Posted on 11/07/2013 10:07:49 PM PST by RBStealth
The Reformation isn’t over. But Protestantism is, or should be.
When I studied at Cambridge, I discovered that English Evangelicals define themselves over against the Church of England. Whatever the C of E is, they ain’t. What I’m calling “Protestantism” does the same with Roman Catholicism. Protestantism is a negative theology; a Protestant is a not-Catholic. Whatever Catholics say or do, the Protestant does and says as close to the opposite as he can.
Mainline churches are nearly bereft of “Protestants.” If you want to spot one these days, your best bet is to visit the local Baptist or Bible church, though you can find plenty of Protestants among conservative Presbyterians too.
Protestantism ought to give way to Reformational catholicism. Like a Protestant, a Reformational catholic rejects papal claims, refuses to venerate the Host, and doesn’t pray to Mary or the saints; he insists that salvation is a sheer gift of God received by faith and confesses that all tradition must be judged by Scripture, the Spirit’s voice in the conversation that is the Church.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
“So, right off the bat we see that this was never issued by the Catholic Church in the first place.”
That is silly. The secular government enforced the rule of the Catholic Church. It is like claiming the Catholic Church never put anyone to death, but merely turned over heretics to be burned by the state. That sort of sophistry might impress a Catholic apologist, but the person being burned alive for being in conflict with the Catholic Church might not appreciate the distinction.
Perhaps you prefer:
“In 1584 Pius IV published the index prepared by the commission mentioned above. Herein ten rules are laid down, of which the fourth reads thus: “Inasmuch as it is manifest from experience that if the Holy Bible, translated into the vulgar tongue, be indiscriminately allowed to every one, the rashness of men will cause more evil than good to arise from it, it is, on this point, referred to the judgment of the bishops or inquisitors, who may, by the advice of the priest or confessor, permit the reading of the Bible translated into the vulgar tongue by Catholic authors, to those persons whose faith and piety they apprehend will be augmented and not injured by it; and this permission must be had in writing.”
Yes, a wealthy man, or one firmly entrenched in the Catholic Church and unlikely to challenge it COULD get permission to read a vernacular translation, but the common man could not.
Vernacular translations ONLY for those whose loyalty to the Catholic Church was unquestioned. The Catholic Church had little to fear from Princes and the wealthy, but much to worry about when commoners could read for themselves.
When Ferdinand and Isabella (1474-1516) prohibited the translation of the Bible into the vernacular or the possession of such translations, did they do so in opposition to the Catholic Church and Inquisition, or in conformity to it? When the state burned men alive for heresy, as judged by the Catholic Church, was the Catholic Church innocent of their lives? When Church and State were one and the same, what distinction do you draw - at least, that you expect anyone to believe?
Had the Pope declared that commoners SHOULD be able to read the Word of God in the vernacular, do you really think it would not have happened? Or that secular rulers would have continued to punish and kill those who tried to do so?
You are trying to draw a distinction between the secular powers and the religious ones at a time when they were one and the same. When Thomas More killed heretics, was he acting secularly or religiously? Did he conceive of a difference? When he slandered the translation of Tyndale - an excellent translation, BTW - was his attack motivated by politics or by Catholicism? When Bishop Tunstall burned Tyndale’s translation in public, was he acting with the Catholic Church, or in opposition to it?
As a matter of policy, the Catholic Church opposed vernacular translation for commoners.
As William Tyndale wrote a few years before his execution for heresy:
” Moreover Moses saith, Deuteronomy “Hear, Israel; let these words which I command thee this day stick fast in thine heart, and whet them on thy children, and talk of them as thou sittest in thine house...”
This was commanded generally unto all men...How can we whet God’s word (that is, to put it in practice, use and exercise) upon our children and household, when we are violently kept from it and know it not?
How can we (as Peter commandeth) give a reason of our hope; when we wot not what it is that God hath promised, or what to hope? Moses also commandeth in the said chapter, if the son ask what the testimonies, laws, and observances of the Lord mean, that the father teach him. If our children ask what our ceremonies...mean; no father can tell his son...
They will say haply, the scripture requireth a pure mind and a quiet mind; and therefore the lay-man, because he is altogether cumbered with worldly business, cannot understand them. If that be the cause, then it is a plain case that our prelates understand not the scriptures themselves: for no layman is so tangled with worldly business as they are. The great things of the world are ministered by them; neither do the lay-people any great thing, but at their assignment.
‘If the scripture were in the mother tongue,’ they will say, ‘then would the lay-people understand it, every man after his own ways.’...Are ye not abominable schoolmasters, in that ye take so great wages, if ye will not teach?
If ye would teach, how could ye do it so well, and with so great profit, as when the lay-people have the scripture before them in their mother tongue? For then should they see, by the order of the text, whether thou jugglest or not: and then would they believe it, because it is the scripture of God, though thy living be never so abominable.
Where now, because your living and your preaching are so contrary, and because they grope out in every sermon your open and manifest lies, and smell your unsatiable covetousness, they believe you not when you preach truth...
...If they will not let the lay-man have the word of God in his mother tongue, yet let the priests have it; which for a great part of them do understand no Latin at all, but sing, and say, and patter all day, with the lips only, that which the heart understandeth not.
Christ commandeth to search the scriptures. John 5. Though that miracles bare record unto his doctrine, yet desired he no faith to be given either to his doctrine, or to his miracles, without record of the scripture.
When Paul preached, Acts 17 the other searched the scriptures daily, whether they were as he alleged them. Why shall not I likewise see, whether it be the scripture that thou allegest? Yea, why shall I not see the scripture, and the circumstances, and what goeth before and after; that I may know whether thine interpretation be the right sense, or whether thou jugglest, and drawest the scripture violently unto thy carnal and fleshly purpose; or whether thou be about to teach me, or to deceive me?...
...The sermons which thou readest in the Acts of the apostles, and all that the apostles preached, were no doubt preached in the mother tongue. Why then might they not be written in the mother tongue? As, if one of us preach a good sermon, why may it not be written?
Saint Jerome also translated the bible into his mother tongue: why may not we also? They will say it cannot be translated into our tongue, it is so rude. It is not so rude as they are false liars. For the Greek tongue agrees more with the English than with the Latin. And the properties of the Hebrew tongue agrees a thousand times more with the English than with the Latin...
...What is the cause that we damn some of Origen’s works, and allow some? How know we that some is heresy and some not? By the scripture, I trow. How know we that St Augustine (which is the best, or one of the best, that ever wrote upon the scripture) wrote many things amiss at the beginning, as many other doctors do? Verily, by the scriptures; as he himself well perceived afterward, when he looked more diligently upon them, and revoked many things again. He wrote of many things which he understood not when he was newly converted, ere he had thoroughly seen the scriptures; and followed the opinions of Plato, and the common persuasions of man’s wisdom that were then famous.
They will say yet more shamefully, that no man can understand the scriptures without philosophy. A man must be first well seen in Aristotle, ere he can understand the scripture, say they...”
There were many reasons the Catholic Church opposed allowing laymen to read the scripture in their own tongue, and it requires an amazing rejection of history to claim otherwise. Far too many men died for translating and distributing scripture (oh wait, they were killed by governments, not the pure and blameless Catholic Church). They were willing to risk their lives because they believed that the Word of God was meant for men, and was not meant to be locked up and hidden.
What Schaff wrote lies at the feet of the Roman Catholic Church, which opposed commoners reading scripture because the more one reads the scriptures, the less one will follow Catholicism.
If scripture supported Catholic belief, the Catholic Church would have SOUGHT ways to publish it, instead of burning it and burning those who translated it.
It is a pity the Catholic Church rejected the teaching of St Peter:
“And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
“That is silly. The secular government enforced the rule of the Catholic Church.”
The University of Sorbonne is a school. It is not the Catholic Church.
“As a matter of policy, the Catholic Church opposed vernacular translation for commoners.”
Then show me the policy as stated by the Catholic Church. Surely if it is a policy it would be written. What you posted from Pius IV - if it is genuine - does not oppose vernacular translations in themselves.
“The secular government enforced the rule of the Catholic Church. It is like claiming the Catholic Church never put anyone to death, but merely turned over heretics to be burned by the state”.
Not the first Christian came to America running from Catholic persecution. They came to get away from protestants that wanted them dead.
Repeat after me..............real slow....so it’ll sink in.
“We should pray and try to persuade others to investigate the teachings of the Catholic Church because charity obliges us to do all we can to lead others to salvation. We should also pray for Catholic missioners and help them in their work of bringing the faith to those outside the Catholic Church”
Yep, but convincing Protestants of that basic fact is sometimes extremely difficult. They know so little about their own history (let alone the Catholic Church’s history).
Amen Brother. I find it especially amusing when the work of Dr. Scott Hahn is questioned and belittled. I didn’t know there were so many PHD theologians on FR.
“The University of Sorbonne is a school. It is not the Catholic Church.”
“The Index of Prohibited Books.
This was confirmed and extended by the Bull Inter multiplices of Alexander VI in 1501. At the Fifth Lateran Leo X in 1515 authorized the Master of the Sacred Palace to act as censor in Rome and the papal States; and the Inquisition in 1543 began to regard the censorship as one of its functions. The first lists of prohibited books were however drawn up in 1546 and 1550 at Louvain, in 1549 at Cologne, and by the Sorbonne between 1544 and 1551. The first papal Index was that of Paul IV, which was published in 1559...”
“The theological faculty of the University of Paris published, March 10, 1542, a summary of the most obnoxious doctrines of the Roman Church, in twenty-five articles, which were sanctioned by an edict of the king of France, and were to be subscribed by all candidates of the priesthood.”
The location was not important, but who was doing the work. The Sorbonne meant the Faculty of Theology at Sorbonne. Would you like to guess how many non-Catholics were on it?
Later, its list of censored works was dealt with by the Pope in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum:
“Compiled by official censors, the Index was an implementation of one part of the teaching function of the Roman Catholic church: to prevent the contamination of the faith or the corruption of morals through the reading of theologically erroneous or immoral books. It was not, therefore, equivalent to the total legislation of the church regulating reading by Roman Catholics; nor was it ever a complete catalog of forbidden reading. Until 1966, canon law prescribed two main forms of control over literature: the censorship of books by Roman Catholics in advance of publication, in regard to matters of faith and morals (a practice still followed); and the condemnation of published books that were judged to be harmful. The works appearing on the Index are only those that ecclesiastical authority was asked to act upon...The first catalog of forbidden books to include in its title the word index, however, was published in 1559 by the Sacred Congregation of the Roman Inquisition (a precursor to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). The last and 20th edition of the Index appeared in 1948. The list was suppressed in June 1966.”
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/285220/Index-Librorum-Prohibitorum
“In response to Luther’s vulgar publications - Luther wrote in German and in simple Latin to reach a wide audience - the Faculty of Theology published their own book,...where they officialy condemned Luther’s works on April 15, 1521. With full support of the Parlement of Paris, the highest judicial court in France, the many French theologians outlined punishments for heretics who followed the one German theologian: owners of Lutheran books would be fined a hundred livres and imprisoned.”
The Faculty of Theology acted under a charter from the Catholic Church.
Again, you cannot separate church and state when they were one and the same in those days. The prohibition on a national church in our Constitution was a safeguard against such a thing happening in the USA, and thus it is almost impossible for us to realize the extent to which church and state were intertwined.
“He established the “catholic” church. There’s a difference.”
Nope. They’re one in the same.
The small “c” catholic church is Christ’s church universal, composed of every believer in Him everywhere. That’s different than your big “C” Catholic church, which refers specifically to the Roman sect of Christ’s universal body.
Don’t conflate the two.
“You’re exactly right and Martin Luther and his minions decided to break away from that church......after 1,500 years of being CATHOLIC.”
Don’t conflate Christ’s church universal, composed of every believer everywhere, with the Roman Catholic Church, which does NOT represent the entirety of Christ’s universal body, as it is merely a part of it.
Luther was lead away from the sect of Roman Catholicism because of its egregious teachings, most notably on the sale of papal indulgences. He did not leave the catholic church: he left a sect of it.
Failure to understand that difference is at the heart of any number of these sectarian squabbles.
“152. Which is the one true Church established by Christ?
The one true Church established by Christ is the Catholic Church.”
Yes. And that church is universal; composed of every believer everywhere. Within it are denominations” or sects. One of these is Roman Catholicism. It is hubris and sheer madness to suggest that Roman Catholicism alone represents the height, breadth, and depth of Christ’s universal, invisible body.
Or would you suggest people converted to Christianity by Baptist, Methodist, or Lutheran churches are not part of Christ’s catholic church?
Quickest way to end the Protestant/Roman Catholic debate on any site is to mention full preterism. That seems to unite these people faster than anything! LOL!
“...Luther and his minions decided to break away from that church......after 1,500 years of being CATHOLIC.”
I might add, in response to the above, that it was not Luther who left the catholic church, rather it was the [Roman] Catholic Church that left the apostolic teachings on faith and salvation.
In the same way, Conservatives aren’t leaving the Republican Party: the Republican Party is leaving us.
When any church falls into heresy (as the Roman Catholic Church has done in the past), it is best to admit it and fix it rather than persecute those who point it out and leave the church because of it.
Sorbonne is a school. It is not the Church. Your own post proves that. Thanks.
“Would you like to guess how many non-Catholics were on it?”
Zero. Would you like to guess how many representatives of the Vatican were on it? Zero. Sorbonne is a school. It is not the Church. It didn’t speak for the universal Church either.
You can keep digging your hole. I don’t mind watching you embarrass yourself by now insinuating that a school in France was the universal authority of the Church. Go for it. Next you’ll be claiming the DMV of Wisconsin is the same thing as the U.S. Federal Government.
“The small “c” catholic church is Christ’s church universal, composed of every believer in Him everywhere.”
No. Protestants make that mistake quite often because they like to read back their understanding of their on existence into the Biblical text. When the NT was written the believers were Catholics.
“That’s different than your big “C” Catholic church, which refers specifically to the Roman sect of Christ’s universal body.”
No. There is no “Roman sect”. The very fact that it is called the “Catholic Church” shows us what it is - the universal Church. The Roman Church is only part of it and the leading Church within it. There are about 22 other Churches within the Catholic Church. Only Protestants have sects.
“Don’t conflate the two.”
I don’t. They are one in the same. There is nothing to conflate. To conflate them would mean they were separate to begin with. That is not the case. They have always been one and the same.
“Sorbonne is a school. It is not the Church.”
The Faculty of Theology was not just a school. It operated under the Catholic Church.
And the REASONS it banned Bible translations ARE the reasons the Catholic Church wanted them banned.
I did not say it was “the universal Church”. Heck, you could argue the POPE wasn’t authoritative when he issued bans, because he wasn’t speaking ‘ex cathedra’.
The point is that these were acts by the Catholic Church to ban vernacular translations. They would not have happened if the Catholic Church had disagreed, nor would they have continued on for hundreds of years had the Catholic Church OPPOSED them. They were done by Catholics, under the charter of the Catholic Church, with the support of the Inquisition, for the reasons given, to prevent commoners from being able to read the scriptures.
Those actions and reasons should have appalled the Catholic Church. The Pope should have denounced their actions, rather than endorse them with his own Index (list of books) a few years later.
This statement:
“How dangerous it is to allow the reading of the Bible in the vernacular to unlearned people and those not piously or humbly disposed (of whom there are many in our times) may be seen from the Waldensians, Albigenses, and Poor Men of Lyons, who have thereby lapsed into error and have led many into the same condition. Considering the nature of men, the translation of the Bible into the vernacular must in the present be regarded therefore as dangerous and pernicious”
was written because that is what the Catholic Church believed and wanted to happen. The Inquisition was not something that took place independent of the Catholic Church.
Schaff gave a list of actions by the Catholic Church to prevent commoners from reading scripture. It was an accurate list. Saying the actions took place in the Sorbonne, and thus were secular acts separate from the Roman Catholic Church is false. Catholic theologians, acting under charter from the Catholic Church, banned vernacular translations because that was the Catholic position. They did so for the reasons given, and the Catholic Church was happy about it.
But that is the difference between the NEGATIVE approach of the Catholic Church, and the positive approach of the Protestant one, contrary to the argument in the article at the beginning of this thread. Protestants want to follow the Word of God. That is a positive desire. It doesn’t look to the Catholic Church and ask how we can be different. It looks to the Word of God.
And because we value the Word of God, we want everyone to have access to it, so they can read for themselves what God expects of them and how He would have us live.
And the Catholic Church did its best to stop us from getting those vernacular translations. That the Faculty of Theology AT Sorbonne was one of the places WHERE it happened doesn’t change what happened, or why. The University of Arizona operates independently of churches. The Faculty of Theology at Sorbonne, in the 1500s, did not.
“Or would you suggest people converted to Christianity by Baptist, Methodist, or Lutheran churches are not part of Christ’s catholic church”.
Every single one of them that does not believe in the REAL PRESENCE of Christ in the Eucharist. Read your Bible.
“When the NT was written the believers were Catholics.”
The writers of the New Testament were Jews who were living under the Law. Paul, the most prolific among them, continued the Jewish custom of returning to Jerusalem for the feasts at the Temple, which is where he was arrested for the last time.
Christ’s “catholic” church rose from the ashes of the Temple’s destruction in 70AD, when the “new heavens and new earth” were ushered in. However, by that time, the entire New Testament had been written, the last book of which was Revelation, written no later than 68AD.
Roman Catholics, calling their sect THE “Catholic Church”, mistakenly conflate the rise of their sect with the birth of the “catholic” church is undeniably and irrefutably false. One arose from the immediate end of Temple Judaism while the other appeared on the scene hundreds of years later.
“Every single one of them that does not believe in the REAL PRESENCE of Christ in the Eucharist. Read your Bible.”
I have. Often. And there is nothing in it to suggest that Christ is physically present in the bread and wine apart from a literal reading of texts which are meant to be taken symbolically.
Oy!
Oh, really. I think you need to read up on some Eucharistic miracles.
“Oh, really. I think you need to read up on some Eucharistic miracles.”
I don’t place much faith in what some people perceive to be miracles. I reserve my faith for what the Bible says.
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