S5E26 - Prelude to the Reformation (formerly premium content from JSR)

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Prelude to the Reformation" (S5E26)

Title: Prelude to the Reformation
Host/Author: Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat
Guests: Professor Richard Leduc and Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Release Date: June 19, 2025
Description: This episode delves into the historical backdrop leading up to the Reformation, examining key figures, theological debates, and the socio-political climate of the time. It re-releases content from a previous episode titled "Joseph Smith and the Restoration," expanding the discussion to include influential early reformers and the internal struggles within the Catholic Church.

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Introduction

The episode, titled "Prelude to the Reformation," serves as a comprehensive exploration of the factors that set the stage for the Protestant Reformation. Hosted by Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat, an associate professor of Church History and Doctrine at BYU, alongside Professor Richard Leduc, the discussion pivots from a focus on prominent Reformation figures like Martin Luther and John Calvin to lesser-known but equally pivotal early reformers and the challenges facing the Catholic Church in the centuries preceding the Reformation.

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Historical Context and Overview

The Catholic Church's Dominance and Internal Struggles

Professor Leduc begins by highlighting the paradox of the Catholic Church's simultaneous expansion and internal decay during the late 1300s to mid-1400s. Despite appearing robust and authoritative—spreading globally through the Spanish and Portuguese empires—the Church grappled with significant issues, including:

• Multiple Popes: The existence of rival popes led to confusion and diminished the Church's hierarchical structure. As he states, "there's even one time where they have three popes, where there's a pope who's not accepted. So another pope is then put up, but then the first pope says, no, I'm still the real Pope."

• Corruption and Power Dynamics: Local church officials wielded immense power, often leading to corruption. High positions like bishoprics were lucrative, incentivizing leadership for financial gain rather than spiritual commitment. This environment bred absentee bishops who neglected their religious duties in favor of personal wealth.

• Suppression of Literacy: Literacy rates were low, and the Bible was exclusively in Latin. This exclusivity forced laypeople to depend entirely on priests for theological interpretation, thereby concentrating religious authority and limiting personal access to scripture.

Socio-Political Symbiosis

The relationship between the Catholic Church and European monarchies was symbiotic. Strong monarchies protected the Church's interests, while the Church bolstered the authority of the monarchy by endorsing their divine right to rule. Dr. Dirkmaat elaborates:

“The Church and the kingdoms, they became quite symbiotic in their relationship. Both of them want stability, both of them want the monarchy to be strong.” [24:22]

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Early Reformers: John Wycliffe and Jan Hus

John Wycliffe: The First Reformer

John Wycliffe emerges as a foundational figure in the early Reformation movement. An English Catholic priest in the late 1300s, Wycliffe challenged the Church's authority by advocating for:

• Scriptural Primacy: Wycliffe asserted that salvation comes from personal belief in Jesus rather than adherence to Church sacraments. He argued that doctrines like transubstantiation lacked biblical support.

• Vernacular Scriptures: He championed the translation of the Bible from Latin into English, making scripture accessible to the laity and undermining the priestly monopoly on biblical interpretation.

A notable exchange includes Dr. Dirkmaat’s observation:

“He is going to really make the argument that unless you can prove it in the Scriptures that it shouldn't be being taught in the Church.” [27:52]

Jan Hus: Wycliffe’s Influence in Bohemia

Jan Hus of Bohemia continued Wycliffe's reformist ideals, leading to significant tension with the Catholic Church:

• Challenge to Transubstantiation: Hus vehemently opposed the doctrine, promoting a symbolic interpretation of the Lord's Supper.

• Political Repercussions: His defiance culminated in the 1419 Defenestration of Prague, where Hussite supporters threw city officials out of a window, leading to his imprisonment and eventual execution.

Professor Leduc recounts the event:

“...members of the city council that are trying to put down this kind of Hussite controversy. Well, they so, Well, I mean, I don't know exactly what happened. So I mean, like, obviously the sources are all over the place, but apparently there's a Hussite priest who's marching through Prague with his followers, right? And someone throws a stone at that priest, hits him and turns the whole thing into a mob.” [51:28]

Legacy of Wycliffe and Hus

Both reformers laid crucial groundwork for the Protestant Reformation by:

• Undermining Papal Authority: They questioned the Pope's legitimacy and the necessity of ecclesiastical intermediaries for salvation.

• Emphasizing Personal Faith: Shifting the focus to individual belief and scripture over institutional doctrines and practices.

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Theological Debates: Predestination and Salvation

Augustine’s Influence

Augustine of Hippo, an early Catholic theologian, plays a significant role in shaping debates on predestination and salvation:

• Grace Over Sacraments: Augustine emphasized that salvation is possible only through God's grace, not through performing sacraments.

• Predestination: He posited that God predestines some for salvation, a concept later adopted and contentious within Protestant theology.

Dr. Dirkmaat discusses Augustine's stance:

“Augustine is going to talk about this idea of predestined salvation... he is affirming this.” [08:34]

Protestant Critique

Calvinists and other Protestant groups critique Augustine's views by arguing that:

• Distinction Without Difference: They believe Augustine's nuanced stance on predestination undermines true divine sovereignty, suggesting that if God knows who will be saved, His creation of those destined for damnation is problematic.

• Free Will vs. Divine Determination: Debates persist on the balance between human free will and divine predestination, a tension that fuels much of Protestant theological discourse.

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The Catholic Church’s Structural Issues

Hierarchical Conflicts

The overlapping authorities of the Pope and local monarchies created friction, often leading to:

• Veto Power: Kings exercised vetoes over papal appointments to prevent conflicts, diluting papal authority. As discussed:

“Essentially by this point, most kings had a kind of veto power over papal appointments in their, their kingdoms.” [23:01]

Absentee Clergy and Corruption

The lucrative nature of high clerical offices led to widespread absenteeism:

• Neglected Duties: Bishops and priests often resided in Rome, exploiting their positions for income while neglecting their dioceses.

• Economic Incentives: The financial rewards of religious offices attracted individuals more interested in wealth than spiritual leadership.

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The Age of Exploration and Its Impact

Global Expansion of Catholicism

Concurrent with internal Church struggles, the Age of Exploration facilitated the global spread of Catholicism:

• Colonization and Conversion: The Spanish and Portuguese empires aggressively expanded Catholicism through colonization, often by force. Dr. Dirkmaat notes:

“...the colonization and settlement of, of south and Central America, the entirety of those populations are going to be Catholic, eventually forced to be Catholic, with very, very few exceptions.” [08:40]

• Contrasting Perspectives: While Protestant Europe viewed the Reformation as revitalizing Christianity, Catholics saw their faith spreading globally, marking a complex picture of religious influence.

Transformation and Globalization

The simultaneous internal reforms and global expansion led to a rapidly changing world:

• Dynamic Period: The early 1500s to 1600s were marked by unparalleled transformation, reshaping religious, cultural, and geopolitical landscapes.

• Impact on Belief Systems: Exposure to diverse cultures and ideas during this era laid the groundwork for further religious and intellectual enlightenment.

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Martin Luther and the Onset of the Reformation

Luther’s Radical Departure

Martin Luther’s actions in 1517 symbolized a definitive break from Catholic orthodoxy:

• 95 Theses: Luther's declaration against indulgences and other Church practices catalyzed widespread religious upheaval.

• Foundational Principles: His emphasis on scripture and salvation by faith alone became cornerstones of Protestant theology.

Dr. Dirkmaat emphasizes Luther’s lasting influence:

“Every Protestant, every Protestant church today, to a greater or lesser degree, is descended from Martin Luther's thought, because his arguments are going to be simple, they are going to be widespread, and they are going to be embraced by all Protestants.” [45:13]

Contrast with Earlier Reformers

Unlike Wycliffe and Hus, Luther's reforms gained substantial traction, laying the foundation for diverse Protestant denominations. The episode sets the stage for discussing Luther’s motivations and the subsequent divergence of Protestant thought in future episodes.

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Conclusion and Forward Look

The episode concludes by situating the Reformation within the broader context of simultaneous global and internal transformations. It underscores the interconnectedness of socio-political changes and theological debates, paving the way for the profound religious restructuring that would follow.

Dr. Dirkmaat teases the next episode:

“...we're going to talk about what is causing Martin Luther to throw his temper tantrum... why do we care about that in this Joseph Smith and the Restoration podcast?... how did they start out with the same ideas, but then get so crosswise that Joseph Smith is living in confusion?” [48:02]

Listeners are invited to continue exploring the intricate web of historical, theological, and cultural factors that shaped modern Christianity.

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Notable Quotes

• Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat [08:34]:
  “They are the ones who destroyed everything. So there's actually kind of a debate among scholars about how do you actually classify this Catholic Church of the, you know, the 1400s and the 1500s.”

• Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat [23:01]:
  “Over.”

• Professor Richard Leduc [24:22]:
  “Why?”

• Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat [44:59]:
  “But obviously, it's what it's, it would, it would be scintillating to our audience. Far more interesting than me talking about a bohemian priest.”

• Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat [47:24]:
  “Yeah. You land in the hay. Or Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, right, where it's Biff.”

These quotes encapsulate key moments of discussion, highlighting both the analytical depth and engaging dialogue between the hosts.

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Final Thoughts

"Prelude to the Reformation" offers listeners a thorough examination of the pre-Reformation era, emphasizing the complexity and multifaceted nature of religious transformation. By tracing the lineage from early reformers like Wycliffe and Hus to the seismic shifts initiated by Martin Luther, the episode provides a nuanced understanding of how historical, theological, and political forces intertwined to reshape Christianity.

For those seeking to comprehend the roots of modern religious denominations and the enduring impacts of the Reformation, this episode serves as an enlightening guide, enriched with expert insights and thoughtful analysis.

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Visit standardoftruth.com for more episodes and related content.

Transcript

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm Garrett's friend, Professor Richard Leduc. Now, on the Standard of Truth podcast, Martin Luther and John Calvin get quite a bit of love. Or at least we talk about them quite a bit. I don't know that either of them would necessarily say that they get quite a bit of love, but in this episode, it's a re release of a Joseph Smith and the Restoration episode called Prelude to the Reformation that came out in July of 2023. And in this episode, we talk quite a bit about other fathers of the Reformation. We also talk a little bit about Super Irrigation and the effect that that will have on merit and eventually the selling of indulgences. So we hope that you enjoy this episode and thank you for your litnursip.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Foreign A Standard of Truth Podcast production. In this podcast, hosts Dr. Garrett Dirkmot and Professor Richard Leduc will discuss the events of the Restoration in the order they occurred. Listeners will follow Joseph Smith as he rises from the obscurity of a poor farm boy to the prophet of the Restoration. They will learn of the trials and triumphs, the miracles and misery of Joseph Smith and members of the church. Hi, welcome to another episode of Joseph Smith and the Restoration a Standard of Truth podcast production. I'm your host, Dr. Garrett Dirkmont, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard Leduc.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Hello, Garrett. In our last installment of Joseph Smith and the Restoration, we led right up to Martin Luther speaking a little bit about some of the beliefs of the Catholic Church. We talked about a company based in Georgia that does super irrigation.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Yeah. Which I thought was the greatest marketing plan of all time.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

But it's likely that they're going to be Protestant and they're not making a Catholic joke. But who knows? The we.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Let's move to Italy and start an irrigation company, be huge called Super Irrigation.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

So we, we bumped right up. We talked about indulgences and merit and Jesus and Paul and Peter cartwheeling into heaven. And we were so the, the idea was fantastic. Here we are, Martin Luther. Well, in true Standard of Truth podcast production on brand. We're going to go back a little bit and talk about some other. We talked. You mentioned a couple people, Garrett, but there were a lot of people that kind of led up to Martin Luther. We wanted to spend a little bit of time on those folks before we jump straight into Martin Luther.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Right. We don't want their families to be upset that we left them out of this.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

That's right.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

I, I'm certain that there are literally thousands of of Hussites and perhaps maybe even, even thousands more Lollards that are listening to us right now. So, you know, one of the great questions that people ask about the coming of the Reformation is what is actually going on. Like, so look, from a Protestant point of view, like the Reformation, well, it's about time. You know what I mean? When Protestants look at the Reformation history, they look at it as, well, you guys turned this whole church thing into a stinking rot for 1500 years. And luckily we came in and saved it and got people back to the real Jesus. Right. Surprisingly, Catholics don't look at it the same way.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Right.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

They are not as willing to look at it as, yes, we had completely destroyed all of Christianity, you know, by trying to keep it safe from the invasions of Muslims and of the Turks. But yeah, you know, it's all us. We're the ones who destroyed everything. So there's actually kind of a debate among scholars about how do you actually classify this Catholic Church of the, you know, the 1400s and the 1500s. I mean, it really is a paradox that at the very moment, the very moment that Catholicism is going to explode all over the world with the, you know, the sailing of Columbus and the Spanish conquest and, you know, air quotes, conversion of the Native Americans. I mean, conversion with extreme prejudice. Conversion that you will, you will convert or we will make you convert. Literally millions, tens of millions of more people are going to become Catholic in the next several centuries. So you have, on the one hand, Catholicism is actually almost at its zenith in 1500. I mean, it is rapidly becoming the religion of the empire. And the other empire that's working its way around Africa is the Portuguese Empire, also Catholic. Right. So when you think about the settlement of the colonization, very little settlement, mainly just killing people and forced baptisms, but the colonization and settlement of, of south and Central America, the entirety of those populations are going to be Catholic, eventually forced to be Catholic, with very, very few exceptions. And as the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese trading empire spreads to various places in Africa, some places in the Middle east, some places in India, the Philippines, you are literally, you're witnessing this gigantic expansion of, of Catholicism, right? So I think Protestants tend to look at, you know, they tend to look at Catholicism as if it's like the dying man, you know what I mean? Like, you know, the last gasp is sent out and that of course, Protestantism came in and you know, frankly, Protestants, they are very quick to dismiss any of the good that was done under Catholicism or any religious, you know, advancement of Christianity because they see it as so heretical. I mean, they see what the Catholics are teaching. I mean, you will find some Protestants who will today argue that Catholics, you know, aren't really saved. And why aren't they really saved? Well, because they don't. Haven't really put all their faith in Jesus. They still believe in the Pope. They still believe that, you know, that they have to have certain works to go to heaven. Now, of course, there are other Protestants who will just simply say, well, as long as they believe Jesus is their Savior, they're saved. They just don't realize that they're saved. So they're being taught wrongly, but they're still saved. But there's a really a huge gap there. I mean, to think of it in these terms. I mean, think of how many Catholics there are in the Philippines, right? The Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, which will eventually lead to the colonization of the Philippines and the Catholization of most of The Philippines is two years after Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to the door in Germany. They're contemporaries of one another. The age of exploration and the explosion of the Reformation and religious warfare is the same age. It's going on at the same time.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

85 million Catholics, roughly almost 80% of the population in the Philippines.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Yeah, I mean, and so, so like I said, we tend to look at, because we're Eurocentric, right? We tend to look at the Reformation as the collapse of Catholicism. And the reality is 200 years later, there are more Catholics than there were before the Reformation. Right.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Do Protestants give a tip of the cap to the Catholics at least as it relates to the Trinitarian belief of Jesus? Because that's something that they still hold to, right?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

They will accept it, right? So I mean, they'll accept those councils. They accept the Nicene Council, right. They accept the Chalcedonian Council. They don't give any credit at all to the Church because they argue those things are obvious because they're in the Scriptures. You know, you guys couldn't have come up with anything else because it's literally the only thing that. It's literally the only thing that the Scriptures could tell you that's there. Now, of course, a Latter Day Saint is saying, well, wait a minute, I kind of differ. But you will rarely find Protestant theologians saying what a great job Catholic theologians did. You just won't. Except for when it comes to Augustine. Augustine is that he is a, he is a fan favorite of Protestants. And again, even some Protestants will say that, you know, he Also doesn't, you know, because he's still upholding Catholic sacraments. He still doesn't fully understand. But the reason why they focus on Augustine is that Augustine is, you know, very, very old theologian. I mean, we're talking back in the times of the end of the Roman Empire, right through the late four hundreds. But Augustine is going to really put forward the argument that, yes, salvation comes through the sacraments in the church, but ultimately salvation comes because of grace. And so he is considered a great Catholic theologian, but a great Catholic theologian that many Protestant theologians will quote. You'll find Augustine being quoted all over the place by people like John Wycliffe because he supports their argument that salvation ultimately comes through grace rather than through performing the various acts of the sacrament. And, you know, Augustine, there's kind of a reason that he is. He's so given to that. Augustine is just a. He's a horrendous sinner. I mean, at least in his own description, he is a sinful man. And so he doesn't convert until later. I mean, he, at least he wants to come to Christ, but doesn't know how he's going to come to Christ and doesn't know how he's going to give up the sins that he has. And so by the time he actually comes to Christ, he feels this huge, this huge weight of his own sinfulness. I mean, in some ways, you know, the way that Paul talked about how, you know, I'm the least of the apostles because I persecuted the saints of God, Augustine's going to feel something similar, that he came to his religion late, that he indulged in all kinds of sinfulness beforehand. Right. And that that's the reason why, you know, he's going to focus so much of his theology on the necessity of grace, that you are a sinner, you can't overcome this, but without the grace of God, that Jesus's grace is what covers everything. It's interesting because Augustine will also spend some time talking about predestination. And predestination is really going to factor into, especially the more radical Protestantism of the Reformation, that in what sense do we have free will when it comes to our salvation? This is a question that people ask even today. Protestants themselves argue about this even today because the Bible does talk about predestination. And so Augustine will talk about that God predestining those to salvation. Now, Catholics today will say, well, Augustine's writings have been taken out of context by people like Martin Luther. And it's true that Augustine does believe in free will, but that there is a knowledge from God of who will accept and who will reject salvation. So at the very least, Augustine is affirming this. If God knows everything, then he already knew when he created everyone whether or not they would be saved, right? Now, him knowing whether or not that they would be saved is not the same thing as him willing that someone be saved. Now, I'll tell you what, Calvinists would take pretty strong exception to that because they would say, well, you're arguing for a distinction without a difference, right? You're saying that there's a distinction between God knowing who is going to be saved when he creates them out of nothing, and God deciding who's going to be saved when he creates them out of nothing. The reality is, a Calvinist would say, you just don't want to label what's actually going on here, because if God already knows whether or not someone's going to be saved when he creates them, then that means he created them knowing they're not going to be saved. Now a Catholic would respond, yes, but he knows that because he knows by their own free will they won't choose to follow Catholicism, and so therefore they're not going to be saved. But I think a Calvinist would retort that again, distinction without a difference. God created them out of nothing. So now you have to ask the question, why did God create them if he knew that they were not going to be saved? Or why didn't God modify the terms of salvation if he knew that they weren't going to be saved? You know, in many ways, this kind of, this modified argument for predestination that God predestined to save all of those who he already knew would accept him with their free will. You know, Calvinists will find this kind of laughable. They'll say, well, then there's no predestination at all. You're saying, it's not God who's operative, it's the individual who's operative. And if it's the individual who's operative and not God who's operative, well, then why is it that God created people that God knew would never be saved? For a Calvinist, it's very easy. God created people who he knew would not be saved to demonstrate his justice. And, you know, Augustine's not going to go that way far, but he's going to talk about this idea of predestined salvation. And so there's going to be a thread of that running through Catholic theology, especially through Catholic Scholasticism, as, as, as people are studying and, and learning going forward. And, and especially this idea, this focus on the only reason why the sacraments work is because of grace. Ultimately, the grace of Christ is what saves you, not the sacraments. Well, that having been said, while the Catholic Church was expanding, generally perceived to be strong and much stronger than it had been in previous centuries, in the late 1300s to the mid-1400s, the church was plagued by all kinds of problems, namely, there were multiple popes. You have multiple years in which different people are claiming that they're the legitimate pope, who then immediately excommunicate the other pope. And there's even one time where they have three popes, where there's a pope who's not accepted. So another pope is then put up, but then the first pope says, no, I'm still the real Pope. And then finally there's like a compromised pope, a third pope, who says, no, no, I'll be the Pope. And, you know, that really rocks a structure that is built hierarchically the way that the Church was by this point. Now, there are some things that are just apt to cause corruption if, in fact corruption is going on. Again, I don't want to be too harsh on Catholicism. This is certainly Martin Luther's view, but maybe not Catholics view. One of those is the vast, vast majority of people who were Catholics in Europe. And I mean, nearly everyone did not have the ability to read the Scriptures on their own. Almost none of them did. Now, literacy is already pretty terrible in, in. In early modern Europe. I mean, you don't have to. You won't be winning any. Any awards for your local school for your literacy rates in, you know, Holy Roman Empire, Germany. Okay? So literacy, even in the common vernacular, is not super high. But up to this point, the Bible is only written in Latin. Now, Latin is a dead language at this point, right? Latin was the language of the Roman Empire, at least part of it. Greek was still the language of the other half of the Roman Empire. And so when the Vulgate is written, it's written in Latin. So one of the requirements to be a believer in Christian Europe from, you know, from 400 on was you had to listen to the Mass and most likely your sermons that the homilies that associate with it in a language you couldn't understand. Now, if you were very educated, some people, if you were highly educated, yes, you were taught Latin and you'd get the ability to read it. But almost no one has disposable income in Europe, so almost no one is getting a higher education. They might be able to read German. They might be able to read English, but they can't read Latin. What that does is it, it forces, it forces the, the parishioners to rely exclusively upon their local, their local priest to interpret the Bible for them. I mean, how else could they do it otherwise? This is what the Bible says. Well, how do I know that's what the Bible says? Well, I don't know. Go figure out Latin and you can read it. And this meant that the priests not only had this extraordinary amount of power because they were the ones who had the ability to lead the Mass and bless the host, the Lord's Supper, which is a sacrament. They were the ones who had the ability to take confessions, which was also a requirement. Remember, even a good Catholic Christian is going to spend time in purgatory, almost certainly, because you can't approach that level of perfection needed for heaven. And so you're going to go confess your sins, you're going to perform penance, you're going to try to make restitution for your sins. All of that going through the priest. And so these local church officials have enormous amounts of power, enormous amounts. Now, that doesn't mean that they're all corrupt, okay? I mean that again, if you're reading a Martin Luther pamphlet, the answer is yes, they're all corrupt. But obviously there are all kinds of leaders in the Church who really are desperately devoted to Jesus. At the same time, there is the propensity for corruption to go on. Here's one of the reasons why.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Over.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

The course of time, the various kingdoms had to kind of work out with the Church how bishops and in some cases even priests were going to be appointed in their kingdom. It's a very weird thing, right? The Pope has the power and authority over every church official in your kingdom, and no one can go to heaven without his blessing. But the King has all of the secular authority over that kingdom. So what happens when the Pope wants to appoint a bishop who's already said things like that? Louis xiii, he is a total piece of garbage, right? Well, there's going to be an issue. And so essentially by this point, most kings had a kind of veto power over papal appointments in their, their kingdoms. If not, it would lead to all kinds of conflict. And usually it was easier for the Papacy to simply go with what the kingdoms want. In many ways, the Church and the kingdoms, they became quite symbiotic in their relationship. Right? Both of them want stability, both of them want the monarchy to be strong.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Why?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Well, because if the monarchy is strong, well, then that protects the churches. That are being protected by the monarchy. Right. The Church wants the monarchy to be strong because that protects their interests. And the monarchy wants the churches to be strong because that supports. Because the churches are saying what? Well, you need to give your allegiance to our most high and mighty Catholic King, Henry viii. Right. So they really are working together. And so you can already see a sense of corruption there. The bishoprics come with a subsidy to them. Right. So it was a big deal to get appointed to be a bishop because you then got a certain portion of revenue from those lands. So people would actually seek out the office of being a bishop not because they were desperately trying to lead the flock of God, but because it paid really well. And so you actually had this huge rise of absentee bishops where people were, they would get the bishopric and then they would appoint some priest to run it for them while they continued to live in Rome and live off of the money coming in from the bishopric that they were running. So there's that going on as well. There's of course, this kind of anti, I mean, again from a Protestant perspective, an anti intellectualism that's going on because the people aren't able to read the Scriptures in the language that it's printed. It's against Catholic law against to print the Bible in any other, in any other language. So the people are all at the mercy of the priests. So that's an important, you know, to kind of set the table for this. And maybe that's why it's a good place to start with John Wycliffe. He is a, an English Catholic in the late 1300s. So we're, we're 150, 160 years away from Martin Luther and he has some theological issues with the church as it's being taught. Now he's going to become a priest himself. He's part of the system. And so you actually see these early reformers are people trying to reform the church from within the system. They're trying to change things from within the system. And as you might imagine, that's always a pretty, it's a pretty precarious thing. I mean, even if you were to, you know, if I were to make an appeal to Richard's corporate sensibilities, if you are someone inside of the corporation trying to change fundamentally parts of the corporation, you're going to hit a lot of pushback. If everyone in the executive team gets fired and you hire a new CEO who then changes the corporation, well, that, that's actually much easier than trying to change it from within. Right. From your, your experience as a, as a CEO?

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Well, yes. No, that's absolutely, absolutely the case. Much. There's many a case study on change management. It's, it's something that people do very, very, very poorly, often because it's difficult.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

To reform an incident.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

So it's, it's, it's. It's difficult to do top down. It's. It's almost impossible to do bottom up.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Right, right. So even, even when a CEO wants to change culture of a company, it makes it. It's. It's incredibly difficult. So think about now that the corporation that he's trying to Change here is 1300 years old. Right. And, and there are two aspects of truth that have grown up during that time period. And, and I know we've probably said this before, but I want to. There are two ways you know what's true. One, the scriptures. Okay? So the scriptures are always there. They're a bedrock of belief. Now, of course, those scriptures include the scriptures in the apocrypha, which, you know, not all. You know, most Protestants today will not accept this scripture. And then there's tradition from the Catholic perspective, because we're the church that Jesus set up. That means the way things have been done, clearly, is the way Jesus wants them done. Because if we trace it all the way back now, the reality of tradition is almost nothing that's in the Catholic theology by the 1500s. Can you trace literally, as a historian, all the way back to Peter? Right. I mean, you know, you're not finding Peter writing about transubstantiation. That's not going on. Right. But, but that is the second pillar of understanding, whether or not something's true. So if we've always done it this way, or at least as long as we can remember we've always done it this way, then who are you to say that it's not accurate? Why would you make the claim that it's not accurate? Are you going to say that God's had people been doing it the wrong way for hundreds of years? So it's both tradition and scripture. Well, that's going to become a really big deal to Martin Luther, but it's first a big deal to John Wycliffe. Wycliffe is going to push back against this. The power that the priests and the bishops have this idea that I can't get to heaven unless I am right with my priest, unless my priest is willing to, you know, have me baptized if I wasn't when I'm a baby, unless he's willing to grant me absolution unless he's willing to grant me confirmation, unless he's willing to perform last rites, unless. Unless that priest is 100% on board with my salvation, that I can't get salvation. Wycliffe is going to push hard against this and begin preaching in public that it's actually belief that gives people salvation. Now, what's really interesting is he's going to start arguing about. He's going to start bringing up predestination again, harkening back to Augustine, trying to deal with that. But Wycliffe is going to say that there's actually. That the Church is not the ecclesiology. The Church is not the priests and the bishops and the Pope. The Church is the body of believers. I think Wycliffe is really the first one to, at least very broadly make this argument with inside the early Reformation movement, that there's a distinction between the physical Church and. And what the Church is. The Church is the believers in Christ, and that the buildings and the priests and the bishops are not the church. They are. They are extraneous to it and in fact, lead people away from the true understanding of the true understanding of Jesus and what you're supposed to believe. So Wycliffe is going to. It's going to kind of fan some flames here. He is certainly. He is. Certainly got a lot of followers, but he's also going to upset many people, namely many other Catholics who are part of the. Part of the. The church hierarchical structure. So an example of some of the things that he thinks are not actually scriptural. One of them is transubstantiation. I mean, he is going to criticize this idea that the Lord's Supper, you know, Latter Day Saints will call it the sacrament, but in the Catholic Church, there are multiple sacraments. Each of them are necessary for salvation. In the Latter Day Saint Church, we, you know, we only call the bread and the water, not even wine, that we take each week. We call that the sacrament, but we're really just shortening it because it's actually the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is what it is. And so the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Catholic theology had developed to argue in a. In a doctrine called transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is this idea that when the priest blesses the bread, blesses the wine, that it literally becomes the body and blood of Christ, that it still appears to be bread, it still appears to be wine, but it's not. It's actually now the body and blood of Christ, and that. That. That is considered One of the great miracles of the Mass that the priest calls down from heaven through blessing. This, the, these substances on the altar, and they literally become the, the actual body and blood of Christ. Now, that is a very holy thing if you're a Catholic. And it is something that Reformation theologians will take great aim at. In fact, they will. This is where the term hocus pocus is going to originate from. Reformation theologians making fun of the Latin version of the blessing on the Lord's Supper. You know, the words that are used which, if you say them, sound kind of like hocus pocus and that. What do we use? Hocus pocus. To me, now that it's, you know, it's, it's a sham, right? If you were to say, oh, yeah, you know, that guy's telling me that car can do 100, 100 miles an hour in three seconds. That's all hocus pocus. That's just, it's, it's, it's sleight of hand. It's, it's pretending that something is going on, even though it isn't actually going on. And so Wycliffe is going to really push back against that. He's going to claim that there is essentially an invisible church, and those are the people that are predestined to salvation, regardless of whether or not they've done the sacraments. So you get this early idea that God has already chosen who he's going to save, and it's not because a priest decided whether or not they've performed the sacraments the right way. Probably what is the biggest part of what Wycliffe is doing is because he's making the argument about he, he's going to, he's going to really make the argument that unless you can prove it in the Scriptures that it shouldn't be being taught in the Church. He is, is going to push for the translation of the Bible from Latin into English. This is, is, is a, a big deal. Again, it's forbidden, actually, for the Bible to be published in any other language. By doing this, it is going to make the Bible available to all kinds of people in England that can speak. That speak English. So this is, I mean, look, we're, you know, 140 years before Martin Luther, you have this early English reformer who is arguing that truth needs to come from the Scriptures. That's the reason why we have to get the Scriptures into the language. People can read it. Now, of course, it's a lot of his followers that do this, this translation. It's not all just him. But he's calling into question the authority, the priesthood authority, as a Latter Day Saint might call it, of both the Pope, because the Pope isn't mentioned anywhere in the Bible, and the various sacraments that are being performed by the priests and the bishops, the followers of Wycliffe are going to later be called Lollards. In fact, that terminology is still in place in some places. So if you ever are reading, you know, you know, absentmindedly on early, you know, early modern English history and you come across Lollardy, that that's what it, it's people who are rejecting the preeminent arguments of the Catholic Church and arguing for a different understanding. Now, it is not a, it's not genuinely a break from the Catholic Church. He's certainly arguing things against the Catholic Church's hierarchy. He's certainly arguing for doctrines that are against it. He is certainly arguing that salvation is coming from outside of it. But he is not calling for a new church. He's not saying that, you know, the Christian Church doesn't actually exist. Instead, he's more saying the Christian Church is sick. It's sick and it needs a doctor. It's got a lot of indications that, you know, I guess for his world, it needs to be bloodletted and leeched. It needs to have some things done to change it in order for people to actually have communion with God. Now, I spent time on Wycliffe not only because I speak English and so I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm clearly, you know, for all of our non English speakers, you're thinking, I see, I see. But the main reason I talk about him is the other major person that is going to play a role in Reformation ideas prior to Martin Luther is John Hus of Bohemia, which is an actual place in, I mean, I guess portions of it would today be in what is the Czech Republic, portions of it would be in Slovakia and portions of it would be in Germany. It's not just a rhapsody that was put together by Queen. But why does it matter? Because Hus is a follower of Wycliffe. Wycliffe's writings, Wycliffe's teachings, Wycliffe's publications are going to be the foundations of Jan Hus's pushback against the Catholic Church. And it's going to be along a lot of the same lines. It's going to be along the lines of we are teaching things in the Church that are not actually in the Scriptures. The scriptures have to be the basis of what we're doing. Salvation has to be based upon belief. It can't be based upon whether or not someone got absolution from their priests. And. And again, it will focus on transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is. Is. It's a big issue, this argument which seems. It seems just antithetical to the growing age of understanding, which will, you know, the burgeoning into the age of the enlightenment eventually, that you're telling me every single mass that said everywhere on earth that the bread and wine literally becomes the literal body and blood of Jesus, why couldn't it just simply be in memorial of Jesus? Why does it literally have to be his body and blood? Why can't it just be us remembering Jesus sacrifice? Now, of course, there's two parts to that argument. If, in fact the body and blood. I mean, if the bread and the wine doesn't actually become the body and blood of Jesus, then what is the priest doing up there? What's his purpose? If, if the whole point is to just remember Jesus, then why do we need a blessing on it? To remember Jesus? You need the priest because the priest is performing essentially a miracle in order to make it so that you are partaking the body and blood of Jesus. So, I mean, there's going to be catholic pushback against that as well. Huss and his followers are going to be protected for a time, but eventually king wenceslslaus, which makes it sound like we're singing a Christmas hymn, Will pledged to protect him at a catholic council that is called. And hus will go to that council, and he shouldn't have gone to the council, even though he's been promised good conduct. I mean, he's told, look, you need to come to the council so we can work some of this stuff out. Let's hear your arguments about transubstantiation. Let's hear your arguments about grace. Let's hear your arguments about scripture. We promise you safe conduct. We want to hear what you have to say. We want to be able to respond to it. We also want to kill you. Well, they didn't say that last part, but that last part was in their mind, I think. So. So they. He. He. He. Look, he's. He's responsible about it. He fills out a will before he goes, which I think that any, you know, person. Well, I guess we are talking 1400 Europe. So, like, he could. He could have died from a tooth abscess on the way to. On the way to the council. He could have. He could have like, oh, I. I got a thorn in my. My shoe. Well, goodbye, Martha.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Well, it's a good thing you set up the irrevocable trust then.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Yeah, right, exactly. That's all that he was looking to do. We'd like to morph much of this podcast into discussing inheritance law.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Well, one of my, one of my best friends is a probate attorney, and so it makes its way into my life more than, you know, it otherwise would.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

But I mean, obviously, it's what it's, it would, it would be scintillating to our audience. Far more interesting than me talking about a bohemian priest.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Well, no, you're about to talk about a window. That'll be fun.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Well, the, the, what happens to, to Jan Hus as he goes to that he goes to this council and he is instead, even though he's promised safe conduct, he is imprisoned and then he is condemned, and then he is strangled, and then after he's strangled, he is then burned. So it's you, you know, you'd think that at some point the guy's dead, but that way you could, you know, really prove, you know, that how dead he was. But also the part of what's going on with, with that is it's a demonstration that he's a heretic. Right. What do you do with heretics? You burn them. Right. I mean, essentially, you know, this portion of the time period in Europe talking about heretics is like talking about witches and Monty Python on the Holy Grail. Right? What do you burn upon the heretics?

[Professor Richard Leduc]

More heretics.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

More heretics.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Well, so, so in, in Prague, they love to chuck people out of windows. He wasn't chucked out of a window. Am I thinking of something different? Well, so there was later people chucked out of windows, but he, There are.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

People thrown out of window. Right, but they are, they. And it's related to the Hussite controversy, but it's not the, it's not the same, it's not the same thing.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

This was later then.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Yes. Well, so there's, look, there are multiple defenestrations of Prague. If we were going to talk about.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

That, I will say so. I, I, I've been to, I've been to Prague and we took a tour of the Prague Castle and the person that was giving the tour, you know, he's from that area and he made multiple window jokes because apparently there were multiple people chucked out of, out of windows there to kind of show how they felt about things happened all the time.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

That's exactly right. The defenestration of Prague that we generally hear about is, is several Hundred years later, that's in 1618. And that's the defenestration of Prague where the, the emissaries of the Holy Roman Empire are pitched out the window by, by the, the local Czech leaders and. But I hope they told you when you were there, these guys, miraculously, yeah.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

They landed on like a hay.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

That seems like a badly written like soap opera, right?

[Professor Richard Leduc]

I mean like Princess Bride, right? Jump out the window, land on the.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

And you land on the hay. Or, or Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, right, where they. We're gonna catapult ourselves over the castle walls. We're, we're going to die doing this. Oh wait, we landed in the one bucket of hay that there was anywhere inside the castle. So it does sound like it was written by, you know, you know, chat GPT. But in fact they don't die, they land in. In. I mean, well, later Protestants are going to say they land in a pile of crap. I don't know if that's what he said to you, but at least they will put out pamphlets saying, well that's exactly what you expect of a bunch of Catholics that they would land, you know, of course they're saved by landing in a pile of feces. So that defenestration of Prague does not involve, well, at least not directly, Yan Hus. But there is an early defenestration, it's called the 1419 defenestration. And it's because there are Hussite. Most of the area is popularly filled with followers of Jan Hus and it creates a real problem for the local authorities, right? I mean, look, what do you do when you're a local authority and you need stability to maintain your power, but the people all want as their leaders these non Orthodox priests. So you can either go along with it to try to keep peace because you don't want some kind of popular uprising, or you can try to push back against it. And by pushing back against it, you actually cause a problem where you, you might actually incite the rebellion. I mean, you're really in a position where you're not entirely sure what, what you should do. That one takes place in 1419 where, you know, members of the city council that are, are trying to put down this kind of Hussite controversy. Well, they so, Well, I mean, I don't know exactly what happened. So I mean, like, obviously the sources are all over the place, but apparently there's a Hussite priest who's marching through Prague with his followers, right? And someone throws a stone at that priest, hits him and turns the whole thing into a mob. They go and storm the town hall and start throwing all, you know, you know, the Burgermeister out the window. And unlike the later defenestration of Prague, where there's a pile of crap or possibly hay that people are landing in, these people die.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

So it's quite a drop, by the way. Yeah, it's quite a drop.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Yeah. You, when you were looking out at, you're like, man, that had to be a lot of hay or a lot of crap. Yeah, yeah, both. Yeah.

[Professor Richard Leduc]

Right. It's either. Right, it's either a scene from. From Prince of Thieves or a scene from Back to the Future. Right.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmont]

Yeah. Where it's Biff. Yeah. He's like, I hate my nerve. So that what the Hussism actually is more. The people who follow Wycliffe in England, they're pretty quickly forced to go underground and successive English kings are going to really push back against what they call Lollardy, right. This attempt to delegitimize the actual structure of the church and the ecclesiastic control of the church. But Bohemia is a little bit different, you know, as that, you know, the 1419 defenestration demonstrates. The Hussite is a more. The Hussite movement is more popular there and it's able to kind of exist. So at the same time that you have Martin Luther, you still have thousands of Hussites living in Bohemia, Bohemia and Moravia that are already accepting some of the basic premises of. Of Martin Luther and. And you know, they'll be swept up in the. The Protestant Reformation. Now, look, the Hussites of Bohemia are eventually going to be stamped out with a big iron boot as the Holy Roman Emperor is going to eventually take total control of the area. And when he does, he is going to enforce proper Catholicism at a sword point. But there is much more of a. Of a legacy of the Hussite movement, I would say. So you certainly have these couple of reformers and in some ways they kind of telegraph where the ref. Where the reform is going to come from. Both Hus and Wycliffe are people that are educated, they've gone to university, they are preachers, and they have decided that what the church is teaching is not compatible with Scripture. So it is not. It's actually not hard to then see where the next reform is probably going to come from. It's going to come from someone who's educated, someone who's an insider, and someone who's going to be making the argument that Scripture refutes major aspects of Catholic doctrine and that Scripture will be the deciding point. Now, of necessity, that means that the Pope is at least wrong about some things, that the bishops and the priests at least don't have as much power and authority as they claim that they do. And that reform is essential for people to fully understand their relationship with Jesus. And this is the scene that Martin Luther is going to stumble on in 1517. Now, again, I want you to think about what's going on contemporarily in the world. Columbus is sailing in 1492, right? So. So the New World has just been discovered. They don't know that it's the New World. They still, you know, half his. The whole rest of his life, he's of. He still thinks that he found some outlying islands of India, and the first massive conquest of the mainland is going to take place in 1521. That's when the Aztec Empire is going to be destroyed by Cortez. So at the same time that Martin Luther is picking up steam in his argument for Reformation, the Spanish Empire, which is, you know, the most Catholic empire, is destroying the most powerful Indian civilization in North America. So these are all contemporary things that the age of exploration is what it's sometimes called, you know, back to what we talked about at the beginning. It is just transforming the world from what people know about the world. It's transforming these European empires. And at the same time, in the midst of all of that, you have religious upheaval that's transforming these various kingdoms at home. So you have this external change and internal change all happening at the same time. If you were born in 1500 and you lived a hundred years by 1600, the world wouldn't even be a similar place to you as it was when you were born. There would be multiple different churches rather than just the Catholic Church. The world would be twice the size as you once thought it was. The contact with other civilizations and other, other beliefs, other cultures, other foods would be transformative. I mean, we talk about the change that happens. You know, imagine that you were born in 1900 and you live 100 years. Look at you. You would go from airplanes don't exist, nuclear weapons don't exist. An airplane just dropped a nuclear weapon on Japan in 45 years, right? And then even further to where you're at with supercomputers. I mean, you're going to grow up riding a horse. And in the last couple years before you die, you're going to be trying to figure out AOL online, you not fail, right? I mean, that's a pretty transformative thing in the world. 1500-1600 in Europe is similarly pretty transformative. In fact, if I were to push that number a little further to like 1530-1630, then it's even more transformative. And it really is one of these most dynamic periods of European history. We're going to tend to focus on the religious aspect of it. And that's what we're going to talk about in our next episode is what is causing Martin Luther to throw his temper tantrum, as a Catholic would say, why is he saying enough is enough and making his stance that he makes? And why do we care about that in this Joseph Smith and the Restoration podcast? Because Martin Luther's arguments will, unlike Hus and Wycliffe, that will get some play. Martin Luther's arguments will become the foundation of all Protestant thought. Every Protestant, every Protestant church today, to a greater or lesser degree, is, is descended from Martin Luther's thought, because his arguments are going to be simple, they are going to be widespread, and they are going to be embraced by all Protestants to, like I said, to a greater or lesser degree. Now, there'll be some points where they don't agree with Martin Luther, like, well, what about consubstantiation and stuff like that? But there will be three major points that we'll discuss next time that really can be found in essentially every Protestant church. They're the foundations of Protestantism. So when Joseph Smith says, I go to these different churches and I can't figure out which one I'm supposed to believe in, the churches he's going to are descendants of this Reformation movement. So how did they start out with the same ideas, but then get so crosswise that Joseph Smith is living in confusion? And that's what we'll talk about on our next episode. Thank you for listening to Joseph Smith and the Restoration, a Standard of Truth podcast production. Please join us for our next episode. For our other productions, please visit standardoftruth.com.