Posted on 10/31/2010 11:59:22 AM PDT by RnMomof7
In Christ Alone lyrics
Songwriters: Getty, Julian Keith; Townend, Stuart Richard;
In Christ alone my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song This Cornerstone, this solid ground Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace When fears are stilled, when strivings cease My Comforter, my All in All Here in the love of Christ I stand
In Christ alone, who took on flesh Fullness of God in helpless Babe This gift of love and righteousness Scorned by the ones He came to save
?Til on that cross as Jesus died The wrath of God was satisfied For every sin on Him was laid Here in the death of Christ I live, I live
There in the ground His body lay Light of the world by darkness slain Then bursting forth in glorious Day Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory Sin?s curse has lost its grip on me For I am His and He is mine Bought with the precious blood of Christ
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Cronos, Just as the Pope sent out people to kill Luther..the hate of Luther and Calvin continue in the Catholic church today.
To say that Calvin had an unloving God is so far from his actual doctrinal position to be laughable..
The city of Geneva, like most cities at that time were religious city states.
Calvin brought to Geneva social programs that were absent in the Roman Catholic city states .. Calvin’s social reforms included social services for the poor, the building of Hospitals and schools (which were free), prisons, he made provisions for refugees, and what was an amazing sanitation system for its time that made Geneva one of the cleanest and healthiest cities in Europe.
It was His his principle of the work ethic that started the industrial revolution, it was also his position on the depravity of man that gave American government the checks and balances system
One may not agree with his doctrinal positions to see he was one of the most major influences on democracy and mans responsibility to man
I would just point out that Calvinists and Lutherans and the other faiths that grew from the reformation do not have infallible popes, so we know and expect that like all men they were and are fallen sinners in need of a savior.. we do not expect or claim infallibility or perfection from them..
Calvin was a Roman Catholic ..that was his root.. He brought with him some of that influence ..like it or not
INDEED.
We need look no further than the Vatican cohorts’ hate toward some of us Proddys on FR for examples of that mentality and spirit.
Playing loose with the facts again I see. Perhaps someone lied to you and you are just repeating it. Perhaps it is a bit more sinister. That is between you, your conscience, and God.
What you ascribe to the pope was in fact the actions of Emperor Charles V. He did not "send out people to kill Luther". He officially declared Luther an outlaw, banning his literature, and requiring his arrest. "We want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic." It also made it a crime for anyone in Germany to give Luther food or shelter and permitted anyone to kill Luther without legal consequence.
All of this was done for political not religious reasons. Luther had promoted the revolt of numerous German princes and this threatened Charles V and the Hapsburg Dynasty. Many Catholics met their fate for similar threats.
Do you really think the very angry Pope did not pull the strings to this action? This was not a period of separation of church and state..the church WAS the state
I do not see why this would even be disputed the terror of Rome against the reformers is documented in the history books as the inquisition
A draft of the Diet of Worms ( a religious trial ) placed the reason for the order to kill him was religious “We want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic. It also made it a crime for anyone in Germany to give Luther food or shelter. It permitted anyone to kill Luther without legal consequence.
You have been watching too many Dan Brown movies. The very fact that Luther died as a result of his own excesses is proof that there was no "hit" out on him.
Your biases are tainting your interpretation of historical facts. Set your religious prejudices aside and simply look at the facts without an elaborate manipulation of them. History really isn't that complicated.
To preserve his life Luther hid out at the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach using the name of Knight George. While there he worked at translating the New Testament into German.
Just keep looking to the inquisition to see what he had every reason to fear from the power hungry Roman church
Don't make me laugh. Luther holed up in the Wartburg Castle because his 1521 Excommunication left him unemployed. His sponsor, Frederick III of Saxony, brought him there to advance his ambitions. Fredrick was angry that the Pope had failed on his promise to support him for Emperor. The crown went to Charles V and Fredrick became one of the Protestant Princes.
Luther spent a total of nine months in the Wartburg Castle, in relative luxury at the expense of his host, writing his flawed translation of the Bible. It might be noted that his antisemitic works were also sponsored by those not content with having stolen from the Catholic Church. They were written to excuse theft from Jews.
Luther live another 24 years outside its protections before he died a bloated, self indulgent physical wreck in 1546. In the end it was his excesses, not the Pope that killed him.
However true that is, social reform was not the “Great Commission” given by Christ to his followers. The reformers failed in the most basic precepts of Christ's teaching at Matt. 22:34-40 in the same way as the Catholic Church had: They were willing to persecute unto death those they termed “heretics”.
Burning alive, beheading, drowning, of heretics, dissenters, of anyone, which of these did Christ authorize and teach his disciples?
Which of those things did his disciples practice? The fires that burned in Geneva were no more Christian than the fires in Rome.
Calvin’s philosophy did not in any way start the industrial revolution — that started in Anglican ENGLAND, not in Geneva. A little reading of history can help you learn about secular matters, just as perhaps you can pick up a real Bible and learn instead of your group’s excerpted bible.
Calvin’s god had more in common with Allah rather than a loving Christian idea of God.
His mother, Jeanne Le Franc, born in the Diocese of Cambrai, is mentioned as "beautiful and devout"; she took her little son to various shrines and brought him up a good Catholic
Three of the boys attended the local Collège des Capettes, and there John proved himself an apt scholar.
. The latter [his father]died in 1531, under excommunication from the chapter for not sending in his accounts. The old man's illness, not his lack of honesty, was, we are told, the cause.
He had never been an ardent Catholic; but the stories told at one time of his ill-regulated conduct have no foundation; and by a very natural process he went over to the side on which his family were taking their stand.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03195b.htm
At your urging I've looked at the inquisition and have found the following disturbing accounts observations of the Protestant Inquisition"
"Historically nothing is more incorrect than the assertion that the Reformation was a movement in favour of intellectual freedom. The exact contrary is the truth. For themselves, it is true, Lutherans and Calvinists claimed liberty of conscience . . . but to grant it to others never occurred to them so long as they were the stronger side. The complete extirpation of the Catholic Church, and in fact of everything that stood in their way, was regarded by the reformers as something entirely natural." (Johann von Dollinger)
"If any one still harbors the traditional prejudice that the early Protestants were more liberal, he must be undeceived. Save for a few splendid sayings of Luther, confined to the early years when he was powerless, there is hardly anything to be found among the leading reformers in favor of freedom of conscience. As soon as they had the power to persecute they did." (Preserved Smith)
"At Zurich, Zwingli's State-Church grew up much as Luther's did . . . Oecolampadius at Basle and Zwingli's successor, Bullinger, were strong compulsionists. Calvin's name is even more closely bound up with the idea of religious absolutism, while the task of handing down to posterity his harsh doctrine of religious compulsion was undertaken by Beza in his notorious work, On the Duty of Civil Magistrates to Punish Heretics. The annals of the Established Church of England were likewise at the outset written in blood." (Hartmann Grisar)
"The Reform was brought about by intemperate and calumnious abuse, by outrages of an excited populace or by the tyranny of princes . . . it instantly withdrew . . . liberty of judgment and devoted all who presumed to swerve from the line drawn by law to virulent obloquy, and sometimes to bonds and death. These reproaches, it may be a shame to us to own, can be uttered and cannot be refuted." (Henry Hallam)
"The Reformation of the 16th century was not aware of the true principles of intellectual liberty . . . At the very moment it was demanding these rights for itself it was violating them towards others." (Francois Guizot)
"What shall we say of a church . . . that had as yet no services to show, no claims upon the gratitude of mankind . . . which nevertheless suppressed by force a worship that multitudes deemed necessary to salvation? . . . So strong and so general was its intolerance that for some time it may, I believe, be truly said that there were more instances of partial toleration being advocated by Roman Catholics than by orthodox Protestants. " (William Lecky)
"This fact is forgotten by Protestants. They read blood-curdling stories of the Inquisition and of atrocities committed by Catholics, but what does the average Protestant know of Protestant atrocities in the centuries succeeding the Reformation? Nothing, unless he makes a special study of the subject . . . Yet they are perfectly well known to every scholar . . . If I do not enumerate here the persecutions carried on by Catholics in the past, it is because it is not necessary in this book to do so. This volume is addressed especially to Protestants, and Catholic persecutions are to them sufficiently well known . (John Stoddard)
"It is unquestionable . . . that the champions of Protestantism - Luther, Calvin, Beza, Knox, Cranmer and Ridley - advocated the right of the civil authorities to punish the `crime' of heresy . (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
"The Reformation was intolerant from its cradle, and its authors were universal persecutors. (John Stoddard)
"The intolerance of Protestantism was certainly not less tyrannical than that with which Catholicism is so much reproached. (Auguste Comte).
"Luther's intolerance is very much at variance with the Protestant view still current to some extent in erudite circles, but more particularly in popular literature. Luther, for all the harshness of his disposition, is yet regarded as having in principle advocated leniency, as having been a champion of personal religious freedom . . . Below we shall, however, quote a series of statements from Protestant writers who have risen superior to such party prejudice (Hartmann Grisar)
"In Luther's case it is impossible to speak of liberty of conscience or religious freedom . . . The death-penalty for heresy rested on the highest Lutheran authority . . . The views of the other reformers on the persecution and bringing to justice of heretics were merely the outgrowth of Luther's plan; they contributed nothing fresh." (Walther Kohler)
"Even contempt of the outward Word, carelessness about going to church and contempt of Scripture - in this in-stance . . . the Bible as interpreted by Luther - was now regarded as `rank blasphemy,' which it was the duty of the authorities to punish as such. To such lengths had the vaunted freedom of the Gospel now gone." (Karl Wappler)
"[Luther's views] would justify all sorts of oppression on the part of the State, and all kinds of intellectual tyranny, and were in fact the same as those on which the Roman Emperors acted when they persecuted Christianity." (Johann Neander) "It is an altogether one-sided view, one, indeed, which willfully disregards the facts, to hail in Luther the man of the new age, the hero of enlightenment and the creator of the modern spirit. If we wish to contemplate such heroes we must turn to Erasmus [a Catholic] and his associates . . . In the periphery of his existence Luther was an Old Catholic, a medieval phenomenon." (Adolf von Harnack) 'If we wish to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders we may lay the miseries which Germany has brought on the world, I am more and more convinced that the worst evil genius of that country, is not Hitler or Bismarck or Frederick the Great, but Martin Luther.' (Dean William Inge - The Anglican Dean Inge, of St. Paul's Cathedral, London) "Calvin was as thorough as any pope in rejecting individualism of belief; this greatest legislator of Protestantism completely repudiated that principle of private judgment with which the new religion had begun. He had seen the fragmentation of the Reformation into a hundred sects, and foresaw more; in Geneva he would have none of them." (Will Durant) "There was little political liberty in Geneva under Calvin's regime, and still less of religious liberty. His practical influence was on the side of an autocratic state and complete conformity of the individual to the established powers." (Georgia Harkness)
This an a lot more information can be found at http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/protin.htm. if you care to do some investigation for yourself.
Told by whom? Do you apply the evidentiary standard to the accusations of sodomy against Calvin?
Natural Law wrote:
“Luther live another 24 years outside its protections before he died a bloated, self indulgent physical wreck in 1546. In the end it was his excesses, not the Pope that killed him.”
Cool, logical, scholarly. What more could one say about such assertions and, still more importantly, there bearing on the truth of Christian doctrine?
But, if you want to play this game, let’s take a quick look at the Reformation Era popes:
Alexander VI - now if you like bloat and death, this is the guy.
Pius III - not 24 years, but 26 days!
Julius II - ah, yes, Il Papa Terribile/Guerriero. No excesses here.
Leo X - self indulgence? A pet elephant no less, and so much more!
Adrian VI - ex-Inquisitor General. Useful training for the papacy!
Clement VII - bearded (I thought that was against the rules), worldly, not good at recognizing mushrooms.
Paul III - mistress, illegitimate children, loading up the family treasury, no self-indulgence here either.
Julius III - two words suffice: Innocenzo Ciocchi, 17 year old cardinal and “friend” of Julius.
“This an a lot more information can be found at http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/protin.htm. if you care to do some investigation for yourself.”
Nah, Tan Books is the place to start. Real pulp, not virtual pulp.
When did FR’s Religion Moderator start requiring references for information posted here?
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