Ep 1404 | Church Corruption Shaped More of Our Beliefs Than We Realize

Unashamed with the Robertson Family - The Robertson Family

In this episode of 'Unashamed with the Robertson Family,' the hosts explore how church history, particularly the Reformation led by Martin Luther, has deeply

Key takeaways

• Modern Christian beliefs are significantly shaped by historical developments such as the Reformation, even if individuals aren't aware of their origins.

Main topics

• The historical influence of Martin Luther and the Reformation
• How personal religious upbringing shapes theology

Notable quotes

"We are all kind of byproducts of what Lutheran did if you're a Protestant."

"When people say, I'm just reading it plainly, they're reading it with their plain English and 21st-century context assumptions."

Conclusion

By studying church history—especially figures like Martin Luther—believers gain clarity on how their

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) I am unashamed. What about you? Speaker 3 (0:06) Welcome back to the Unashamed podcast. We're at Hillsdale Friday with the boys, the Hillsdale homies, as we call ourselves on the text thread. So good to be back with you guys. The boys. I think John Luke named Speaker 2 (0:19) it that, right? Did you name it that? Hillsdale homies? It's not something Zach would do. Speaker 1 (0:25) Actually, it wasn't Zach. It wasn't me. I think it was me. It could have been Speaker 2 (0:29) Al. I put a lot of effort. Speaker 3 (0:33) It's leftover verbiage from the 90s. Y'all got to come up with new stuff. I mean, it's like ridiculous. Y'all just keep borrowing from our generation. Homies is a 90s term. Speaker 4 (0:42) Uh-huh. Well, that's why they used it, Zach, so you didn't understand it. Speaker 3 (0:47) Maybe so. I mean, nothing's new. Now we're doing movies about making movies. I saw Odyssey last night, and in the promo, they had a movie about Rocky. It's a movie about making the movie Rocky. I just feel like, I mean, we got to come up with something new. But anyways, a couple of things here. We are taking the Theology 101 course, and we have a contest going on. We're going to pick one listener to come down to West Monroe to watch a live recording of Unashamed. And we're going to pay for lodging for you and the guest up to $1,000 each. All you have to do is take the course with us. Theology 101, it's free, and you can sign up at unashamedforhillsdale.com. Now, once you take the course, here's the rules. You have to take the course and pass and get your certificate of completion. And then you'll take that certificate and you will upload it at watchunashamed.com and you'll be entered in for the drawing. So hopefully you guys are taking this with us. We're kind of going through a whole walk through Western theology, theology in the West. It's been very educational for us. I wish Jace was here to take it with us, Al, because he's been giving me a hard time about talking about some of this stuff on the other side of the podcast. Speaker 4 (2:00) Yeah, I chuckle every time we get into something, Zach, because it's definitely things that Jace makes fun of on a regular basis. Because we'd just gotten into Martin Luther recently. And Zach's like, yeah, Martin Luther. Because Jay's like, Martin Luther? Martin Luther, where's that in the Bible? Is he in the Bible? Speaker 2 (2:19) Where is that in the Bible? Would Jace ever actually watch one of these lectures or no? He would like the course. He would actually enjoy the course. I think Speaker 3 (2:29) it would just be a matter of would his pride allow him to. If he did watch it, I don't think he would tell. us that he watched it. That's the bigger question. Speaker 2 (2:39) That's probably Speaker 3 (2:39) true. What did he tell us that he watched it? We don't know. So anyways, well, we are, yeah, and this lecture is on Martin Luther, kind of a big deal, you know, right? And we actually were getting into this on a recent podcast we talked to. I don't know how Luther got brought up. I guess you spoke at a Lutheran church. Yeah, I Speaker 4 (2:59) did. I spoke at a Lutheran church, so I had to do a little bit of... research myself because I was just curious about it. But as it turns out, it wasn't really the Lutherans that were putting on the event. It was just we were in Minnesota. Most of the buildings up there are either Catholic or Lutheran. And so these people that put the event on were at there. But it kind of put me in that mode of searching. I was curious as to what version of the Bible. that most Lutherans use. So that's what got us into it. And then Jay said, well, what is a Luther? Who's Luther? And we were like, Martin Luther. They got the Reformation. You know Speaker 3 (3:37) what's funny is when I, so this is interesting because I think sometimes people will try to dismiss if you study theology or if you study Luther or Calvin or whoever, Trent, the church fathers. This is my pushback on that, that none of us arrived here in a vacuum, right? I grew up in the Church of Christ, which so did you, Al. And John, look, you kind of did. Would you claim that as your upbringing? Speaker 1 (4:08) Yeah. Speaker 3 (4:08) Yeah, I would. Speaker 1 (4:09) Yeah, Speaker 3 (4:09) for sure. What about you, Christian? Methodist. Methodist, okay. So this might be foreign to you. So when I was at White's Ferry Road Church, where Al is an elder at, I was young, about 24, 25, and there was a small church of Christ right down the way in a little place called Rocky Branch. You know where that's at? Speaker 2 (4:34) That's where Speaker 3 (4:34) I go to take my deer to get processed. I mean, the middle of nowhere. And they had about 15 people left in the church, and they called up our big church and said, Hey, y'all got any young, budding preachers that would come out here and preach? For little of nothing. For little or nothing, I think I got paid like $75 to start my watch back then. I was like, hey. Oh, wow. That's big. My first Speaker 4 (4:56) gig was $25 a Sunday. So you tripled me. I was in the Allah Church of Christ, which is about, I drove an hour because it's down almost to Alexandria. And I would drive down there every Sunday for my little 25 bucks and my little opportunity to preach. Well, here's the irony of it, John. This is where it connects with you. Guess Speaker 3 (5:15) who I think was one of the founding members of that church, or at least they grew up in that church. Speaker 1 (5:20) Who? Speaker 3 (5:20) Alton Howard. Your Speaker 4 (5:21) grandfather, Speaker 3 (5:22) Alton Howard. Yeah, I knew that. So there were Howard roots all in there, Alton and Kelton. I think Jack was a part of that church for years. Speaker 3 (5:32) But anyways, I say all that to say that there was a sign on the front of the building, and it looked like it was like a bronze kind of metal plaque. And it said, Rocky Branch Church of Christ established in A.D. 33. And I thought that thing's been there a while. And how old was that church in Georgia? Yeah. But then the claim, if you grew up Church of Christ, which I did, and if you look at my heritage, by the way, I actually had my house, someone drew it. I got a portrait of my great, great, great, great, whatever grandfather who was one of the key founding members or people in the whole, what's called the Restoration Movement, which is Christian Church, Church of Christ, and Disciples of Christ. all came out of that, which came out of the Presbyterian church primarily. But, um, Herman Christian Dasher, I got a portrait of him cause he was a church planner in Georgia and I had someone draw that for me cause it was special to me. But, uh, but you know, it was, the idea was that you, we, we, we speak where the Bible speaks. We were silent, we're silent. The problem is, is that if you, once you get so divorced from, from like your heritage or like we, we all kind of, there, there's an evolution. There's a reason why we, we, believe the way we believe, or at least the theologies that have emerged. And so I think it's healthy to go back and, I mean, me personally, I think it's healthy to go back and listen to different points of view, listen to how, you know, things evolved. I mean, we are all kind of byproducts of what Lutheran did if you're a Protestant. So, you know, I'm not a full Lutheran, and I'm certainly, I don't know about you guys, but I'm thankful for his contribution. I don't know how y'all thought about it when you went through the lecture. Speaker 1 (7:07) Yeah, I thought the same thing, reading, listening to this lecture. And then reading through the course material, what's it called? What do they name it? Not they name it. The Luther's Treatise on Christian Liberty. Speaker 1 (7:25) Reading through it, I thought, oh, this is where these ideas come from. We're still thinking the same thoughts. And I thought that a lot through ancient Christianity course too. Like, okay, I can see how these thoughts develop. And I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Because I've been hearing that term, like a plain reading of scripture or like a plain reading of the Bible. a variety of topics. I feel like it's part of my algorithm. I see that on Instagram a lot. I'm just reading it plainly. Then you read it and then you start to learn more about the context. You learn more about the words. The deeper you get into it, you realize this is not plain at all. When people say, I'm just reading it plainly, They're saying, they're reading it with their plain English. Speaker 1 (8:25) 21st century context assumptions that they're putting on the text. And it's like, this is what this means to me right now in this context, which is not anything what it actually meant at the time or what I think God intended it for me to mean. And the thing, and so like you start to go like deeper and deeper and deeper. And that's to say that that's why I think this course is so good is that you, As you learn about these church fathers and learn about Luther and how he developed these things, you're like, oh, that's why I believe that. And then you can take your belief and change it or keep it because you kind of know how it developed. Yeah, I feel like so Speaker 2 (9:09) much of this course for me, it's been like connecting dots to things that I feel like I've known but haven't fully understood like the origin of it. you know, where it came from. And even a lot of the stuff with Luther, it's like, oh, that connects to this that I believe in this. And then, you know, so I think that's what's been super cool for me. It's like, it's almost been just like connecting dots for things that I've known, which this is funny about Luther and this might make zero sense to y'all, but for some reason, whenever I've thought about Luther in the 95 Theses and nailing it on the door, It's like whenever I think about that moment for me, it's like I imagined him in this big trench coat and it's like snowing outside in England and he just goes in like, it's almost like an Ebenezer Scrooge type of thing, but Luther was a good guy. And he like nails these theses on the door and then like that's it. So I've never, like I didn't know anything about like the Pope and really why he did it. I didn't fully understand like. what led to him making that contribution and what led him to do that. I've just always thought he was just some man on the other side of the ocean who like was just with like a lantern, like walking through the streets in the snow and like just went and hammered these, these theses on the door. So I don't know why that was like what I always thought about Luther or like, you know, how that moment happened, but that, that was just what I thought. I don't know where that thought came from, but Speaker 4 (10:46) when I thought about it. He was a grumpy old Speaker 2 (10:48) man. Well, you may have Speaker 4 (10:49) saw Speaker 3 (10:50) the movie. There was a movie, but I think the church was in England. It was in Germany, right? Speaker 4 (10:56) Germany. Yeah, Germany. But Speaker 3 (10:58) that's probably where you're at because there's actually really a movie on Luther. I've probably never seen that. He's wearing the coat, and it is this gloomy outside. Everything that you picture is what it is. Speaker 3 (11:13) It's Speaker 4 (11:13) kind Speaker 3 (11:13) of like you hear the – I've studied the Reformation movement. I've read Metaxas' book, other books on Luther, and I've studied Luther a little bit because I've read a lot of Bonhoeffer too and Barth and all those guys that kind of came out of that movement. And I think when you just put yourself – back in what's actually happening, and I don't know why, listen, this course, it just kind of hit me a little bit differently, that the Catholic Church was selling indulgences. I mean, that is the backdrop of the whole thing. I don't even know if it's like a... I don't think it was primarily theological at first. It Speaker 4 (11:55) was just a fundraiser. I mean, what got me was, it was the, one of the things they talked about it, that here's the image I had, because it said that they weren't selling them in Luther's district. So they were selling them next to