The Reformation: Exploring the Five Solas and the split from the Catholic Church

Episode Transcript
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Pastor Joe Liles (00:00):
Uh, All right, welcome to the TNC podcast. We

(00:05):
are recorded in studio in theworship center at the
neighborhood church, and we havea full house today. Um, all four
of us returned to the podcasttable. Is this the first time
that all four of us have been onsince you returned? Indeed,
indeed. That is true indeed. Sothis is all of your podcast
hosts. So we have all the way tomy right, sitting over here,
Director of worship table nextto him, incoming pastor of care

(00:26):
and education at theneighborhood Church, the one and
the only Tom every week, youlook at me like you don't know
what's happening next, waitingfor your it's

Tom Helmich (00:34):
so so, because all my time in this church, like
that title sounds way too likeprofessional Oh, I don't mind,
because it doesn't feel real tome like it you could be talking
about somebody. Talking about

Tevo Christmann (00:43):
somebody. I'm just looking for a more
unprofessional,

professional pastor of the study thing. I'm

just used to being a volunteer, you know, yeah,
that's true. And you've gottable, you know, like the
director of musical experiences,and then, yeah, you know, herder
cats,

you get to make up your own title. We

should have an official title that's going to
go on to the call paperwork,right? So that way the ELCA
still loves us, right? Becausethey love official things. And
then we can put, like,parentheses or something below
that, or maybe an asterisk,right? Can go below that, yeah,
yeah. Okay, that'd be great. Sowe'll come up with that. If you
have a title for Tom, go aheadand share,

Director of hanging out and

smoke. Yeah, man,

I'll go to youth any night you smoke.
Britain. Smoke brisket. That'llbe wonderful. That'll be
wonderful. All right? And thennext to me on my left, and we're
gonna have a new segment today,the one, the only, who is it?
Roseanne. Roseanne and Roseanne,you came to me earlier saying
that you were excited for thepodcast. We were walking over
here to the building, comingover from a meeting with little
neighbors preschool, and yousaid, All right, we're getting

(01:41):
ready for the podcast. And said,Yep. And then you said, you have
what notes? You have notes. Imade notes. You made notes
specifically for the podcast.
Well, because

Roseann Bowlin (01:50):
of the Reformation and all the really
good stuff that's in here, it'snot just because

it's great. So we're gonna start a new segment
today that'll happen at somepoint during this podcast. We
just decided that we can call itRoseanne notes, and it'll be a
live kind of a note takingsession from the message, and so
we can hear that. Did youintroduce yourself? Who you are?
Oh, no, I haven't introducedmyself. My name is Joe Liles,
pastor of the neighborhoodchurch. Planted the church back
in 2012 and so we've been goingall the way through to now, and

(02:18):
just received in an exciting wayour 10 year anniversary of the
neighborhood church certificateof being a chartered, of being a
chartered and organized, whichjust is, like, you really, like,
10 years. There's so much beforethat. There was so much, there's
four years in addition that, andthen four years of seminary
before that. So, yeah, it's oneof those where I want a couple
more years on that. There shouldbe an asterisk. It's like, with

(02:40):
little princess, it says. Butreally, since 2012 you know,
like it's been a little bitlonger. So we'll talk about what
that means in a second. Butbefore we do that, we always
open the podcast with a, Jing,A, one,

a, two, A, one or 2479367, 2285, neighborhood

church. Nice job. Well done. That was great.
That was great. So we're goingto break into it today. We're in
our series on church shopping,and we're the second week in the
series, and we're going throughthe years of the church. So we
started in year 100 and week oneof the series that went through
the early church, that is reallythe church, kind of like after
Christ year 33 through 100 andthat's kind of the years when

(03:19):
the gospel was written that'syears when these communities of
faith are forming all aroundAsia, minor and different
things. That is the the kind ofjourney of Paul as he's kind of
moving throughout and other kindof missionaries that went out
and planted these communities,and then you really have the
church from 100 to 300 which ispersecuted, and so they kind of
descend back into the catacombsand into the homes and different
things like that. Um, as they'retrying to understand what is

(03:41):
this Christian reality in themidst of the pagan identity of
the government at that time. Andso that was the early church.
And then this last week, wemoved into the 1500s right? And
we talked through theReformation. The Reformation in
the Lutheran church is a huge,huge church history moment,
because it literally started theProtestant denominations are

(04:03):
Protestant reality. And theProtestant reality, if you've
not heard of the word Protestantbefore, Protestant means
protest.

And Protestant the ones who protest against the
stuff going on with RomanCatholicism. I

Unknown (04:16):
love it, not Catholic.
It means not

it means not Catholic, yeah. And I love that,
because it does come from theword protest, right? And they
were protesting Catholicism,Roman Catholicism, the state
parts of it. Yeah, correct,yeah, not all of it, but state
run Catholic Church. And so youhave this kind of year in 1500
that we have this kind of splitof the church. And the church
splits due to, really, MartinLuther right, having some

(04:39):
questions or really morestatements about the theology of
the church, and how they'representing that theology to the
people of the church, right, andwhat they were saying about
that, and specifically for thesale of indulgences. So we're
going to get into a little bitof church history. But Tom I was
wondering, can you share alittle bit about the church
history of the Reformation beingsuch a fresh seminar? A grad,

(05:00):
right? What is the Reformation?
Give us a little bit. So itstarted

before Martin Luther, that's correct. There's
for a while. Well, I think lastyear, there was a podcast that
came out was 30 days, and eachday was a different like,
reformation, character, person.
And that podcast went down forlike 30 minutes talking about
that one person.

Yeah,

my podcast, it was neat because it went through a
bunch of people you don'tnormally hear about, okay? And
it was beyond, you know, therewas no Lutheranism, right?
Everything was just Catholic orOrthodox, because that split
happened way before 500 years,yeah, 500 years before that was
around 1000 Yep, and, but theit's the Protestant Reformation
surrounded around the split fromCatholicism. But there was like

(05:43):
booster and Hus and splint Leeand Calvin, all these people
going on, Erasmus, all these,all these people talking about
these things, but with a littlebit more maybe. And as a
Lutheran, I can say this socialintelligence and maybe a little
more self preservation instinctis true, how you know, doing
things in a way that is notobtuse in how they communicate.
And then here comes Luther, whohad no filter, yeah, I agree,

(06:07):
and didn't really worry aboutthings, plus a little bit of it
was even outside of Luther,because he he wrote these things
for a conversation at highereducation, you know, situation,
right, in a college. Andsomebody thought, this is really
great. We should publish this.
And they did, and it gotbroadcast far and wide, and kind
of blew up beyond Luther. Sothis could have, you know, very

(06:28):
been considered, instead of aLutheranism, hussianism, or, or,
well, there is colonism, orthere could have been
boosterism, all these differentthings, but it's centered on
things that Luther said, becausehe really just, like, No, you
know, not holding any punches.
Just like, very blunt aboutstuff, and in picking on the the

(06:48):
Pope, specifically, yeah, andthat kind of that just that just
blew up, and it fragmented fromthere. And unfortunately, it
fragmented to a great degree,which is, well, unfortunately or
not, because that's yeah, dowhat it is, what it is, it is
what it is. Yeah, for a while itwas, there's about a negativity.
It came to us some really sadhistory that that happened right
after the Reformation, but it'swhat allowed us to have in this

(07:11):
country. Now, what we see is allall these different churches, of
different church histories,different church traditions. And
Nate from Box said this one ofhis classes. And who's Nate from
he's my one he's my advisor, myfirst advisor, and third
advisor, because I got him back.
But he said that there's no myadvisor, also your advisor,
tiring into the semester. Hesaid, There's no such thing as
the Lutheran church. There'sonly one church, the Christian

(07:34):
church, and we are part of theLutheran tradition. I love that.
And it's all the Catholicworldwide church, whatever
denomination you belong to, ispart of the one, the one church.
And as belonging to the Lutherantradition, you know, we have
part of that heritage that goesall the way back, back to the
beginning, yeah, but, but so doeverybody. So does everybody

(07:56):
else. You know, we're allChristians. All believe the same
thing.

So I love what you said about Martin Luther.
And I didn't talk about this onSundays. This little extra,
right? I think Martin Luther,way you describe it, is great,
right? He was bolder in that,right? Oh, yeah. He didn't hold
back his thoughts. And yeah,booster and Calvin, right? And
all these other people that kindof took these notions beyond,
right, they continued thelanguage. Very interesting.
Couple interesting things. One,they didn't agree with Luther

(08:23):
personally, yeah,

issue it opened. It opened up a can of worms. It
did. And

what ends up happening is you have all these
other people who are MartinLuther adjacent, right?
Basically, they knew that therewas a key issue in the theology
of the Catholic Church, and whatwas happening at the time Martin
Luther named it, put it outthere. But Martin Luther also
had his own understanding ofwhat it should be. And John
Calvin and these other peoplewho are moving it forward also
had their own understandings ofwhat that should be. And it got

(08:47):
into great and rich theologicaldiscussions about how they
continued this, I would say,Protestant reality of what does
it become? Now, if it's not, andthere were

table, I can't remember the name, specifically
the ones that came beforeLuther, like there were other
writers before Luther that, thathe would have been aware of,
that were writing about this.
But I can't remember

who's I know Erasmus in particular was, was
someone that they were reading alot, because that was before,
correct, yeah, yeah.

But it was an entire movement. Oh, it had been
going on form, the church,

Oh, yeah. I assume probably before cat, before
Luther was born.

It was in the air. It was on the water, yeah.
I

mean, it never been. I mean, there was always
discontent, because it, youknow, I mean, even, I mean,
since the the Eastern split, youknow, there's just, there was
always printing

press. Is what helped it, yeah, go viral. I
think, I think Luther was justuniquely placed. And there's a
great degree of justhappenstance that Luther became
what he was. It's a mix of hispersonality, a mix of the
printing press and the fact thathe was in Germany and in the
particular province of Germany,that there was a particular

(09:52):
Prince of that province that wasinterested in not giving
property and money to thechurch, and so he was quite
willing. To take Luther underhis wing and protect him from
the wars. And so there's a lotof things that conspire together
for Luther to emerge as a leaderof the Reformation, a prince.

It sounds like God had a plan, right?

Well, because it I mean that Prince protected
Luther, yeah, otherwise youwouldn't have the like the
Luther edition of the Bible, andthere was a lot of national
stuff going on because thechurch had become a
sociopolitical authority, right?
You know, it remains. It's asovereign nation today. And so
there was a little bit of inGermany, of trying to have its
own autonomy outside of thepapacy in Rome. And so there are

(10:32):
all kinds of things that came intogether to allow that to
happen. Well,

and you get the kind of cataclysmic right,
events that are happening there,the printing press is one of
them, right? That spread it farand wide. The translation of the
Bible during the time when hewas considered a heretic, right?
And being hid by this prince,right? And having this time to
do that, you now have a languagethat's put back into the people,
right? So this is also somethingthat goes beyond Luther, I

(10:57):
think, and even that way,translating the Bible, it wasn't
a Lutheran translation of theBible. It was a translation of
the Bible. It

was like from a Catholic monk and priest, it
100% into

the language of

the people.
Yes, and I think that's verythat, in and of itself, kind of
takes us beyond Luther right?
What it did is it allowed peopleto discover for themselves,
right, their relationship withGod, something that honestly had
not been a reality before them.
They wouldn't. They were toldwhat their faith is. And I we
even see this in churches today.
You'll see a very quick, rootedgrowth in churches, and I would
call it a shallow, rooted growthof pastors who tell people what

(11:30):
to believe. People love that,right? Because I don't have to
think about it, right? You cantell me what to believe. I'm
either in or I'm out. Yeah, so,and it's,

it's a distinct, like a very clear distinction
of, oh, well, no, you know, youjust don't ask questions. We
don't talk about

it. Well, how smart are sheep really? Well,
yeah, okay, so you have thisShepherd. I'm a sheep. I'm just
going along with the shepherd.
Yeah,

right, right off the right, off the cliff, if

you're not careful, yeah. Well, that's what
happens, right? And so you getthis moment where all of a
sudden you now have the abilityto discern for yourself what
this relationship is, and thatshifts. Now, I think what you
end up having is you have astate run church that was having
you pay for indulgences, youstart to read in the Scriptures.
You see someone of that churchquestioning a lot of things, and
then you start to read it foryourself. And you're like, I I

(12:15):
think it's right, like, youstart this kind of movement that
happens throughout but yeah,what we don't talk about is the
wars that started from that,right? These Christian wars that
started because of that, and theloss of life there. That's kind
of a really dark part of thathistory that's not brought up
with the Reformation. Hey, wetranslated the Bible. There was
a printing press. There wasChristian. Was that the
Crusades? That was the Crusades,right? The Roman and

the Roman Catholic Church remembers the Reformation
in a very different light,because I have friends that are
Catholic. He's like, Oh, y'allstill like, celebrate that.

Yeah, yeah, that's different because

of the story that does, I mean validly, that does,
does exist. I think part withLuther too is because of his
personality. I don't know if Idon't know how to describe I
have the word, but I lost it.
There's all the mic drop momentsright, where a lot of boldness,
like, where maybe we're like,Luthers personality, for
whatever reason, just didn'treally care about consequences.

(13:07):
Because, I mean, one particulartime he got called to the carpet
by arguably the most powerfulman in the world, saying, You
need to basically apologize andrecant that, and he's like, I
said what I said, and then theywere going to kill him. And
that's when I

bet he wasn't quite as nonchalant. No, no, he

was, yeah, there's a great documentary with

Luther. Oh yeah, it shows that scene. But that's
what got communicated out.
That's the other side. Is right?
You get the all the turmoil andthe worry and the concern of him
and and being conflicted on itby his conscience, on his faith,
yeah, not for the life here andnow, but for what his what his
faith actually commands of him,which is rare in humanity,
because we have a strong selfpreservation. And that's where

(13:52):
you get the you know. And, youknow, here I stand kind of
comment, you know, like, well,you know, I said, what I said.
But then you get all whichalways happens, an idealized
version that goes out again inthose, those young college
student, kind of age people thattheir brain isn't fully plugged
in, their spinal cord, they haveno frontal lobe, no concept of
consequences, and they have aprinting press, right? And they

(14:13):
take probably an idealizedversion of what happened, great
heart.

William Wallace, yes, like

a revolutionary, right? It's not a
reformation. They're looking forrevolution, and they

love it.
Revolution, and they love it,and they send all that out, and
it just kind of blew up. I thinkhe becomes a

hero. Yeah, correct, yeah. I think, I think
one of the things that helpedthat whole era, or that whole
situation, was not a lot ofpeople were fully literate at
the time, right? And one of themain arguments of the Reformers
was, show me from scripture,right? I mean, Luther said it,
Calvin said it, Zwingli said it.
They all in public debates. Andpublic debates at that time

(14:50):
wasn't just a scholarly affair,yeah, because the church and the
state were connected together.
So there were real life this.
Decisions about the politics ofwherever they were, like, should
we pay tithes to the state? Itmatters to everyone. And so
these public debates were bigdeals. And they would say, they
would say, Well, show me fromscripture where it says that you

(15:10):
should do that, yeah, and atthat time, well, nobody's read
scripture, I don't know. Andeven the the Catholic debater
debaters that were there, theyweren't fully prepared to answer
those questions. They were like,I've never thought like this
before, so I don't know how toshow you from scripture this or
that. And

now we have sola scriptura. And now we have sola
scriptura because the bigdifference at the time, and even
to some degree now, between theRoman Catholic tradition of the
church and the Lutherantradition of the church is where
does authority come from? And weset comes from Scripture. In a
lot of Roman Catholicismcircles, it comes from Scripture
and tradition, correct? Which isset by people. You can have

(15:51):
traditions, which is fine, butthey're not authoritative.
That's why we get to that. Ican't remember the fancy word,
the audiophra, right? It's okay,but it's not authoritative. But
in the Roman Catholic church atthe time, it was authoritative,
and Luther is like no, the onlyauthority comes from God's word
that we have in in Scripture.
And

Luther challenged authority
consistently, right? I mean, andI think he questioned authority
consistently, but he also tookthe traditions, and if he didn't
abide by traditions or see thevalue of them. He didn't live
into them, right? Part of thoseis that he was a monk, right?
And monks and priests at thetime celibate, right? And also
not in relationship. And hedidn't think that was right. He

(16:31):
didn't think, I mean, he saidthis in the 1500s priest should
not be celibate, right?

Real, because he knew that the church tradition
or the church history, that thatwasn't always the case in Roman
Catholicism, and with oneparticular Pope, it became
standardized. But he's like,Okay, show me in Scripture.
Yeah, correct, and it's notthere. And that really, I think,
ticked off the pope when he gotmarried to a former runaway nun.
Yeah, he

got married to a nun. So just put that out
there. Not only

fool on the nose, isn't

it? Not only did you get married like, you're
like, I'm gonna marry which nunwho also

said, find a nice peasant lady somewhere,
which,

having read a lot of of Luther stuff, I kind of
would, I would not be surprisedif somebody told me, yeah, he
sent the pope an invitation tothe wedding. Yeah, I wouldn't
doubt it, because some of thestuff he said was very like, if
you read it in a slightly moremodern version of the wording,
you're like, oh, and

he was kind of a potty mouth, too. Oh, yeah,
instrumental. Whole lot, yes,

yeah. And at one point, at one point, he wrote
one of the confessions, and headdressed it to the Pope, and
had a copy sent to the Pope, andin there, he talked about that,
if the devil himself were to tryto screw up the church, he could
do no more than the papacy.
Yeah. And I'm like, Oh, you justsaid that he's worse than the
devil. I'm like, that's not agood idea, yeah, even

there's, there's a great deal of tragedy
on all this too. It's on thehero. It's not all heroics,
because the Reformation wasn't aperfect movement. I mean,
Luther, let's just, you know,the cat out of the bag. Luther,
later on, was very, very mean tosay the least, to Anabaptists
and to Jews as well. Calvin was,I mean, because church and

(18:06):
politics were together and so onhis recommendation, yeah, people
were burned at the stake. RightZwingli said of his own, of his
own, Felix Mons, his own fellowreformer who wanted to reform a
little further than he did by Rebaptizing. And he said, Well, if
he wants to be baptized, somuch, let him drown. And that's

(18:27):
how feelings bonds. So it wasnot perfect, and so much of it
is the Catholic Church wasn'tready to respond to all of these
things. The Counter Reformationmovement was, had to pick had to
do a lot of work to pick it allup. And then eventually ended up
in the Council of Trent, wherethey spent 20 years working out
what they actually believe aboutjustification and all of these
things, because nobody had readit. Nobody had read it. Yeah, so

(18:49):
it would it would be amazing hadall of these things been worked
out within the church, and thechurch achieved a unified better
situation than it did. Butthat's not how it happened. And
I mean, that's not even in ourlives, in the in the life of the
story of people Israel, youknow, like God is at work
through all of these things,even though it's very through

(19:09):
very imperfect line, but icky,but it's, but it's, I think, I
don't know if everyone sharesthis sentiment, but I I do of
this hope, of the thereunification of the church
eventually, one day, probablynot in any of our lifetimes,
right? But we can rift is sobig, we can hope, but we but we

(19:30):
can hope for. I mean, because itsays, the Bible says that Jesus
is preparing her bride to bepresented immaculate, and it's
difficult to imagine, uh, thisfragmented bride to pieces,
yeah? So there's, there's a lotof hope, because,

and probably the issue with the Roman Catholic
Church being such a politicalauthority is, once the
Reformation kicked off, itcreated a leadership
governmental void, an authorityvoid. Yeah, much like if you go
to and the US has done. Us,unfortunately, go to a country
and remove the governmentwithout putting another one in
there. And then you get masschaos and anarchy, which is as

(20:06):
soon as people start to turnagainst the Catholic Church,
which had so much of a role inpolitics, it created that void.
And you got these little whichis when, part of when, when
Luther first started stepping upand advocating for the use of
violence to try to get controlagain, if it had happened in a
council that which like the likethe Roman Catholic Church has
done since, Yeah, correct. Youknow, then it could have all

(20:27):
been, all been avoided, but itjust become very uncivil. I
mean, I

think this is where we get to the place that
Luther didn't want to startLutheran, yeah, right. That was
never the reality, right? So tosay that the Reformation was
started because he wanted toname a denomination outside of
Catholicism after himself. Idon't think was ever the

character, because he didn't, he didn't name it. It
was a derogatory thing. Yeah,

correct from right there, Luther, right.
Yeah, those are those. Lutherfollow. Luther, right? And so,
but now, I mean, you get thisfrom the Protestant Reformation.
You get these Protestantmainline denominations, right?
And it's going to be yourMethodist and your episcopals,
right, and your different thingslike that that were started
honestly by other reformersafter Luther also, and you get
your Anabaptists and thesedifferent things like this that

(21:06):
all start to descend from thisone moment. And I was thinking
about this the other day. Thedistinction that we make now and
distinguishing ourselves fromother denominations is so
loosely understood by the commonpeople outside of seminary that
really you're choosing based onwhat other people have said
about another church that youdon't even know if their

(21:28):
theology aligns with thedenomination that they're
representing, right? Like so andso goes to this church in our
community. So because they go tothis church and it has the name
Lutheran or Methodist or Baptistnext to it, that is all Baptist.
And you're like, Oh, wow. Like,not the reality,

or we make distinctions to try to not be
somebody else. Like a lot ofpeople, like, well, they won't
use certain words because, Oh,it's too Catholic. It's like,
well, but it's still the church.
Yeah, yeah, you know. Now, howabout because of this element of
theology? Yeah, you know.
Because I don't agree with that,you know. Okay? Because if, if,
if it had gone more peacefully,I think if Luther had his way,
when young Luther, it probablystill be just the Catholic

(22:06):
Church, just the church. Yeah,

I love this idea that the church can once
again become the local church,right? I really love, and have
continued to love. And in fact,I remember when we first started
the neighborhood, we are tryingto partner with other Lutheran
churches. So like, imagine thatthe local church starts with,
like, trying to partner withyour siloed Lutheran churches
and then extend beyond that,right? And we called a position

(22:29):
that we made up to sharechildren's ministry, the
children's ministry areacoordinator, which was the C
Mac, right? And we called it theC Mac. And the Mac, C Mac would
go out to all thesecongregations and serve in these
multiple roles. And theintention of that, from the
start of our ministry at theneighborhood was to combine the
local church, was to make surethat we saw what the width and
breadth of the local church canbe. And that extends beyond into

(22:51):
our other partners, even in theLutheran church and Missouri
Senate, and then the WisconsinSenate, and having these other
churches before and then to ourreally communal partners of the
Presbyterians and the Methodistsand the episcopals, and then
beyond that, to the other localchurch identities here, where we
can all serve together for theneeds of the people. And I do
love that idea that one day thechurch will reform as a local
church, as the, you know, thekingdom on earth, right, that we

(23:13):
call that's here that's not sosegmented in ways that we don't
even understand anymore, right,in ways that aren't known. I
even thought that next yearwould be great to do a series on
like, how are we different thanBaptist, and how are we
different than Methodist, andwhat does that truly mean? Not
as hey, you should be Lutheran,but as in a hey, understand what
this means when you're goinginto the realities of these
churches.

Because most people probably realize there are not
as many clear distinctions aspeople think there

are no, oh yeah, no. And honestly, well,
there's probably many, many,many clear distinctions, and
there's probably one or twocultural distinctions that are
being made that distinguish thechurches based on conversation,
right? And people live intothose very key cultural
distinctions that are said outloud and not anything else,
right? And so very interestingtalk through like what the local

(23:59):
church is. So we're going tojump into a segment that that's
a little bit about theReformation. The Reformation. So
that was in the 1500s the 95theses was posted in 1517, and
just imagine October 31 by theway, October 31 That's right,
Halloween. Reformation Day,Reformation Day. All Saints
variety, All Saints Day. So wehave this really weird like,
Halloween is reformation likeand sometimes put together.

(24:21):
That's why we do chunk or treat.
I'm just kidding. It's not. It'sjust nothing to do with it.
Yeah, that's just for fun. Whichdid

he do that on purpose?

I don't think so.
Same state, no, I think it'sjust the way it worked out in
the calendar. I really nodistinction.

I never heard of any reason

why Halloween back then, right? I

don't, you know. I don't know that part of Germany,
I doubt it question. I don'tknow. I don't know about the
history well, because it wouldhave been, I may have been all,
All Saints Eve, you know, rightsaints, they wouldn't have been,
right, All Hallows Eve, theywouldn't have had, I don't think
the tradition we have withHalloween came too much later,
because that was organized. Theydidn't have Reese's Pieces back
then. No, that's Reese's peanut

butter cups on.

You saw Reese so

much better than the cups.

Oh, no, you gotta have the cups. No. It's always
it, and it's we only get intoit. That's another topic. But if
you, if you read up on howHalloween started, the way it is
now, it was very much a lawenforcement effort to control
kids from tearing stuff up likethat's what we know now. Of
Halloween is a recent invention.

There's a okay side note. There's a comedian
who makes a joke on Reese'sPieces, which I call Reese's
Pieces. It's not Reese's Pieces.

That's like, a horoscope, yeah, yeah,

right, isn't it? Like, yeah, there is yeah
something. But he makes a jokethat Pisces, did you ever see
that Reese's has an apostrophe,and he's like, someone owns
those pieces, and it's Reese.
And who is Reese? I got lots ofpieces. He's got lots of pieces.
So if you ever look at it now,you can never unsee it. There's
an apostrophe. Someone ownsthose pieces that you're eating,

(25:47):
yeah, and then

someone else or you're eating pieces.

Oh, gosh no, wow. So with that, we're gonna
start a new segment that Ireally love. We're just gonna
make it up today and we're gonnasee how it goes. This segment is
called roseanne's notes. I

want, yeah, I want two, three. Roseanne,

all right, Roseanne, what are you? Did
y'all practice that ahead of

Unknown (26:12):
Time's like, I didn't really do that much. You built
this up like it

was going to be incredible. Roseanne told

you I had it is incredible. It's me.

Hello. We have a new second high priest, the High
Priestess. The

High Priestess has notes. Alright, Roseanna,
can you share with us your notesfrom the message that Tom can
answer? So, solo scriptura, thesolo Scriptura only scripture.
Yes. Okay,

so my note was, be in the word to deepen your
faith and grow closer to God

that, yes, that is really wonderful. I
said, if you want to begin kindof, your foundation of faith
begins in it with a relationshipwith God. And if you want to be
in that relationship every day,it begins in the Word, and that
we should be opening the wordevery day and going to bed with
the word every day, likebeginning your day and ending
your day with that, as you startand read scripture, so And

the scripture was second, Timothy chapter
three, verses 16 and 17. AllScripture is inspired by God and
is useful for teaching, forreproof, for correction and for
training in righteousness, sothat everyone who belongs to God
may be proficient, equipped forevery good work. It's amazing.

(27:24):
It's

a wonderful scripture. Can I pause for a
moment? Pause as a pastor, I'mdeeply, deeply heartfelt towards
these notes. We don't often getto hear people's notes from the
message right as pastor, andit's wonderful to hear because
we we prepare and we preachthese messages, right? And we

(27:44):
hope that there is somethingthat comes across that you can
take away with you. Andhonestly, like a lot of people,
came up on Sunday talking aboutthe history of the church that
they did not know about, whichwas great. I think sometimes we
have pastor tunnel vision thatbecause we've learned it and we
know it, and we're so infusedwith it that it's common
knowledge. Reformation is notcommon knowledge. And so Jess

(28:05):
even called me. She listened tothe message when she was in
Minneapolis, and she called shesays, you need to do one of
those a year, like, just like abreakdown of the history of the
church once a year, so thatpeople know what's going on. As
it's great. So that's awonderful note. And yeah, that
is sola scriptura. That'sabsolutely

wonderful. So my next note

was wait. Note number

two, if you're making fun of me,

create the moment of what is roses. You gotta know
that for most of this is gonnabe the best part of the whole
podcast. No pressure.

Well, what I'm impressed is I'm doing this
without my glasses. Well, you're

impressed too.
We're very impressed. Uh, tableit glasses if you don't have
glasses,

yeah, yes.
Well, but they look great. Bythe

way. They do look great. So my next note is
just justified in God throughfaith only. And that comes from
Romans, chapter one, verses 16and 17, for I am not ashamed of
the gospel. It is the power ofGod for salvation to everyone
who has faith, to the Jew firstand and also to the Greek for in

(29:21):
it, the righteousness of God isrevealed through faith. For
faith, as it is written, the onewho is righteous will live by
faith,

beautiful sola fide, right? That is only faith.
And yes, that is justificationby faith. This was one of
Luthers main points when he wastalking through his
understanding of grace, right,and the paying for of
indulgences and the remission ofsins, right, that God is the
only one who can forgive oursins, right? It is not under the

(29:51):
papal authority. And he said,with God being the only person
that can forgive our sins, ourresponse to that is faith,
right, that that is our onlyresponse that can be a. In this,
and that is how he began tounderstand and really bring
together his theology of thecross and theology of grace,
which leads us into some of theother Solas that exist there
too.

The sorry, go ahead. The on, on the I just
remember on the sola scriptura,we forgot to mention that what
sola scriptura means, it doesn'tmean just like it doesn't mean
you only read the Bible byyourself in your room. It means
that Scripture is the finalauthority over against

(30:30):
tradition. But it doesn't meanthat you don't listen to
tradition, that you don't listento the church history, that,
because, you know, even churcheshave their own creeds, they have
their confessions, we stillrecite the Apostles Creed, which
is not in Scripture. Yeah,nobody's coming. It's built from
scripture. But it's built fromscripture, it means it has to
agree with scripture. Whatevertradition you you subscribe to,
has to agree with scripture. Soit's only the only final

(30:52):
authority over against humantradition, which is the issue
they had with the

I kind of read in that the study of Scripture
and you can't study alone. You

shouldn't. I mean, you should, but also you
should, yeah,

bring your questions to someone who is more
learned. But that's

and that's some of the downside from the split is,
you know, a lot of traditionsthat don't require training and
that. And so I wouldn't say thatyou have to have to have
completed seminary to be able topreach the gospel, but to make a
lot of the interpretations it,you know, you need to have had a
program of study, to studyscripture. You know, for that,
for that reason, it helps, ithelps to operate in and rest,

(31:34):
studied it. You gave

a little a little more deeply into the
history of it and and where itbubbles up from. And so that's,
that's why I can't just read theBible and go, Okay, I'm done
now. Now I can live my life. No,I need to go to someone when I

(31:55):
have questions that says, Whatdoes it mean? And we did that to
you on the trip to SenateAssembly, like, what does it
mean when, yeah, and veryinteresting conversations, I
mean,

that's where we go back to the ordination,
right? Like, there is a, thereis a, still an order to the
church, right? That is helpfulin teaching and in revealing the
scriptures and walking throughin discipleship, right? And that
ordination comes from, yeah,study, and it comes from
understanding the theology andunderstanding, kind of the
traditions of the church, toshare those with others. And so

(32:28):
I think that even though Lutherwas against Pope's authority and
the papal authority and thepriests still understood
structure of the church right,and how important that is when
we go forward, just not to abusethat power, right? And be the
only authority, right? Theauthority goes back to God, was
his major point, goes back intoscripture, goes back into faith,
being our response to that.
That's why these came about.

(32:49):
Imagine

a doc, a doc like, say, your appendix is bothering
you, right? Yeah. And I like,well, I got a book

appendix, and we've been talking about
scripture, and I immediatelythought about the appendix. It's
like, why would that?

Like, if you like, if you need an append my body,
my body, Appendix, if you needan appendectomy, like, Well, I
gotta, I got a book here. I'lljust read the instruct, all the
instructions, and I'll do it foryou. Yeah, that doesn't work,
you know. Or somebody teachinghow to do medicine and teaching
something. And this one of thestudents, like, where's that in
the book? Yeah, where's thattextbook? Right? You gotta have
balance,

yeah, right. On justification by faith, which is
what you said. You said isMartin Luther main thing. And
for sure, it definitely is hismain thing. And he has, as you
guys, maybe can tell the storybetter of how he was direct with
guilt his whole life he couldnot send he paid the he paid the
payment penances he wouldconfess to the priest, and he

(33:40):
felt like he was still notforgiven. And so it was
meditating on that issue that inreading through Romans, where he
had this light bulb moment forhim, which is like, Wait, I
don't like, I'm I'm notjustified because of how much I
confessed, or that I confessedenough because what he was like,
what if I forgot to confesssomething? Yes, you know it's
like, but I'm justified byfaith, through grace, through

(34:03):
grace. And that really is kindof the tipping point for him.
Really was, yeah,

and that's, you know, Paul, I was for that which
I like your reading. I usuallygo to Ephesians two and I'll,
you know, yours, maybe more moregives, gives, more of the, the
kind of concept for the more ofthe, you know, those things
surrounding but Paul said in inEphesians, two, he said, For
Grace, you have been savedthrough faith. And this is not

(34:26):
your own doing. It is the giftof God, not the result of work,
so that noone may boast. Mm,hmm, you know that which, which
you ties right? Ties right intomore broadly. And it because
that's a big distinction, too,from indulgences, right? It's
not because it works.

And actually, that is the foundational verse,
right, for sola gratia, right?
So my note on that, that'sgreat. Note number three, this
is great. We're going to

do my note on that is good works are the
result of your faith. Wereceive. Receive this only
through God's grace. So it'sbecause I have God's grace that
I want to go and do works. Iwant to volunteer. I want to
help someone so and I

love that there's a lot in there too, that
you're talking about Ephesianstwo it says so that no one may
boast right, that we don't boastof ourselves right? And it's
going to lead us into our lasttwo solas. But that reality was
that, and it's kind of off.
Luther is like, I can't doanything to affect this change,
because I'm a saint and asinner. There's no way I can
confess all my sins continuallyin order to be remissed from
them or forgiven for all ofthem. So I live into this

(35:34):
reality. I also know that I amsanctified by the cross, right?
And we have this theology of thecross of what Christ did. And so
we have this reality there'sreally nothing that we can do.
And I think we struggle withthat. And I was talking to you
all about a family situationearlier where I struggled
because I felt helpless, becausethere was nothing I could do
right outside of be present andI wanted to activate, and I
wanted to solve things, and Iwanted to do this, but there's

(35:56):
nothing I could do. And so inthose moments, you realize that
the kind of the tenant of ourtheology that we rest on this
foundation is that, though thatis when we understand, again, at
the base of all that we are inour Christian reality, that we
really go back to God. When weget to the end of ourselves, we
go back to God. And what Lutheris trying to commit people to is
that we don't have to get to theend of ourselves to start with,

(36:17):
to go back to God like we willalways end there. But why
wouldn't we start with that,knowing that that we are at the
end of ourselves, right? Andthat this all goes back to God.
And so that's a huge distinctionabout the grace we made in a
little side note, which I'lllink to in the show notes,
something very interesting westudied in seminary just based
on this, as we're talking aboutjustification by faith is called

(36:38):
the joint declaration of thedoctrine of justification, the
JD, DJ, and this is jdj. DJ,could you imagine that a jingle
to that? Gosh, that would ruinthe whole thing. It is a joint
conversation between theLutheran Catholic dialog about

(36:59):
the doctrine of justificationand by faith. And so they
basically, 500 years later, comeback to the table and they say,
Hey, let's talk about thisagain. And it's not so that
Catholic Church can recanteverything they said. It's a
dialog, and it goes through thiswhole dialog. It's a very
interesting, very theological,very seminary read, but also
very small. Go into the shownotes. Yeah, it's

also, like, one of the thinnest books I ever got in
seminary. Yeah, it's great.
Like, there's just not, youknow, like, there's not that
much of a and most of the issueswith the early, early problems
don't exist anymore. That's onething I think we have to own
that. Like, the distinctionbetween Lutheran, the Lutheran
tradition, and Roman Catholictradition of the church is not
what it once was, correct?

My sister and I had a very interesting
conversation Sunday on thissubject, because we were raised
Catholic, and she's she's verymuch Catholic, and in her
traditions and her sort ofideology and, and I'm Lutheran,

(38:05):
yeah,

right. So, yeah, you had a joint
conversation. We

probably could have written that great, that's
all. So

this is also a seminary test. If you've heard
about this, J, D, D, j, andyou're that intrigued to go into
our show notes and discover andread it. You might enjoy
seminary, if you are slightlyintrigued, but you're not going
to go pull that up and read it.
You just might love church andthen get there. If you're not
going to read it, but you enjoythe podcast, then you're just a
wonderful member. Welcome to theneighborhood. Welcome to the

(38:33):
neighborhood. That's it. I loveit. It's a great seminary test
note number

four, alright.
Thanks. So. So this one was fromFirst Timothy, chapter two,
verses three through five. Thisis right, and it is acceptable
in the sight of God, our Savior,who desires everyone to be saved
and to come to the knowledge ofthe truth. For there is one God.

(38:59):
There is also one mediatorbetween God and humankind,
Christ, Jesus himself human. Andmy note was only Christ, yeah,
that's it.

So loose Christus, yes, right? So change
a little bit from the solaSolus, Christus, and this is
only Christ, right? And and wecan only get to, and the Christ
says this in Scripture also, butwe can only get to the Father.
Get to the Father throughChrist, right? There is not
another mediator on our behalf,which is very important, because
that again, goes back intopriestly authority and papal
authority. They were trying tointercede on the behalf of God,

(39:34):
and Luther made the distinctionthat only God can do these
things, and it is not on thePope or the papal authority. And
I do want to say, remember,Luther at this time is a
Catholic teacher, doctoratepriest, right? So he's in the
Catholicism. So this isn'tagainst the Pope, right? It's
not against papal authority.
It's not against the structureof the church. It's literally

(39:54):
aligning back to God versus thePope and papal authority. It's
not removing the order of thechurch, but challenging that
authority of the Church andputting it back in the hands of
God. So I don't want to takethis moment to be like, ah,
Catholics right? It's not reallywhat the intention was. It was
meant to be a conversation. Itwas meant to be a starter for
Hey, we need to talk. It justgot a little out of hand.

It's a classic oversteer. Let's try to change
the direction a little bit.

Yeah, flipped it. You gotta feel your likes,
yeah, that's crazy. It was amoment. So my

last note, yeah, is First Corinthians, chapter
10, verse 31 so whether you eator drink or whatever you do,
everything for the glory of God,and I put Amen, put away pride
and selfish desires. The pastoris with the people, never above.

(40:50):
The Gospel cannot be containedin a building or a denomination.
I think that was a direct

I was a preach,

don't drop the mic.
That's

really good.
That is Soli Deo Gloria, right?
And that is only for the gloryof God. And I think you're
right, right? That was the lastpoint that I preached on Sunday.
Is that really the reality isthat we do everything for the
glory of God, right? When youbreak down your life and you
look at all the things there,and this can be in daily
decisions. It can be how youwake up. It can be how you treat

(41:24):
your kids, how you respond toadverse situations. It could be
in the line in the morning,right? I just a side note,
walked into safe flight autoglass this morning, and had been
working for a week to get myglass replaced and had all the
insurance signed up and all thethings done correctly and
everything else, and I walked inthis morning on a schedule,
needing to get to be places ontime in order to get to this

(41:44):
podcast. And they looked at meand they said, Hey, you you're
not verified yet. And out of allthe 10 conversations I've been
in this past week with safeflight and State Farm and
confirmed from both sides thateverything was good to go, I
walked in this morning and I waslike, Oh, I'm about to be hot.
Like, Man, I don't have time forthis. And then it honestly goes
back to in every single decisionyou give glory back to God

(42:06):
there. There are seven, eightpeople in that waiting room,
right, who all have experiencedadverse situations and that. And
yeah, we have all theopportunity to get unlevel
headed, right, and to kind ofsay, this is not the reality
that I want to be living in. Ithink when we look at
everything, goes back to theglory of God. It's in the
smallest distinctions in ourdaily life, and it is with the
profound theologicalimplications in our daily life.

(42:27):
It extends between them, allright? When we're discussing
what is the justification byfaith mean to us, and when we're
sitting in a waiting room andthings have not gone well,
right? All those go back to whoam? I am as a person that is
following Jesus Christ, knowingthat I'm justified by my faith,
through the grace of God, andnot by my works. And then how do

(42:47):
we live our life, responding tothat and my hope truly from
Sunday like hearing these Solas,it was really interesting. It's
almost like if we have theunderstanding that we are to go
and make disciples, we have theunderstanding that our mission
is to go make disciples,teaching them. You know,
everything that I've commandedyou across all the world, right?
This great commission that isthe mission, that is the vision
of every church, every church,every Christian Church, that is

(43:09):
it, right? Every church has adifferent mission statement.
It's not true. That's it. That'sthe one mission statement of the
church, right? These would beconsidered the values, if you
were to break down what do youlook at as the values of the
church that exist after thatmission statement to go and make
disciples? This is it, if youcould teach people what it means
to be a part of the church,teach them this, these five

(43:30):
solos, right? These are the onlyvalues that we should live by
when we're looking and then wedig into our life in relation to
those values in the Scripture.
So, yeah, I loved, I love thismessage. I love your notes,
because that took us through thefive solas. I appreciate that.
That was amazing. But those arethe five onlys, right, that went
through. And that was kind of akey part that came out of the
Reformation, right? And it was akey part that led into these 95

(43:51):
theses that also existed there.
So, so that was great. So thatwas really a little bit more
breakdown of the Reformation,little breakdown of things that
are coming up. We got anexciting couple weeks that are
happening. Coming up this weekis Mother's Day. But not only
Mother's Day, it is 90s worshipday. Literally. Have people very
excited to hear the 90s music.
Already had people respond toour post and the Spotify plays I

(44:12):
put together that I did notinclude songs that were in the
90s that they love. And how dareI not put jars of play in there.
So which is not wrong, it's notwrong. It's not an exhaustive
list, but it's not wrong. Sowe're gonna have a lot of fun
this Sunday. Tom on the 14th,which I think is coming up after
Mother's Day. That's nextWednesday. You're at an approval
at seminary. That happens, I

won't be there before I've done the interview,
and they the faculty meetup todecide, like, do we really want
to unleash this on the church?
At some point I'll find outwhere don't know how that'll
work. No. Then, of course, we'rehosting a traditional Sunday

right here at the neighborhood church to go
through. What is the kind ofafter these moments of hearing
about the tradition? How many ofus grew up in very traditional
church that I'm going to missthis church full of hymnals.
It's going to be full ofhymnals, 100% full of hymnals,
and it's going to be incredibleand alcohol. And Albs and stoles
and communion from those trays.
Are you doing the little traycommunity? Yeah, absolutely. I
don't know if I'm going to callthem shot glasses on Sunday, but

(45:07):
that's the thing that's talkingabout the 14th. So that's 18
that we have a congregationalmeeting to vote and call you as
pastor of Karen education andthe study things in the church,
and then, and then beyond that,we have graduation Sunday, which
Tom pull up the graduates. Wehave like, 14 people.

It's not entirely correct. We've had some issues
with so a little thing for thefor those out there listening,
yeah, we automatically gothrough once a year and update
correct people's ages from oneto another. But depending on
when we do it and whether or notparents go in there and update
their kids their own then itgets updated beyond, yeah, where
they're at. So we have someshowing as seniors that are

(45:47):
juniors. That's why, 100% why Isent you that list. So yeah, I'm
working through I'm workingthrough it, yeah, because it's
not entirely accurate, yeah, andI'll make sure nobody's missed.
But we also have a few thatwould love to be graduating, but
have one more year to go.

Oh, that's great. That's fantastic. Yeah,
met some of our seniors onSunday. So coming over here
talking, they're exciting forsenior Sunday. So that's
happened on the 25th and you'repreaching because you also will
be a graduation person on seniorSunday, because I will have
graduated, you have graduated.
That's exactly right. So, sosome exciting things coming up
in the life of the church, butthat is our TNC podcast talking
about the Reformation And allGod's people said, Amen.

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The Reformation: Exploring the Five Solas and the split from the Catholic Church

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