WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.680 Mahler. 00:00:41.680 --> 00:00:43.920 And I'm still woe. 00:00:44.320 --> 00:00:48.800 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing the Magdeburg Confession. 00:00:48.800 --> 00:00:53.360 This is a document that was written in fifteen fifty during a 00:00:53.360 --> 00:00:58.720 conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and a Lutheran city state, basically 00:00:58.800 --> 00:01:00.640 just a city, wasn't even a city-state. 00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:04.000 The reason that we are visiting a five century old document document 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:09.280 is because there is some applicability to the arguments that were made 00:01:09.600 --> 00:01:13.200 to our lives today, to current political conflicts. 00:01:13.200 --> 00:01:17.040 It's something that comes up periodically, the government's doing something bad, what 00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:17.920 do we do? 00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:21.920 And And so before we get into the meat of the Magdagberg 00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:25.600 confession, which was the beginning of what you've probably are familiar with, 00:01:25.600 --> 00:01:30.720 the lesser magistrate doctrine, that is something that basically originated at this 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:34.000 point and then was evolved over the next few decades into what 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:37.200 became known as the lesser magistrate doctrine. 00:01:37.200 --> 00:01:40.240 Before we get into it, I want to make sure that people 00:01:40.240 --> 00:01:43.200 don't get the wrong impression of us Of us going back and 00:01:43.200 --> 00:01:47.280 talking about an old document, you might notice that it's actually pretty 00:01:47.280 --> 00:01:50.800 rare that Stone Choir episodes do something like this. 00:01:50.800 --> 00:01:53.440 We don't do a lot of history, we don't do a lot 00:01:53.440 --> 00:01:58.240 of rehashing of old arguments, and it's not that we're novelty seeking. 00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:01.600 For one, you can generally find good coverage of good basic stuff 00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:02.480 other places. 00:02:02.480 --> 00:02:05.840 Yeah, we did the baptism and communion episodes because a bunch of 00:02:05.840 --> 00:02:06.880 people asked for it. 00:02:06.880 --> 00:02:10.000 We want you to be Lutheran, but this podcast doesn't exist to 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:11.760 bully anyone to being Lutheran. 00:02:11.760 --> 00:02:14.560 People ask why are you guys different with the sacraments? 00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:17.360 So we gave the Lutheran case and we think the scriptural case 00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:18.320 for those things. 00:02:18.320 --> 00:02:21.360 But for the most part we don't touch on things that are 00:02:21.360 --> 00:02:22.800 pretty well settled. 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:27.840 Also, it's really important to me not to perpetuate the notion that 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:31.200 exists in so many minds today that I can only think or 00:02:31.200 --> 00:02:34.480 believe something if a bunch of old guys agreed. 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:41.680 So so often I see throughout the religious discourse, guys find some 00:02:41.680 --> 00:02:45.920 old book, they find some old author, and they see some argument 00:02:45.920 --> 00:02:48.720 from him they like and get really excited and say, Hey, this 00:02:48.720 --> 00:02:49.360 is great. 00:02:49.360 --> 00:02:52.080 I now have permission to think this thing that I already thought 00:02:52.240 --> 00:02:54.080 because this dead guy said so. 00:02:54.080 --> 00:02:55.280 I hate that. 00:02:55.280 --> 00:02:57.120 I absolutely loathe it. 00:02:57.120 --> 00:02:59.920 It is an excuse for people to be lazy. 00:02:59.920 --> 00:03:04.080 The reason that we are talking about the Magderberg Confession today is 00:03:04.080 --> 00:03:06.880 to point to the argument that they make and the framework that 00:03:06.880 --> 00:03:10.960 they lay out for establishing or evaluating whether or not a government 00:03:10.960 --> 00:03:14.240 is a good and godly government and when it's not, how do 00:03:14.720 --> 00:03:16.400 we handle that situation? 00:03:16.400 --> 00:03:20.080 Because that's very much a live issue in any century, in any 00:03:20.080 --> 00:03:23.280 place, in any political context, it's always a live issue. 00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:24.800 This government's doing something bad. 00:03:24.800 --> 00:03:27.120 What do we as Christians do when we have a duty to 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:30.320 God? But we're not pointing to it because a bunch of dead 00:03:30.320 --> 00:03:32.640 guys said it, so that makes it okay for us to think 00:03:32.640 --> 00:03:34.800 it. That's absolutely not the case. 00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:37.600 One of the reasons that so many of the arguments that we 00:03:37.600 --> 00:03:42.240 make on make on Stone Choir are just our arguments is precisely 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:46.160 because we don't have any credentials or particular credibility or any reason 00:03:46.160 --> 00:03:49.040 for you to believe us just because we said it. 00:03:49.040 --> 00:03:52.880 So what that does is it frees you to disbelieve us, to 00:03:52.880 --> 00:03:55.920 challenge what we're saying, to actually think about it, which is something 00:03:55.920 --> 00:03:58.400 that we don't necessarily think we have the freedom to do once 00:03:58.480 --> 00:04:00.640 old old dead guy said something. 00:04:00.640 --> 00:04:03.840 I think one of the reasons that so many pastors lean on 00:04:03.920 --> 00:04:08.000 the writings of other better men, dead men, is that it lets 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:10.560 them share something that's interesting knowledge. 00:04:10.560 --> 00:04:14.560 But the danger there is that when they make someone else's arguments, 00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:18.160 as a pastor in a theological context, there's always going to be 00:04:18.160 --> 00:04:21.520 the incentive to bind people's consciences with whatever is said. 00:04:21.520 --> 00:04:22.480 Here's an argument. 00:04:22.560 --> 00:04:23.760 Here's a dead guy's argument. 00:04:23.760 --> 00:04:24.960 He made an argument from the Bible. 00:04:24.960 --> 00:04:27.040 I'm making it to you as your pastor. 00:04:27.040 --> 00:04:29.120 So now you have to do this or you're going to hell 00:04:29.280 --> 00:04:30.960 because you're sinning if you disagree. 00:04:31.280 --> 00:04:33.440 There's none of that with a podcast. 00:04:33.440 --> 00:04:35.840 If you disagree with us, we've said many times I think you're 00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:36.400 going to hell. 00:04:36.400 --> 00:04:37.360 Even if I think you're wrong. 00:04:37.360 --> 00:04:39.280 Because if I thought that you were right, I wouldn't have said 00:04:39.280 --> 00:04:41.040 the thing that you disagree with. 00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:44.400 But the fact that there's a degree of equality between the listener 00:04:44.400 --> 00:04:47.920 and the speaker in the case of a podcast, is lost as 00:04:47.920 --> 00:04:50.320 soon as you delve into old stuff. 00:04:50.320 --> 00:04:51.280 Where you know it's famous. 00:04:51.280 --> 00:04:53.760 The Magdeburg Confession has a Wikipedia article. 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:57.600 It's been now thankfully reprinted fairly recently and translated. 00:04:57.600 --> 00:04:58.960 It was actually lost for a while. 00:04:58.960 --> 00:05:02.320 Like knowledge existed, but it wasn't in active use. 00:05:02.320 --> 00:05:06.480 It's important that although we are pointing to something old, I don't 00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:09.920 want to reinforce people thinking, well, okay, it's old, so I'm gonna 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:10.560 believe it. 00:05:10.560 --> 00:05:11.680 That's just it's silly. 00:05:11.680 --> 00:05:14.160 There's so much of that in the way that men try to 00:05:14.160 --> 00:05:15.840 operate and it's exhausting. 00:05:15.840 --> 00:05:17.280 Because it's not thinking. 00:05:17.280 --> 00:05:20.800 If you're just borrowing somebody else's thoughts, you're you're basically doing what 00:05:20.800 --> 00:05:24.080 an LLM does, it's just regurgitating text that it ingested. 00:05:24.080 --> 00:05:25.360 Please don't be that guy. 00:05:25.520 --> 00:05:28.480 So when we point to this 500 year old text, we're not 00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:30.320 encouraging anybody to be that guy. 00:05:30.320 --> 00:05:33.360 We're gonna lay out today the arguments that they made and say, 00:05:33.360 --> 00:05:36.000 well, here's why we think this makes sense. 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:38.400 And if you look at the arguments, and for those of you 00:05:38.400 --> 00:05:41.520 want to go get a copy of it, it's worthwhile. 00:05:41.520 --> 00:05:45.120 Another thing to note, if you do read the whole thing, you're 00:05:45.120 --> 00:05:48.400 very much going to see that it is a product of historical 00:05:48.400 --> 00:05:49.120 moment moment. 00:05:49.120 --> 00:05:53.680 The context of the men in Mogdeburg in fifteen forty eight to 00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:57.440 fifteen fifty when they were dealing with the situation was a dire 00:05:57.680 --> 00:06:00.080 situation, and we'll get into the history of that. 00:06:00.080 --> 00:06:03.920 But again these were Lutherans, they were besieged by papists. 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:07.680 They were surrounded by Lutheran lands that had in large part ceased 00:06:07.680 --> 00:06:08.720 to be Lutheran. 00:06:08.720 --> 00:06:10.640 And that was the entire conflict here. 00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:13.840 The Holy Roman Empire come in and say, All right, Lutheranism's cancelled, 00:06:13.840 --> 00:06:16.800 Reformation's canceled, everyone's Catholic again. 00:06:17.040 --> 00:06:21.440 And these guys were saying, No, we changed our beliefs as a 00:06:21.440 --> 00:06:24.320 matter of conscience and we're not going to go back on that. 00:06:24.320 --> 00:06:27.680 And hence the bloodshed, hence the siege that we're going to get 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:31.760 into. So people actually died as a result of the thing that 00:06:31.760 --> 00:06:32.800 was written here. 00:06:32.800 --> 00:06:34.720 And they did it as a matter of conscience. 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:37.120 They fought, and part of the reason for them writing this was 00:06:37.120 --> 00:06:38.560 to justify why they would fight. 00:06:38.560 --> 00:06:42.800 They didn't passively resist because the papal armies were coming to destroy 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:45.120 their home and they fought back. 00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:47.600 And it was important to them as Christians to understand if that 00:06:47.600 --> 00:06:48.560 was illicit. 00:06:48.560 --> 00:06:51.440 Was it actually a moral thing for them to do? 00:06:51.440 --> 00:06:56.000 And some of those issues are live, potentially to some degree, but 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.800 I also want to make the case as we go through the 00:06:58.800 --> 00:07:05.360 specific details of Magdeburg that although their particular historical situation involved matters 00:07:05.360 --> 00:07:11.360 of conscience with regard to church practice and religious belief, the framework 00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:14.160 that they lay out has nothing to do with the church. 00:07:14.160 --> 00:07:16.720 And the reason I point this out ahead of time is that 00:07:16.720 --> 00:07:20.880 it's very important that if someone goes and reads Magdeburg, this confession, 00:07:20.880 --> 00:07:25.120 a lazy reading would cause you to conclude, okay, well, if the 00:07:25.120 --> 00:07:30.560 church is besieged by the state and the state is trying to 00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:34.080 enforce religion religious beliefs, then these tests apply. 00:07:34.080 --> 00:07:35.440 And that's simply nonsense. 00:07:35.440 --> 00:07:37.600 When you look at the actual tests that are laid out, the 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:40.400 we think are reasonable tests, and you can apply your own reason 00:07:40.400 --> 00:07:41.760 to it to see what you think. 00:07:41.760 --> 00:07:44.320 Some of you probably already agree, even if you don't know the 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:48.640 specifics, because the lesser magistrate doctrine has evolved and it came from 00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:53.520 this essentially, but it's all ultimately scriptural and it's based on headship, 00:07:53.520 --> 00:07:58.320 the notion that there is somebody at the top politically who governs 00:07:58.320 --> 00:07:58.880 a land. 00:07:58.880 --> 00:08:01.520 Yeah, we often call that the prince just a shorthand. 00:08:01.520 --> 00:08:03.360 It's not explicitly about monarchy. 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:07.760 It's just there will be an executive who's responsible for a geographic 00:08:07.760 --> 00:08:12.560 region politically in charge of enforcing the law, punishing evildoers. 00:08:12.560 --> 00:08:16.000 You know, Prince is far removed from our modern politics, but you 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:19.440 know, Donald Trump is effectively the prince of the United States today. 00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:24.400 Not politically, but he's in that position to act as the executive. 00:08:24.400 --> 00:08:28.080 And thankfully as we're recording in the first week of his second 00:08:28.080 --> 00:08:31.840 term, we're seeing him actually moving more like a prince than like 00:08:31.840 --> 00:08:34.160 most presidents we've seen in the past. 00:08:34.160 --> 00:08:36.640 The authority is there, and then the question is do they use 00:08:36.640 --> 00:08:39.600 it? And when they use it, do they do it in a 00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:40.640 godly fashion? 00:08:40.640 --> 00:08:43.600 That's what the tests are about in the Magdeburg Confession. 00:08:43.600 --> 00:08:46.720 It's not about is the state being mean to the church or 00:08:46.720 --> 00:08:48.000 being mean to Christians. 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:53.280 The Magdeburg Confession, the reasoning applies to every man, regardless of religious 00:08:53.280 --> 00:08:57.520 belief, because it's a basically a reason proposition from hierarchy. 00:08:57.520 --> 00:09:00.560 So as we're going through this, I hope that you will focus 00:09:00.560 --> 00:09:01.360 on those parts. 00:09:01.360 --> 00:09:04.240 We're going to try to focus on them and not get sidetracked 00:09:04.240 --> 00:09:06.640 on the specific details of the battle. 00:09:06.640 --> 00:09:09.120 If you go and read it, you're going to find a lot 00:09:09.120 --> 00:09:11.840 of very nasty polemics against papists. 00:09:11.840 --> 00:09:14.560 And some nasty things are said about the Anabaptists and about the 00:09:14.560 --> 00:09:15.760 Reformed as well. 00:09:15.760 --> 00:09:16.960 They were polemic. 00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:19.680 And it was because they were besieged where they were about to 00:09:19.680 --> 00:09:22.320 be besieged, they knew that they stood a very real chance of 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:23.520 being killed over this stuff. 00:09:23.520 --> 00:09:26.560 And all their neighbors had betrayed their own confessions. 00:09:26.560 --> 00:09:30.000 So if you read it and you see the polemic stuff and 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:33.360 you feel hurt by it, just keep in mind that they thought 00:09:33.360 --> 00:09:36.400 that they might be about to die because all their neighbors betrayed 00:09:36.400 --> 00:09:39.760 the confession that they had shared a year prior. 00:09:39.760 --> 00:09:43.760 And so it wasn't simply, you know, emotional tumult. 00:09:43.760 --> 00:09:46.480 It was the fact that this was a very real life and 00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:48.560 death matter in a matter of conscience. 00:09:48.560 --> 00:09:52.480 So our arguments are from conscience, they're from scripture, and they're about 00:09:52.480 --> 00:09:53.360 real-world things. 00:09:53.360 --> 00:09:56.480 What do we as Christians do when the government steps out of 00:09:56.480 --> 00:09:58.000 the line from the top. 00:09:58.000 --> 00:09:59.520 Not necessarily always from the top. 00:09:59.520 --> 00:10:01.440 You know, one of the nice things about the way the argument 00:10:01.440 --> 00:10:04.000 is laid out is that maybe you have a bad mayor. 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:06.560 The nice thing about that is you have a governor above him. 00:10:06.560 --> 00:10:10.720 There's someone above the local magistrate that you can go to. 00:10:10.720 --> 00:10:13.120 The real problem is when it's the emperor. 00:10:13.120 --> 00:10:17.280 When the Holy Roman Emperor or the President is the bad guy, 00:10:17.280 --> 00:10:20.720 then it gets tricky because there's no one to appeal to above 00:10:20.720 --> 00:10:21.840 him for relief. 00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:25.600 And then the resistance becomes the moral question. 00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:29.280 And so it's a live issue for us today because these are 00:10:29.280 --> 00:10:32.720 the circumstances that we are all facing in the 21st century. 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:35.760 We saw with the COVID shutdowns, and we'll see again and other 00:10:35.760 --> 00:10:39.120 things in the future that maybe people can't even imagine yet, where 00:10:39.120 --> 00:10:44.800 the state does intervene against churches and against individuals for ungodly reasons. 00:10:44.800 --> 00:10:46.880 We have to have thought some of those things through so that 00:10:46.880 --> 00:10:48.400 we can behave as Christians. 00:10:48.400 --> 00:10:51.200 We have to answer to God for whatever we do. 00:10:51.200 --> 00:10:55.040 And that includes how we protect our lands, how we protect our 00:10:55.040 --> 00:10:56.560 families, our neighborhoods. 00:10:56.560 --> 00:10:59.120 We have a lot of duties beyond just make sure that the 00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:00.960 right doctrine is at church. 00:11:00.960 --> 00:11:04.640 So they were fighting for all of that in Magdeburg in fifteen 00:11:04.720 --> 00:11:08.320 fifty. And the argument they lay out is one that I think 00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:09.760 stands the test of time. 00:11:09.760 --> 00:11:12.800 So we're sharing it for that specific reason, not because a bunch 00:11:12.800 --> 00:11:14.000 of dead guys said it. 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:15.520 So now we have an excuse. 00:11:15.520 --> 00:11:16.160 Go read it. 00:11:16.160 --> 00:11:17.440 Disagree with it freely. 00:11:17.440 --> 00:11:18.240 Like that's fine. 00:11:18.240 --> 00:11:20.640 Just like you can disagree with any of our arguments. 00:11:20.640 --> 00:11:21.600 That's important. 00:11:21.600 --> 00:11:22.560 That's thought. 00:11:22.560 --> 00:11:28.080 That's actual men participating in the process of us living together. 00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:31.360 When guys point at history and say, well, now you're bound because 00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:33.680 some guy 500 years ago said it. 00:11:33.680 --> 00:11:34.720 That's crap. 00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:35.520 That's crap. 00:11:35.520 --> 00:11:38.640 It's just simply nonsense to have to have a book from a 00:11:39.040 --> 00:11:41.520 long time ago to be able to believe something or to be 00:11:41.520 --> 00:11:43.680 obligated to believe something as was written in a book a long 00:11:43.680 --> 00:11:44.560 time ago. 00:11:44.560 --> 00:11:48.480 The only question is does this withstand reason? 00:11:48.480 --> 00:11:50.320 Does this withstand scripture? 00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:51.680 And then is does it apply? 00:11:51.680 --> 00:11:52.400 Is it useful? 00:11:52.400 --> 00:11:55.200 And that's when the matter of wisdom really comes into play because 00:11:55.600 --> 00:11:57.680 maybe it's a good idea, but it doesn't have anything to do 00:11:57.680 --> 00:11:59.040 with our circumstances. 00:11:59.040 --> 00:12:01.600 So as we go through this today, just keep that in mind. 00:12:01.600 --> 00:12:04.400 Don't take this as us saying suddenly we have to look to 00:12:04.400 --> 00:12:08.240 dead guys to believe anything and don't think that it's limited just 00:12:08.240 --> 00:12:13.600 to the specific fact pattern that they faced in 1550 because it 00:12:13.600 --> 00:12:14.480 simply doesn't. 00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:17.520 There's a lot of lessons for us to apply because they're wisdom, 00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:19.440 their wisdom, their morality. 00:12:19.440 --> 00:12:23.120 And when you apply reason to all of that, you can see 00:12:23.120 --> 00:12:25.680 that yeah, I want this to be my idea. 00:12:25.680 --> 00:12:29.040 So we'll present this to you today for your consideration. 00:12:29.040 --> 00:12:30.720 I hope you'll find it valuable. 00:12:30.720 --> 00:12:32.320 Just don't get the wrong message. 00:12:32.320 --> 00:12:35.520 I'm belaboring that point because I hate so much how many guys 00:12:35.520 --> 00:12:38.960 delve into history and then that becomes their entire personality. 00:12:38.960 --> 00:12:41.520 If people start running around on X or whatever saying I'm a 00:12:41.520 --> 00:12:42.960 Mogdeberg Christian now. 00:12:42.960 --> 00:12:44.080 I'm gonna lose my mind. 00:12:44.080 --> 00:12:44.720 Don't do that. 00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:45.520 That's not the point. 00:12:45.520 --> 00:12:47.600 Don't say you're a stone choir Christian either. 00:12:47.600 --> 00:12:48.800 Like it's Christian. 00:12:48.800 --> 00:12:50.320 That's what we should be. 00:12:50.320 --> 00:12:52.320 That's what we are trying to be. 00:12:52.320 --> 00:12:56.000 To adopt things that you borrowed from somewhere else is the recipe 00:12:56.000 --> 00:12:56.720 for failure. 00:12:56.880 --> 00:13:00.320 And these men were fighting for their lives and for their faith 00:13:00.400 --> 00:13:01.840 and for their consciences. 00:13:01.840 --> 00:13:05.360 That's something that we should take seriously and then hear out the 00:13:05.360 --> 00:13:07.120 arguments that they made for why they did 00:13:07.120 --> 00:13:07.760 it. 00:13:08.320 --> 00:13:15.280 Although we're focusing specifically on the Magdeburg Confession in this episode for 00:13:15.280 --> 00:13:20.080 reasons that are and will become even more obvious, what we are 00:13:20.080 --> 00:13:26.000 actually doing in this episode is laying the groundwork with regard to 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:30.800 the Christian doctrine of resistance to tyranny. 00:13:30.800 --> 00:13:34.720 And there are a number of moving parts with regard to how 00:13:34.720 --> 00:13:38.400 you run that analysis, what Christians should and should not do, we'll 00:13:38.400 --> 00:13:40.720 get into that later in the episode. 00:13:40.720 --> 00:13:45.760 But the episode itself is not limited specifically to the Magdeburg Confession. 00:13:45.760 --> 00:13:47.680 We're not doing a book review. 00:13:47.680 --> 00:13:50.720 We're generally not going to do book reviews. 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:54.240 We've done one previously, and there will be exceptions to that, possibly 00:13:54.240 --> 00:13:55.520 also in the future. 00:13:55.520 --> 00:13:58.320 But that is not what we're doing in this episode. 00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:03.440 In this episode, we are going over the idea, this area of 00:14:03.440 --> 00:14:08.080 thought that has an intersection not only with Christianity but also with 00:14:08.080 --> 00:14:11.680 politics, and we'll get into that more as well, because there is 00:14:11.680 --> 00:14:14.960 a moral question here and a political question here. 00:14:14.960 --> 00:14:19.840 And those are not identical, you do not run identical analyses for 00:14:19.840 --> 00:14:21.520 the one and the other. 00:14:21.520 --> 00:14:24.080 They are separate things. 00:14:24.080 --> 00:14:26.800 Which is something that we tend to lose sight of sometimes in 00:14:26.800 --> 00:14:27.920 Christian circles. 00:14:27.920 --> 00:14:32.080 We want to conflate the political and the religious, and they again 00:14:32.320 --> 00:14:34.960 are not identical, they are not the same thing. 00:14:34.960 --> 00:14:39.200 You have different considerations in the political realm. 00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:42.560 But to help lay some of the background for this, for those 00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:47.040 who are not familiar with this era of history, and that's probably 00:14:47.040 --> 00:14:50.720 most listeners quite frankly, this is not an area of history that 00:14:50.720 --> 00:14:56.000 is extensively studied by most in school, unless you have an interest 00:14:56.000 --> 00:15:01.920 in the Reformation era or in related matters to this time. 00:15:01.920 --> 00:15:06.240 So obviously we have the Reformation that essentially kicks off in the 00:15:06.240 --> 00:15:09.600 early 1500s with the 95 Theses. 00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:14.000 Then you have the Augsburg Confession in 1530. 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:16.960 That sort of gives you the broad brushstrokes, as it were, of 00:15:16.960 --> 00:15:18.400 the Reformation. 00:15:18.400 --> 00:15:21.200 We're not going over the Reformation this episode as we're not going 00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:23.840 to give a full timeline of that. 00:15:23.840 --> 00:15:28.720 But the Pope obviously is not very happy with the spread of 00:15:28.720 --> 00:15:31.520 Lutheranism, specifically Lutheranism. 00:15:31.520 --> 00:15:35.840 He also is not very fond of the Reform, but this particular 00:15:35.840 --> 00:15:40.960 issue at this particular time is very much a matter between the 00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:45.600 Roman Catholic Pope and the Lutheran Princes. 00:15:45.600 --> 00:15:49.040 In this case it winds up being one particular Lutheran city, not 00:15:49.040 --> 00:15:52.480 even the Lutheran princes, because some of them have been imprisoned at 00:15:52.480 --> 00:15:52.960 this point. 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:54.560 I'll get to that. 00:15:54.560 --> 00:15:57.440 But the Pope goes to the Emperor. 00:15:57.760 --> 00:16:03.040 And makes a deal with the emperor to suppress Protestantism, to suppress 00:16:03.040 --> 00:16:06.800 Lutheranism, because he sees it spreading in the Empire and he wants 00:16:06.800 --> 00:16:08.480 to stop it. 00:16:08.480 --> 00:16:12.400 And so what flows from that is what is known as the 00:16:12.400 --> 00:16:14.400 Schmalkaldic War. 00:16:14.400 --> 00:16:20.960 This is essentially a localized civil war within the Holy Roman Empire. 00:16:20.960 --> 00:16:23.040 In Germany, of course. 00:16:23.040 --> 00:16:28.160 This results in the defeat of the Lutheran German princes. 00:16:28.160 --> 00:16:33.120 Subsequent to the defeat of the Lutheran German princes in the Small 00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:37.200 Caldic War, what is instituted by the Empire is what is known 00:16:37.200 --> 00:16:39.600 as the Augsburg Interim. 00:16:39.600 --> 00:16:46.640 Essentially that sees a restoration of Roman practices in the areas 00:16:46.640 --> 00:16:48.880 that were conquered. 00:16:48.800 --> 00:16:52.800 And so obviously this is a suppression of Protestantism, a suppression of 00:16:52.800 --> 00:16:59.280 Lutheranism, and this is unacceptable, of course, to the Protestants. 00:16:59.280 --> 00:17:06.320 This is what sets the stage for Magdeburg, because Magdeburg holds out. 00:17:06.320 --> 00:17:11.440 They do not consent to the Interim, they reject the Interim, and 00:17:11.440 --> 00:17:16.160 so they are besieged by the Imperial Forces. 00:17:16.160 --> 00:17:19.600 Eventually, what comes out of this, and this is not sort of 00:17:19.600 --> 00:17:23.520 a spoiler warning for something that happened five centuries ago, but what 00:17:23.520 --> 00:17:27.440 comes out of this is that Magdeburg essentially wins. 00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:29.360 They hold out long enough. 00:17:29.360 --> 00:17:32.000 The siege lasts about a year. 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:37.760 About 4,000, give or take, Imperial troops die, just shy of 500 00:17:37.840 --> 00:17:40.080 Magdeburgers die. 00:17:40.080 --> 00:17:40.400 And 00:17:41.280 --> 00:17:45.760 the result winds up being what's known as the Peace of Passau. 00:17:45.760 --> 00:17:51.520 This is sort of an early recognition by the Holy Roman Empire, 00:17:51.520 --> 00:17:54.000 not so much by the Pope yet, because he doesn't want to 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:58.640 concede, but by the Holy Roman Empire, of Lutheranism, of some of 00:17:58.640 --> 00:18:01.840 the claims of the Protestants. 00:18:01.840 --> 00:18:08.880 Eventually there's a fuller peace, a larger recognition of Lutheranism specifically 00:18:09.200 --> 00:18:12.480 because the recognition of the reformed comes later, but what is known 00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:16.560 as the Peace of Augsburg, and it is the Peace of Augsburg 00:18:16.560 --> 00:18:22.320 where we get Cuisregio Eus Religio, which is just Latin saying that 00:18:23.360 --> 00:18:28.880 the religion of a given territory can be decided by the authority, 00:18:28.880 --> 00:18:32.240 by the prince who reigns in that territory. 00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:36.720 And so you wind up having Lutheran lands and Roman Catholic lands, 00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:39.360 and later of course Reformed as well. 00:18:39.360 --> 00:18:46.640 This is essentially what is maintained for a number of decades until 00:18:47.120 --> 00:18:48.880 essentially the 30 Years' War. 00:18:48.880 --> 00:18:50.880 That's a topic for another time. 00:18:50.880 --> 00:18:58.560 That lays the historical background, though, for what we are discussing here. 00:18:58.560 --> 00:19:02.720 And so we're dealing in the time period Time period after the 00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:08.960 defeat of the Lutheran princes in the Schmalkaldic War, and before the 00:19:08.960 --> 00:19:12.640 Magdeburgers, of course hold out, and then we wind up with eventually 00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:15.120 the peace of Augsburg. 00:19:15.120 --> 00:19:20.480 That is the context in which they are writing this document. 00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:24.400 And so, like Woe said, some of the things in here are 00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:30.240 polemical to a certain degree, because they're quite literally watching Imperial troops 00:19:30.240 --> 00:19:32.400 set up to siege their city. 00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:35.920 Some men have already died because there have been some skirmishes, and 00:19:35.920 --> 00:19:40.560 obviously there was just a small-scale civil war in which men did 00:19:40.560 --> 00:19:42.080 indeed die. 00:19:42.080 --> 00:19:45.760 That is the background for this confession. 00:19:45.760 --> 00:19:50.960 And so when they talk about resistance to tyranny, this is not 00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:51.840 some abstract. 00:19:52.320 --> 00:19:54.960 This is not a thought experiment. 00:19:54.960 --> 00:19:58.000 This is not men sitting in a room and just thinking, well, 00:19:58.000 --> 00:19:59.200 what if? 00:19:59.200 --> 00:20:03.120 No, these are men who could go to the city walls and 00:20:03.120 --> 00:20:08.880 see Imperial troops getting ready to siege the city and slaughter them. 00:20:08.880 --> 00:20:12.560 This was a very concrete thing for the men writing this document 00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:14.960 and for the men who signed their names to it. 00:20:14.960 --> 00:20:17.600 And of course, signing their names to it could have very well 00:20:17.600 --> 00:20:23.040 been signing their own death warrant had they lost. 00:20:23.040 --> 00:20:28.240 But to turn to the confession itself, we're not going to go 00:20:28.240 --> 00:20:31.680 over the first section because the first section of the confession is 00:20:31.680 --> 00:20:36.160 essentially just a distillation of Lutheran beliefs. 00:20:36.160 --> 00:20:40.400 It's worth reading because it's actually a pretty good summary of them. 00:20:40.400 --> 00:20:43.760 It is a very short summary, but we've gone over that in 00:20:43.760 --> 00:20:44.480 other episodes. 00:20:44.480 --> 00:20:47.440 It is not the point of this episode. 00:20:47.440 --> 00:20:52.400 The point of this episode is to go over the arguments for 00:20:52.400 --> 00:20:59.280 Christian resistance to tyranny, for Christian resistance, to the magistrate who oversteps 00:20:59.280 --> 00:21:05.360 his bounds, who goes beyond what is permissible for him to do. 00:21:05.360 --> 00:21:08.240 And as well already said, the core of this is that doctrine 00:21:08.240 --> 00:21:10.480 of the lesser matter. 00:21:10.480 --> 00:21:17.120 Because there's the concept of the authority being delegated and the hierarchy 00:21:17.120 --> 00:21:18.240 of authority. 00:21:18.240 --> 00:21:22.320 And so if you have someone higher up the chain who is 00:21:22.320 --> 00:21:27.440 doing something wicked, it falls first and foremost to those directly under 00:21:27.440 --> 00:21:31.200 him in that hierarchy to correct him. 00:21:31.200 --> 00:21:36.160 That's going to be relatively uncomfortable in many cases, particularly in this 00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:40.400 one, because if you are, say, an elector in the Holy Roman 00:21:40.400 --> 00:21:44.240 Empire, well that means you have to correct the emperor. 00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:47.520 That is somewhat dangerous because he does have the authority. 00:21:47.520 --> 00:21:51.200 At least theoretically there's some complications here with how exactly the structure 00:21:51.200 --> 00:21:54.560 works, but he does at least theoretically have the authority to simply 00:21:54.560 --> 00:21:56.240 have you executed. 00:21:56.240 --> 00:22:00.480 And so this isn't something that's just easy, because by virtue of 00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:02.320 your office you can just go and do this thing. 00:22:02.720 --> 00:22:04.960 No, your life may very well be on the line. 00:22:04.960 --> 00:22:10.240 There's some very real risks inherent in these sorts of undertakings. 00:22:10.240 --> 00:22:13.760 But in some cases there's a Christian duty to do it And 00:22:13.760 --> 00:22:16.720 so there's that, again, twofold question. 00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:20.800 There's the moral consideration, the Christian question we could call it, and 00:22:20.800 --> 00:22:24.080 then there's the political, which is a question of wisdom. 00:22:24.080 --> 00:22:27.760 Just because you can do the thing, doesn't mean that you should 00:22:28.240 --> 00:22:29.680 do the thing. 00:22:29.680 --> 00:22:33.680 Just because it's unwise to do the thing doesn't mean that you 00:22:33.680 --> 00:22:36.640 have the option not to do it. 00:22:36.640 --> 00:22:41.040 Because if you have a moral duty to do something, then you 00:22:41.040 --> 00:22:46.080 actually don't get to run the full political analysis as it were. 00:22:46.080 --> 00:22:50.560 You can still undertake the execution of that duty in a wise 00:22:50.560 --> 00:22:52.880 manner. But you can't decide 00:22:53.760 --> 00:22:57.760 I'm just not going to do that because it would be unwise. 00:22:57.760 --> 00:23:01.680 If you have a moral duty to do something, it is incumbent 00:23:01.680 --> 00:23:05.040 on you to do it, even if you know that the outcome 00:23:05.040 --> 00:23:06.080 is going to be bad for you. 00:23:07.120 --> 00:23:09.760 Which if you have to go to the emperor and correct him, 00:23:09.760 --> 00:23:12.320 the outcome may very well be bad for you. 00:23:12.320 --> 00:23:14.720 But you still have a duty to do it, assuming that in 00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:20.320 this particular hypothetical case, you do in fact have that moral duty. 00:23:20.320 --> 00:23:25.680 And so essentially the core of the analysis here for the moral 00:23:25.680 --> 00:23:33.280 analysis in the Magdeburg Confession is four different levels of of violator, 00:23:33.280 --> 00:23:38.800 four different levels of a superior magistrate who is overstepped in some 00:23:38.800 --> 00:23:45.360 fashion. And it goes from least bad to most bad. 00:23:45.360 --> 00:23:49.280 And And the fourth level would be the one where you have 00:23:49.280 --> 00:23:51.360 that moral duty to act. 00:23:51.360 --> 00:23:54.880 And so it's no longer simply a matter of wisdom there. 00:23:54.880 --> 00:23:58.240 It is a matter of you have a duty to do something 00:23:58.560 --> 00:24:03.360 because of what this tyrannical magistrate is doing, because of how far 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:07.840 and in what ways he has overstepped his boundaries. 00:24:08.240 --> 00:24:11.600 The first level is the simplest one. 00:24:12.880 --> 00:24:15.120 All men have weaknesses. 00:24:15.120 --> 00:24:20.720 All men have predilections, have certain temptations into which they are more 00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:22.640 likely to give. 00:24:22.640 --> 00:24:24.160 We're all sinners. 00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:29.360 That includes magistrates, and so magistrates are occasionally going to do things 00:24:29.520 --> 00:24:30.880 they should not do. 00:24:30.880 --> 00:24:34.320 They are going to do things that are in fact sinful. 00:24:34.320 --> 00:24:39.360 However, we as Christians, this is the moral analysis, we as Christians 00:24:39.520 --> 00:24:44.000 have to bear with their weaknesses and still submit to that rightful 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:49.520 authority they hold by virtue of their office, even when they sin. 00:24:49.520 --> 00:24:53.360 That's not to say that we participate in their sin, because that's 00:24:53.360 --> 00:24:57.760 an important caveat with the first and the second level here. 00:24:57.760 --> 00:25:02.080 You are to submit to that magistrate still, as long as you 00:25:02.080 --> 00:25:06.400 can do so without joining in his sin. 00:25:06.400 --> 00:25:11.360 Now, if you are the lesser magistrate under him, you can very 00:25:11.360 --> 00:25:14.960 well go to him and say, You are sinning, you need to 00:25:14.960 --> 00:25:15.520 stop doing that. 00:25:15.920 --> 00:25:18.880 You need to do X, Y, and Z, or not do A, 00:25:18.880 --> 00:25:22.240 B, and C, whatever it happens to be. 00:25:22.240 --> 00:25:24.800 And you probably do have a Christian duty to do that, because 00:25:24.800 --> 00:25:27.600 there is that general duty to rebuke your brother when he is 00:25:27.600 --> 00:25:30.880 in sin, to correct him, so that he can return to the 00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:32.240 correct path. 00:25:32.240 --> 00:25:35.360 You're not doing it just because you feel like correcting him, you're 00:25:35.360 --> 00:25:39.520 doing it to help him because he is your brother. 00:25:39.520 --> 00:25:41.600 The next level would be would be 00:25:42.560 --> 00:25:48.720 not just the natural weakness that men have, but a particularly bad 00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:56.800 magistrate, someone who engages in atrocious and notorious violations. 00:25:56.800 --> 00:26:01.520 This is a magistrate who goes above and beyond, as it were, 00:26:01.520 --> 00:26:07.200 not simply violating rights or the law because of his natural proclivities 00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:10.560 or weakness But this is a wicked man. 00:26:10.560 --> 00:26:15.680 You are still generally to submit even to that wicked man. 00:26:15.680 --> 00:26:19.920 Not if doing so causes you to participate in his sin, of 00:26:19.920 --> 00:26:22.960 course, that is the same caveat as with the first level here 00:26:22.960 --> 00:26:25.840 in the second. 00:26:25.840 --> 00:26:31.840 But because of the sort of harm that would come with rebellion, 00:26:31.840 --> 00:26:35.760 because rebellion is generally always a wicked thing, and that's one of 00:26:35.760 --> 00:26:39.600 the major considerations in all of this. 00:26:39.600 --> 00:26:42.880 Not just as Christians, but as men, we should never want to 00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:48.560 engage in rebellion, because rebellion is always going to cause significant harm. 00:26:48.560 --> 00:26:52.960 Often it is going to cause greater harm than simply suffering the 00:26:52.960 --> 00:26:56.080 sort of harm against which you would be rebelling, and that is 00:26:56.080 --> 00:26:59.040 the case here for the second level. 00:26:59.040 --> 00:27:01.200 The third level is where things start 00:27:02.080 --> 00:27:06.640 to be less of a matter of wisdom and more of a 00:27:06.640 --> 00:27:11.200 matter of moral duty or said another way, a matter of moral 00:27:11.200 --> 00:27:13.840 duty that can be executed in wisdom because there's that 00:27:14.800 --> 00:27:18.880 consideration there of the two different types of wisdom as it were. 00:27:18.880 --> 00:27:23.520 Wisdom in choosing whether or not to do something versus wisdom in 00:27:23.520 --> 00:27:26.160 choosing how to do it when it is incumbent on you to 00:27:26.160 --> 00:27:26.960 do it. 00:27:26.960 --> 00:27:31.120 And so the third level if the magistrate is wicked to such 00:27:31.120 --> 00:27:35.920 an extent that what he is doing forces you, as the lesser 00:27:35.920 --> 00:27:37.280 magistrate, to participate in 00:27:38.240 --> 00:27:43.520 his sins, then you have a duty not to do that. 00:27:43.520 --> 00:27:48.400 You have a duty to reject participation in his sins. 00:27:48.400 --> 00:27:50.480 You have a duty to do something. 00:27:50.480 --> 00:27:54.000 You have a duty to defend those against whom he is committing 00:27:54.000 --> 00:27:57.440 these wicked acts, whatever it happens to be. 00:27:57.440 --> 00:28:00.400 It is going to be a matter of wisdom how you do 00:28:00.400 --> 00:28:02.960 that, but it is no longer a matter of whether or not 00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:08.640 you are permitted or required, because of the fact that he is 00:28:08.640 --> 00:28:12.640 forcing you to participate in his sins, you are required to act 00:28:12.640 --> 00:28:14.160 at this level. 00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:18.800 And then the fourth level, of course, would be essentially the sort 00:28:18.800 --> 00:28:22.720 of magistrate who is acting on behalf of Satan himself. 00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:28.480 This is someone who is attacking the church, attacking Christianity, drawing 00:28:29.360 --> 00:28:33.760 men to open and notorious sin. 00:28:33.760 --> 00:28:38.640 This is the level that was in play with regard to Magdeburg. 00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:44.720 Because what you had was the Pope corruptly acting in concert with 00:28:44.720 --> 00:28:49.120 the Emperor to attack and murder Christians? 00:28:49.120 --> 00:28:54.720 This is a magistrate who has gone so far beyond his bounds, 00:28:54.720 --> 00:28:59.360 who has exceeded his authority to such an extent that he is 00:28:59.360 --> 00:29:02.720 no longer an instrument of God and has become instead an instrument 00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:04.080 of the devil. 00:29:04.080 --> 00:29:09.200 In this case, there is an affirmative moral duty to resist. 00:29:09.280 --> 00:29:12.400 And again, there is that wisdom consideration. 00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:16.000 And the wisdom is how you go about resisting that. 00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:19.360 Not whether or not you resist it, but how you go about 00:29:19.360 --> 00:29:20.480 doing so. 00:29:20.480 --> 00:29:23.440 And to make sure that I've been clear with what I've said, 00:29:23.440 --> 00:29:27.680 we are still talking about those who are in that hierarchy of 00:29:27.680 --> 00:29:34.000 authority. This becomes somewhat difficult in our current context in most of 00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:35.200 the Western world because 00:29:36.240 --> 00:29:40.480 the men who wrote the Magdeburg Confession didn't even have democracy in 00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:42.960 mind. That was not a thing. 00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:47.440 They weren't thinking about representative government as we think of it. 00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:52.000 Of course, there was some sort of representation in the Holy Roman 00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:56.320 Empire because you had electors and things like that, but different from 00:29:56.320 --> 00:29:58.000 what we have today. 00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:01.440 And so today some of these questions are a little more difficult, 00:30:01.440 --> 00:30:05.360 a little more challenging to assess. 00:30:05.360 --> 00:30:07.760 Because who is the lesser magistrate? 00:30:07.760 --> 00:30:10.880 We have the obvious hierarchy that we can see, we have the 00:30:10.880 --> 00:30:14.400 president at the top, we have the vice president, we have the 00:30:14.400 --> 00:30:18.240 Senate, we have the House of Representatives, we have governors, we have 00:30:18.240 --> 00:30:21.520 mayors, on down the chain. 00:30:21.520 --> 00:30:26.400 But at the same time, we have a political system in which 00:30:26.720 --> 00:30:32.720 basically all adults participate because we have universal suffrage. 00:30:32.720 --> 00:30:38.080 And so to a certain extent, every man is a lesser magistrate, 00:30:38.080 --> 00:30:41.280 granted all the way at the bottom of that hierarchy, but that 00:30:41.280 --> 00:30:47.520 But that does devolve certain duties to every single Christian man. 00:30:47.520 --> 00:30:51.280 And of course I am specifically saying Christian men, I am not 00:30:51.360 --> 00:30:54.720 using that as a generic term here, because this is a matter 00:30:54.720 --> 00:30:58.160 of headship, as Woe said in his opening. 00:30:58.160 --> 00:31:01.360 So this is not a matter for women, it's not a matter 00:31:01.360 --> 00:31:04.000 for children, this is a matter for men. 00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:07.760 Because only a man can be head. 00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:14.560 And so in our context, in the context of a democratic system, 00:31:14.560 --> 00:31:17.840 there is a certain duty that devolves all the way down to 00:31:17.840 --> 00:31:20.240 the individual man. 00:31:20.240 --> 00:31:26.240 Depending on what sort of violator a given magistrate is, it may 00:31:26.240 --> 00:31:30.400 be incumbent on individual Christian men to do something. 00:31:30.400 --> 00:31:33.200 There may be a moral duty to act. 00:31:33.200 --> 00:31:36.880 There is still that wisdom consideration in how you act and what 00:31:36.880 --> 00:31:37.600 you do. 00:31:37.600 --> 00:31:39.520 That is always the case. 00:31:39.520 --> 00:31:42.480 God does not call us to be fools. 00:31:42.480 --> 00:31:43.920 We want to be very clear about that. 00:31:44.880 --> 00:31:48.400 Just because you have a duty to do something does not mean 00:31:48.400 --> 00:31:50.560 you have a duty to be an idiot. 00:31:50.560 --> 00:31:53.600 Hopefully, you will avoid doing that. 00:31:53.600 --> 00:31:58.160 We in fact strongly advise you to avoid doing that. 00:31:58.160 --> 00:32:02.320 But in our system, the hierarchy does run all the way from 00:32:02.320 --> 00:32:07.840 the top, the president, in the US case, down to individual men. 00:32:07.840 --> 00:32:10.560 And to some degree that's always been the case. 00:32:10.560 --> 00:32:15.360 Because even in some system like the Holy Roman Empire, you had 00:32:15.360 --> 00:32:19.760 the Emperor, then you had electors, you had princes, depending where you 00:32:19.760 --> 00:32:22.800 lived, you had all the way on down to they still in 00:32:22.800 --> 00:32:25.360 fact had mayors and things like that. 00:32:25.360 --> 00:32:29.200 But then individual Christian men still had duties. 00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:32.960 Because if your mayor was corrupt, if your mayor ordered you to 00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:37.600 participate in sin, you have a Christian duty not to do that. 00:32:37.600 --> 00:32:40.160 You have a Christian duty to resist. 00:32:40.160 --> 00:32:45.760 What the Magdeburg Confession gives is essentially a framework for thinking about 00:32:45.760 --> 00:32:47.040 these issues. 00:32:47.040 --> 00:32:49.840 It is a useful document to read. 00:32:49.840 --> 00:32:53.280 It is not something, again, as to echo woe. 00:32:53.280 --> 00:32:57.200 It is not something that we are saying, read this, memorize it, 00:32:57.200 --> 00:33:00.800 use these exact steps, run this analysis, and you'll get the answer. 00:33:00.800 --> 00:33:02.960 That's not what this is. 00:33:02.960 --> 00:33:06.480 As with many of the other episodes that we do, this is 00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:10.560 a matter of learning how to think about a particular type of 00:33:10.560 --> 00:33:15.520 issue. And so the Magdeburg Confession is useful because it gives a 00:33:15.520 --> 00:33:20.960 very concrete, a very real world example of these things coming into 00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:26.400 play. And so you can look at something that was not simple, 00:33:26.400 --> 00:33:28.560 certainly, for the men involved. 00:33:28.560 --> 00:33:32.320 You have the emperor involved, you have the pope involved, you have 00:33:32.320 --> 00:33:35.120 imperial troops on one side, you have 00:33:36.080 --> 00:33:39.760 formerly imperial troops on the other side, you have a somewhat independent 00:33:40.480 --> 00:33:44.720 city, this was a complicated matter, and these were Christian men attempting 00:33:44.720 --> 00:33:48.080 to navigate these things. 00:33:48.080 --> 00:33:51.760 What we face today is also complicated. 00:33:51.760 --> 00:33:56.880 Because in some ways, our government is deeply wicked. 00:33:56.880 --> 00:34:02.000 But in other ways, our government is still our government. 00:34:02.000 --> 00:34:05.920 Our government still holds rightful authority. 00:34:06.080 --> 00:34:10.640 And so Christians are not to rebel against rightful authority. 00:34:10.640 --> 00:34:14.960 But Christians also cannot participate in sin. 00:34:14.960 --> 00:34:18.000 And so it's not a simple matter. 00:34:18.000 --> 00:34:23.600 The Magdeburg Confession serves as a useful tool for Christians to think 00:34:23.600 --> 00:34:26.400 about these matters, to think about these issues. 00:34:26.400 --> 00:34:30.400 How do we approach these things as Christian men? 00:34:30.400 --> 00:34:35.440 How do we run the analysis of what is morally permissible or 00:34:35.440 --> 00:34:37.760 what is morally impermissible? 00:34:37.760 --> 00:34:41.760 And then how do you approach that with wisdom as we are 00:34:41.760 --> 00:34:43.920 commanded to do in Scripture? 00:34:43.920 --> 00:34:46.320 We're not commanded to be fools. 00:34:46.320 --> 00:34:49.520 Again, to repeat that, it's an important point. 00:34:49.520 --> 00:34:54.560 We are commanded to be wise as serpents, to be crafty even. 00:34:54.560 --> 00:34:58.480 We are not commanded to act foolishly, and so we have to 00:34:58.480 --> 00:35:03.120 think through these issues, we have to consider these sorts of things, 00:35:03.120 --> 00:35:05.120 because it is not a simple analysis. 00:35:05.120 --> 00:35:08.400 It is not just here are your bullet points, check them off, 00:35:08.400 --> 00:35:10.560 and then you have your answer. 00:35:11.440 --> 00:35:15.760 It's easier, certainly, if someone gives you a checklist and just says, 00:35:15.760 --> 00:35:18.480 if you do this, then this, then that. 00:35:18.800 --> 00:35:21.280 That's not how life works. 00:35:21.280 --> 00:35:24.320 And it's certainly not how things work when we're dealing with moral 00:35:24.320 --> 00:35:28.960 issues and political issues, which is what we are certainly dealing with 00:35:28.960 --> 00:35:34.160 in this episode, when we're dealing with how Christians are to navigate 00:35:34.160 --> 00:35:39.680 real world issues with regard to those who usurp authority or exceed 00:35:39.680 --> 00:35:41.680 the bounds of their authority. 00:35:41.680 --> 00:35:44.800 Now, of course, some are going to think of Romans 13, and 00:35:44.800 --> 00:35:48.800 we will get to that in a little bit in the episode. 00:35:48.800 --> 00:35:52.400 It is not a simple matter of just submitting to all earthly 00:35:52.400 --> 00:35:55.200 authority regardless of what they do. 00:35:55.200 --> 00:35:59.920 That is an incorrect interpretation of Romans 13. 00:35:59.920 --> 00:36:05.200 But at the same time, rebellion itself is wicked. 00:36:05.200 --> 00:36:07.520 And so we cannot be rebels. 00:36:07.520 --> 00:36:11.280 That is not something Christians should ever aspire to be or even 00:36:11.280 --> 00:36:16.720 tolerate. But there are times where you do have to resort to 00:36:16.720 --> 00:36:22.720 resistance, because certainly the Magdeburgers took up arms against a wicked and 00:36:22.720 --> 00:36:24.480 oppressive Caesar. 00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:26.160 That was necessary. 00:36:26.160 --> 00:36:28.720 That was their Christian duty. 00:36:28.720 --> 00:36:33.840 And so as we navigate these issues, we have to recognize the 00:36:33.840 --> 00:36:38.720 complexity of the matter and the complexity of the analysis and not 00:36:38.720 --> 00:36:44.480 resort to simple answers because they're simple, because they're easy. 00:36:44.480 --> 00:36:49.280 We have to actually think through the matter, run the assessment, and 00:36:49.280 --> 00:36:54.160 then navigate these in not just a Christian way, but also a 00:36:54.160 --> 00:36:55.920 wise way. 00:36:56.720 --> 00:36:57.040 As 00:36:57.040 --> 00:37:02.160 we've discussed in the episode on violence, obviously there are times where 00:37:02.160 --> 00:37:04.960 violence is necessary in life. 00:37:04.960 --> 00:37:08.720 There are times when men must be violent to stop evil. 00:37:08.720 --> 00:37:12.480 And that was the predicate notion that these men carried into this 00:37:12.480 --> 00:37:17.360 siege. They drafted and published this in April of fifteen fifty. 00:37:17.360 --> 00:37:21.040 By August they were under siege, and that siege lasted thirteen months. 00:37:21.040 --> 00:37:24.640 So as Corey said, there had already been skirmishes, they knew that 00:37:24.640 --> 00:37:26.000 this was coming. 00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:29.680 And part of the reason for the first portion of the Magdeburg 00:37:29.840 --> 00:37:33.920 Confession, just being an exhibition of their Lutheran faith, was to establish 00:37:34.320 --> 00:37:36.240 look, we're not anarchists. 00:37:36.240 --> 00:37:40.960 We are not godless rebels seeking to tear down the high places. 00:37:40.960 --> 00:37:45.600 They were specifically pleading with the emperor himself directly to say we 00:37:45.600 --> 00:37:46.960 want to obey you. 00:37:46.960 --> 00:37:51.440 They were begging the emperor, Charles V to behave in a fashion 00:37:51.440 --> 00:37:52.560 that they could obey. 00:37:52.560 --> 00:37:57.040 And they said, basically, if you take off of the table, forcing 00:37:57.040 --> 00:38:00.240 us to be papists, we will obey everything else. 00:38:00.240 --> 00:38:02.160 We are obeying everything else. 00:38:02.160 --> 00:38:04.960 In every regard, as much as they could, they were obeying what 00:38:04.960 --> 00:38:08.720 was commanded of them, but not that one thing. 00:38:08.720 --> 00:38:12.080 And so the reason that they were writing this was that their 00:38:12.080 --> 00:38:13.680 home was being besieged. 00:38:13.680 --> 00:38:15.040 They knew the violence was coming. 00:38:15.040 --> 00:38:17.120 Violence has already ensued before they wrote it. 00:38:17.120 --> 00:38:19.120 They knew that it would get worse. 00:38:19.120 --> 00:38:22.160 So as these men were looking out and seeing these preparations for 00:38:22.160 --> 00:38:24.960 them to be besieged and probably killed, I mean that's how sieges 00:38:25.120 --> 00:38:27.040 are supposed to end if you don't surrender. 00:38:27.040 --> 00:38:29.920 They understood that in order for them to defend their homes and 00:38:29.920 --> 00:38:33.680 their lives, they would have to engage in violence against the king's 00:38:33.680 --> 00:38:35.920 own men, the emperor's own men. 00:38:35.920 --> 00:38:38.400 And on paper that sounds sinful. 00:38:38.400 --> 00:38:41.120 And so they had to try to figure out can we resist 00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:45.280 our do we have to just take this or is there a 00:38:45.280 --> 00:38:48.480 moral out for us to defend ourselves? 00:38:48.480 --> 00:38:53.520 Which is a terrible position for the executive to put anyone in. 00:38:53.520 --> 00:38:56.160 The prince, the emperor, the magistrate, whatever you call it, to put 00:38:56.720 --> 00:39:00.560 people in a position where they have to decide this is unjust. 00:39:00.560 --> 00:39:05.360 Do I have to also behave unjustly to keep from dying here? 00:39:05.360 --> 00:39:09.680 And that's a position that states should never ever permit anything to 00:39:09.680 --> 00:39:10.400 get to. 00:39:10.400 --> 00:39:13.600 You know, de-escalation is not just a leftist meme, it's a good 00:39:13.600 --> 00:39:16.080 idea. When somebody's dead, they stay dead. 00:39:16.080 --> 00:39:17.920 You can't undo that. 00:39:17.920 --> 00:39:22.800 And so resorting to violence is sometimes necessary, but when it can 00:39:22.800 --> 00:39:25.840 be avoided as a matter of wisdom and as a matter of 00:39:25.840 --> 00:39:28.160 morality, it generally should be. 00:39:28.160 --> 00:39:31.520 Obviously we've talked in a past that's not remotely pacifist, but at 00:39:31.520 --> 00:39:33.840 the same time, you don't want to see violence. 00:39:33.840 --> 00:39:36.640 Violence is always necessarily destructive. 00:39:36.640 --> 00:39:39.040 There's no creation in violence. 00:39:39.280 --> 00:39:41.920 All you're creating is pain and suffering. 00:39:41.920 --> 00:39:45.360 Sometimes it must be done, but that's never desirable. 00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:48.960 Any other outcome would be preferable if possible. 00:39:48.960 --> 00:39:52.480 So as these men were looking around and seeing what the emperor 00:39:52.480 --> 00:39:55.760 was prepared to do in the name of Rome, I'm sure they 00:39:55.760 --> 00:40:00.400 were beside themselves with moral and emotional anguish that to be in 00:40:00.400 --> 00:40:03.680 put in this position, how unthinkable, to have to face the idea 00:40:03.680 --> 00:40:07.280 that you might have to kill your countrymen not to be killed 00:40:07.280 --> 00:40:09.200 for exercising your faith. 00:40:09.200 --> 00:40:12.800 And And that was the entire impetus for them to lay out 00:40:12.800 --> 00:40:16.400 their position as Lutherans and then to make the case for here's 00:40:16.560 --> 00:40:20.560 how we calculated that we are not sinning by resisting. 00:40:20.560 --> 00:40:23.360 I think one of the key insights is Corey laid out with 00:40:23.360 --> 00:40:28.640 that hierarchy is that the notion of the lesser magistrate is not 00:40:28.640 --> 00:40:31.520 one of anarchy, but it's one of devolution. 00:40:31.520 --> 00:40:36.560 In the event that the president does something evil and he continues 00:40:36.560 --> 00:40:40.000 to do evil things and those evil things escalate to the point 00:40:40.240 --> 00:40:45.600 that force must be employed, it doesn't automatically devolve to me to 00:40:45.600 --> 00:40:46.400 fight back. 00:40:46.400 --> 00:40:47.760 That's the key insight. 00:40:47.760 --> 00:40:50.320 And this is a key moral insight because it's the only way 00:40:50.320 --> 00:40:52.880 to keep from devolving into anarchy. 00:40:52.880 --> 00:40:56.960 If the president, if the emperor, whomever at the top, is an 00:40:56.960 --> 00:41:00.960 absolute despot and has failed every test, is just the devil's right 00:41:01.280 --> 00:41:02.960 hand in what he's doing. 00:41:02.960 --> 00:41:04.720 There's men beneath him. 00:41:04.720 --> 00:41:06.960 There are going to be more men beneath him because that's how 00:41:06.960 --> 00:41:08.240 hierarchies work. 00:41:08.240 --> 00:41:10.480 You don't have one general and then one colonel. 00:41:10.480 --> 00:41:12.160 You have a number of colonels, and they have a bunch of 00:41:12.160 --> 00:41:13.920 majors and a ton of lieutenants. 00:41:13.920 --> 00:41:15.600 That's how hierarchy works. 00:41:15.600 --> 00:41:18.720 So you know in our country, we have everyone listening in the 00:41:18.720 --> 00:41:22.880 United States has one president, you have one of fifty governors, almost 00:41:22.880 --> 00:41:25.680 all of us are gonna have mayors, as Corey laid out. 00:41:25.680 --> 00:41:30.240 So at any point, one of those men could potentially step in 00:41:30.240 --> 00:41:33.040 and say, as it comes to my town, as it comes to 00:41:33.040 --> 00:41:37.280 my state, we will not participate and I will actively resist the 00:41:37.280 --> 00:41:38.960 evil that you are proposing. 00:41:38.960 --> 00:41:40.480 That was their key insight. 00:41:40.480 --> 00:41:42.400 It wasn't completely novel. 00:41:42.400 --> 00:41:45.120 It's just the first time that I'm aware of that someone had 00:41:45.120 --> 00:41:48.400 written it down and articulated it certainly this clearly. 00:41:48.400 --> 00:41:53.360 That we don't want to see battles and resistance and wars, particularly 00:41:53.840 --> 00:41:54.960 up and down. 00:41:54.960 --> 00:41:59.440 It's one thing when neighboring nations go to war, but in internal 00:41:59.440 --> 00:42:04.160 war where you have a state warring against its superior, that's worse. 00:42:04.160 --> 00:42:07.440 You know, it's potentially a civil war, but it's always undesirable. 00:42:07.440 --> 00:42:11.520 And so they made sure that they came up with a scheme 00:42:11.520 --> 00:42:14.000 and a framework and a logical proposition. 00:42:14.000 --> 00:42:15.680 I don't say scheme negatively. 00:42:15.680 --> 00:42:19.040 Like here are the rules that we think will make any situation 00:42:19.840 --> 00:42:24.240 like this and generalize the specifics of our situation such that a 00:42:24.240 --> 00:42:27.840 man can look and see, yes, under these conditions, it is necessary 00:42:27.840 --> 00:42:32.880 for someone to resist, not the individual, not the pastors themselves personally, 00:42:32.880 --> 00:42:37.600 but the magistrate over the lesser domain had to do something to 00:42:37.600 --> 00:42:41.440 resist because he had a duty from God to his town, to 00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:42.320 his city. 00:42:42.320 --> 00:42:45.680 The governor has a duty from God to his state, just as 00:42:45.680 --> 00:42:49.120 the president has a duty from God to his country. 00:42:49.120 --> 00:42:54.080 So at any point we're all participants in all of those simultaneously. 00:42:54.080 --> 00:42:56.240 It's exactly the same way race works. 00:42:56.240 --> 00:43:00.240 I'm white, I'm mostly English, I'm American. 00:43:00.240 --> 00:43:04.240 I have you know much closer relations here in this country going 00:43:04.240 --> 00:43:08.080 back hundreds of years, but to particular relatives of mine, that's a 00:43:08.080 --> 00:43:13.440 much smaller concentric circle than white or you know, European English, those 00:43:13.440 --> 00:43:17.920 concentric circles matter in exactly the same way, and they're manifest in 00:43:17.920 --> 00:43:19.840 the doctrine of lesser magistrate. 00:43:19.840 --> 00:43:25.120 At those various concentric circles, not necessarily perfectly correlating, but you're gonna 00:43:25.120 --> 00:43:29.280 find that someone closer will also have, you know, I have multiple 00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:29.920 people over me. 00:43:29.920 --> 00:43:32.400 I have a mayor, I have a governor, I have a president, 00:43:32.400 --> 00:43:36.640 and then various intermediary bodies that are sort of peripheral, but they 00:43:36.640 --> 00:43:37.600 do come into play. 00:43:37.600 --> 00:43:39.520 in the United States as well as in England, where we got 00:43:39.760 --> 00:43:43.040 it from, you have the sheriff over a county, who's a very 00:43:43.040 --> 00:43:46.480 interesting legal authority in our system. 00:43:46.480 --> 00:43:48.960 We talked about that a little bit in a previous episode. 00:43:48.960 --> 00:43:52.640 The importance of not saying, well, okay, the president's mean, not the 00:43:52.640 --> 00:43:55.040 president's mean, but I want to downplay this. 00:43:55.040 --> 00:43:57.040 The president is Satan himself. 00:43:57.040 --> 00:43:59.040 So I'm gonna go hurt people. 00:43:59.040 --> 00:44:00.480 I'm going to go be violent. 00:44:00.480 --> 00:44:02.480 That's absolutely impermissible. 00:44:02.480 --> 00:44:05.840 And the key insight that the Magdeburg confession provides is that that's 00:44:05.840 --> 00:44:08.320 not even necessary because there's always somebody above me. 00:44:08.320 --> 00:44:10.960 And as Corey said, I don't have authority of my own, but 00:44:10.960 --> 00:44:11.920 I can appeal. 00:44:11.920 --> 00:44:13.360 I can go talk to someone. 00:44:13.360 --> 00:44:16.400 I can raise the alarm and say, hey, you guys who are 00:44:16.400 --> 00:44:20.560 over me and beneath the ultimate bad guy that's a problem here, 00:44:20.560 --> 00:44:21.280 do something. 00:44:21.280 --> 00:44:24.880 Look at this problem, protect me, protect my community. 00:44:24.880 --> 00:44:29.280 That is what we do have the opportunity to avail ourselves of. 00:44:29.280 --> 00:44:32.400 And so the fact that they went out of their way to 00:44:32.400 --> 00:44:35.360 make sure that you know they didn't stretch scripture at all. 00:44:35.360 --> 00:44:38.560 They make their arguments from scripture and they go into ample detail, 00:44:38.560 --> 00:44:40.080 I think in some cases almost too much. 00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:44.000 they want to pull in so many peripheral anecdotes about well, in 00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:45.360 this one example, this guy did this. 00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:49.040 It's there's this appetite that so many Christians seem to have to 00:44:49.120 --> 00:44:52.800 try to plumb the depths of scripture for trivia to make some 00:44:52.800 --> 00:44:53.520 moral point. 00:44:53.520 --> 00:44:55.600 I personally find that really dangerous. 00:44:55.600 --> 00:44:58.800 I would much rather just make the argument in my own words 00:44:59.040 --> 00:45:01.760 and not bind your conscience and let you figure it out. 00:45:01.760 --> 00:45:04.400 And if you agree, then if your conscience is bound, it's because 00:45:04.400 --> 00:45:05.840 it's obedience to God. 00:45:05.840 --> 00:45:09.040 But as soon as I start coming up with weird examples from 00:45:09.040 --> 00:45:11.520 deep in the bowels of the Old Testament, I'll say, Well, look, 00:45:11.520 --> 00:45:13.040 here's this example, you gotta do it. 00:45:13.040 --> 00:45:15.440 You're invoking the name of God in a dangerous fashion. 00:45:15.440 --> 00:45:16.320 I don't think they did it wrong. 00:45:16.320 --> 00:45:17.920 I just think they did it too much. 00:45:17.920 --> 00:45:20.240 It's a habit I see a lot today, especially in some of 00:45:20.240 --> 00:45:21.680 the reform circles. 00:45:21.680 --> 00:45:22.560 It's not bad. 00:45:22.560 --> 00:45:25.040 It's always struck me as kind of odd because it's not the 00:45:25.040 --> 00:45:26.880 strongest case for the argument. 00:45:26.880 --> 00:45:30.160 One of the important points that they made was that I'm just 00:45:30.160 --> 00:45:31.760 gonna give you a quote here. 00:45:31.760 --> 00:45:35.600 This was nullifying one of the counter arguments against the idea that 00:45:35.600 --> 00:45:38.080 they wouldn't be able to fight back or resist. 00:45:38.080 --> 00:45:42.800 They wrote Magistrates and subjects shall be bound by shirk chains and 00:45:42.800 --> 00:45:46.240 mutual oaths, but it shall be permitted to magistrates when they want 00:45:46.240 --> 00:45:50.240 to be, to be loosed and free from all obligation, while subjects 00:45:50.240 --> 00:45:54.160 shall always be bound in all circumstances, and never be free. 00:45:54.160 --> 00:45:58.320 It shall be permitted to magistrates to exercise the utmost tyranny contrary 00:45:58.400 --> 00:46:01.440 to the laws and their oaths, but it shall not be permitted 00:46:01.440 --> 00:46:05.120 to the subjects to restrain the ravings of tyrants, in accordance with 00:46:05.120 --> 00:46:06.000 the laws. 00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:09.360 Thus the truth of our common sense and the logic of consequences 00:46:09.360 --> 00:46:12.240 will always depend on the whims and weapons of those who have 00:46:12.240 --> 00:46:15.440 power. Now obviously that was spoken tongue in cheek. 00:46:15.440 --> 00:46:17.120 They were saying this is absurd. 00:46:17.120 --> 00:46:21.600 The idea that the subject is always bound to obey, and also 00:46:21.600 --> 00:46:24.720 the magistrate, the superior is always bound to obey God obey God, 00:46:24.720 --> 00:46:26.880 but he can just change his mind and you still have to 00:46:26.880 --> 00:46:29.040 obey once he breaks his oath. 00:46:29.040 --> 00:46:32.800 Once he's disobeying God, you have to keep obeying him. 00:46:32.800 --> 00:46:36.640 And they went on to articulate very clearly that that's basically setting 00:46:36.640 --> 00:46:37.840 God against himself. 00:46:37.840 --> 00:46:40.800 If God puts a man in a position to rule over you 00:46:40.800 --> 00:46:44.080 in a godly fashion, and then he turns against God and is 00:46:44.080 --> 00:46:48.000 doing wicked things and involving you in those wicked things, he's not 00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:49.680 acting on behalf of God. 00:46:49.680 --> 00:46:50.960 He can't be. 00:46:50.960 --> 00:46:53.920 That's a house divided against itself. 00:46:53.920 --> 00:46:58.000 And so part of their argument rested on the moral argument that 00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:02.640 the limitations of the executive, of the magistrate, at whatever level, are 00:47:02.640 --> 00:47:06.320 going to be screwed by the duties to which he's bound. 00:47:06.320 --> 00:47:08.880 And they must always be oriented towards God. 00:47:08.880 --> 00:47:11.680 Even if it's secular, even if it's just making the trains run 00:47:11.680 --> 00:47:15.760 on time or making sure that invaders don't burn the crops, whatever 00:47:15.760 --> 00:47:20.800 duties the magistrate has, he is fulfilling them for the benefit of 00:47:20.800 --> 00:47:21.760 God's people. 00:47:21.760 --> 00:47:24.720 And that is obedience to God, whether he knows it or not. 00:47:24.720 --> 00:47:28.880 When he inverts that and starts harming God's people in various ways, 00:47:28.880 --> 00:47:32.640 and they exceed the threshold of the four part test they lay 00:47:32.640 --> 00:47:37.200 out, then their argument is that violence is necessary from the lesser 00:47:37.200 --> 00:47:41.280 magistrate solely to protect those beneath them. 00:47:41.280 --> 00:47:44.080 And again, this is all purely defensive. 00:47:44.080 --> 00:47:47.040 It's not we're going to overthrow this guy. 00:47:47.040 --> 00:47:50.720 It's simply we must neutralize the threat. 00:47:50.720 --> 00:47:55.600 You know, in self defense legal frameworks, that's the goal. 00:47:55.600 --> 00:47:57.360 Not I'm gonna kill somebody. 00:47:57.360 --> 00:47:58.960 I have to neutralize the threat. 00:47:58.960 --> 00:48:03.120 If lethal force is necessary to neutralize the threat, then it's legally 00:48:03.120 --> 00:48:06.160 permissible. It's not you want to kill the guy and so you're 00:48:06.160 --> 00:48:07.200 gonna use lethal force. 00:48:07.200 --> 00:48:11.600 No. Then you're gonna catch a manslaughter rap because the intent there 00:48:11.600 --> 00:48:14.400 is not to protect yourself, it's to hurt him. 00:48:14.400 --> 00:48:18.240 Even though it's such a subtle and seemingly insane distinction, because if 00:48:18.240 --> 00:48:21.280 you pull the trigger, obviously someone's going to be hurt. 00:48:21.280 --> 00:48:22.320 It's a question of intent. 00:48:23.200 --> 00:48:26.560 If your intent is I want to stop this person from hurting 00:48:26.560 --> 00:48:29.680 someone, then pulling the trigger is permissible. 00:48:29.680 --> 00:48:32.160 If your intent is I want to kill that guy because I'm 00:48:32.160 --> 00:48:35.920 mad that what he's doing is wrong, then you're suddenly in fraught 00:48:35.920 --> 00:48:37.520 legal territory. 00:48:37.520 --> 00:48:41.440 Self defense is incredibly tricky and it's legally fraught, and it's morally 00:48:41.440 --> 00:48:43.600 fraught, even when it's justified. 00:48:43.600 --> 00:48:46.560 These men understood that they had a duty to God to get 00:48:46.560 --> 00:48:49.200 this right before the siege was laid. 00:48:49.200 --> 00:48:52.160 And you know, as Corey was saying, there was the discussion around 00:48:52.160 --> 00:48:55.760 the and it's something we've talked about before in other episodes. 00:48:55.760 --> 00:48:58.240 A nation should have a unified religion. 00:48:58.240 --> 00:48:59.600 That's a good thing. 00:48:59.600 --> 00:49:02.880 We talked about households converting and then the you know, the husband 00:49:02.880 --> 00:49:04.800 converts, the whole household converts. 00:49:04.800 --> 00:49:08.560 We've talked at great length from the very earliest episodes about how 00:49:08.560 --> 00:49:13.360 when in many cases kings or rulers, the magistrates of European lands 00:49:13.440 --> 00:49:17.760 converted to Christianity, and rapidly their people followed suit. 00:49:17.760 --> 00:49:22.400 It wasn't necessarily enforced rigidly, but the example was set, and then 00:49:22.400 --> 00:49:25.920 eventually and this is effectively the law of the land, is this 00:49:25.920 --> 00:49:27.600 new religion. 00:49:27.600 --> 00:49:32.480 So when all of these other Lutheran lands reneged on their promise 00:49:32.480 --> 00:49:35.680 to God to be Lutheran, it wasn't duty to Luther. 00:49:35.680 --> 00:49:39.120 They believed it was their Christian duty to be Lutheran and to 00:49:39.120 --> 00:49:41.360 reject the papacy. 00:49:41.360 --> 00:49:45.200 When the Emperor swept in at the Pope's orders and said, We're 00:49:45.200 --> 00:49:48.960 gonna kill you if you don't become Roman Catholic again, one of 00:49:48.960 --> 00:49:53.120 the points that they made to emphasize that this was tyranny and 00:49:53.120 --> 00:49:56.960 not simply, well, the guy in charge gets to decide what religion 00:49:56.960 --> 00:49:57.680 we are. 00:49:57.680 --> 00:50:01.920 They pointed out that in these very same lands there were Jews 00:50:01.920 --> 00:50:04.080 and there were pagans who were tolerated. 00:50:04.080 --> 00:50:06.320 The Pope didn't care about Jews and pagans. 00:50:06.320 --> 00:50:08.080 He only cared about Lutherans. 00:50:08.080 --> 00:50:10.720 The only people he was killing were the people who refused to 00:50:10.720 --> 00:50:14.320 be Roman Catholics specifically after the Reformation. 00:50:14.320 --> 00:50:18.080 And that was part of their case that this specific instance was 00:50:18.080 --> 00:50:21.120 per se tyranny because they were leaving other people. 00:50:21.120 --> 00:50:24.640 It wasn't that everyone was being converted to the papacy by the 00:50:24.640 --> 00:50:27.680 sword. As Corey said, the Pope was mad. 00:50:27.680 --> 00:50:28.720 He was livid. 00:50:28.720 --> 00:50:34.080 He was murderously angry, specifically a Lutherans in these lands that he 00:50:34.080 --> 00:50:37.840 claimed authority over, which was another part of the fight in the 00:50:37.840 --> 00:50:41.520 Reformation itself, that the Pope doesn't have universal authority. 00:50:41.520 --> 00:50:44.480 It was literally one of the fundamental fights. 00:50:44.480 --> 00:50:47.280 So when they said, you know what, you're leaving Jews alone, you're 00:50:47.280 --> 00:50:51.200 leaving pagans alone, and you're only coming after us proves that it 00:50:51.200 --> 00:50:56.080 is not the potentially legitimate case where the magistrate is saying everyone 00:50:56.080 --> 00:50:57.520 in my land must be Christian. 00:50:57.520 --> 00:50:59.120 That's not even a question here. 00:50:59.120 --> 00:51:02.000 Whether or not that's legitimate, they pointed out that's not what's going 00:51:02.000 --> 00:51:03.040 on here at all. 00:51:03.040 --> 00:51:06.080 If you're going to tolerate unbelievers and let them practice their own 00:51:06.080 --> 00:51:10.640 religion, but you won't let us practice Lutheranism, well, we believe we're 00:51:10.640 --> 00:51:14.160 Christian and we believe you're murdering Christians, and because of that, it 00:51:14.160 --> 00:51:17.840 is necessary to employ violence to protect Christian lives. 00:51:17.840 --> 00:51:21.600 And that duty devolves to the lesser magistrate, and here's the case 00:51:21.600 --> 00:51:24.160 that we're making for it. 00:51:24.480 --> 00:51:24.640 The 00:51:24.640 --> 00:51:32.240 authors of the Magdeburg Confession advance essentially three different arguments with regard 00:51:32.560 --> 00:51:32.880 to 00:51:34.320 --> 00:51:38.240 why they believe, and they are correct in this, we would say 00:51:38.240 --> 00:51:42.240 they are correct in this, why they believe that there are limitations 00:51:42.560 --> 00:51:46.960 to the power of, in this case, the emperor, and why it 00:51:46.960 --> 00:51:53.520 is permissible for for the lesser magistrate to resist under certain circumstances. 00:51:53.760 --> 00:51:58.480 The three arguments are essentially an argument from definition, an argument from 00:51:58.480 --> 00:52:02.320 inference, and an argument from absurdity. 00:52:02.480 --> 00:52:07.760 And so definitionally, essentially is the Romans 13 argument. 00:52:07.760 --> 00:52:09.520 So I'll come back to that. 00:52:09.520 --> 00:52:12.480 Inference is also drawn from Romans 13. 00:52:12.480 --> 00:52:16.320 And then the absurdity argument I'll cover briefly because it's the easiest 00:52:16.320 --> 00:52:20.160 to cover before we delve into Romans thirteen. 00:52:20.160 --> 00:52:25.600 If you argue that Caesar, that the emperor, that the president, whatever 00:52:25.600 --> 00:52:29.280 office, if you argue that he can do whatever he wants and 00:52:29.280 --> 00:52:34.640 you must always submit to his authority, then what you've effectively argued 00:52:34.960 --> 00:52:38.160 is that God sanctions sin. 00:52:38.160 --> 00:52:43.360 Because if you advance the moral argument, then That the magistrate can 00:52:43.360 --> 00:52:47.680 do whatever he wants and you must always submit, then if he 00:52:47.680 --> 00:52:52.400 sins and forces you to sin, what you're saying is that the 00:52:52.400 --> 00:52:59.440 authority granted him by God encompasses Compasses enforcing sin, which is 00:52:59.440 --> 00:53:05.520 absurd. You can give any number of concrete examples, of course. 00:53:05.520 --> 00:53:10.960 If the magistrate says that no man is allowed to have a 00:53:10.960 --> 00:53:14.080 wife now, that all the women have to be prostitutes, this is 00:53:14.080 --> 00:53:20.160 actually an example that is given in the Magdeburg Confession, obviously, you 00:53:20.160 --> 00:53:22.240 do not have to submit to that as a Christian. 00:53:22.240 --> 00:53:25.760 In fact, you have a duty to resist at that point. 00:53:25.760 --> 00:53:31.600 So to argue that there is no limitation on the authority, on 00:53:31.600 --> 00:53:36.400 the power of the magistrate is absurd. 00:53:36.400 --> 00:53:39.440 And so that alone would be sufficient, but there are the other 00:53:39.440 --> 00:53:42.480 two arguments, definition and inference. 00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:45.760 And in order to understand those, they have to be couched in 00:53:45.760 --> 00:53:52.080 Romans thirteen, and so I'll read the relevant portion of Romans thirteen. 00:53:52.080 --> 00:53:56.240 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is 00:53:56.240 --> 00:54:01.360 no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted 00:54:01.360 --> 00:54:02.480 by God. 00:54:02.480 --> 00:54:07.760 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those 00:54:07.760 --> 00:54:10.240 who resist will incur judgment. 00:54:10.240 --> 00:54:14.080 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. 00:54:14.080 --> 00:54:17.040 Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? 00:54:17.040 --> 00:54:21.040 Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for 00:54:21.040 --> 00:54:23.280 he is God's servant for your good. 00:54:23.280 --> 00:54:26.960 But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear 00:54:26.960 --> 00:54:30.560 the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an 00:54:30.560 --> 00:54:34.160 avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. 00:54:34.160 --> 00:54:39.360 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath, 00:54:39.360 --> 00:54:41.760 but also for the sake of conscience. 00:54:41.760 --> 00:54:45.840 For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are 00:54:45.840 --> 00:54:49.280 ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 00:54:49.280 --> 00:54:53.040 Pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes 00:54:53.040 --> 00:54:57.520 are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect 00:54:57.520 --> 00:55:01.680 is owed, honor to whom honour is owed. 00:55:01.680 --> 00:55:05.760 There have been many historically, and certainly it seems to be very 00:55:05.760 --> 00:55:11.120 popular to day, who have argued, and who indeed argue to day, 00:55:11.120 --> 00:55:17.040 that Romans thirteen gives a blanket command for Christians to submit to 00:55:17.200 --> 00:55:23.280 authority, to submit to the state, whatever the office happens to be. 00:55:23.280 --> 00:55:28.560 Now we've already seen the argument from absurdity that defeats that, but 00:55:28.560 --> 00:55:32.320 Romans thirteen is not merely a command. 00:55:32.320 --> 00:55:35.440 Romans thirteen is also a polemic. 00:55:35.440 --> 00:55:38.640 Because if you look at what is actually said in the passage 00:55:38.640 --> 00:55:40.880 that I just read, and I of course encourage you to go 00:55:40.880 --> 00:55:42.960 and read it yourself, and I will put a link in the 00:55:42.960 --> 00:55:44.480 show notes. 00:55:44.480 --> 00:55:48.560 It actually gives a definition of what a proper authority is, what 00:55:48.560 --> 00:55:51.440 a rightful authority is. 00:55:51.440 --> 00:55:53.360 And what does it say? 00:55:53.360 --> 00:55:56.640 Well it says in the core of it, for rulers are not 00:55:56.640 --> 00:56:00.320 a terror to good conduct, but to bad. 00:56:00.320 --> 00:56:03.920 That's defining what a ruler properly is. 00:56:03.920 --> 00:56:08.720 And so a man who is a terror to good conduct, and 00:56:08.720 --> 00:56:14.240 not to bad, is in fact not actually a rightful ruler. 00:56:14.240 --> 00:56:18.400 He has overstepped, he has become a minister of Satan instead of 00:56:18.400 --> 00:56:20.240 a minister of God. 00:56:20.240 --> 00:56:26.080 And so for instance, if you were living somewhere and the authority 00:56:26.080 --> 00:56:33.680 in that area, the president, say, outlaws Christianity and forces everyone under 00:56:33.680 --> 00:56:38.080 penalty of death to convert to paganism, he is not a rightful 00:56:38.080 --> 00:56:41.600 authority. Because what has he done? 00:56:41.600 --> 00:56:45.040 He has become a terror to good conduct and not to bad 00:56:45.040 --> 00:56:51.200 conduct. He is the inverse of what God defines here as being 00:56:51.200 --> 00:56:52.960 a rightful authority. 00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:56.480 And so you have to read Romans 13 and recognize what it 00:56:56.480 --> 00:56:57.440 is saying. 00:56:57.440 --> 00:57:02.800 It is not simply saying that first part which some modern teachers 00:57:02.800 --> 00:57:08.080 love to quote, let every person be subject to the governing authorities. 00:57:08.080 --> 00:57:10.960 And perhaps they'll move on from there and also say, For there 00:57:10.960 --> 00:57:14.000 is no authority except from God. 00:57:14.000 --> 00:57:17.040 But you have to read the rest of it, because it goes 00:57:17.040 --> 00:57:21.760 on to define what an authority a proper authority actually is. 00:57:21.760 --> 00:57:27.600 And so if some person holding some certain office does not meet 00:57:27.600 --> 00:57:30.960 this standard in the In so far as he deviates from the 00:57:30.960 --> 00:57:34.960 standard that is set forth here in Romans 13, he is not 00:57:34.960 --> 00:57:36.400 a rightful authority. 00:57:36.400 --> 00:57:40.320 And then you run that analysis that we spoke about earlier. 00:57:40.320 --> 00:57:43.360 Again, not specifically that one, but that is the general source of 00:57:43.680 --> 00:57:45.440 analysis you have to run. 00:57:45.440 --> 00:57:48.080 What sort of violation is he committing? 00:57:48.080 --> 00:57:50.880 What sort of violator is he? 00:57:50.880 --> 00:57:56.560 Is he some sort of horrible tyrant that is actually suppressing Christianity, 00:57:56.560 --> 00:58:01.040 that is going specifically after the church, that is commanding you participate 00:58:01.040 --> 00:58:01.920 in sin? 00:58:01.920 --> 00:58:04.800 Well he's certainly not a rightful authority according to the definition we 00:58:04.960 --> 00:58:10.000 have here in Romans thirteen, and so Christians are going to have 00:58:10.000 --> 00:58:13.840 certain moral duties that flow from that. 00:58:13.840 --> 00:58:18.640 But then there is also the argument from inference, and we can 00:58:18.640 --> 00:58:20.560 see this elsewhere in Scripture as well. 00:58:20.560 --> 00:58:25.840 The Magdeburg Confession also makes reference to Christ's words render unto Caesar 00:58:26.000 --> 00:58:31.840 that which is Caesar's, render unto God that which is God's. 00:58:31.840 --> 00:58:35.120 That also implies a certain number of things. 00:58:35.120 --> 00:58:37.440 There is an inference to be drawn there. 00:58:37.440 --> 00:58:41.680 The inference, of course, is that you do not render unto Caesar 00:58:41.680 --> 00:58:43.200 that which is God's. 00:58:43.520 --> 00:58:47.680 And you do not render unto God that which is Caesar's. 00:58:47.680 --> 00:58:50.800 In that specific case there's a sort of nuance that goes along 00:58:50.800 --> 00:58:51.280 with that. 00:58:51.280 --> 00:58:55.280 This would be used polemically, in fact, against the Pope, because the 00:58:55.280 --> 00:58:59.360 Pope then and less so now because he doesn't have the power 00:58:59.360 --> 00:59:01.760 anymore, although certainly if he had the power he would make the 00:59:01.760 --> 00:59:06.160 same claims because the doctrine has not changed, in this case, he 00:59:06.160 --> 00:59:11.200 makes claims to having authority over the states, over the nations. 00:59:12.240 --> 00:59:16.640 He makes claims to having power in the kingdom of the left 00:59:16.640 --> 00:59:19.840 hand. That is a violation. 00:59:19.840 --> 00:59:25.760 That is an attempt to take what belongs to Caesar and not 00:59:25.920 --> 00:59:28.640 really take it for God, because of course we would disagree that 00:59:28.640 --> 00:59:33.040 the Pope is working for or speaking on behalf of God. 00:59:33.040 --> 00:59:35.920 But that is essentially the claim that he is setting forth. 00:59:35.920 --> 00:59:39.520 He is saying, no, none of these things belong to Caesar. 00:59:39.520 --> 00:59:46.560 They all belong under this particular formulation of the Church, which 00:59:46.560 --> 00:59:49.840 is a violation of what Christ is saying, because he is saying, 00:59:49.840 --> 00:59:53.200 There are certain things that belong to Caesar. 00:59:53.200 --> 00:59:57.200 Ultimately, of course, yes, everything belongs to God. 00:59:57.200 --> 01:00:01.920 But here in time, and with regard to human affairs, there are 01:00:01.920 --> 01:00:06.640 certain things that belong to Caesar, just as there are certain things 01:00:06.640 --> 01:00:10.880 that belong to God, which is to say there is a distinction 01:00:10.880 --> 01:00:13.680 here between the things of the left hand and the things of 01:00:13.680 --> 01:00:15.680 the right hand. 01:00:15.680 --> 01:00:19.280 If Caesar invades the domain of the church and says you must 01:00:19.520 --> 01:00:25.200 worship in this specific way, believe these specific things, Caesar is likely 01:00:25.200 --> 01:00:27.200 overstepping his bounds. 01:00:27.200 --> 01:00:32.240 There are some cases in which Caesar, in which the authority, has 01:00:32.240 --> 01:00:36.720 a duty to see that right religion is taught in his realm. 01:00:36.720 --> 01:00:40.320 Wolredi said that we went over some of that with regard to 01:00:40.320 --> 01:00:41.280 the history. 01:00:41.280 --> 01:00:45.920 But those who have authority, rightful authority in the left hand kingdom 01:00:46.240 --> 01:00:50.640 do have a duty to see that right religion is taught in 01:00:50.640 --> 01:00:51.680 their realm. 01:00:51.680 --> 01:00:54.800 They will stand before God and answer for that. 01:00:54.800 --> 01:00:59.920 It would be completely ridiculous to claim that they have no authority 01:01:00.240 --> 01:01:04.160 to enforce right religion in their realm, and then also they're going 01:01:04.160 --> 01:01:08.000 to stand before God and answer for for not enforcing what they 01:01:08.000 --> 01:01:10.080 didn't have the authority to enforce. 01:01:10.080 --> 01:01:12.320 That argument would be incoherent. 01:01:12.320 --> 01:01:17.760 And so the authority must have the power, must have the right 01:01:17.760 --> 01:01:21.440 to see that what is taught in his realm is correct. 01:01:21.440 --> 01:01:24.240 He's going to stand before God and answer for that if he 01:01:24.240 --> 01:01:26.480 is wrong or if he did it in a wrong way. 01:01:26.480 --> 01:01:29.120 That's one of the things that comes along with having that sort 01:01:29.120 --> 01:01:30.320 of office. 01:01:30.320 --> 01:01:35.520 It's not just power and enjoyment with no strings attached. 01:01:35.520 --> 01:01:38.000 You get a sort of stricter judgment. 01:01:38.000 --> 01:01:40.640 There's a form of that that you are going to have if 01:01:40.640 --> 01:01:44.000 you are an authority in the left-hand kingdom. 01:01:44.320 --> 01:01:48.960 But with regard to the matters of the right hand kingdom, the 01:01:48.960 --> 01:01:52.640 church does not tell the state what to do. 01:01:52.640 --> 01:01:55.680 That would be trying to take the things of Caesar out of 01:01:55.680 --> 01:01:58.480 his hands and say, no, these don't belong to you, they belong 01:01:58.480 --> 01:02:00.240 to me instead. 01:02:00.240 --> 01:02:03.760 I'm the Pope, I'm the bishop, I get to do this, I 01:02:03.760 --> 01:02:06.480 have all the authority and you have none. 01:02:06.480 --> 01:02:09.840 That is rejecting the clear words of Christ. 01:02:09.840 --> 01:02:13.360 Because when he says that you are to render unto Caesar the 01:02:13.360 --> 01:02:18.320 things that are Caesar's, it means there are things that are Caesar's. 01:02:18.320 --> 01:02:22.880 And so the inference here is that that inverse you can't have 01:02:22.880 --> 01:02:25.760 the one taking from the speaking from the other. 01:02:25.760 --> 01:02:30.720 That was the problem that we see occurring here with regard to 01:02:30.720 --> 01:02:32.000 the Emperor. 01:02:32.000 --> 01:02:34.800 Because the Emperor is coming in at, of course, the behest of 01:02:34.800 --> 01:02:39.360 the Pope, and saying No, you cannot be a Lutheran. 01:02:39.360 --> 01:02:42.720 No, you cannot practice Christianity. 01:02:42.720 --> 01:02:45.360 You cannot believe these things. 01:02:45.360 --> 01:02:49.120 Instead, you are going to do what I tell you to do. 01:02:49.120 --> 01:02:52.560 Now, of course, some of you are going to recognize there's a 01:02:52.560 --> 01:02:55.440 tension here, and there absolutely is. 01:02:55.440 --> 01:02:58.880 One of the ways that you can solve this tension, and the 01:02:58.880 --> 01:03:04.320 way that eventually the peace of Augsburg did solve this contention is 01:03:04.320 --> 01:03:11.040 by permitting princes to have a religion as the established religion in 01:03:11.040 --> 01:03:12.400 their own realms. 01:03:12.400 --> 01:03:16.880 And so that meant if you were Lutheran and your prince was 01:03:16.880 --> 01:03:22.320 reformed, you moved next door and you lived under a Lutheran prince. 01:03:22.320 --> 01:03:24.480 That solved the problem. 01:03:24.480 --> 01:03:27.840 The issue with regard to the Pope is the Pope was claiming 01:03:27.840 --> 01:03:34.000 that absolutely, everyone has to believe exactly what Rome teaches. 01:03:34.000 --> 01:03:39.200 That does not leave any room with regard to Christian conscience. 01:03:39.200 --> 01:03:41.280 We're not going to argue that 01:03:42.160 --> 01:03:46.720 false doctrine is right simply because some men believe it is true. 01:03:46.720 --> 01:03:47.920 That's of course false. 01:03:47.920 --> 01:03:50.800 That's ridiculous. 01:03:50.800 --> 01:03:55.840 But with regard to these matters, similar to the question of wisdom 01:03:55.840 --> 01:04:00.560 and how you pursue your duty with regard to if you have 01:04:00.560 --> 01:04:05.840 violations of the moral law and you have a duty to act, 01:04:05.840 --> 01:04:11.280 there is a consideration of minimization of harm. 01:04:11.280 --> 01:04:15.760 With regard to rebellion, rebellion, one of the reasons that rebellion is 01:04:15.760 --> 01:04:19.840 so wicked is that it always causes harm, and the harm is 01:04:19.840 --> 01:04:20.480 almost always 01:04:21.520 --> 01:04:26.480 worse than the harm that caused the rebellion caused so-called in the 01:04:26.480 --> 01:04:28.240 first place. 01:04:28.240 --> 01:04:31.840 And so you have to subject that to wisdom. 01:04:31.840 --> 01:04:36.480 You can't cause a worse harm to undo a lesser harm. 01:04:36.480 --> 01:04:40.560 That is what the Pope was attempting to do in this case, 01:04:40.560 --> 01:04:44.000 and the Emperor at his behest. 01:04:44.000 --> 01:04:46.240 If you are subjecting everyone 01:04:47.520 --> 01:04:52.240 to this same doctrine, to this same belief, and you are leaving 01:04:52.240 --> 01:04:55.600 no place for Christian conscience, what you are doing is you are 01:04:55.600 --> 01:04:58.640 telling men, you must either rebel against your conscience 01:05:00.320 --> 01:05:03.520 in submitting to this doctrine in which you do not believe, this 01:05:03.520 --> 01:05:09.200 doctrine that you believe to be false, or you must rebel against 01:05:09.200 --> 01:05:12.640 the Empire, you must take up arms. 01:05:12.880 --> 01:05:16.800 That is leaving men with absolutely no good option, because they are 01:05:16.800 --> 01:05:20.800 either going to have to sin by acting against conscience, which of 01:05:20.800 --> 01:05:25.360 course Christians cannot do, or they are going to have to rebel. 01:05:25.360 --> 01:05:27.840 And if they have to rebel that is going to lead to 01:05:27.840 --> 01:05:29.680 other forms of wickedness. 01:05:29.680 --> 01:05:33.760 That is one of the reasons you want this sort of subsidiarity, 01:05:33.760 --> 01:05:38.960 you want this to be devolved, not to be handled at the 01:05:38.960 --> 01:05:42.560 imperial level, which is what was happening here. 01:05:42.560 --> 01:05:48.800 Because if, again, if you are Lutheran and your prince is not, 01:05:48.800 --> 01:05:52.400 you can move next door, or if you're Roman Catholic and your 01:05:52.560 --> 01:05:57.760 prince is Lutheran, you can move one principality over or two, whatever 01:05:57.760 --> 01:06:01.920 it happens to be, and then you can practice your version of 01:06:01.920 --> 01:06:07.280 Christianity under a prince who has said, My realm is going to 01:06:07.280 --> 01:06:11.600 be Lutheran, my realm is going to be Reformed, my realm is 01:06:11.600 --> 01:06:14.560 going to be Roman Catholic. 01:06:14.560 --> 01:06:18.080 That means that men are not forced to violate their conscience 01:06:18.960 --> 01:06:22.320 or choose to take up arms. 01:06:22.320 --> 01:06:26.800 We know from Scripture Scripture is very clear about this, that there 01:06:26.800 --> 01:06:31.760 are going to be divisions in the church, we are not going 01:06:31.760 --> 01:06:35.520 to achieve complete unity of doctrine. 01:06:35.520 --> 01:06:40.400 And despite what some have claimed, we didn't even have it historically. 01:06:40.400 --> 01:06:42.880 Rome doesn't even have it today within Rome. 01:06:42.880 --> 01:06:46.720 So So that claim as well is complete nonsense. 01:06:46.720 --> 01:06:49.920 We are always going to have these quarrels. 01:06:49.920 --> 01:06:52.640 We are going to have disagreements. 01:06:52.640 --> 01:06:56.480 And so we have to act in a Christian manner with regard 01:06:56.480 --> 01:06:57.200 to those. 01:06:57.200 --> 01:07:01.360 We have We have to seek to minimize the harm without violating 01:07:01.360 --> 01:07:04.080 our conscience in the process. 01:07:04.080 --> 01:07:07.120 Because, of course, if we are forcing men to violate their conscience, 01:07:07.120 --> 01:07:10.240 what we're doing is we're forcing them to sin. 01:07:10.240 --> 01:07:14.560 That doesn't mean, again, it does not mean that just because men 01:07:14.560 --> 01:07:18.160 believe in false doctrine that doctrine is acceptable. 01:07:18.160 --> 01:07:21.040 It means that there is a greater harm that we want to 01:07:21.040 --> 01:07:27.040 avoid. We should seek to convince our Christian brothers by convincing them. 01:07:27.040 --> 01:07:32.800 We don't convince them by sieging their city and murdering them. 01:07:33.120 --> 01:07:35.760 That is what the Emperor was doing here. 01:07:36.000 --> 01:07:39.440 That is why it was rightful for these men to resist, and 01:07:39.440 --> 01:07:43.840 incidentally, the Emperor had already made promises and gone back on them. 01:07:43.840 --> 01:07:46.640 This was not the first thing the Emperor did that was out 01:07:46.640 --> 01:07:49.360 of bounds, that was impermissible and immoral. 01:07:49.360 --> 01:07:53.120 He had a history of doing it at this point. 01:07:53.120 --> 01:07:57.520 And so when you look at what it means to be an 01:07:57.520 --> 01:08:01.920 authority, you have to look at what scripture actually says. 01:08:01.920 --> 01:08:05.120 This is another one of those cases in which we are advocating 01:08:05.120 --> 01:08:07.600 that you read carefully. 01:08:07.600 --> 01:08:13.040 Don't just glaze over and sort of pay attention to the words 01:08:13.520 --> 01:08:15.680 as you read through it quickly. 01:08:15.680 --> 01:08:19.920 Actually pay attention to the words of Scripture because God chose those 01:08:19.920 --> 01:08:24.880 words. He didn't choose them idly, he didn't choose them without reason. 01:08:24.880 --> 01:08:28.560 He chose them specifically because they say what he wants you to 01:08:28.560 --> 01:08:29.920 know as a Christian. 01:08:29.920 --> 01:08:35.600 And so when you read Romans thirteen, it's not just saying submit 01:08:35.600 --> 01:08:39.360 blindly to whatever authority happens to be over you at any given 01:08:39.360 --> 01:08:42.480 time. Time because that's your Christian duty. 01:08:42.480 --> 01:08:46.080 I would hope that at least most Christians, and it should be 01:08:46.080 --> 01:08:50.560 all Christians, but at least most Christians would recognize there was no 01:08:50.560 --> 01:08:51.920 duty to submit 01:08:52.960 --> 01:08:55.440 to the Soviet Union. 01:08:55.440 --> 01:09:02.080 The Soviet Union was actively wicked in almost every conceivable way. 01:09:02.080 --> 01:09:07.120 Did everything it could to destroy Christianity, did everything it could to 01:09:07.120 --> 01:09:11.120 attempt to destroy the world in so far as it was capable 01:09:11.120 --> 01:09:12.960 of doing it. 01:09:12.960 --> 01:09:18.400 There is no Christian duty to submit to that sort of wickedness. 01:09:18.400 --> 01:09:24.320 But under the supposed interpretation of Romans 13 that has become popular 01:09:24.320 --> 01:09:28.080 in certain circles, you would have had a duty to submit to 01:09:28.080 --> 01:09:33.920 Stalin, to simply submit to that sort of wickedness Regardless of what 01:09:33.920 --> 01:09:36.320 he tells you to do. 01:09:36.320 --> 01:09:38.640 That is absurd. 01:09:38.640 --> 01:09:40.960 That is not Christian. 01:09:40.960 --> 01:09:47.040 Because Romans thirteen gives you a definition of what a rightful authority 01:09:47.040 --> 01:09:49.840 is. It does not just say submit. 01:09:49.840 --> 01:09:55.040 It says you submit to the rightful authority because rulers are a 01:09:55.040 --> 01:10:01.600 terror to bad conduct, not to good conduct If you have someone 01:10:01.600 --> 01:10:06.480 who is a terror to good conduct and encourages bad conduct, he 01:10:06.480 --> 01:10:10.240 is not an authority, according to the definition we have in Romans 01:10:10.400 --> 01:10:16.480 13. And the other argument that is set forth in the Magdeburg 01:10:16.560 --> 01:10:19.920 Confession, as I've already said, is the one by inference, the fact 01:10:19.920 --> 01:10:23.360 that if there are things that belong to Caesar, then there are 01:10:23.440 --> 01:10:26.000 in fact things that belong to Caesar, and they should not be 01:10:26.000 --> 01:10:28.080 seized by others. 01:10:28.080 --> 01:10:30.160 And the inverse as well. 01:10:30.160 --> 01:10:35.200 So it's important to read these things, not just to accept whatever 01:10:35.200 --> 01:10:38.320 you're told about, you know. 01:10:38.320 --> 01:10:42.320 Well, Romans 13 says submit, and so you obviously have to submit 01:10:42.400 --> 01:10:47.920 regardless. Go and read what it actually says. 01:10:47.920 --> 01:10:51.040 We're not telling you just to believe what we say, as we 01:10:51.040 --> 01:10:53.600 have said in a number of other episodes. 01:10:53.600 --> 01:10:56.560 We want you to look at what Scripture says, to look at 01:10:56.560 --> 01:11:00.800 what God has caused to be transmitted in his word, and believe 01:11:00.800 --> 01:11:02.160 what he says. 01:11:02.160 --> 01:11:03.200 That's why I read it. 01:11:04.080 --> 01:11:07.120 That's why I am going over the interpretation of it and not 01:11:07.120 --> 01:11:11.680 simply saying Well it says be subject to the governing authority, so 01:11:11.680 --> 01:11:12.640 obviously that's it. 01:11:12.640 --> 01:11:13.520 End of story. 01:11:13.520 --> 01:11:16.160 No, read it in context. 01:11:16.160 --> 01:11:18.720 God's Word is complete. 01:11:18.720 --> 01:11:23.120 God's Word gives you everything you need to know about the subjects 01:11:23.120 --> 01:11:26.400 that are addressed by God's Word. 01:11:26.400 --> 01:11:31.280 God's Word addresses what it means to be a rightful authority. 01:11:31.280 --> 01:11:36.240 It addresses it I won't say extensively, because it's obviously not a 01:11:36.240 --> 01:11:39.520 very large treatment here, it's one paragraph in Romans thirteen. 01:11:39.520 --> 01:11:43.120 Yes, there are some other sections that are relevant as well, but 01:11:43.120 --> 01:11:47.760 it addresses it sufficiently if you read the words that are actually 01:11:47.760 --> 01:11:50.880 there and understand what is being said. 01:11:50.880 --> 01:11:55.760 And part of this is an exegetical tool that is important to 01:11:55.760 --> 01:11:59.840 bear in mind when reading any part of scripture, when reading really 01:11:59.840 --> 01:12:04.320 anything, because this is true with regard to other literature as well, 01:12:04.320 --> 01:12:09.520 not just for scripture, but when you have a positive statement, it 01:12:09.520 --> 01:12:13.840 imports with it a sort of inverse negative statement. 01:12:13.840 --> 01:12:17.520 And the same of course for a negative statement importing the inverse 01:12:17.520 --> 01:12:18.560 positive statement. 01:12:18.560 --> 01:12:23.280 To give a more concrete example, so it is more easily understood. 01:12:23.280 --> 01:12:29.520 This is something that is going to be very recognizable, readily comprehensible 01:12:29.520 --> 01:12:33.840 to Lutherans, because this is in the book of Concord, this is 01:12:33.840 --> 01:12:38.880 in our confessions, with regard to the Ten Commandments, if the commandment 01:12:38.880 --> 01:12:44.960 prohibits something, it is also implying, it is also stating inversely that 01:12:44.960 --> 01:12:46.960 you have a duty with regard to 01:12:48.080 --> 01:12:52.000 the inverse of that negative thing, or if it tells you to 01:12:52.000 --> 01:12:57.440 do something, then you are not to do the negative things. 01:12:57.440 --> 01:13:00.480 So for instance, thou shalt not murder. 01:13:00.480 --> 01:13:05.280 Not only does that mean don't go and stab your neighbor, which 01:13:05.280 --> 01:13:10.080 is obviously the core meaning there, do not murder, but it also 01:13:10.080 --> 01:13:11.920 means that you aid your neighbor. 01:13:11.920 --> 01:13:13.520 It means you help your neighbor. 01:13:13.520 --> 01:13:16.000 You do not do things that harm your neighbor. 01:13:16.000 --> 01:13:18.320 There are things that come along with that. 01:13:18.320 --> 01:13:20.640 The same is true here. 01:13:20.640 --> 01:13:24.080 With regard to what it means to be a rightful authority, and 01:13:24.560 --> 01:13:29.120 You can draw out more from that passage than just the bare 01:13:29.280 --> 01:13:30.800 words themselves. 01:13:30.800 --> 01:13:34.320 Scripture doesn't just have a surface-level meaning. 01:13:34.320 --> 01:13:35.440 There is more to it. 01:13:35.440 --> 01:13:38.240 We should expect that it's written by God. 01:13:38.640 --> 01:13:42.960 God chose these words because he wants us to believe what is 01:13:42.960 --> 01:13:45.600 said here, and this is what he wants us to know about 01:13:45.600 --> 01:13:46.880 the subject. 01:13:46.880 --> 01:13:50.640 And so we have to exercise the abilities that God has given 01:13:50.640 --> 01:13:56.720 us to interpret this, to understand this, to exegete this. 01:13:56.720 --> 01:14:01.360 With regard to authority, it is not simply a matter of well 01:14:01.440 --> 01:14:03.440 there's authority you must submit. 01:14:03.440 --> 01:14:08.480 No, the authority has duties from God, the authority has a definition 01:14:08.480 --> 01:14:09.920 from God. 01:14:09.920 --> 01:14:12.960 It means something to be an authority. 01:14:12.960 --> 01:14:17.120 And if you are faced with someone in a position of authority 01:14:17.280 --> 01:14:21.440 who is not living up to the standard that God has set, 01:14:21.440 --> 01:14:23.920 then there are some additional questions. 01:14:23.920 --> 01:14:27.120 That is the point of the Magdeburg Confession. 01:14:27.120 --> 01:14:30.080 That is the point of this episode. 01:14:30.080 --> 01:14:35.200 If an authority does not meet the standard for a rightful authority 01:14:35.200 --> 01:14:38.880 that has been set by God, then it is incumbent on the 01:14:38.880 --> 01:14:40.960 Christian to figure out 01:14:41.920 --> 01:14:46.320 what sort of violator is this person? 01:14:46.320 --> 01:14:49.280 How bad is what he is doing? 01:14:49.280 --> 01:14:52.560 And whose duty is it to do something about it? 01:14:52.560 --> 01:14:55.120 Because it probably isn't your duty. 01:14:55.120 --> 01:14:57.840 But it might be your duty to raise it with the person 01:14:57.840 --> 01:15:00.960 who is above you in the hierarchy, who should then take it 01:15:00.960 --> 01:15:03.280 to the man who is above him. 01:15:03.280 --> 01:15:06.720 That is how things are supposed to work, because as Woe said, 01:15:06.720 --> 01:15:12.000 if we do not respect the authority and the hierarchy that God 01:15:12.240 --> 01:15:18.560 has built into creation that just inevitably expresses itself with regard to 01:15:18.560 --> 01:15:25.680 human constructions, so civilization, society, these things form organically because God 01:15:25.680 --> 01:15:28.560 has designed creation in that way. 01:15:28.560 --> 01:15:33.200 If we ignore them, we wind up with anarchy, and there is 01:15:33.200 --> 01:15:35.600 nothing worse than anarchy. 01:15:35.600 --> 01:15:40.480 Even to submit to a wicked ruler, who is, of course, with 01:15:40.480 --> 01:15:45.840 the caveat not causing you to participate in his sins, it is 01:15:45.840 --> 01:15:50.080 better to submit to that wicked ruler than to engage in behavior 01:15:50.080 --> 01:15:55.360 that will lead to anarchy, because anarchy is the greater evil. 01:15:55.360 --> 01:15:57.600 That's that wisdom call. 01:15:57.600 --> 01:16:03.520 Will resisting in whatever means you happen to be employing, a particular 01:16:03.520 --> 01:16:08.160 form of wickedness from an authority, lead to a greater evil than 01:16:08.160 --> 01:16:10.880 the one you are attempting to destroy? 01:16:10.880 --> 01:16:15.520 If so, then obviously it is not only unwise to go down 01:16:15.520 --> 01:16:19.200 that road, but it would be wicked as well, because it is 01:16:19.200 --> 01:16:22.960 in fact a sin to commit that greater wickedness. 01:16:22.960 --> 01:16:26.960 You're not making the world better, you're not solving the problem, you're 01:16:26.960 --> 01:16:29.760 creating a new and larger problem. 01:16:29.760 --> 01:16:34.320 That is why as Christians, we oppose rebellion. 01:16:34.320 --> 01:16:40.240 We are never going to advocate for rebellion because rebellion inherently Is 01:16:40.240 --> 01:16:44.320 anarchy. Anarchy creates worse conditions. 01:16:44.320 --> 01:16:47.120 It creates more and greater sins. 01:16:47.600 --> 01:16:52.880 The goal should always be the maintenance of hierarchy, the maintenance of 01:16:52.880 --> 01:16:57.680 these systems that God has built into creation for our benefit. 01:16:57.680 --> 01:17:01.200 Yes, they are going to be imperfect because there are imperfect men 01:17:01.200 --> 01:17:02.880 in these offices. 01:17:02.880 --> 01:17:06.400 But what we should endeavor to do is fix the problems, not 01:17:06.960 --> 01:17:09.200 burn everything to the ground. 01:17:09.840 --> 01:17:10.080 I 01:17:10.080 --> 01:17:13.040 want to emphasize one more point about Romans thirteen. 01:17:13.040 --> 01:17:15.760 It's something that I pointed out in the past when we were 01:17:15.760 --> 01:17:19.520 talking about the Sermon on the Mount On the Mount. 01:17:19.520 --> 01:17:23.520 When Christians speak of the Sermon on the Mount, you know, beginning 01:17:23.520 --> 01:17:29.600 with the Beatitudes and these moral prescriptions that Christ provides, they're very 01:17:29.600 --> 01:17:32.880 clearly challenging teachings because they show that we're all sinners. 01:17:32.880 --> 01:17:35.760 They show that we all fall short of the glory of God. 01:17:35.760 --> 01:17:38.160 You were taught don't murder, I say don't hate. 01:17:38.160 --> 01:17:40.800 If you've hated someone in your heart, you've already murdered them. 01:17:40.800 --> 01:17:45.040 That's impossible for any man to live perfectly throughout his entire life. 01:17:45.040 --> 01:17:48.320 The point that I've made in the past about the Sermon on 01:17:48.320 --> 01:17:53.440 the Mount is that that was not a lecture to governors. 01:17:53.440 --> 01:17:55.840 That was a lecture to Christians. 01:17:55.840 --> 01:17:57.280 It was not about government. 01:17:57.280 --> 01:17:58.160 It was about interpersonal 01:17:59.360 --> 01:18:04.080 behavior. Part of the Sermon on the Mount says, do not resist 01:18:04.080 --> 01:18:06.240 the one who is evil. 01:18:06.240 --> 01:18:09.680 Could you possibly apply that to a government? 01:18:09.680 --> 01:18:14.400 Could that possibly be something that a governor that a magistrate is 01:18:14.400 --> 01:18:15.280 held to? 01:18:15.280 --> 01:18:16.720 Absolutely not. 01:18:16.720 --> 01:18:21.120 If there is an evildoer and the magistrate does not resist the 01:18:21.120 --> 01:18:23.760 one who is evil, that magistrate is evil. 01:18:23.760 --> 01:18:27.840 He has failed to do one of his primary tasks. 01:18:27.840 --> 01:18:33.360 So it's an important point when we in a Godforsaken democracy are 01:18:33.360 --> 01:18:36.880 talking about our participation, we cannot take things like the sermon on 01:18:37.040 --> 01:18:42.080 the Mount or Romans thirteen and apply them to the government as 01:18:42.080 --> 01:18:46.320 though these men, as though God were speaking to the government, because 01:18:46.400 --> 01:18:48.000 it's simply not the case. 01:18:48.000 --> 01:18:53.840 Romans thirteen begins, let every person be subject to the governing authorities. 01:18:53.840 --> 01:18:57.360 Paul is obviously not addressing the governing authorities here. 01:18:57.360 --> 01:18:59.520 He's addressing everyone else. 01:18:59.520 --> 01:19:02.480 The arguments that are made here are not applicable 01:19:03.520 --> 01:19:08.000 in terms of limiting, but at the same time, a godly ruler, 01:19:08.000 --> 01:19:13.360 a godly magistrate, governor, emperor, whomever, when he reads Romans thirteen, he's 01:19:13.360 --> 01:19:16.560 going to read for rulers are not a terror to good conduct 01:19:16.640 --> 01:19:17.600 but to bad. 01:19:17.600 --> 01:19:21.120 And the ruler is not going to think that he is limited 01:19:21.120 --> 01:19:21.680 by that. 01:19:21.680 --> 01:19:23.760 He's going to think, well, this is my punch list. 01:19:23.760 --> 01:19:25.360 This is what I've got to be doing. 01:19:25.360 --> 01:19:27.120 Have I terrorized good conduct? 01:19:27.120 --> 01:19:29.280 Have I sinned against God as a ruler? 01:19:29.280 --> 01:19:32.960 Or have I failed to be a terror to bad conduct? 01:19:32.960 --> 01:19:35.840 That itself is a sin for a magistrate. 01:19:35.840 --> 01:19:38.960 It's not my personal job to be a terror to bad conduct, 01:19:38.960 --> 01:19:42.400 but to the emperor, to the prince, it absolutely is. 01:19:42.400 --> 01:19:45.040 And so for a prince who does not resist the one who 01:19:45.040 --> 01:19:48.640 is evil, he has failed to be a terror to bad conduct, 01:19:48.640 --> 01:19:50.640 and he's a wicked prince. 01:19:50.640 --> 01:19:53.680 This is one of the primary reason that girls are utterly disqualified 01:19:54.320 --> 01:19:56.320 from any political participation. 01:19:56.320 --> 01:19:59.840 Because no girl as part of her nature as a female is 01:19:59.840 --> 01:20:02.400 going to want to terrorize evil men. 01:20:02.400 --> 01:20:05.840 The good prince, you know, he'd been lazy for a while, and 01:20:05.840 --> 01:20:09.200 he picks up Romans 13, and he reads this and he says 01:20:09.360 --> 01:20:12.240 for rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad 01:20:12.400 --> 01:20:15.200 and he pauses and he thinks Have I been a terror to 01:20:15.200 --> 01:20:16.400 bad conduct recently? 01:20:16.400 --> 01:20:17.760 And he realizes he hasn't. 01:20:17.760 --> 01:20:20.640 He hasn't terrorized any evildoers in a long time. 01:20:20.640 --> 01:20:23.040 He's gonna stop what he's doing and say, I'm gonna be right 01:20:23.040 --> 01:20:25.760 back, and he's gonna go terrorize some evildoers. 01:20:25.760 --> 01:20:27.840 That's him doing his job. 01:20:27.840 --> 01:20:30.960 That's something that's not inherent to a female nature, it's inherent to 01:20:30.960 --> 01:20:32.160 a male nature. 01:20:32.160 --> 01:20:34.480 Men are potentially good at that. 01:20:34.480 --> 01:20:36.960 Most men aren't particularly good at it. 01:20:36.960 --> 01:20:40.160 And some men have had that notion bred out of them. 01:20:40.160 --> 01:20:44.080 And our society is oriented to say no, you have to not 01:20:44.080 --> 01:20:47.760 resist the one who is evil, which is completely ungodly. 01:20:47.760 --> 01:20:49.120 It's completely wicked. 01:20:49.120 --> 01:20:52.000 It's how Satan is burning down our society. 01:20:52.000 --> 01:20:55.600 When every time we see evil, we're told, well, you can't resist 01:20:55.600 --> 01:20:57.440 evil. Absolutely not. 01:20:57.440 --> 01:20:59.840 We have a duty to resist evil. 01:20:59.840 --> 01:21:03.920 That is the entire premise of the Magdeburg Confession. 01:21:03.920 --> 01:21:08.000 The magistrates at every level have a duty to resist evil, even 01:21:08.000 --> 01:21:09.840 when that evil is government. 01:21:09.840 --> 01:21:13.920 And in particular, it's vital that the lesser magistrate resist the evil 01:21:13.920 --> 01:21:16.880 of government because he's the only one who can do it. 01:21:16.880 --> 01:21:20.160 One of the similar passages to Romans thirteen that comes up in 01:21:20.160 --> 01:21:24.800 the Magberg Confession and elsewhere is first Peter two, which begins be 01:21:24.800 --> 01:21:28.000 subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be 01:21:28.000 --> 01:21:30.800 to the emperors or supreme or to governors, as they are sent 01:21:30.800 --> 01:21:33.440 to punish those who do evil, and to praise those who do 01:21:33.440 --> 01:21:35.760 good. It's very similar to what Paul wrote. 01:21:36.160 --> 01:21:38.960 The important thing about Second Peter two is you have to read 01:21:38.960 --> 01:21:41.120 the rest of it and you have to understand it in the 01:21:41.120 --> 01:21:44.480 scope of what the Mogdeberg pastors were talking about. 01:21:44.480 --> 01:21:47.280 When you look at the rest of 1 Peter two, it begins 01:21:47.280 --> 01:21:48.320 with governments. 01:21:48.320 --> 01:21:52.480 It says that we the people should obey emperors as supreme or 01:21:52.480 --> 01:21:56.960 governors. Interestingly, in this passage, it acknowledges there are multiple forms of 01:21:56.960 --> 01:22:00.400 government. In whatever it is, you're going to have an executive. 01:22:00.400 --> 01:22:03.040 And then the next paragraph is about servants. 01:22:03.280 --> 01:22:04.480 Servants slaves. 01:22:04.480 --> 01:22:05.200 I shouldn't say that. 01:22:05.200 --> 01:22:07.120 I'm looking at the ESV, it's slaves. 01:22:07.120 --> 01:22:11.440 Slaves who are owned by other men, obey your masters, particularly when 01:22:11.440 --> 01:22:14.560 they beat you, when they are cruel and unfair. 01:22:14.560 --> 01:22:17.600 And then it goes on and talks about wives and husbands. 01:22:17.600 --> 01:22:20.080 The wives are to submit to their husbands. 01:22:20.080 --> 01:22:23.280 Now, the crucial distinction here that gets back to what Corey said 01:22:23.280 --> 01:22:27.280 at the beginning about the arguments that the Magdeburgers were making was 01:22:27.280 --> 01:22:30.240 that in the case of a husband, she has to obey her 01:22:30.240 --> 01:22:33.200 husband unless he commands her to do something evil. 01:22:33.200 --> 01:22:35.680 He does not have absolute authority over his wife. 01:22:35.680 --> 01:22:38.320 There's never absolute authority in this life. 01:22:38.320 --> 01:22:42.080 A husband has a duty to protect her, to defend her, to 01:22:42.080 --> 01:22:46.160 command her properly, but that should never be a burden for her. 01:22:46.160 --> 01:22:48.480 It may be a burden for him to have to do more 01:22:48.480 --> 01:22:49.920 thinking and more work. 01:22:49.920 --> 01:22:52.560 But it should not be a burden to her to be commanded. 01:22:52.560 --> 01:22:55.440 It is sin if he goes too far. 01:22:55.680 --> 01:22:59.360 Particularly if he commands her to do something that is sinful. 01:22:59.360 --> 01:23:02.400 The same is true of slaves, and the same is true of 01:23:02.400 --> 01:23:06.880 governments, but the difference between husband and wife, slave and master and 01:23:08.160 --> 01:23:11.760 us at the bottom of the political pile and the emperor, the 01:23:11.760 --> 01:23:15.600 prince, the magistrate, whatever at the top, is that and this is 01:23:15.600 --> 01:23:21.360 encapsulated in the Mogdiber argument, the necessity to employ violence is particular 01:23:21.840 --> 01:23:25.600 to a man's duty as it relates to external threats. 01:23:25.600 --> 01:23:28.800 Now that excludes slaves and excludes wives. 01:23:28.800 --> 01:23:32.480 If a wife has a wicked husband who's commanding her to sin, 01:23:32.480 --> 01:23:36.080 that does not give her the moral right to kill him, just 01:23:36.080 --> 01:23:39.200 as it does not give slaves the moral right to kill their 01:23:39.200 --> 01:23:41.520 masters even if their masters are wicked. 01:23:41.520 --> 01:23:46.160 To the extent possible those people should obey as an example of 01:23:46.160 --> 01:23:49.840 the submission that we have to God, but they do not have 01:23:49.840 --> 01:23:55.680 the license morally to commit violence against the slave master or against 01:23:55.680 --> 01:23:57.040 the husband. 01:23:57.040 --> 01:24:01.520 It is exclusively not true in the political realm, but only because 01:24:01.520 --> 01:24:05.280 of the lesser magistrate, because there's always somebody in greater authority of 01:24:05.280 --> 01:24:07.040 you as an individual. 01:24:07.040 --> 01:24:09.680 And as we've said before, even in the case of the prince 01:24:09.760 --> 01:24:14.320 at the very top, the only person above him is God Himself. 01:24:14.320 --> 01:24:18.080 He answers to God alone for his actions, which is what puts 01:24:18.080 --> 01:24:20.480 him in a particularly precarious place. 01:24:20.480 --> 01:24:24.720 When the very top man is acting wickedly, is failing all the 01:24:24.720 --> 01:24:28.880 tests, all four tests, is showing that he is an absolute tyrant, 01:24:28.880 --> 01:24:31.600 that there's nothing but evil, a Stalin. 01:24:31.600 --> 01:24:35.280 The duty of the lesser magistrate is to employ violence against the 01:24:35.280 --> 01:24:36.800 one who is doing evil. 01:24:36.800 --> 01:24:40.880 And this is the case that Corey mentioned, the reason, the specific 01:24:40.880 --> 01:24:45.200 reason the violence is permissible and in fact it's necessary in the 01:24:45.200 --> 01:24:49.680 political environment, is because there's still a duty to protect those beneath 01:24:49.680 --> 01:24:53.120 you. The mayor has a duty, the governor has a duty, there's 01:24:53.120 --> 01:24:57.120 always a duty to those beneath to protect from those above, just 01:24:57.120 --> 01:24:59.040 as with any external threat. 01:24:59.040 --> 01:25:03.600 So when evil comes, those men are still obligated to God to 01:25:03.600 --> 01:25:06.000 be a terror against evildoers. 01:25:06.000 --> 01:25:08.400 Not to embrace those who do evil, say, Oh, it's fine, I 01:25:08.400 --> 01:25:09.280 forgive you. 01:25:09.280 --> 01:25:11.440 Absolutely impermissible in politics. 01:25:11.440 --> 01:25:13.520 And this is why it's really tough for us as Americans or 01:25:13.520 --> 01:25:18.960 anyone in a Western democratic society to tease this out because to 01:25:18.960 --> 01:25:22.960 the extent that we're voting, we're wearing too many hats. 01:25:22.960 --> 01:25:27.520 Most men are not equipped to deal with politics as Christians where 01:25:27.520 --> 01:25:30.960 you have duties to neighbor that are peaceful and positive, and you 01:25:30.960 --> 01:25:32.960 also have duties to violence. 01:25:32.960 --> 01:25:36.720 They're duties to kill people in certain narrow cases. 01:25:36.720 --> 01:25:41.600 And the participation of individuals in a democracy make those lines incredibly 01:25:41.600 --> 01:25:45.280 blurred because suddenly maybe I'm the one who's voting to go to 01:25:45.280 --> 01:25:48.480 war, you know, indirectly by voting for someone who's promised to go 01:25:48.480 --> 01:25:49.120 to war. 01:25:49.120 --> 01:25:54.240 When those situations arise, suddenly we as individuals become participants in a 01:25:54.240 --> 01:25:57.440 hierarchy that we're at the bottom of the hierarchy, but we're pretending 01:25:57.440 --> 01:25:58.960 that we have other places. 01:25:58.960 --> 01:26:02.000 It's part of the reason that democracy is evil is that it's 01:26:02.000 --> 01:26:06.080 artificially elevating men who are not equipped by God, not called by 01:26:06.080 --> 01:26:09.440 God, not suitable by God to do those things. 01:26:09.440 --> 01:26:11.680 The other last thing I want to say about you know the 01:26:11.680 --> 01:26:16.160 Stalin case in particular, any particularly wicked king, even in the case 01:26:16.160 --> 01:26:20.080 where you have the worst king imaginable, God has still permitted that 01:26:20.080 --> 01:26:23.440 man. That doesn't mean you obey him, but when you look in 01:26:23.440 --> 01:26:27.920 scripture and you can see throughout history, scripture is replete with evil, 01:26:27.920 --> 01:26:31.280 absolutely evil kings that God permitted. 01:26:31.280 --> 01:26:36.720 He sent evil kings to harm, to punish, to destroy at the 01:26:36.720 --> 01:26:39.760 least end of the scale, to chastise. 01:26:39.760 --> 01:26:43.840 But often it goes from chastisement all the way up to genocide. 01:26:43.840 --> 01:26:47.440 God unleashes evil kings to do evil. 01:26:47.440 --> 01:26:50.160 It's a question of their hearts being hardened to do what they 01:26:50.160 --> 01:26:50.880 want to do anyway. 01:26:50.880 --> 01:26:54.000 And God's like, You're gonna be my man to destroy these people. 01:26:54.000 --> 01:26:57.840 This evil that's going to befall this entire race, you're the guy 01:26:57.840 --> 01:26:58.640 that's gonna do it. 01:26:58.640 --> 01:27:00.800 Because you're gonna do it anyway, I'm gonna permit it. 01:27:00.800 --> 01:27:03.840 I'm gonna let you be the king that goes and wipes out 01:27:03.840 --> 01:27:08.080 this neighbor because the neighbor is the one that I'm punishing. 01:27:08.080 --> 01:27:11.680 So when you have a situation like the USSR or very many 01:27:11.680 --> 01:27:15.280 others, where there's absolute evil from top to bottom. 01:27:15.280 --> 01:27:19.280 It is simultaneously the case that we have a duty to end 01:27:19.280 --> 01:27:24.080 that evil by whatever station we are, and that God has permitted 01:27:24.080 --> 01:27:27.040 it. But God hasn't permitted it to the extent that well, it's 01:27:26.960 --> 01:27:30.800 okay. You know, God let Stalin be in charge of the USSR, 01:27:30.800 --> 01:27:32.720 so that means it's fine when he doesn't. 01:27:32.720 --> 01:27:36.000 No. That means that they were under chastisement as well, as well 01:27:36.000 --> 01:27:37.440 as the rest of the world. 01:27:37.440 --> 01:27:40.720 Russia was destroyed by the Soviet rule. 01:27:40.720 --> 01:27:42.800 That country was absolutely destroyed. 01:27:42.800 --> 01:27:43.920 It will never recover. 01:27:43.920 --> 01:27:47.040 They were a mess beforehand, which is why they fell under chastisement. 01:27:47.040 --> 01:27:51.040 It's ugly when God unleashes evil rulers. 01:27:51.040 --> 01:27:55.120 And you know, again, that's over our pay grade as individuals to 01:27:55.280 --> 01:27:59.520 have those battles, but it's important to recognize that these things happen 01:27:59.760 --> 01:28:03.680 in the timeline and we see examples in scripture, we see examples 01:28:03.680 --> 01:28:06.560 in modern history and everywhere in between. 01:28:06.560 --> 01:28:08.960 The Pope was permitted to be the Pope by God. 01:28:08.960 --> 01:28:11.200 As we've said in the past, some of the popes were good. 01:28:11.200 --> 01:28:15.440 You know, there were men who were absolutely good Christian leaders, even 01:28:15.760 --> 01:28:20.480 failing the fact that we disagree with the office itself existing. 01:28:20.480 --> 01:28:23.920 There were periods when the Roman Catholic Church was behaving as a 01:28:23.920 --> 01:28:24.720 good Christian church. 01:28:24.720 --> 01:28:26.880 It was the only one we had in the West. 01:28:27.040 --> 01:28:28.800 It was a territorial monopoly. 01:28:28.800 --> 01:28:31.840 So we're thankful that that Christianity was preserved. 01:28:32.000 --> 01:28:34.240 But the bad popes were permitted by God too. 01:28:34.240 --> 01:28:37.360 And they're permitted for the chastisement both of the church and of 01:28:37.360 --> 01:28:39.280 the countries that tolerated it. 01:28:39.280 --> 01:28:42.720 And that was part of what the battle that played out, beginning 01:28:42.720 --> 01:28:47.840 in Germany and the Reformation, when Christians began to resist what at 01:28:47.840 --> 01:28:52.080 that time had become the clear-cut tyranny of the Roman pontiff, suddenly 01:28:52.160 --> 01:28:54.960 a lot more men got involved in these questions. 01:28:54.960 --> 01:28:57.280 And it was a terrible situation. 01:28:57.280 --> 01:28:59.120 We talked about that in the Reformation episode. 01:28:59.120 --> 01:29:02.800 It was terrible for this situation to have ever been created in 01:29:02.800 --> 01:29:03.680 the first place. 01:29:03.680 --> 01:29:07.760 The Reformation was not desirable, but it was necessary. 01:29:07.760 --> 01:29:10.400 And at the very beginning, their only desire was to run Was 01:29:10.400 --> 01:29:11.920 to reform the church. 01:29:11.920 --> 01:29:13.280 There was no overthrow. 01:29:13.280 --> 01:29:15.360 It was never anarchy. 01:29:15.360 --> 01:29:17.120 It was never rebellion. 01:29:17.120 --> 01:29:20.880 Their goal was to say, hey, we believe scripture says one thing, 01:29:20.880 --> 01:29:24.320 and the current Pope and the recent popes are doing something different. 01:29:24.320 --> 01:29:26.960 Let's Let's get back to what we were doing in the past, 01:29:26.960 --> 01:29:30.320 an argument that they made from history, and what we believe scripture 01:29:30.320 --> 01:29:32.720 teaches. And that's when the killing began. 01:29:32.720 --> 01:29:34.800 That's when the Pope doubled down. 01:29:34.800 --> 01:29:38.480 And we see that same malice today in modern church bodies, where 01:29:38.480 --> 01:29:41.840 when there is resistance from the rank and file or from the 01:29:41.840 --> 01:29:46.320 lesser magistrates of pastors or priests or anyone at some mid level 01:29:46.480 --> 01:29:51.520 saying, hey, this theology is bad, they immediately get targeted for destruction. 01:29:51.520 --> 01:29:54.480 And it's coming swiftly and frequently today. 01:29:54.480 --> 01:29:56.240 It's the same spirit. 01:29:56.240 --> 01:29:58.800 You're going to see this play out over and over again. 01:29:58.800 --> 01:30:02.080 And so one of the tremendous values of the Magdikberg Confession is 01:30:02.080 --> 01:30:03.440 the general framework. 01:30:03.680 --> 01:30:08.080 As I said at the beginning, it's not strictly about matters of 01:30:08.080 --> 01:30:11.920 conscience or it's specifically about matters of doctrine. 01:30:11.920 --> 01:30:15.280 In that case it applies, and that's a very important question. 01:30:15.280 --> 01:30:19.280 But I don't know if we'll ever see another government that's directly 01:30:19.600 --> 01:30:24.720 tied where the belief of the leader is reflected in the belief 01:30:24.720 --> 01:30:25.600 of the country. 01:30:25.600 --> 01:30:27.840 I think that would be a good and desirable thing. 01:30:27.840 --> 01:30:31.600 And obviously it's most desirable if it's the correct doctrine. 01:30:31.600 --> 01:30:35.920 But even failing that, the doctrine of the lesser magistrate still applies. 01:30:35.920 --> 01:30:40.720 In secular contexts, when absolute evil is occurring, you know, resistance to 01:30:40.720 --> 01:30:44.400 Stalin, well he did have something to do because he exterminated the 01:30:44.400 --> 01:30:45.280 Christian church. 01:30:45.280 --> 01:30:47.760 He exterminated Christianity in Russia. 01:30:47.760 --> 01:30:50.640 That was resistance against evil for the sake of the church, but 01:30:50.640 --> 01:30:54.160 it was resist even absent that he could have left Christianity itself 01:30:54.160 --> 01:30:54.800 alone completely. 01:30:55.360 --> 01:30:59.040 All the other destruction that was being done was absolutely evil and 01:30:59.040 --> 01:31:00.320 had to be resisted. 01:31:00.320 --> 01:31:04.640 So the framework is generally applicable, and that's why we're talking about 01:31:04.640 --> 01:31:08.480 it. It's not just some narrow niche thing and it's a really 01:31:08.480 --> 01:31:11.200 valuable framework for you to consider. 01:31:11.200 --> 01:31:13.120 We'll put a link in the show notes where you can get 01:31:13.120 --> 01:31:14.480 a hold of a copy of it. 01:31:14.480 --> 01:31:16.880 You can read about it elsewhere. 01:31:16.880 --> 01:31:20.720 The idea that we have to even deal with these things is 01:31:20.720 --> 01:31:23.840 only ever going to be a symptom of sin and harm. 01:31:23.840 --> 01:31:27.920 These pastors who were besieged in their city five hundred years ago 01:31:28.080 --> 01:31:30.560 should have never had to write about this or think about this 01:31:30.560 --> 01:31:32.000 stuff. They were nobodies. 01:31:32.000 --> 01:31:34.800 And later on when it came up and others pointed back to 01:31:34.800 --> 01:31:37.920 them, arguments were made, hey, this is a pretty good argument, and 01:31:37.920 --> 01:31:40.480 guys looked at the list of names like those guys are nobodies. 01:31:40.480 --> 01:31:41.920 And the answer is yeah, they were. 01:31:41.920 --> 01:31:44.960 They were forced to do this by circumstance. 01:31:44.960 --> 01:31:47.840 That's often how theology comes about. 01:31:47.840 --> 01:31:50.880 The creeds were forced by circumstance. 01:31:50.880 --> 01:31:56.800 The creeds were written from scripture through reason by the church specifically 01:31:56.800 --> 01:32:02.160 to battle heresies, rampant heresies and to defend the faith. 01:32:02.160 --> 01:32:04.960 When the fight is picked, you have these markers that are then 01:32:04.960 --> 01:32:06.960 left in the history of the Christian church. 01:32:06.960 --> 01:32:10.880 And the Mogdeburg Confession is an important one for us today, simply 01:32:10.880 --> 01:32:14.080 because if we don't think about these matters now, how do I 01:32:14.080 --> 01:32:17.920 remain a Christian in the face of implacable evil? 01:32:17.920 --> 01:32:19.440 We will get into trouble. 01:32:19.440 --> 01:32:23.040 And it's not that these guys have absolute authority, it's an argument. 01:32:23.040 --> 01:32:27.760 You don't need permission from the Mogdeburg pastors to believe this. 01:32:27.760 --> 01:32:29.840 They happen to be the first ones to tackle it. 01:32:29.920 --> 01:32:31.760 They wrote it down, they laid it out. 01:32:31.760 --> 01:32:34.080 It's a benefit to us to consider it. 01:32:34.080 --> 01:32:36.560 I'm glad the people have been looking back at this for some 01:32:36.560 --> 01:32:38.720 time. You know, that I'm sure many of you at this point 01:32:38.720 --> 01:32:41.440 have heard the doctrine, the lesser magistrate. 01:32:41.440 --> 01:32:46.880 This origin was born out of evil, out of the extermination of 01:32:46.880 --> 01:32:48.880 Christians by a wicked pope. 01:32:48.880 --> 01:32:51.840 Whether any one of them were good, this guy was a bad 01:32:51.840 --> 01:32:53.280 one. And he did harm. 01:32:53.280 --> 01:32:54.720 He killed Christians. 01:32:54.720 --> 01:32:58.880 There are other cases in modern society, certainly in I think in 01:32:58.880 --> 01:33:02.960 the rest of the century, we will see Western governments that these 01:33:02.960 --> 01:33:05.840 tests will prove failed. 01:33:05.840 --> 01:33:09.760 And if and when the circumstances arrive that we determine, and those 01:33:09.760 --> 01:33:14.720 in the future determine that some current government is absolutely evil, that 01:33:14.720 --> 01:33:17.840 it fails those tests that have held up to reason and to 01:33:17.840 --> 01:33:21.280 scripture, then the next step is not anarchy. 01:33:21.280 --> 01:33:23.280 The next step is not rebellion. 01:33:23.280 --> 01:33:25.760 The next step is you find the guy who should be resisting 01:33:25.840 --> 01:33:28.800 and you help and encourage him and make sure that the resistance 01:33:28.800 --> 01:33:29.600 is godly. 01:33:29.600 --> 01:33:32.240 As individuals, all we can do is try to bring a Christian 01:33:32.240 --> 01:33:34.240 voice to these difficult problems. 01:33:34.240 --> 01:33:37.680 These are all ultimately matters of wisdom, which is why there's no 01:33:37.680 --> 01:33:42.080 playbook, there's no carbon copying from one portion of history into another 01:33:42.160 --> 01:33:44.400 and saying we got to do it exactly like this. 01:33:44.400 --> 01:33:48.640 We're never going to see cities besieged by a papal army to 01:33:48.640 --> 01:33:50.960 force some city to stop being Lutheran. 01:33:50.960 --> 01:33:52.320 It's not gonna happen. 01:33:52.320 --> 01:33:54.640 So if that's all you think that the confession is about, then 01:33:54.640 --> 01:33:55.600 it's completely worthless. 01:33:55.600 --> 01:33:57.440 It's a dead letter and there's no point. 01:33:57.440 --> 01:34:00.400 If there's some wisdom contained in it, even if you even if 01:34:00.400 --> 01:34:01.520 you're a Roman Catholic. 01:34:01.520 --> 01:34:05.120 That's why I said you can disregard the polemics and the historical 01:34:05.120 --> 01:34:10.640 circumstances and still apply the wisdom of their arguments from scripture to 01:34:10.640 --> 01:34:13.360 situations that face all of us today. 01:34:13.360 --> 01:34:16.720 It's part of the reason that it's useful to look at history 01:34:16.880 --> 01:34:19.360 only insofar as you're going to root around and find the stuff 01:34:19.360 --> 01:34:21.200 that's good and throw away the rest. 01:34:21.200 --> 01:34:26.400 You can't just carbon cop, you can't clone one guy's philosophy from 01:34:26.400 --> 01:34:29.040 one century directly into another. 01:34:29.040 --> 01:34:32.000 I think that the arguments they make are good and they're sound, 01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:37.280 they're scriptural, they're useful, but the application is always going to be 01:34:37.280 --> 01:34:38.160 a matter of wisdom. 01:34:38.160 --> 01:34:40.560 And that's why we have to think about these things and talk 01:34:40.560 --> 01:34:43.600 about them, particularly in times where it's not pressing. 01:34:43.600 --> 01:34:46.880 You don't want to have to figure this stuff out when they're 01:34:46.880 --> 01:34:50.800 about to lay siege to you for whatever reason, by whatever means. 01:34:50.800 --> 01:34:53.440 You want to figure this stuff out when it's quiet so you 01:34:53.440 --> 01:34:54.800 can be prepared. 01:34:54.800 --> 01:34:58.720 God willing, this will only ever be an incidental matter for us. 01:34:58.720 --> 01:35:00.880 If we thought that were the case, we wouldn't be doing the 01:35:00.880 --> 01:35:02.800 episode. But it's relevant. 01:35:02.880 --> 01:35:05.920 It's something just to have in your back pocket to understand the 01:35:05.920 --> 01:35:08.000 thinking and to be prepared. 01:35:08.000 --> 01:35:10.320 If you disagree with their arguments, that's fine. 01:35:10.320 --> 01:35:11.760 Come up with a better framework. 01:35:11.760 --> 01:35:14.560 They provide a four pronged test and three prongs. 01:35:14.560 --> 01:35:16.880 Maybe you need five and two, doesn't matter. 01:35:16.880 --> 01:35:20.800 The structure is just there for your benefit to start thinking. 01:35:20.800 --> 01:35:22.560 We need to do more of that as Christians. 01:35:22.560 --> 01:35:25.360 We need to think like Christians and act like Christians, and then 01:35:25.360 --> 01:35:27.600 we will conduct our lives like Christians. 01:35:27.600 --> 01:35:32.080 But we cannot continue to engage in the bumper sticker theology where 01:35:32.160 --> 01:35:37.120 we're basically just governed by school marms and everything is tolerate evil, 01:35:37.200 --> 01:35:38.320 don't get mad. 01:35:38.320 --> 01:35:40.400 You can't be angry about that, you got to put up with 01:35:40.400 --> 01:35:42.480 it. Jesus wanted you to do that. 01:35:42.480 --> 01:35:46.800 That politics, that religion lost at the ballot box, and it lost 01:35:46.800 --> 01:35:47.920 at the cross. 01:35:47.920 --> 01:35:50.640 Jesus did not die on the cross for us to be weak 01:35:50.640 --> 01:35:52.240 and to be destroyed. 01:35:52.240 --> 01:35:56.240 We were given tasks in this life to honor God. 01:35:56.240 --> 01:36:01.600 And as men and his leaders, that specifically includes protecting the weaker, 01:36:01.600 --> 01:36:04.000 protecting those who cannot protect themselves. 01:36:04.000 --> 01:36:06.960 Any man who's in a position of authority has a duty to 01:36:06.960 --> 01:36:10.240 God, and if that means he has to go against the man 01:36:10.240 --> 01:36:12.320 above him, that's a terrible duty. 01:36:12.320 --> 01:36:14.560 But nevertheless, it's one that remains