically uh one great example is john wimber right uh the founder of the vineyard churches he was actually born and raised a quaker that's where he was formed theologically formed as a disciple and you could look throughout sort of quaker history but miracles signs wonders tongues prophecy all of it you're gonna find if you just take a look at the quakers but it's a protestant group that many ways took luther further than he ever went when it comes to the priesthood of all believers finally i'm going to circle around when we think about the reformation right there are still catholics in the reformation era right the catholics in many ways were saying hey we've always believed this thing it's luther who kind of rocked the boat and threw out the baby with the bath water in some sense he did some sense you obviously know he didn't but later followers of luther did but we're gonna we're gonna finish this and just just to kind of give a little shout out to the catholics who are still as you know from other lectures i've done they're still sending out missionaries jesus going all around the world during this time they're still doing amazing things hyatt talks about uh perhaps the gift of missionary tongues being given to certain jesuit missionaries early on and remarkable things happening when they go to new frontiers i'm going to end with you know to kind of cap off this this session about the process of information look at a catholic and who writes right during this era he's in the 17th century but still in this early reformation period where there's you know wars between catholics and protestants um and you know we addressed the question of what do we do with with relic miracles from the medieval period yes against yes luther railed against them and though he believed in laying on our hands and healing people um he certainly was like way against saints and relic miracles right he definitely was like let's get rid of that but let's loop that back around and let's look at a one of the most famous miracle accounts of the 17th century it comes from blaise pascal for those of you who are vaguely familiar with this famous circle figure pascal was a mathematician scientist philosopher and theologian just a remarkable renaissance person in the 1730s french and he had a deep encounter with the holy spirit through the jansenist movement this is a catholic renewal movement with a strong augustinian emphasis on grace and also this deep engagement with the holy spirit right so pascal is in some sense of jesus but he's still like a mainstream catholic significant figure in france known as a scientist but on march 24 1656 his niece marguerite had this severe eye condition a very very significant severe eye condition and she was brought to the jansenist monastery and they prayed for her but the the real kicker is this stay with me here they touched her infected eye with a piece of the crown of thorns for the alleged crown of thorns right a thorn from the crown of thorns i've actually seen it in paris it's notre dame there are many relics if you want to go go you know do your pilgrimages throughout your you can find all sorts of great relics that's a really really famous relic comes from the crusades crusader era but they touched her eye the genesis touched her eye with this alleged fragment of the crown of thorns and she was instantly healed when you have an eye condition you can't be like yeah i think like my cough's going away like you're like visibly her eye was instantly healed it happened publicly and you keep in mind right her uncle the one who orchestrated this this moment is a scientist like a leading edge scientist who's obsesses with verification who obsesses with evidence who obsesses with let's let's you know be thorough about this right so it's pascal's niece instantly healed of her eye condition this creates such a stir in such like a a a wake in france the queen sends her own queen of france sends her own physician to verify this this that that pascal's needs actually no longer had an eye condition so why do i tell that story to end this session i tell it because one i want to show the continuity that we've seen all throughout church history but let's just say continuity with the medieval period and even though we think we we are thankful for the remarkable things that happen to the reformation and even though i think we've demonstrated that luther and other reformers were not nearly as cessationist as they've been reported i want to end this lecture and again continue to provoke us to think in the 16th the 17th century now we're at a time where there's much more sort of empirical verification of things so this is an empirically verifiable verifiable healing of a famous person's niece that he verifies other doctors well known and publicized so you can't fake this one but on the other hand it's probably uh speak as a medievalist was that thorn from the crown of thorns really authentic probably not right if you're a catholic you might say well you know relics aren't you know supernatural not subject to uh natural process of decay right the crown of thorns would would have been dust by now it's possible but highly unlikely that that was a genuine relic but yet we have a genuine miracle and again i'm looping back around his idea that though we can and should be thankful for the remarkable uh doctrinal correction that luther made when it comes to justification by faith priests of all believers i do think one of the uh the bits of theological inertia that luther pushed into protestantism is that you know if there is any sort of false doctrine or misunderstanding theology then the miracle must be false right they kind of have to match up if it's false teaching the miracle certainly false there's no way you can have a real miracle if it's a bad teacher um or a real miracle with a fake relic maybe and maybe not i hope that when we have you know finished this romp through church history and think back on this reformation time you'll realize that there's an interesting sort of complex engagement that prostate reformers had with uh the charismatic things of the spirit if you will we end with that story because the reality is is though we want to be people of the word though we want to discern spirits we want to test spirits so we don't want to be gullible and naive and luther certainly was not that when we think about pascal's remarkable miracle that happened to his niece the reality is that the wind blows where he wishes and we can't control how the spirit works where the spirit works and with whom the spirit works and i think that's a good thing let's pray lord i thank you that you are living and active among whom and by whatever means you please we thank you for your work in and through the project reformation between martin luther and john calvin we thank you for your work in and among the quakers a much more sort of smaller fringe group where we thank you for your work among the catholics during this time reformation time lord we ask that you would move in and through us even if it doesn't fit in all of our theological boxes even if it's not what we're expecting lord i pray that you would make us open to the work of the holy spirit and i pray that you would fill us with supernatural power or that we wouldn't just have a right belief about the doctrine of the holy spirit and check off certain boxes or by pray that we would be filled with supernatural power and expectation lord we'd see the world as you see it jesus name amen [Music]