Posted on 10/30/2007 12:47:36 PM PDT by Gamecock
Hello and welcome to another broadcast of the White Horse Inn, and this isn't just any broadcast this is Reformation Sunday, the 490th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. In previous programs of this series we've walked through the history of the heresy known as Pelagianism, so we won't belabor the point a lot. Named after the fifth century British monk, Pelagius who locked horns with Church Father Augustine over salvation, Pelagianism denied original sin, that is that we're born into this world dead in trespasses and sins, and so Adam affects us only as a bad example and Christ affects us as a good example. If we just use our free-will properly we can follow Christ's example and attain eternal life. This is a heresy that has crept up again and again in church history. Already laurelled in his native land and university Thomas Bradwardine expressed what he described as a "conversion." "Early in his studies" he writes, "The school of Pelagius seemed to be the nearest the truth, what I heard day in and day out is that we are masters of our own free acts, that ours is the choice to act well or badly, to have virtues or vices, and much more along this line." Every time I listen to the Epistle reading in church and how Paul magnified grace and belittled free-will as is the case in Romans 9, it is obviously not a question of human willing or effort, but of divine mercy and its many parallels, grace displeased me ungrateful as I was. " And then he goes on to say that when he began to study this ninth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, "The text mentioned came to me as a beam of grace and captured by a vision of this truth it seemed I saw from afar how the grace of God precedes all works. That is why I express my gratitude now to him who has given me this grace as a free gift."
As a result of this shift, Bradwardine wrote a provocative little book, the Case of God against the New Pelagians. His jeremiad against what he regarded as the creeping moralism of his day, wasn't written recently however, nor was it written by a cranky paleo-Calvinist as many today would put it, it was an Oxford don in the 14th century and Bradwardine was Archbishop of Canterbury when he wrote it. Other Medieval churchman fought valiantly against the spread of Pelagianism, including the head of a monastery in Germany Johanne von Staupiz who had a very important impact on one of his monks, Martin Luther. Less than two centuries after archbishop Bradwardine, Martin Luther and John Calvin could not help but see their battle in similar terms of Jesus versus the Pharisees, Paul versus the Judiazing party, and Augustine versus Pelagius. At the same time as the Reformers themselves recognized the Pelagianism of their day was more the practical, working theology although it remained officially condemned. Today, most Evangelicals would probably not sign off on Pelagianism if they saw it written down on paper, and yet it seems to be the assumed working theology of our day.
Benjamin Franklin's line, "God helps those who help themselves" receives an approving nod from a majority of Evangelicals, in fact a majority of the Evangelicals said in a recent survey that it was a quotation from the Bible. This is where we are today, Evangelicals are known for their interest in the Gospel. The very name itself comes from the Greek word for "gospel." Getting that gospel right and getting it out has been the hallmark of any genuinely Evangelical Christianity. But the movement in America that goes by the name "Evangelicalism" is much more diverse, and this is the situation in which we find ourselves today. The diversity that has led to the point where in many instances it seems the light from the Reformation seems to be burning very dimly. In his visit to the United States, Dietrich Bonheoffer, described American religion as Protestantism without the Reformation. As Bonheoffer elaborates, "God has granted American Christianity no Reformation. He has given it strong Revivalist preachers, churchman, and theologians, but no Reformation of the church of Jesus Christ by the word of God. In American theology Christianity is still essentially religion and ethics. Because of this, the person and work of Christ, must for theology sink into the background and in the long-run be misunderstood because it is not recognized as the sole ground of radical judgment and radical forgiveness."
And so this is a very good time for us to remember the 490th Anniversary of the Reformation. Not in order to celebrate the work of individuals, but for us to thank God for that great work and the body of writing concerning the Scriptures that is still available to us today, in the hope that we will be liberated from our American counter-reformation and have a new Reformation by God's Word in our day.
ROFLOL! This is Saturday Night Live, folks!
A mutilated Bible?
Arguably some of the finest Roman Catholic theologians of the Middle Ages rejected the legends and prejudices of the ancient apocryphal books, just like Luther and later Evangelicals agreed--in accord with the Jews, who are after all who wrote them, who rejected these books as canonical in the 1st Century. It wasn't until Trent, 80% of the delegates who were Italian... (and just how representative was that of the Roman Church at that time?), that just because Luther et al. rejected the Apocrypha, made it mandatory.
Just what parts of "Bel and the Dragon", the ridiculous, fanciful and superstitious story of "Tobit," and the rest, do you refer to for any, any at all, important doctrines?
Sorry, I just have to laugh when Romanists mention the Apocrypha. Most have read it about as much as they have read the real Bible...
Never heard of Graduate of Westminster Seminary (PA). Any well-known theogians or gradutes you know of, aside from yourself?
>>In fact, Paul says all men are tempted.<<
I take enormous comfort in Paul’s own descriptions of his “harrassing demon” (2 Cor 12) when I stress under the weight of my own besetting sins.
Praise God for his faithfulness to wretched and vile sinners as us!
Snicker, snicker. An argument from a bible believer, that rejects a book from the bible because it is deemed fanciful and ridiculous is very funny. Reminds me of Mr. Jefferson. Makes for a thin bible.
J. Gresham Machen was a founder of that fine institution
AMEN!
>>Sorry, I just have to laugh when Romanists mention the Apocrypha. Most have read it about as much as they have read the real Bible...<<
Ooo, that’s gonna leave a mark!
***We follow the teachings of Jesus, not a murdering theological thug who imposed an iron despotic rule upon Geneva.***
Perhaps you don’t remember the number of Popes who made murder, extortion (you might call some it indulgences), & despotic rule the way of the land. Before you crucify falsely one of the most brilliant and God gifted theologians of all time, you might ought to remember your own history and butchery that would make many of todays religious fanatics green with envy. And, if I understand aright Catholic belief, we have yet to see this “anti-Pope” and the most bloody religious ruler of all time.
And you trot out the Servetus card when he would have been killed by Rome and would have been just one of a multitude of heretics burned by Rome about that time.
We are not Romanists. We are Papists and don’t you forget it. :)
Do you have a list of the Roman Catholic theologians of the Middle Ages that rejected the Deuterocanonicals?
We have theological proofs in the Deutercononicals that are carried to lesser degree in the rest of the Bible; that is the real reason that Luther and his merry band of Scriptural Visigoths went after the affected books. Don’t forget that he wanted to get rid of Revelation and the non Pauline epistles (especially James) as well.
I have no intention of crucifying Calvin. He has made his own legacy, let his followers revel in it. The rest of us will just look on with alternating amusement and abhorrence.
I make no mention of Servetus; doubtless Saint Calvin (PBUH) was just secretly doing the will of the Pope. I would however enquire of the rest of the Genevans that he had burned at the stake. I suppose that he was secretly doing the will of the Pope there, too.
Everything that you need to know about anti popes can be found at New Advent.
Why do you say "late of FreeRepublic"? What does that mean?
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