#82: Martin Luther: Revolutionary or Medieval? The Real Roots of the Reformation | Dr. Volker Leppin

Was the Reformation actually... medieval? Historian Dr. Volker Leppin (Yale Divinity School) joins us to make a case that unsettles both Protestant and Catholic accounts of Martin Luther: that Luther's core ideas — justification by faith, the priesthood of all believers, even his critique of the papacy — were already alive in late medieval piety and mysticism before he ever wrote a word against Rome.

We trace the real chain of influence: Luther's confessor Johann von Staupitz, the mystic Johannes Tauler, and the anonymous Theologia Deutsch that Luther himself named and published. We also tackle a legend Dr. Leppin argues never happened quite the way you were taught — the hammering of the 95 Theses to the Wittenberg door — and we put to him the sharpest criticism of his thesis from within the field itself: that in finding Luther's roots, he risks shrinking Luther's revolution.

If the theology was already there, what exactly made the Reformation a Reformation? That's the question this episode sits inside. Guest: Dr. Volker Leppin, Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology, Yale Divinity School. Author of Die fremde Reformation, Martin Luther: A Late Medieval Life, and Sola: Christ, Grace, Faith and Scripture Alone in Martin Luther's Theology.

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