[marshmallow]

For one thing the spiritual basis of Protestantism went to pieces through the breakdown of the Bible as a supreme authority. This breakdown was the result of that very spirit of sceptical inquiry upon which Protestantism had always been based. It had begun by saying, "I deny the authority of the Church: every man must examine the credibility of every doctrine for himself." But it had taken as a prop (illogically enough) the Catholic doctrine of Scriptural inspiration. That great mass of Jewish folklore, poetry and traditional popular history and proverbial wisdom which we call the Old Testament, that body of records of the Early Church which we call the New Testament, the Catholic Church had declared to be Divinely inspired. Protestantism (as we all know) turned this very doctrine of the Church against the Church herself, and appealed to the Bible against Catholic authority. Hence the Bible — Old and New Testaments combined — became an object of worship in itself throughout the Protestant culture. There was a great deal of doubt and even paganism floating about before the end of the nineteenth century in the nations of Protestant culture; but the mass of their populations, in Germany as in England and Scandinavia, certainly in the United States, anchored themselves to the literal interpretation of the Bible. Now historical research, research in physical science and research in textual criticism, shook this attitude. The Protestant culture began to go to the other extreme; from having worshipped the very text of the Bible as something immutable and the clear voice of God, it fell to doubting almost everything that the Bible contained.

It questioned the authenticity of the four Gospels, particularly the two written by eyewitnesses to the life of Our Lord and more especially that of St. John, the prime witness to the Incarnation. It came to deny the historical value of nearly everything in the Old Testament prior to the Babylonian exile; it denied as a matter of course every miracle from cover to cover and every prophecy. That a document should contain prophecy was taken to prove that it must have been written after the event. Every inconvenient text was labelled as an interpolation. In fine, when this spirit (which was the very product of Protestantism itself) had done with the Bible — the very foundation of Protestantism — it had left nothing of Protestantism but a mass of ruins.

Yes!!!

Hoorah!!

[Boogieman]

“It questioned the authenticity of the four Gospels, particularly the two written by eyewitnesses to the life of Our Lord and more especially that of St. John, the prime witness to the Incarnation. It came to deny the historical value of nearly everything in the Old Testament prior to the Babylonian exile; it denied as a matter of course every miracle from cover to cover and every prophecy. That a document should contain prophecy was taken to prove that it must have been written after the event. Every inconvenient text was labelled as an interpolation.”

This seems very misleading to me. First of all, this type of analysis began long before the 19th century; one could probably ascribe the beginnings of it to Erasmus, who was a Catholic, even if they later practically disowned him. Then you have Spinoza, who was a Jew, though they seem to similarly have disowned him. As for the so-called Protestant critics of later centuries, there are plenty of Protestants who would question if they should even be considered Christians, and many of these “scholars” were committed Marxists. I think it’s pretty clear that all of them put their philosophy of rationalism above whatever religious beliefs they held, and that was the true source of this error, not something particular to the “spirit of Protestantism” as the writer suggests.

[hinckley buzzard]

For one thing the spiritual basis of Protestantism went to pieces through the breakdown of the Bible as a supreme authority

Right. That's why the Lutheran reformers said "Sola Scriptura", Scripture alone, as the source of knowledge about the will of God. Someone has totally lied here. And it isn't the reformers.

Prior to the reformation, the overt, unabashed, uncontested position of the Church was, "the faith means what we Bishops say it means and nothing more." Anyone who seeks to dispute this is lying to you. It is a historical and empirical fact beyond dispute.

Indeed, much of the power behind Luther was that the church had cynically and corruptly abandoned the scripture in favor of what today would be called chicago politics.