Hi, I'm Peter Adams and you're listening to the history of philosophy podcasts brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich online at history of philosophy.net.

Today's episode will be an interview about Martin Luther with Lindel Roper, who is Regis Professor of History at the University of Oxford.

Hi, Lindel.

Hi, Lisa.

Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you.

Let's talk about Luther then, obviously a very major figure in European history and he is thought to be in some sense a revolutionary figure.

But I thought I could start by asking whether he was really a radical figure because although he is credited with launching the reformation, he seems to have been relatively conservative compared to some other reformation leaders.

And in fact he accused some of these other leaders of what he called Sramarai.

So can you say something about how conservative you think he was, how radical and how radical he was trying to be?

Well, of course it all depends on what you mean by radical.

And you can certainly look at Luther and see the elements that are all about supporting existing authority, insisting on obedience, upholding the state, all of that is there.

You can also see how other things that really are very different and are very radical.

I think to have done what he did to attack people power in the way that he did and to be willing to defend that view in front of the emperor and all the assemble the states of the German Empire, that really takes enormous courage.

Sometimes I think that that example of resistance is almost as important to some of the things that he wrote.

It is a quite extraordinary moment and you can see in his correspondence how he arrives at a position where he is willing to be a martyr, to be killed for his beliefs.

While at the same time because he's Luther very cunningly planning how he's going to escape and how he's going to get protected.

So he's radical in the challenge he makes to the church, he's really radical in his attack on people power, although he's certainly not the first to attack people power.

And I think he's also interesting because some of his basic philosophical and theological positions are quite different from many of the other reformers.

And the thing that I find actually quite radical is the way he approaches the difference between flesh and spirit.

Most Western Christian figures make quite a sharp distinction between flesh and spirit.

And they see flesh is basically bad and spirit is what you want.

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