Got any dirt on Derek Wilson?
Undoubtedly, the hope of Salvation has paled and now it is so weakened that no images are associated with it. Therefore, even when you tell yourself, "If you want to save your soul, you should renounce things which are the most precious to you, your creative work, a romance, power or other satisfactions of your ambitions," it is so hard to accomplish this. Once, when Salvation signified a palm in Heaven, and damnation, eternal tortures in the abysses of Hell, people, it seems, had a stronger incitement to search for saintliness and to temper their gluttonous appetites. Not at all. They killed, committed adultery, grabbed the land of their neighbor, and were avid for fame. Something is wrong here. The tangible presence of Paradise, as promised to the Islamic faithful who fell in battle against the infidel, may increase their fervor in combat, but, in general, life on earth and the idea of Salvation seem to belong to two different orders, hardly connected.It is not improbable that Martin Luther guessed this when he made Salvation dependent not upon acts but upon Grace.
Now, a little more connected to the topic of the thread...
Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote a History of the Reformation just a couple of years ago. He's more gentle when describing Catholic defects and you can see by the phrases he uses, who he has the better opinion of. For instance, he refers to Calvin as 'buttoned' up. Right from the get go, I could see that his sympathies were not solidly in the Reformers camp. Not that they should be either, and, in my view, he managed to keep that from becoming a problem.
The period that Martin Luther lived in may not have been a let's see your smile era, but the people, I think, did have a sarcastic side or pretty developed sense of humor, however you would prefer to describe based on excerpt below.
Lurking in a little English country church, at Preston Bissett in Buckinghamshire, is an object lesson in the difficulty of understanding the religious outlook of past generations. Holding up the arch at the entrance to the chancel, the most sacred part of the church building, are two carved stone figures, sculpted sometime in the early 14th century. The figure on the north side, crouched on all fours under the weight of the arch, is displaying his ample buttocks towards the high altar, the place where, day by day before the Reformation, the priest of Preston presided at the Mass, transforming breand and wine into the flesh and blood of the crucified Christ. Some later vandal has knocked the head off the carving, as with countless other carvings in Protestant Europe, but the buttocks are unscathed (see Plate 1A) [Me: the plate shows an enormous backside.)It is easier to understand a Protestant sparing the buttocks -which would admirable convey what he or she thought of the miracle of the Mass- than to understand why they were carved in the first place.
Preston Bissett's priest could hardly have avoided staring at them as he blessed the people at the end of the Mass, before processing down the altar steps and out through the wooden screen which filled the chancel arch and hid the sculpture from his parishoners' eyes....Did the carving express the impatience which many devout people felt with their clergy when they did not perform their sacred task to public satisfaction? Was it meant to be a warning to a lazy or incompetent priest, or was it a private joke? Was it a symbol of Satan who sought to destroy the Church's proclamation of good news at God's altar?
Otherwise the meaning of the figure is now irrecoverable from a belief system where the physical and the spiritual were much more intimately, unexpectedly and exuberantly fused than they became in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
I think he also noted in the book that there were two sets of Commandments making the rounds at the time. Tried to find exact excerpt, but couldn't.
Finally, I think that our image of Luther in some measure at least is based on book titled Table Talk that is supposed to be a record of what Luther said. And, for what it's worth, Owen Chadwick, another very well-reputed historian of the Reformation wrote the following in The Reformation
The characteristic memory of Luther is of a man presiding at his own table, with his colleagues and friends around, arguing with him, or listening to his divinity, his politics and his humour. One of the friends shamefacedly took out a notebook and began to jot down Luther's remarks. The habit spread, and twelve different reporters made collections. Luther sometimes mocked nut neither resented nor forbade these deferential scribes. Twenty years after his death, one of them, Aurifaber, published a collection from a variety of collections . Thenceforth Luther's Table Talk became a classic of the Reformation. Rude and outspoken he might often be; 'Dear husband', said Catherine, 'you are too rude'. 'They teach me to be rude" replied Luther. He was so outspoken that his enemies leaped to make capital out of the Table Talk. It is unreliable as a source for details of history, particularly when the events occured many years before the date of the reported conversation; and Aurifaber's text was not untouched by improvement or interpolation. But it is a unique and authentic picture of a man and a divine; he who would understand Luther's person and mind cannot neglect it. It is impossible to apply any epithet to him less than the old classical epithet magnanimous, in its original sense of great-hearted.