Ep. 50 - Reformation Day? Dr. Martin Luther Will Have It So!
Happy Halloween, Reformation Day, and Trigger A College Student In 2017 Day! We’ll discuss why lefties are so angry about Moana. Then, the top 10 myths about Martin Luther. Finally, Allie Stuckey, Kira Davis, and Jacob Airey join the Panel of Deplorables as Donald Trump Jr. trolls Hillary, British socialized medicine bans fat people from getting surgery, and the Podesta Group considers dropping the name Podesta because then they won’t be criminals who colluded with Russia or something.
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We will discuss why lefties are so angry about Moana and then top 10 myths about Martin Luther.
Then Donald Trump Jr.
trolls Hillary.
British socialized medicine bans fat people from getting surgery.
And the Podesta group might drop the name Podesta because then they won't be criminals who colluded with Russia or something.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
I got to tell you, I am so embarrassed.
I should make a preemptive apology.
But by the time I had bought my 8-year-old Moana costume at Party City, it was only after that that I read the Cosmo article that Moana's racist.
It's racist to wear the Disney princess costume.
So I'm really sorry.
It's just, I guess, a preemptive apology.
Obviously, it was too late to get a new costume.
So here I'd already had to slit open the back.
So really, my sincere apologies.
Mea culpa, mea culpa.
According to Cosmo, according to Cosmo and bulletin boards at elementary schools and colleges across the country, but I repeat myself, it is racist for white people to wear Moana costumes.
Now, luckily, I am a bit swarthy, so I might get away with it.
That is possibly the saving grace is my Sicilian background.
But Faith Moore, the daughter of the Lord of the Multiverse, Andrew Clavin, has a good piece at PJ explaining how the left completely misunderstands what Disney princesses are.
So they say if you are not Arabic, then you can't be Jasmine or something.
If you're not Middle Eastern, you can't be Jasmine.
If you're not Hawaiian or Polynesian, then you can't dress up as Moana.
And the premise there is that the essential aspect of these Disney princesses is the color of their skin, when obviously that is not the case.
The essence of Cinderella, the heart of the Cinderella story, is not that she's a white girl.
The heart of Rapunzel is not that she's a white girl.
Wait, what?
Excuse me?
I know, this is pretty shocking.
Even Beauty and the Beast, even Beauty and the Beast, the heart of it is not that Belle is a white girl.
Honestly, even Snow White, which is one that's right in the name, is white, you know?
It's a German fairy tale.
But even that isn't about the race, right?
It's about that she's the fairest one of them all.
It's a fairy tale and it's a metaphor.
Are you being prophetic right now about Snow White becoming racist?
Yeah.
Well, it is, you know, it's obviously a metaphor about her spiritual fairness and her inner beauty and her inner fairness compared to that wicked old stepmother.
So I think the left as usual misses the point, but they're pouncing on censoring Halloween costumes for a reason.
Let's not forget that that craziness at Yale with the student, Gerilyn Luther, screaming at her professor saying, this is not an intellectual space.
It's about creating a home.
That was over a Halloween costume.
That was over an email that that professor's wife had sent out saying that ostensibly 18 to 22-year-olds at one of the elite universities in the world can dress themselves.
They don't need teachers to hold their hands and lay out their costumes for them.
And the reason the left pounces on this It's because if you scratch a lefty deep enough, you'll get a totalitarian.
They love censorship because at this moment, the leftist view of the world is an unrational one.
It's an unobjective one.
It borders into relativism, and it's one in which different competing groups with competing interests have to yell at each other, and whoever's loudest wins.
It's not one where we can follow logic through a dialogue to arrive at a A logical conclusion.
This is where Shapiro gets the phrase, facts don't care about your feelings, right?
It isn't just people who have no recourse to reason and no recourse to logic screaming and bashing each over the head.
Now, they try to ban the speakers at college campuses.
They try to ban Ben or Charles Murray or Christina Hoff Summers.
And they catch a little flack for that because they're shutting down a reasonable lecture.
But because Halloween costumes are not inherently They're not really about ideas per se.
They try to ban them to flex their censorship muscles, and that impulse becomes unrestrained.
So, you know, I probably should have thought this through, because the rest of the show deals with serious matters, you know, like the Protestant Revolution and Martin Luther and everything that's in the news, but I can't change out of my Moana costume.
So enough about Moana.
It is Halloween, but it's also Reformation Day in full Moana attire.
I will turn the potpourri up to 11 and delve into the top 10 myths about Martin Luther.
Number one, Martin Luther did not set off a reformation.
He set off a revolution.
This is just a matter of definition.
Rather than reforming his own ecclesiastical institution, he didn't do that.
He didn't change the Catholic Church.
Martin Luther's actions led to the breakaway of countless churches throughout Europe and the world.
G.K. Chesterton described him as one of those great elemental barbarians to whom it is indeed given to change the world.
And the excellent historian Jacques Borsen credits the Protestant Revolution.
With initiating modernity, which he describes brilliantly in his book, From Dawn to Decadence.
Highly recommended.
Number two, Martin Luther most likely never posted his 95 Theses to the door of the All Saints Church in Wittenberg.
You know that famous line, I got 99 problems, but the Pope ain't one, bang, bang, bang?
Probably didn't happen.
He certainly sent them to Albert of Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Maines, but there's no evidence that he ever nailed the Theses to the door.
He never wrote about it.
He never wrote about posting the Theses.
And claims to the effect that he did didn't appear until 30 years after the alleged event.
Number three.
This is the big one.
This one's going to take a little while because people really misunderstand this one.
Luther did not cause the Church, the Catholic Church, to end a long-standing practice of selling eternal life through indulgences.
That's just a lie.
It is stunning how little people understand about a concept that is so central to the Protestant Revolution and to the modern era as indulgences.
Let's establish a definition.
An indulgence is, quote, "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain defined conditions through the church's help when, as a minister of redemption, she dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfaction won by Christ and the saints." If that was too many words for you, the sins have already been forgiven.
And the indulgence that one gets at rare times in history by donating to charities or giving alms, that indulgence is for the temporal relief.
It's for the relief of penance.
It's not for popping out of purgatory a thousand years early, and it's not for going from hell to heaven.
Now, it's true that there were some corrupt professional pardoners who extorted money in exchange for bogus promises.
There were forgers who sold fake indulgences.
But none of this had any agreement with church doctrine.
In fact, as early as 1215, centuries before Martin Luther, In 1392, more than a century before the 95 Theses, Pope Boniface IX wrote to the Bishop of Ferrara to condemn members of religious orders who were fraudulently claiming that the Pope had authorized them to sell the forgiveness of sins to ignorant and hopeful faithful.
Now, because indulgences strictly refer to temporal penance, the Rouen Cathedral has been nicknamed the Butter Tower, this cathedral in France, the Butter Tower, because some of its funding came from the sale of indulgences that allowed the faithful to eat butter during the penitential period of Lent, when theoretically they should have been abstaining, you know, they shouldn't have very flavorful food, it's a time to kind of do some penance and think about the sinful nature of man and of this world.
Even this sale is misleading because no one could ever buy indulgences outright.
Rather, they had to give alms to some charity.
Of course, it's easy to see how abuses would creep in in that case, but it wasn't like you write a check and you get a receipt and that's it.
There was always at least the veneer of donating to some charity.
Now, even if there's a difference between selling a 40-day butter-eating pass and purporting to sell eternal life, Pope Pius V at the Council of Trent forbade all grants of indulgences involving any fees or other financial transactions to severely address any abuses.
This was a couple decades, three or four decades after Martin Luther, very shortly thereafter.
Martin Luther, this is number four, Martin Luther was not terribly pluralistic.
He led to this breakaway of the church and all these various sects and denominations.
He himself was not terribly pluralistic as some might think.
It is true, he did say, quote, Let the Turk believe and live as he will, just as one lets the papacy and other false Christians live.
That's fairly tolerant.
He also said, As the Pope is Antichrist, so the Turk is the very devil.
Of the Jews, and I'm quoting one sentence out of a long sentence, He said, quote, Not very tolerant.
Number five, Martin Luther did not unchain the Bible so that the common man could read it.
There is a myth that before the Protestant Revolution, Bibles were put under lock and chain.
Literally, they were locked up so that common men could not read them.
Now, they were frequently attached to a chain.
As were all large books at the time so that people couldn't steal them because books were very expensive.
But Bibles were available everywhere in whole book form, prayer books, stained glass windows, and artwork.
Scripture was everywhere.
Number six.
This leads directly into number six.
Martin Luther was not the first to translate the Bible into a common language.
This is obviously true because St.
Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, then the common language, in the fourth century.
When Luther began his work, when he began his Bible translation, there were already 18 German translations of the entire Bible going around.
7.
Martin Luther was not a populist.
We have this idea, this common perception of him as a man of the people, retrieving Christianity back from oppressive elites, but Luther had fairly harsh words for German peasants.
One need only consult his book...
This is the title, Against the Murderous Thieving Hordes of Peasants, and his subsequent defense of that book, open letter on the harsh book against the peasants, and we can understand Luther's guilt and confusion at having inspired the peasant war by his theological proclamations.
This brings us to number eight.
A difference, I suppose, between Luther and the Lutherans, between Luther and people who followed in his tradition, Martin Luther believed in the literal presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
He wrote, quote,"...who but the devil has granted such a license of resting the words of the Holy Scripture?
Who ever read in the Scriptures that my body is the same as the sign of my body, or that it is the same as it signifies?
What language in the world ever spoke so?
It is only then the devil that imposes upon us by these fanatical men.
Not one of the fathers of the church, though so numerous, ever spoke of the sacramentarians.
Not one of them ever said, it is only bread and wine, or the body and blood of Christ is not there present.
He fully believed that the Eucharist is the body of Christ, not that it's a symbol of the body of Christ or it's some remnant that we have of the body of Christ.
Number nine, Martin Luther added a word to the Bible.
This is also little known, but while prior and virtually all subsequently revised versions of the Bible translate Romans 3.28 to read, quote, For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law, Luther translated that passage as, quote, So now we hold that man is justified without the help of the works of the law alone through faith.
That addition of alone is theologically important.
The implications of this creativity would become very important as the Protestant Revolution progressed into our modern era, but quite creative.
A little addition there.
And number ten.
Martin Luther obviously didn't like the Pope very much.
He did not like that authority.
But he did defer to at least one theological authority outside of the Bible on at least one occasion.
And that man's name was Martin Luther.
Luther addressed Catholic criticisms of his translation in his open letter on translating.
He said, quote, Please do not give these donkeys any other answer to their useless braying about that word sola only than simply this.
Luther will have it so, and he says that he is a doctor above all the doctors of the Pope.
Let it rest there.
I will from now on hold them in contempt, and have already held them in contempt, as long as they are the kind of people, or rather donkeys, that they are.
And there are brazen idiots among them who have never That is obviously an interpretation of judge not lest you be judged.
Okay, I have brayed enough on the topic of Reformation Day.
Let's bring on our panel to discuss the news.
We have an excellent expert panel today.
We have Ali Stuckey, we have Daily Wire's own Jacob Berry, and for the first time on the panel of Deplorables, my pal, Kira Davis.
Now, I know, look, I know that you want to listen to them.
I know you want to see them, especially Kira.
You've never heard from Kira on this show.
I've got to tell you something, guys.
This is Halloween.
In order to keep me in Moana costumes, these things are very expensive, by the way, even though you have ripped them up to make them fit onto a grown man.
You've got to go to dailywire.com.
We have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube right now.
If you go to dailywire.com right now and you're already a subscriber, you watch the rest of the show, thanks for subscribing, keeping the lights on in this place, keeping me in these kind of cheap costumes and employed, at least for another day.
If you're not, then go over there.
It's $10 a month, $100 a year.
You get me.
You get the Andrew Klavan Show.
You get the Ben Shapiro Show, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But you get this.
You get...
I gotta tell you guys.
They were sold out of Moana costumes at one of the stores I went to.
There are going to be leftist tears flowing from the heavens.
It is going to be Noah's Ark Part 2, speaking of Reformation Day and new advances into Christianity.
So make sure that you go to dailywire.com.
Get this leftist tears tumbler, the finest vessel for salty, hot or cold leftist tears in the world.
Subscribe on YouTube.
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We'll be right back.
All right panel, I feel like we have just beaten Moana and poor Martin Luther to death here.
So I want to get into the really important news that obviously is changing our country.
Donald Trump Jr.'s tweet and Hillary Clinton's stupid comments.
Asked on Monday what she would dress as for Halloween, Hillary Clinton responded, I think I will maybe come as the president.
So Donald Trump Jr.
responded and he said, that's cute.
She can borrow my Donald Trump mask.
Jacob, which is scarier?
Rather, which is the scariest?
Is the Hillary Clinton as president costume the most frightening costume that has ever been posted for Halloween?
Oh yeah, most definitely.
I saw someone posted a comic strip, I believe it was Michael Ramirez, I could be wrong, but it was a girl dressed as Hillary and she wouldn't leave the house that she got the candy from.
And the people passing out the candy were like, oh that's a nice touch.
Yeah, it's especially scary.
It's like Hillary Clinton won't go away, and now we have to endure all these masks of her and all these blue dresses that she used to wore, her famous pantsuits, which, by the way, were around long before Hillary Clinton ever wore them.
Well, fair enough.
I also, this is apropos of nothing, I recently learned Winston Churchill invented the male romper, the romp him.
That's just a little tie-in with the Hillary Clinton suits.
Kira...
If Hillary Clinton went as Donald Trump for Halloween, would that be culturally appropriative of cantaloupe-colored Americans?
No, I mean, I think they're both privileged white people.
I think, as you pointed out earlier in your commentary on the Moana costume, it's really important that we stick to our own race.
When we're doing costumes, you should never want to be like someone else.
You should never want to elevate someone of another race or gender as someone you aspire to be.
You've got to keep them in their place.
You don't want to do that.
You've got to keep those people in their place.
So your options for Halloween costumes are very limited.
And I think Hillary and Donald, I mean, they're very compatible looks-wise.
They both ran for president.
They're both rich.
So they have a lot in common.
I think it's fine for her to go as Donald Trump.
I think it's really cute.
We all like to pretend.
We all like to dream and fantasize.
And she's still fantasizing about being the president.
That's fair.
She's staying in her lane.
And, you know, Trump was a Democrat for many years, so she's staying in her lane.
This is so much in common.
They both like chicks.
Brutal.
Brutal, but possibly true.
I'll edit that out.
It's okay.
Ellie.
Allie, people keep describing Donald Trump as unpresidential.
Meanwhile, a losing presidential candidate is parading around the country, stoking conspiracy theories, blaming everyone else on earth for her loss, and questioning the results of an American election.
Who is really being unpresidential here?
Well, first I want to say that Donald Trump Jr.
absolutely wins the troll of the year.
I mean, his trolling is like right up there with Michael J. Knowles, which means it's really, really good.
Y'all can get together and like teach a trolling 101 class.
But honestly, Hillary Clinton makes it pretty easy.
She keeps on walking into these cringeworthy situations.
I mean, for crying out loud, she, which I am not the person who made this joke.
I've seen this several times, but she wrote the first book with the question and answer on the cover.
What happened Hillary Clinton?
She keeps on walking into these situations in which people can so obviously point out both her incompetency.
Is that a word?
I think it is.
But that's not what I was going to say.
And just her complete lack of self-awareness about both who she is now and I guess, I don't know, who she believes people see her as.
I think she has a very inflated view of her own popularity.
No, she seems pretty humble to me.
Speaking of Hillary's cultural appropriation and her inflated view of herself and lack of common touch, this was up until about three weeks ago.
You can still find it on the Wayback Machine.
On HillaryClinton.com, on her campaign website, there was an article titled, Seven Ways Hillary Clinton is Just Like Your Abuela.
And it used these various Spanish words.
Like it said, Hillary Clinton and your abuela both understand the importance of el respeto.
And they keep going with these little el fontan de respeto or whatever the heck.
And this was up for almost a year after her election was.
The cultural appropriation eventually got us before the 2017 Halloween season.
But truly, truly out of touch.
Yeah.
A local health committee in the United Kingdom's socialized medicine regime has just announced that for an indefinite amount of time it will ban access to routine or nonurgent surgery for the obese and for smokers.
Jacob, isn't universal health care just great?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's wonderful.
But my question is, how are they going to make this happen?
Because there are some people who have legitimate health reasons, and that's why they're overweight.
So are they just not going to give surgeries to you just period if you go over a certain weight?
That doesn't make any sense to me.
I think it's And the smoking, too, Jacob.
I mean, sometimes I get a little tired after a day of work.
Physically, I get a little tired, so I need to have a little nicotine and a nice Cuban cigar to relax.
That's just medicine, man.
That's science.
Exactly.
And what next is the British universal health care system is going to say, hey, you have a risk.
That's a pre-existing condition.
We're not going to give you a...
Your hand surgery because you have a wrist.
I mean, this is the logic as far out as it can play out.
And I think it's just despicable, especially when you have people like Bernie Sanders saying, we need a universal healthcare system like Canada and England.
I mean, it's just the most ridiculous thing.
And that's why a good old fashioned American private healthcare system is what we need.
I did not expect that Jewish New York accent from that man, Jacob Berry.
Well done, sir.
You bring up this great point of the pre-existing condition.
We're now seeing, in a socialized medicine regime, the reintroduction of pre-existing condition clauses like obesity to keep the costs down because the costs start soaring.
Kira, in a socialized healthcare regime, is it necessary to ration care like this?
If taxpayers are funding someone else's surgery, don't they deserve a say in how that person can live their lives?
Well, I have an interesting perspective on this because I'm actually Canadian.
And I was born and raised in Canada.
I moved to the U.S. as soon as I finished high school because I like America better.
Freedom.
These colors don't.
Welcome.
But I did grow up under socialized healthcare and I was a victim of rationing and I know many people who have been and are.
It is a real thing that happens.
What happens is when you give the government control over your healthcare, you give them control over every decision.
Everything you do can be under the government purview.
It's really like a free ticket to fascism.
I mean, if they decide, yes, that sugar is bad for you, then they can start saying, look, we either have to ban sugar or we have to ban people from eating sugar or ban people from getting surgeries if they've eaten sugar because this is their justification for everything.
Everything is bad.
Well, we're all paying for this and it's not fair.
And so you're right, Michael, you hit the nail on the head.
Like what ends up happening is the pre-existing condition ends up coming back because the government says, oh, well, now that we're paying for it, you know, we can't afford for you to take liberties with the things you eat and drink and even things like the places you go and how much outdoor time you get, how much time you spend on the couch, like all of those things begin to come into play when you give the government that much power over your life.
So I can tell you as someone who has been turned away from a hospital with pneumonia, hey, we have no beds.
You can probably get better at home.
You know that this is the end game of socialized medicine.
It's inevitable.
And I'll tell you, my mom still lives in Canada.
She's a senior citizen now.
And she is very low on that list of priorities.
The government does have an equation that they use to pass out funds.
And treatment.
And she's on the low end of that equation.
So there are times when they say, look, we've measured out how much we think you have of your life left versus what a younger person has.
We don't know if this treatment is best for you.
We'll go with the cheaper, like Obama said, we'll give you the pill.
And she comes here to the US and I'll be like, I don't feel good.
I'm going to call the doctor.
And I get in that day and she's just blown away.
That I can get into the doctor.
And my thing is, this is what you get when you pay for it.
That's right.
And they've got that equation.
They know what her health is worth.
They know what her life is worth.
Don't worry.
Those technocrats, they figured it all out.
There's the algorithm.
And oops, sorry, we can't give you any medicine whatsoever.
A government big enough to give you anything you want.
Is big enough to take everything you have, a wise man once said.
Allie, are we inevitably heading down this path towards socialized medicine?
Do people now expect health care is right in the United States?
Are we headed there whether we want it or not?
Well, if Republicans could just have a majority in Congress and take the White House, then maybe we would get something done with healthcare.
Oh, wait!
They have both of those things that we're still not getting done.
So unfortunately, I don't really have a very rosy view of what we can do with healthcare because our Republicans have thus far failed us.
But if they can get their act together, then there is certainly hope for it actually being repealed and replaced, and maybe we're on the way to that.
But then the New York Times might say mean things about John McCain, so I don't think we're going to be able to grab that vote.
They might be mean to him.
The New York Times loves conservatives so much.
They really matter.
Their opinions are really credible, right?
Yes.
Okay, so we all agree that socialized medicine is stupid, that it doesn't really work, that you're giving everyone care as a formality, but the quality of care actually goes down, so it's not compassionate at all.
We hear the rhetoric all the time.
But, Michael, I really want to talk to you about the Reformation.
Alright, we have a little extra time.
Bring it on.
I was thinking about bringing his eminence Paul Bois on the panel today, but I figured since the first entire half of the show was all potpourri, potpourri up to 11, I'd make it a fully Protestant panel for the second half.
Yes.
Lay it on me.
Yes, okay.
So here's what I have to say, because some of those myths are absolutely correct.
It is true that he probably never nailed the 95 theses up on the door.
In fact, he had no intention whatsoever of revolutionizing the church or even reforming the church.
The letter that he actually wrote to the Archbishop that you mentioned He almost sounded like a sycophant.
I mean, he was sucking up to him so much.
He was this very, kind of in the beginning, this very humble guy who just said, hey, just FYI, there are priests and there are people around these indulgences, and they think that these indulgences count for salvation.
We probably should fix that.
So it wasn't so much that he was accusing the church leaders necessarily of directly saying that, hey, these indulgences are tied to your salvation, but that they were allowing people to believe that.
He felt like, either intentionally or unintentionally, they were leveraging the guilt of the people to believe that these indulgences in some way paid for their sin.
And that was the problem that he presented, which is why he presented the 95 Theses, Of course, we also know that Martin Luther wasn't this perfect guy.
You read some of his quotes that were also an accurate description of him.
But of course, we can't use his character to necessarily invalidate his entire theology.
I think the best thing that Martin Luther, and probably the biggest thing I disagreed with you on, but the best thing that Martin Luther presented were the five solas.
Of course, the biggest one being by faith alone.
And that was his greatest contention with the Catholic Church and also his greatest accomplishment in breaking away from the Catholic Church because, in his belief, they had been contaminated so much in the 16th century into believing, just as the Pharisees did, that somehow your salvation was also earned by works or also were earned through sacraments.
And he said that's actually antithetical to what the gospel preaches.
If that was the case, If it was faith and something else, if it was by grace through faith and money, by grace through faith and works, then Jesus would not have had to die.
He wouldn't have had to die.
He would have just come and said, hey, Peter, on this rock I build my church, okay, great, I'm heading up now.
He would not have had to die a gruesome death and be resurrected.
And so what Martin Luther said, even though, yes, he was not the first one to translate scripture for all the common people, he reminded people, you do not need a priest, you do not need sacraments to go to the throne of God confidently.
That is exactly why Jesus died, because Jesus is your intercessor.
No one else, no man in a robe, No one else.
And I'm not even saying that Catholics, especially Catholics today, believe that.
But that's what Martin Luther was standing up for.
And now, of course, he's dragged through the mud for dividing the church and causing this chasm, which he absolutely did, but it was for the sake of salvation.
Because intentionally or unintentionally, people were being led to believe There is, I will grant, he did change over time.
But he did change over time.
So earlier on, he was a little bit better, more of a reformer than later on.
All of the anti-Semitic comments came later in his life.
They didn't come earlier in his life.
However, let's not forget that he did add that first sola, that only faith from Romans.
He added that.
And in subsequent translations...
But that is not the only place where the Bible talks about by faith alone.
And in fact, if you just want to look at the gospel in general, the fact that Jesus had to die...
Of course.
Of course.
That would not have had to happen if it was faith and something else.
Of course not.
He could have just said, hey, Ali, be a little bit holier, act a little bit better.
If that was the case, he would have been totally fine with the Pharisees because the Pharisees were the holiest of them all.
But obviously it wasn't about works.
It was about faith.
Of course.
But I think it's a straw man.
I don't see anywhere in church teaching where the Catholic Church has ever taught that through works you will earn your salvation.
The church explicitly called that a heresy.
That's the heresy of Pelagius in the 4th or 5th century.
And we do know, I am certain, of course, Christ's sacrifice was perfect.
But let's not forget that Christ says to Peter, Peter, you're a rock.
On this rock I'll build my church.
Here are the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.
He also said, there will be many who come to me and say, Lord, Lord, who will not see the kingdom of heaven.
And, of course, James says, faith without works is dead.
Absolutely.
And that's actually exactly what Martin Luther came to preach about.
That there will be many who say, Lord, Lord, who actually will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Because what Martin Luther did is he said, this is not about your external proof of whether you are saved or not.
This is about your heart.
And I'm not saying the entirety of the Catholic faith preaches otherwise, but he felt where he was that that was the trend that was going on.
At least the people in the Catholic Church were starting to focus too much on the outer works and not enough on true repentance in their heart.
And that's exactly what Martin Luther came to refocus the church on, was focusing on the heart transformation that grace through faith actually accomplishes.
Because you're right, faith without works is dead, but works without faith is nothing.
Sure, but when has the Catholic Church ever taught otherwise?
When has the Catholic Church ever taught that you'll earn your way to heaven through works?
I don't deny that there were corrupt professional partners.
Obviously, many popes condemned them explicitly.
But if Martin Luther's problem was with some local bishops and some local priests selling heaven or trying to sell heaven to ignorant people, then that's a political conversation.
That's not a theological refutation.
Ali just said that.
The issue is...
The issue is, instead of saying, oh, okay, Martin Luther, we'll look this over, we'll talk about this, he was persecuted for coming to his archbishop and saying these things.
He was brought and told to say mea copa before him.
And instead of doing that, he stood his ground.
And of course, like as you said, years later, he seemed to become a little bit embittered.
But let's not forget...
That's an understatement, sure.
Yeah, well, as I'm saying, you know, it was because Catholic mobs attacked his followers and burned them at the stake and stoned them.
Well, if anybody was a proponent of burning at the stake, I think we would all agree that Martin Luther was a proponent of it.
Well, sure, and I'm not going to defend Martin Luther in his entirety.
After all...
If there was one thing Catholics and Protestants were united in, it was the persecution of the early evangelicals.
Of course, they weren't called that back then, but that's exactly what Ali has said.
It's more about by faith alone and standing up to the corruption of his day.
You know, I will bring up this point, though, because I am sympathetic to a lot of these Protestant arguments, and I do like a lot of Protestant theologians.
And apologists.
But there is this one sticking point, because the question here, especially with Luther, is, is the Church the Church?
Is the Pope in the Petrine line, in the line of Peter?
And did Christ institute A real church on earth with a real clergy and real buildings and real windows and real places?
Or is it strictly an ethereal sort of thing that floats about and does not have real clergy and real windows and things like that?
And it just seems to me that in a religion which is based on a fact, It's not based on a philosophy.
It's based on a fact.
The incarnation of the divine logos into a particular person through a particular mother at a particular place in a particular time where he performed particular miracles in space and time on real people and then literally was killed by someone named Pontius Pilate And then was literally resurrected, stayed around for six weeks, and then ascended into heaven.
That it makes sense to me that that guy would have picked twelve real people to be the apostles, and when he said, I establish a church, would have established a real institution on earth.
it's hard for me to get beyond that and to think that really there's all fact, a unity of the symbol and the symbolized, of the logos and the creator and the creation.
But then it just becomes ethereal after that.
I will give...
We're going to get to the Podesta group.
That's way less interesting than this.
And it is Reformation Day.
So I will give my Protestant panel the last word around the horn.
Kira, any thoughts?
Yeah, I mean...
I'm a former atheist.
I was raised by atheists, and I made a decision to follow Christ, you know, in my teenage years.
So all of these arguments about, to me, Reformation Day is nothing more than a historical discussion, and it has been just because of how I came to faith.
All I can say is I'm listening to you guys talk, and I find it fascinating as someone who loves history, And theology, I'm a huge theology nut.
I read everything I can get my hands on.
But at the end of the day, for me, everything you're talking about, none of it is a salvation issue.
And I don't mean to...
You know, condescend or say that these issues aren't important and they're not important to you, Michael, as a Catholic or to you, Allison, as a Protestant.
I mean, I guess they're important to us all.
And it is important to be able to understand the nature of God and what he did.
But I also think at the end of the day, I really, truly do believe.
I mean, I pursue a relationship with God because before him, I was empty and before him, I was lost and before him, I was headed to a life that I don't know if I'd still be living this day.
So for me, My only motivation ever is to be closer to Christ and to learn how to live.
I believe that this is the life we have been given.
We're not waiting for heaven.
That'll come, but we shouldn't be waiting for heaven.
We should be working on You know, our relationships with each other and our relationship to God's kingdom here on earth.
So for me, I mean, I'm listening to these things and I'm like, I mean, it's interesting.
How many angels?
Yeah, I guess I don't care that much.
I mean, for me, it's just a salvation.
It's all about the Jesus.
Of course, Michael, you do a really great job of making the Catholic Church seem absolutely perfect.
Come on, get out of here.
Stop it.
I'm just trying to work out my treasure in heaven.
Allie.
Any final thoughts?
I have too much to say and it's a lot more divisive than that.
Although that was very beautiful and I agree that it is all of these things, I believe at least, are not central to the conversation about the gospel.
I believe that if you believe in by grace through faith alone, that Jesus alone is what grants you salvation and reconciles you to God, then all of this other stuff is it's supplemental, it's secondary, It doesn't actually matter towards one of our salvation.
I do think it's important and it's also very, it's fascinating.
I mean, you mentioned whether the church is a real physical church or whether it's some ethereal thing.
I think that's actually kind of a false dichotomy.
I don't think it's either the Catholic Church and some ethereal random thing that Protestants believe in that we don't know how to tie into.
We believe that it's the body of Christ, that if it's by grace through faith, whether you're part of the Catholic Church or whether you're on a plane in Africa, but you believe that Jesus alone is true for salvation, then you are part of the body of Christ.
And to say that the church only exists within the walls of Catholicism is a very small mind view, in my view, of what Christianity and what the body of Christ truly is, which is this living, being, dynamic thing that is predicated on one's faith in Christ.
And not sacraments, not being a part of the Catholic church, nothing like that, because in my view, that just adds something to the gospel.
It is by grace through faith.
And if all of us believe that, whether you are Lutheran, whether you're a Calvinist, whether you are, whether you're a Catholic, then that's really the only thing that matters.
Well, the question, of course, is...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, the question is, did Christ institute that church?
Did he institute those sacraments?
Did he say, you have the power to forgive sins?
Did he say, break this bread and eat it in memory of me?
I think it's a disagreement that I think that Protestants and Catholics have, and I do believe that there is probably a misunderstanding among Protestants of what the sacraments are for.
It's been explained to me by someone who is devoutly Catholic, and he explained it very well, because at one point I was under the impression that sacraments were actually necessary for salvation.
He explained that they're not necessary for salvation, and he pointed to the points of Scripture in which he believes that they were actually derived from.
So I But it is all about the Jesus.
That's what's necessary for salvation is the Jesus.
All the other stuff, maybe it's instituted by Christ, but it all follows from that.
That's absolutely right.
All right, Jacob, we've just heard excellent points from Allie and Kira.
How are you going to end this discussion on a low note?
Are you going to hell or heaven, Jacob?
Tell us now.
I'm going to heaven.
I'm sure everybody here is in the body of Christ, but Jacob, I mean, come on, man.
I don't know.
My whole thing is I think this is actually really good for Catholics, Protestants, and evangelicals to talk about these things because I agree with Allie.
In the end, And as you also reiterated, Michael and Kira, it's also about Christ and Jesus.
And I think, like for instance, the church I went to seminary in, they always invite Catholic leaders and vicars and priests to teach.
And they don't issue a letter of correction after they preach.
They just let them come and they let them preach.
And I think that if we saw more...
Unity like that in the body of Christ, whether, again, like you're Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, all this stuff, all these wounds happened over 500 years ago, maybe some of them sooner, but we need to come together as one body, one faith, and work together.
So I think these conversations that we're having, we should have them because I think it represents a good coming together to talk about our differences as Peter and Paul did in the Bible.
Absolutely right.
But the Pope is the Antichrist.
And that.
And that.
We also forget.
We have to have that point at the end.
Well, to quote Martin Luther, it is because Keira Davis says so.
That is why I believe that.
Excellent discussion.
Thank you all for being here.
An excellent reform of the Reformation Day topic earlier in the show.
We have Allie Stuckey.
We have Jacob Berry.
For the first time on the show, Kira Davis.
Thanks for being here.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
I'm going to now change out of my Moana costume so that I don't go trick-or-treating and traumatize everyone in Hollywood who hasn't already been traumatized.
