Beeson Podcast, Episode 366
Carl Beckwith
November 14, 2017

Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, your host, Timothy George. 

Timothy George:	Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. Well, this year we've been commemorating the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's posting of his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg. We've celebrated that in all kinds of ways here at Beeson Divinity School, and we're going back to actually 2016, one year ago, on Finkenwalde Day. 

	Now let me tell you about Finkenwalde Day. Finkenwalde was the little town in Germany where Dietrich Bonhoeffer had an underground seminary with his students during the Nazi period. We each year celebrate a Finkenwalde Day, in which we as a community try to live through, as best we can, the pattern, the routine of study and prayer in common life that Bonhoeffer and his students experienced back in Finkenwalde.
 
	Well, last year, that is 2016, Dr. Carl Beckwith gave one of our lectures on Finkenwalde Day, and it was on Martin Luther and prayer. Let's go to Hodges Chapel and listen to our colleague, Dr. Carl Beckwith, who teaches history and doctrine here at Beeson, a prolific writer, a great scholar, and he's talking today on prayer and the Reformation, Martin Luther and prayer. 

Carl Beckwith:	Well, thank you. The dean asked me to lecture on prayer and the Reformation, and I will confess, and this is really true, he asked me to lecture on Luther and prayer, which is what we will be doing, but I want you to think for a minute about this question as I've been thinking about it, prayer and the Reformation. Now if we were in the classroom, and I won't do this now, but if we were in the classroom, I'd want to ask you, what do we owe the Reformation when it comes to prayer? In other words, how do we even think about our debt to the reformers for this element of the Christian life that is central to our identities as Christians? 

	Now you think of the Reformation, and I suspect that most of us would talk about the wonderful and beautiful preaching of the Gospel, justification by faith, how the reformers point us to Christ for our salvation and there our sufficiency to go forth and live the Christian life, but where does prayer fit into this for the reformers and our debt to them? 

	Well, I want you to think about it in this way. How do we date the Reformation? We all know that next year is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Why do we date it that way? Why do we think October 31, 1517, and the posting of the 95 Theses, why do we think of that as the marker of when the Reformation begins? It's a historical judgment. It's somewhat arbitrary. It's an important date, but think about it this way. 

	When we begin with the 95 Theses and we think of the Reformation chiefly in those terms, what are we doing? We're privileging Luther, the academic theologian, and his dispute with the pope, with the cardinals, with the universities, as he goes on into the Leipzig Debate before the emperor at Worms, as he confesses his faith and there is declared then an outlaw, is excommunicated by the pope. 

	From there, we continue to march through the 1520s and we highlight some remarkable things by Luther, his 1520 treatises, the Freedom of the Christian, in my mind one of the greatest works in the history of the church. We talk about Luther and his debate with Erasmus, which he won. We talk about Luther and the struggle with the other reformers, Zwingli ... Luther won that, too ... the arguments over the Lord's Supper and so forth.
 
	Then, if you know your history, you get to 1528, and if you’ve ever read the preface to Luther's Small Catechism, we're sort of drawn into what Luther there says. He visited the churches in Saxony, and he was very disappointed. They didn’t know anything. They didn’t know The 10 Commandments. They didn’t understand The Creed and The Lord's Prayer. They didn’t know how to pray, and they didn’t know what it meant to live the Christian life. 

	It wasn’t just the people in the pew for Luther. it was the pastors. They didn’t know what to rightly teach in going forth and proclaiming the Gospel. Then chronologically, in 1529, Luther publishes the Small Catechism and the Large Catechism, and it's there that we begin to see Luther's great concern for catechesis, for the teaching of the faithful, for taking what he was arguing in the academy, in the classroom, and bringing it into the churches. 

	Well, if we think about the Reformation that way, which is completely legitimate, by the way, but if we think about it in those terms and we begin with October 1517, we end up highlighting an aspect of the Reformation that overlooks something that was very dear to Luther, and that is catechesis and the teaching of the faithful. What Luther does with the catechisms in 1529 is the fruit of 13 years of lecturing, preaching, and publishing on The Lord's Prayer, the 10 Commandments, and The Apostles' Creed. 

	That work began for Luther in October of 1516, which means that the dean has asked me to address all of you on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, which began in 1516. It does make me wonder if we get a discount on that trip for the 501st year of the Reformation that the dean is going to take us on. 

	Well, think about this. If we were to ask Luther, in other words, when did your reformation efforts begin in earnest? I think he'd point to October 1516. In October 1516, he gives a series of sermons on The Lord's Prayer, and he does this to teach the faithful how to pray, "They do not pray rightly. Prayer is not ..." I love this line, "Prayer is not," Luther says, "the howling and the growling of the monks. It is earnestly calling upon God in prayer," but he has to teach this to the faithful. 

	On October 1516, he publishes his first work on The Lord's Prayer. In the spring of 1517, he begins a series on The 10 Commandments, and then he publishes that in 1517. This effort will not stop for Luther. Every year from 1516 to 1529, Luther is either publishing a new series on The Lord's Prayer, The 10 Commandments, The Apostles' Creed, or revising an edition. He does this with The Lord's Prayer in 1516, The 10 Commandments in 1517. He does another series on The Lord's Prayer in 1518. 

	When we get to 1520, it's a strange title, but Luther produces what's called a Short Form for The Lord's Prayer, The 10 Commandments, and The Apostles' Creed, but now he's ordering this differently. Now, we begin with The 10 Commandments. Then, we go to The Apostles' Creed, and we end with The Lord's Prayer. I'll come back to that ordering in just a minute. In 1522, he publishes his Prayer Book. This Prayer Book was meant to replace all of the Medieval prayer books that were in use in the late Medieval period and especially in Luther's day. Again, I'll come back to that in a minute. 

	From 1522 all the way then to the end of the '20s, Luther is reworking this Prayer Book, and it's the Small Catechism and the Large Catechism that are the culmination of all of that work. That is the fruit of Reformation labor that goes back to 1516, and it is chiefly to teach the faithful how to go forth and live as Christians and to rightly pray to God. Now step back for a minute and think about the history here, because this gets us to the heart of the question on what does the Reformation give us when it comes to prayer? 

	Well, as historians, if we tell the story of the Reformation by starting with the 95 Theses and moving Luther through the various disputations that he has with the pope and the cardinals and the universities and then ultimately the emperor, and we continue that by talking about Erasmus and these high-level theological disputes with some of the other reformers, we end up missing what for Luther, and I think for the other reformers was at the heart of the Reformation, restoring the Gospel of Christ and showing that as we are freely forgiven in Christ, we are then freed to go forth and love and serve our neighbors. In other words, it was restoring the Christian life itself to what scripture declares to us. 

	Well, if that’s the history, how about the doctrine? Justifying my own position at Beeson. History leads us to doctrine, Luther's Large Catechism. In this Large Catechism, Luther takes us through what scripture says about prayer, and there is a sense in which it is going to sound very basic to you, and yet Luther's teaching and his insight was very much needed in his day. I would say that we now bear the fruit of these rather sensible and straightforward teachings on prayer, so much so that we may really take this stuff for granted. 

	Well, the first thing Luther says is that we pray because we rightly understand who we are and who God is, and this we know from The Commandments. We rightly believe because we now understand what God has done for us in Christ and how he has brought us to share in that salvation through the work of his Spirit, and as the children of God, we then pray. That’s why the ordering is important for Luther. It goes The 10 Commandments, then The Creed, and then The Lord's Prayer. The Commandments showing us our sinfulness, showing us who we are before God. The Creed showing us that God has saved us and overcome that sin, and prayer then being the expression of what it means to be Christian. 

	Now this ordering was not new. I'm sorry, the topics are not new for Luther. It's the ordering that is new. The Medieval prayer books turns this almost upside down. In the Medieval prayer books, you start with The Lord's Prayer and then you move to The Creed, and you end with The 10 Commandments, and the thinking was this: You pray, but prayer apart from faith is no prayer at all. Therefore, you need The Creed. Faith apart from good works will not avail either. Therefore, your prayer is dependent upon your right faith, but especially then the living out of that faith and the works and the merit that come to you. 

	In the Medieval world, in late Medieval society, it's often said, and this is a little simplistic, but it's right, that all of society is sort of divided into one of three groups. There are the workers. They're the ordinary, common folk who have to work for a living. There are the warriors, those who defend us, and then there are the spiritual elite, the intercessors, the monks and the nuns, the religious. They give their life to the study of God's word and to constant prayer. 

	More than that, because of the sacrifices that they have made, they are holier than the ordinary person, and because of that holiness, their access to God and the saints is greater than your access. Their prayers will avail more than your prayers. This is taught in the way in which these prayer books are ordered. You look at your life and you see, "I don’t know the faith as well as, say, the priest or the monk. I don’t live a holy life in the way that the monk or the nun does. Therefore, my prayers will not avail. I need others to be praying for me." You would then support them and pay them to do just that, that they would pray on your behalf. 

	When you get then to the Reformation, Luther has to address a very significant issue, am I supposed to pray or am I supposed to have others pray for me, namely, those who are closer to God than I am? Should I simply give money to them and they will pray for me, or is it something that I must do? Luther takes this up directly in his Large Catechism, and he says, "There is nothing so necessary to the Christian life than to call upon God incessantly and drum into his ears our prayer that he may give, preserve, and increase in us faith and obedience. The first thing that we must know," Luther says, "the first thing we must know is that it is our duty to pray because God has commanded it." 

	It may seem strange to begin there. We pray because God has told us, "You are to pray." Where do we see that for Luther? We see it in the Second Commandment, "You shall not take the Lord thy God's name in vain." Luther says then, "This means we are required to praise the holy name of God, to pray and call upon that name in every need, and to call upon it is nothing else than to pray. Every opportunity that we have to call upon the name of the Lord," Luther says, "is an opportunity for us to pray. 

	We pray simply because God has commanded it. He's told us to pray, but second, Luther goes on to say, "In the second place, God has promised that our prayer will be answered. In Psalm 50, 'Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you,' or Christ says in the Sermon on the Mount, 'Ask and it will be given to you, for everyone who asks, receives.' Such promises," Luther writes, "certainly ought to awaken and kindle in our hearts a desire and love to pray. For by his word, God testifies that our prayer is heartily pleasing to him and will assuredly be heard and granted." 

	These two things are the doctrine behind prayer for Luther. God commands us to pray, and, therefore, we have every confidence in the world that when we pray, we are doing that which is pleasing in the sight of God because he has declared it to us, "Do this," and second, he has promised that he will hear and answer our prayer. Therefore, with boldness and confidence, we rightly pray. We pray to God and we know, yes, indeed, he has heard my prayer. 

	Now, Luther has to take up the objections to this. He says, "There are vulgar people out there." He's writing this in 1529 and he's talking specifically about those within the evangelical churches, "They're vulgar people who say, 'Why should I pray? Who knows whether God heeds my prayer or cares to hear it? If I do not pray, someone else will. This idea that I have prayer from others. I do not need to do it myself.'"
 
	The second thing you hear Luther is some will say, quote, "I'm not holy enough. I'm not worthy enough. If I were as godly and holy as Saint Peter or Saint Paul, then I would pray." Luther says, "Away with such thoughts. The commandment to pray was given to you just as it was to Saint Paul." Listen here how he puts this. He says, "This is what I would say to God. The prayer I offer is just as precious, holy, and pleasing to you as those of Saint Paul or the holiest of saints. Why? Well, I freely admit that Saint Paul is holier in respect to his person, but not on account of the commandment. God does not regard prayer on account of the person, but on account of his word and the obedience accorded to it. On this commandment, on which all the saints base their prayer, I, too, base mine." 

	We pray not because we have something to offer God. This in Luther's mind is exactly what the Medieval prayer books were teaching, that my prayer becomes a work that I offer to God and that work comes back to my merit. Luther says, "No. It isn't about your work, your worthiness, or your holiness. We base the prayer on God's commandment. He said, 'Pray,' and, therefore, that’s what we do. Whether we are great saints as Saint Peter or lowly saints like ourselves, we pray because God has told us to pray and promised then to hear those prayers. This is what we ought to say," Luther says, "I come to thee, dear Father, and pray not of my own accord or because of my own worthiness, but at thy commandment and promise, which cannot fail or deceive me." 

	When it comes to the doctrine of prayer for Luther, it's pretty simple. We pray because this is what the Bible shows us that God wants. God says to call upon his name, to pray to him. Second, he says that "I will answer and hear these prayers." We have that commandment and that promise, and that gives us all the confidence in the world to come forward in prayer. 

	Well, there's history and there's doctrine, so let's make it practical and relevant. Now you already have this in the wonderful guide that Vicki put together, but in 1535, Luther was asked by his barber, "How do I pray?" He gives a wonderful description of prayer, a very practical way of thinking through it. Now all the students here at Beeson read this in the Reformation class, and I'm sure that everyone remembers it so clearly that what I'm about to say will just be terrible and redundant, but let's do it anyway. 

	A couple of things that Luther says. The first is that "Prayer," he says, "should be the first business of the morning and the last at night. When you rise in the morning," for Luther, "you make the sign of the cross. You remember your baptism, that you are a child of God and you call upon God in prayer for all of your needs, both bodily and spiritual needs, and you go forth." He says, "You go forth. You sing a song, you sing a hymn, and you go forth, thanking God for this day. Then at the end of the day, you do the same. You make the sign of the cross, you remember your baptism, and you give thanks to God for all of the many blessings that he's given you in that day." 

	Prayer for Luther, then, isn't simply something we do in those desperate times of need. It's that, but prayer for Luther is the very way of living the Christian life. It frames your Christian living, morning to evening and every moment in between. In fact, one of the things I like to do is to see how different theologians throughout the history of the church have understood how we pray without ceasing. How do you do something like that? All of the theologians, it seems, throughout the history of the church have tackled that in some way. 

	Luther tackles that by looking at our vocations. As we go forth and faithfully do the things that God has given us to do in our day, there in our work, we are praying and we are praying without ceasing, and this work glorifies God because we do the very thing he's called us to do. That, Luther says, is living a prayerful life every day and every moment. 

	The first thing, then, when it comes to prayer is that it begins and ends the day. Well, how, what do you do then when you actually need to pray, for Luther? Well, he says, "I grab my Book of Psalms. I hurry to my room or if it be the day and hour for it, I go to the church where a congregation is assembled and as time permits, I say quietly to myself and word-for-word The 10 Commandments, The Creed, and if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul or some psalms, just as a child might do." 

	For Luther, prayer is based on God's word. He prays, in a sense, the prayers that God has given us. He takes the very words of God, whether it be the petitions or The 10 Commandments or The Lord's Prayer, and he takes these and he prays through them as his act of prayer, taking the words of Scripture and allowing this to shape and form our meditation and our prayer upon it. 

	The other thing that he says there that I think is fascinating is that prayer for Luther is never removed from the church itself. Yes, he will pray on his own, but if this is available to him, this is where he wants to be, praying with the faithful, praying in the house of God, reflecting upon the Scriptures and offering there his prayers. 

	Well, how do you do this? Well, Luther says, "I take the Scriptures, I kneel or I stand, I fold my hands, I turn my eyes to heaven, and I say the following, Oh, heavenly Father, dear God, I am a poor unworthy sinner. I do not deserve to raise my eyes or hands toward you or to pray, but because you have commanded us all to pray and have promised to hear us and through your dear Son, Jesus Christ, have taught us both how and what to pray, I come to you in obedience to your word, trusting in your gracious promise."

	One of the characteristics of Luther on prayer is always talking back to God, reminding God of his command and of his promise, "You are the one who told me to pray to you, and so I will be praying to you, and you promised to hear my prayer and answer that prayer." Luther will take the very things that God has declared and promises he's made, and he will speak them right back to God with great certainty, knowing this is what God has declared, and so this is what God will, indeed, do. 

	Well, how do you do this very practically? This is what you see in the thing that Vicki put together for you. For Luther, "We recognize there's sort of four aspects to how we can pray through The Commandments, The Creed, and The Lord's Prayer or scripture. First, we look to see what God has said. We see the instruction. What has God commanded us to do? What has he told us? We reflect upon that instruction, and second, we turn it into thanksgiving. Thank you, God, that you have given me this your word and this is what you have declared to me.

	"Third, we confess that we've failed to do that, that we haven't, in fact, done the very thing God has declared to us. Though we're thankful for it, we recognize that in many ways, we've acted with ingratitude. We've failed to do the things he's given to us. Finally," he says, "we pray." I don’t have what you have before you, but I have this here in Luther's book. I think it's all there for you. Let's look through this with the First Commandment and how he does this.

	He gives an example, and Luther's good at pointing out here this is how he would do it. He doesn’t expect anyone to do this word-for-word in the way that he offers. In fact, he suggests to not do it word-for-word as he's suggesting here, but he begins, "I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me." Here, Luther says, "I earnestly consider that God expects and teaches me to trust him sincerely in all things and that it is his most earnest purpose to be my God. I must think of him in this way at the risk of losing eternal salvation.

	"My heart must not build upon anything else or trust in any other thing, be it wealth, prestige, wisdom, might, piety, or anything else. Second, I give thanks. I give thanks for his infinite compassion by which he has come to me in such a fatherly way and un-asked, unbidden, and unmerited has offered to be my God, to care for me, to be my comfort, guardian, help, and strength in every time of need. We poor mortals have sought so many gods and would have to seek them still if he did not enable us to hear him openly tell us in our own language that he intends to be our God. How could we ever in all eternity thank him enough? 

	"Third, I confess and acknowledge my great sin, and in gratitude for having so shamefully despised such sublime teachings and such a precious gift throughout my whole life, and for having fearfully provoked his wrath by countless acts of idolatry, I repent of these, and I ask for his grace. Fourth, I pray and I say, Oh, my God and Lord, help me by your grace to learn and understand your commandments more fully every day and to live by them in sincere confidence. Preserve my heart so that I shall never again become forgetful and ungrateful, that I may never seek after other gods or other consolation on earth or in any creature, but cling truly and solely to you, my only God. Amen. Dear Lord God and Father, Amen." 

	Luther in this work that he's written to Peter will take you through all of The Commandments. He'll take you through The Creed. He'll take you through all the petitions of The Lord's Prayer, showing you this fourfold way of praying those individual petitions. But he also says, "Don’t feel like you need to do all The Commandments or to go through the entire Lord's Prayer. 

	"Don’t even think that you need to do all four of these, for if in the moment of prayer itself," he says, "you begin to hear the preaching of the Holy Spirit, listen," he says, "to the Spirit." He says, "The Holy Spirit preaches there in those moments and one word of the Spirit's sermon is far better than a thousand of our prayers. Allow yourself then," Luther says, "to be caught up in the word of God, there meditating and praying upon that word, and there also hearing the very word of God as he comes to you and guides and directs you in all that you do." 

	One last thing, and I'll end with this. When you say these prayers ... This is one of my favorite lines by Luther, "When you say your prayers, you end that prayer with Amen," but listen to how Luther describes the Amen, "Say it firmly. Never doubt that God in his mercy will surely hear you and say Yes to your prayers. Never think that you are kneeling or standing alone. Rather, think that the whole of Christendom, all devout Christians, are standing there beside you and you are standing among them in a common, united petition which God cannot disdain. Do not leave your prayer without having said or thought, 'Very well, God, God has heard my prayer and this I know as a certainty and a truth.' That," Luther says, "is what Amen means." 

	Well, when you think of prayer and the Reformation, the advice that we get from Luther, it's pretty straightforward, it's pretty basic, and it seems so obvious to us that here we can say thank you to the reformers who have returned us to Scripture and shown us we pray because God has told us to pray, and there's great confidence in that commandment, in that word, and I can go forth and I can do this knowing that this is what God would have me to do, and more than that, he has promised to hear these prayers that he has asked me to say. His commandment and his promise are then at the heart of prayer itself, and this gives us great confidence that we pray not because of our holiness, not because of our merit, because of what Christ has done for us, because of God's command and his promise. 

Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast.