[MUSIC] Luther's life was filled with drama. As a young man, he cowered in fear when he was caught in a terrible thunderstorm. Not many years later, he stood in audacious resistance in front of the Holy Roman Emperor. He verbally attacked the Pope, who personally excomminucated him. But these events are not nearly as famous or historically important as when on October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther strode up to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church and nailed the 95 theses to it. There are those who say this single act marks western history's cataclysmic leap into modernity, because it was an act of radical freedom. Freedom was central to Martin Luther's religious experience and theological ideas, and so I want to explore with you the idea of freedom and Luther beginning with his important work The Freedom of a Christian. This text became a manifesto for Luther's protest against bondage to false church traditions, and a witness to Christ as the one, Luther believed, who sets a person free. We will then look forward to Luther's legacy of freedom. We are going to see the impact of Luther's understanding of freedom on modern philosophy by looking first at the work of 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. And then, closer to our own day, on the life and thought of another theologian, Martin Luther King Jr, one of the leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States. Luther's idea of freedom continues to be an important touch stone for our own times. Because Luther's thinking about freedom was so deeply grounded in his own biography, this is where we begin. Luther is said to have experienced what is now the called the reformation breakthrough. This was the moment in his life when after years of the most dreadful fear of his own father and an anxiety about God so awful that it brought Luther to hate God, Luther suddenly realized God's love in Christ. He now understood that God loved him. This liberation from fear and anxiety, pain and hate, allowed him to experience joy, love and truth that later informed his ideas of Christian freedom. The only problem is that we don't know if Luther actually experienced this moment as one by breakthrough or epiphany, and if he did, we don't know when or where it was. But many legends purport to describe it. There is the story of Luther's preoccupation with Paul's letter to the Romans in which he discovered that God's forgiveness in Christ is a free gift. Other stories recount public disputations he held with luminaries of the Catholic church. There's also the humorous legend that Luther arrived at his breakthrough when relieving himself on the toilet. Luther suffered horribly from what we call today gastrointestinal problems. Even if these stories aren't true, they continue to fascinate people curious about when and where Luther arrived at the discovery that not only permanently changed Christianity, but also opened the doors to new values and new ways of thinking. Luther's reformation breakthrough was a world historical event that pointed towards freedom from oppression, dogma, bondage, and slavery. Luther the reformer has become a symbol around the world for the freedom to think both in religion and politics. [MUSIC]