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 ...
Thank you. You’re very kind.
“Peter also wrote that “the end of all things was near.” (IPeter 4:7)”
Yes, and?
“He wrote that to the Jewish diaspora living during his day. (IPeter 1:1), not to us. So do you reject Peter’s words, the man whom you view to be the first pope???”
Nope. I just understand them properly. Peter was right. The end of all things was and is near. We have been in the last days for 2,000 years. Also, Peter was writing to me now as much as anyone back then. Scripture is timeless in a sense in that it possesses an anagogical message for all generations.
OK...Sorbonne’s efforts preceded Trent. Indeed, as I cited earlier, it had preceded the Council of Trent in banning translations by 30 years. The Pope issued his list of banned works after Trent. Do you deny the banning was with the approval of the Catholic Church? Or that the reasons they gave were contrary to the beliefs of the Catholic Church? Or that the Council of Trent was part of the wave of repression offered by the Catholic Church?
From Schaff:
“In France the Sorbonne declared, Aug. 26,1525, that a French translation of the Bible or of single books must be regarded as dangerous under conditions then present; extant versions were better suppressed than tolerated.
In the following year, 1526, it prohibited the translation of the entire Bible, but permitted the translation of single books with proper annotations. The indexes of the Sorbonne, which by royal edict were binding, after 1544 contained the 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”
So yes, the movement to ban vernacular translations was afoot before the Council of Trent, which Council then determined:
““This synod ordains and decrees that henceforth sacred Scripture, and especially the aforesaid old and vulgate edition, be printed in the most correct manner possible; and that it shall not be lawful for any one to print, or cause to be printed, any books whatever on sacred matters without the name of the author; or in future to sell them, or even to possess them, unless they shall have been first examined and approved of by the ordinary.”
Now, in England, the only translation attempt made used the auspices of the Catholic Church was the D-R, which was so poorly done that it soon languished for over 100 years without being printed. It took a revision around 1750 to make it decent enough that people would WANT to use it, and even then it deliberately mistranslated words like “repent”.
So...if an approved translation was needed, and the Catholic Church didn’t sign off on a decent one until 1750, hundreds of years after Tyndale’s excellent translation - what does that tell you? Or, to be more precise, what would that tell an unbiased observer?
“Tyndale was certainly regarded as a heretic, but that’s not what got him killed.”
He was sentenced to death for heresy. There is a long discussion of the arguments about his beliefs here:
http://www.tyndale.org/reformj01/wilkinson.html
Feel free to prefer the reasons given here:
“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. But if any shall have the presumption to read or possess it without such permission, he shall not receive absolution until he have first delivered up such Bible to the ordinary.” - 1584, the Pope
“OK...Sorbonne’s efforts preceded Trent.”
Which means you were wrong. Embarrassingly wrong.
“Indeed, as I cited earlier, it had preceded the Council of Trent in banning translations by 30 years.”
Exactly where and when did Trent ban translations? Your source says there was no such ban from Trent: http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc02/htm/iv.v.lxi.htm Did you even read your own source???
“The Pope issued his list of banned works after Trent.”
Which would mean it wasn’t done by Trent, but you just said: “it had preceded the Council of Trent in banning translations by 30 years.” Can you make up your mind?
“Do you deny the banning was with the approval of the Catholic Church?”
What banning?
“Or that the reasons they gave were contrary to the beliefs of the Catholic Church?”
Who is “they”? What “beliefs” are you talking about? Are we back to time travel now?
“Or that the Council of Trent was part of the wave of repression offered by the Catholic Church?”
What repression? And if it was a “wave of repression” wouldn’t that mean that any actions taken were merely in response to some perceived need?
“Now, in England, the only translation attempt made used the auspices of the Catholic Church was the D-R, which was so poorly done that it soon languished for over 100 years without being printed.”
The original Douay Rheims Bible was made by a handful of Jesuits at the English College at Douay - that’s in FRANCE not England. It has nihil obstat and imprimatur from local clergy in France. I know of only one high up clergyman involved and that was Cardinal Allen who had established the college IN FRANCE and helped out with the translation. It was not poorly done - I’ve read it and own two different copies (not originals, just facsimile editions). As the Bible’s preface itself states, it was because of the “lack of means,” and their “poor estate in banishment,” that kept the English college Jesuits from publishing the whole Bible for nearly 30 years after producing the NT in 1582. After the Old Testament was published in 1609-1610, it was published again in 1635. The New Testament was published again in 1600, and again in 1621 and again in 1633. It was only after all of those printings that the publishing of the original Douay Rheims ceased. By then many English Catholics were dead. It was illegal to practice the faith in England don’t forget. English priests were hunted down and murdered in the late 16th century: http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Hunted-Priest-John-Gerard/dp/1586174509 To get caught in possession of Catholic books meant harsh reprisals.
Now, here’s a point you probably didn’t know: Catholics didn’t have to print the Douay-Rheims New Testament after 1582 because the Protestants printed it for them. In 1589 the Puritan, William Fulke, published the entire D-R New Testament in a two column Bible alongside a Protestant translation. He did it to attack what he considered to be deficiencies of the D-R New Testament. His book sold widely because it was a way for Catholics to have a Catholic New Testament without raising suspicions against them. Fulke’s edition was published multiple times if I am not mistaken. It is through Fulke’s book that I - much like the Catholic Recusants who suffered persecution in the 16th and 17th century - first became acquainted with the original Douay-Rheims New Testament. And Catholics, ironically, were not Fulke’s only target: http://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/William_Fulke Fulke’s was not the last Protestant edition of a Douay-Rheims Bible either. In 1834, a Protestant edition of the Rheims New Testament was put out by Leavitt of New York. Last year I purchased a Protestant version of an updated 1582/1610 Douay-Rheims from this mysterious outfit: http://www.newdouairheimsbible.com/Contact-Us.html Not bad. I like it.
“It took a revision around 1750 to make it decent enough that people would WANT to use it, and even then it deliberately mistranslated words like “repent”.”
False. The translation needed to be modernized - just as the King James Version was in 1769: http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon10.html. The same is true of the D-R. When people buy one today, it is not the 1582/1609 or the 1749. It is almost always the 1899. Personally I like the original Douay Rheims and the 1938 edition of the New Testament from the Douay Bible House best (an edition almost impossible to get).
“So...if an approved translation was needed, and the Catholic Church didn’t sign off on a decent one until 1750, hundreds of years after Tyndale’s excellent translation - what does that tell you?”
Since your premise is wrong, it tells us nothing. The Douay-Rheims was not perfect. Neither was Tyndale’s translation. Both Bibles influenced the KJV, however. People complain about translations all the time. Ever see how NIV devotees go after the ESV and vice versa? If not, look up David Dollins’ post on Paul Cain’s web page on that very topic from about 18 months ago.
“Or, to be more precise, what would that tell an unbiased observer?”
Again, nothing since your premise makes no sense.
And you were still wrong about the Sorbonne index. That won’t change.
There’s no ban on the production of vernacular translations there. The statement in fact presupposes the existence and production of vernacular translations.
As soon as I read “John Foxe...” I quit. Foxe is perhaps the ugliest and most deceitful polemicist in the history of Christianity; he makes Jack Chick seem even-tempered and reasonable.
On going to close out the article, I see there is but one, single, harmless quote by Foxe, and what follows is a scholarly, respectable work of reconstructing what Tyndale believed. I skimmed it, a very lengthy work, and didn’t see much of anything about his trial. I noted that he certainly was regarded as a heretic, so I’m not sure what purpose going into his beliefs serve.
And as Christians, we have already done that...
“Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of His blood, you shall not have life within you.” And y’all’re sitting in the middle of the fire saying, “he just means it figuratively.”
Jesus did not mean it figuratively...He meant is spiritually...That apparently is lost on you guys...
We did eat of his flesh and drank his blood...Plus, we drank the water from the well...We eat his words constantly and they are sweeter than honey, praise God...
The fire can not touch us...
“Which means you were wrong. Embarrassingly wrong.”
Yes, I erred. The Catholic Church spent hundreds of years suppressing vernacular translations, and Trent came in the middle. So sorry...
After all, they had banned them in England in 1408, nearly 150 years before Trent. My bad. Forgive me. The Catholic Church did much worse than what I suggested when I said Sorbonne was following Trent. Trent followed Sorbonne, and it also followed, as both of us know, 200 years of suppression. In discussing ONE SENTENCE I wrote, I got suckered in to suggesting trent began the suppression. Yet we both know it had gone on for hundreds of years prior...
Of course, TECHNICALLY vernacular translations were allowed. All one needed was permission - which was never given to commoners. So there were a few copies of Wycliffe’s translation signed off individually, yet others were punished for having excerpts of the same translation. It wasn’t the translation, per se, that was objected to, but commoners owning them and reading them.
As both Oxford in 1408 and Trent in the mid-1500s said, INDIVIDUALS could get permission, on a case by case basis. If you had enough money & power, and were firmly enough caught in the Catholic Church, you could own and use a vernacular translation - but the common man could not - for the reasons Schaff listed.
If someone was impressed when Bill Clinton parsed the meaning of “is”, they will be impressed with the argument that the Catholic Church allowed vernacular translations - provided almost no one ever got to touch, see or read one.
Contrast that with Tyndale, who was refused permission to translate by the Catholic Church, but who went ahead and did so. His goal WAS to allow commoners to read the scriptures, and he rejected the arguments by the Catholic Church that common men were not allowed to read the Word of God.
Boast, if you will, that the Catholic Church PERMITTED a few hundred to read the Word of God, while Martin Luther and Tyndale ensured that MILLIONS could do so. The difference, of course, is that Luther and Tyndale understood what access to the Word of God meant - a rejection of the deceitful theology the Catholic Church was built on.
No priests in the New Testament. No Purgatory. No indulgences. No transubstantiation. No Bishops. No Pope. No temporal power. The foundation of the Catholic Church - what makes it the Roman Catholic Church - doesn’t exist in scripture, and indeed is contradicted directly by it.
No priests, offering a sacrifice by the authority of Bishops and the Pope. Without that, there IS no Catholic Church. And that is why Luther and Tyndale WANTED people to read the scriptures for themselves, and the Catholic Church fought to prevent it.
Obviously Martin was reacting to what he saw going on around him with his fellow Catholics...
Brings a picture to mind; Standing in a beautiful orchard (I live in orchard country) of Red Delicious apples with the sweet fruit hanging from the branches amongst the dark green leaves...
Interspersed thru out the orchard are trees barren of real leaves and fruit with crepe and craft paper cutouts of leaves and apples glued to the otherwise empty branches, proudly standing amongst the trees bearing the real leaves and fruit, not knowing the harvester will pass them by...
What were the fruits of Martin Luther? A 500-year-long collapse of the German standard of living? 30 million dead in the bloodiest war in European history? Don’t say, “it takes two to tango”; the Lutherans sided with the Muslims in the 30-Years-War, and left fifteen times more dead than the entire history of the Crusades. (Ironically, this was a man who cited the pacifist Jan Hus as his inspiration.)
In 1400, German peasants worked an average of three and a half days a week and lived to be 50 (if they lived past childhood, they likely lived to 70)... The life expectancy of Germans wouldn’t reach 50 again until after WWII.
So if Martin Luther had not existed, there would never have been any Protestants for the Catholic religion to slaughter, so the war is Marty's fault...And I guess it was Abraham Lincoln's parents' fault that he got shot...
Don’t say, “it takes two to tango”; the Lutherans sided with the Muslims in the 30-Years-War
And the Americans sided with the Russians against Hitler...So what's your point???
So I thank God for Martin Luther's part in preventing the complete takeover of the Catholic religion in all of Europe...
You’re comparing the Lutheran-Muslim alliance with the US-Soviet alliance? In 1529, the Polish and Austrians had rescued Germany from Islamic conquest at the first siege of Vienna, while Luther was whining about the military budget, convincing Germanic lords that they a duty to sit out the defense of civilization, and allow the Muslims to be the instrument through which God punished Christianity for being infidels.
Yeah, that’s why the Catholic church treated Luther as more than just another idiot bumpkin: the German aristocracy were salivating over the chance to grow rich while their military rivals depleted their fortunes defending civilization, and Luther gave them the theological tools to justify their betrayal: He was the Jane Fonda, John Kerry and Code Pink of his day, rolled up into one.
Thanks be to God that 23,000 Poles and Austrians defeated an army of 120,000 Muslim invaders.
Let’s not forget what happened in China and India when Islam conquered, shall we? The Muslim genocides actually took huge chunks out of the global population, wiping out hundreds of millions combined. These are the people Luther brought into Poland, not to help in a mutual counter-aggression struggle, but purely because they would depopulate a potential political rival.
Well that seems to put the James 2:24 'charge' to rest.
There wasn't any Lutheran-Muzlim alliance...They both had their separates reasons form fighting the Catholics...They just happened to fight at the same time for a little while...
Yeah, that’s why the Catholic church treated Luther as more than just another idiot bumpkin: the German aristocracy were salivating over the chance to grow rich while their military rivals depleted their fortunes defending civilization, and Luther gave them the theological tools to justify their betrayal: He was the Jane Fonda, John Kerry and Code Pink of his day, rolled up into one.
In the eyes of the Catholic religion possibly...But in the eyes of biblical Christianity, Martin Luther was more like the founding Fathers of and for the U.S...
These are the people Luther brought into Poland
That's nuts...Luther or the Lutheran church didn't bring muzlims anywhere...The muzlims perhaps saw an opporutnity to attack the Catholic war machine from another side...
From wikipedia, on the topic of the 30-Years’ War
In the east, the Protestant Hungarian Prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bethlen, led a spirited campaign into Hungary with the support of the Ottoman Sultan, Osman II. Fearful of the Catholic policies of Ferdinand II, Gabriel Bethlen requested a protectorate by Osman II, so “the Ottoman Empire became the one and only ally of great-power status which the rebellious Bohemian states could muster after they had shaken off Habsburg rule and had elected Frederick V as a Protestant king”.[26] Ambassadors were exchanged, with Heinrich Bitter visiting Constantinople in January 1620, and Mehmed Aga visiting Prague in July 1620. The Ottomans offered a force of 60,000 cavalry to Frederick and plans were made for an invasion of Poland with 400,000 troops in exchange for the payment of an annual tribute to the Sultan.[27] These negotiations triggered the Polish–Ottoman War of 1620–21.[28] The Ottomans defeated the Poles, who were supporting the Habsburgs in the Thirty Years’ War, at the Battle of Cecora in September–October 1620,[29] but were not able to further intervene efficiently before the Bohemian defeat at the Battle of the White Mountain in November 1620.[30] Later Poles defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Chocim and the war ended with status quo.[31]
The emperor, who had been preoccupied with the Uskok War, hurried to muster an army to stop the Bohemians and their allies from overwhelming his country. Count Bucquoy, the commander of the Imperial army, defeated the forces of the Protestant Union led by Count Mansfeld at the Battle of Sablat, on 10 June 1619. This cut off Count Thurn’s communications with Prague, and he was forced to abandon his siege of Vienna. The Battle of Sablat also cost the Protestants an important ally — Savoy, long an opponent of Habsburg expansion. Savoy had already sent considerable sums of money to the Protestants and even troops to garrison fortresses in the Rhineland. The capture of Mansfeld’s field chancery revealed the Savoyards’ involvement, and they were forced to bow out of the war.
Then while you accuse Luther of being unclear, you should have made it clear that "Catholics reject sola fide" due to it meaning a faith that does not effect works, as if it was a faith that does not produce "things that accompany salvation." (Heb. 6:9) but which was is not the historical view, and should not be made today 500 years after the Reformation.
My only point is to clarify what the Catholic Church was and was not condemning
You stated why RC rejected sola fide as if this was the current reason. Then you invoked what Leo said in 1520 and a statement Luther said in 1521. Of more relevance would be Trent, but which dealt with more than Luther, and their condemnation of Luther and the Reformation was many decades after the Reformation began.
Yet its censure of sola fide is subject to interpretation. As one of your notable apologists (Akin) states in explaining why Trent's condemnation of sola fide may not apply to Protestants today,
"the canon was directed at what Lutherans of the time said, but not at what they meant by what they said, so the doctrinal formula was condemned as defective rather than the doctrine itself, or (5) the canon was never directed at Lutherans to begin with but was directed at something else." (http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/SOLAFIDE.HTM
Similarly, another RCA (Armstrong) stated,
The canon only condemns “sola fide” if it is used “so as to understand that nothing else [besides intellectual assent] is required” to attain justification. Thus Trent is only condemning one interpretation of the sola fide formula and not the formula itself.
Armstrong also quotes (by way of Akin) "The Condemnations of the Reformation Era—Do They Still Divide?" - a document of special importance for the Joint Declaration on Justification - which states,
We may follow Cardinal Willebrand and say: In Luther’s sense the word faith by no means intends to exclude either works or love or even hope. We may quite justly say that Luther’s concept of faith, if we take it in its fullest sense, surely means nothing other than what we in the Catholic Church term love (1970, at the General Assembly of the World Lutheran Federation in Evian). (p. 52)
A Protestant researcher, James R. Payton, Jr. author of , "Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some Misunderstandings," objectively understands (from a review) that Reformation was not a monolithic, unified movement, but a diverse and hotly contested multiplicity of reform movements." But overall "the reformers did not teach that salvation consists in faith without works, much less in a single-event act of “faith, but rather a life dedicated to God. " (Also, "The reformers did not teach that the Bible is literally “the only book” Christians need, but that scripture is best read in an informed manner, drawing upon both general learning and knowledge of the church’s tradition, particularly its early tradition.")
Your own Peter Kreeft stats, One of the tragic ironies of Christian history is that the deepest split in the history of the Church...— this split between Protestant and Catholic originated in a misunderstanding. And to this day many Catholics and many Protestants still do not realize that fact. (http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0027.html)
In addition, ancient understanding of justification finds differing interpretations, and that at the time of Trent theology saw more variation in views than were allowed after it.
Jaroslav Pelikan, (then) Lutheran scholar in the history of Christianity (with honorary degrees from 42 universities), contended,
"Existing side by side in pre-Reformation theology were several ways of interpreting the righteousness of God and the act of justification. They ranged from strongly moralistic views that seemed to equate justification with moral renewal to ultra-forensic views, which saw justification as a 'nude imputation' that seemed possible apart from Christ, by an arbitrary decree of God. Between these extremes were many combinations; and though certain views predominated in late nominalism, it is not possible even there to speak of a single doctrine of justification." (Obedient Rebels: Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle in Luther’s Reformation, p. 52 )
"Every major tenet of the Reformation had considerable support in the catholic tradition. That was eminently true of the central Reformation teaching of justification by faith alone…..Rome’s reactions [to the Protestant reformers] were the doctrinal decrees of the Council of Trent and the Roman Catechism based upon those decrees. In these decrees, the Council of Trent selected and elevated to official status the notion of justification by faith plus works, which was only one of the doctrines of justification in the medieval theologians and ancient fathers. When the reformers attacked this notion in the name of the doctrine of justification by faith alone – a doctrine also attested to by some medieval theologians and ancient fathers – Rome reacted by canonizing one trend in preference to all the others. What had previously been permitted also (justification by faith alone), now became forbidden. In condemning the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent condemned part of its own catholic tradition.” — The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (1959), 49, 51-52 )
The problem as i see it is that, per usual, there was overreaction on both sides, in which Reformers emphasized that unmerited grace appropriated thru faith, not on the basis of works/merit, but with their protests seeming to foster the idea that such faith need not be the kind that effects works, and or that God does not recompense the faith of believers in the light of their works, due to His promises in grace to reward the "obedience of faith, " even though the rewardees actually deserve damnation.
Rome reacted to this by emphasizing merit, and so that believers have "by those very works which have been done in God...truly merited eternal life." (Canon 32) Thus in RC soteriology souls merit the graces needed for attaining eternal life, truly meriting eternal life by the good works that he performs by the grace of God. Salvation by merit under unmerited grace.
Salvation begin by being formally justified by one's interior holiness, usually via baptism in recognition of proxy faith, and usually ends with becoming good enough to enter glory via purgatory.
It was and is not my intent to get into the lengthy theological distinctions here, though whats important to me is that souls come to Christ as per my tag line, and die with the same faith in the Lord Jesus to save them by His blood.
But my original point was that Catholic rejection of sola fide is wrong if based on the premise that it teaches mere intellectual faith saves, or in any way being a kind of faith that does not effect obedience toward of Object of faith, the risen Lord Jesus.
“Yes, I erred.”
You certainly did. I did not.
“The Catholic Church spent hundreds of years suppressing vernacular translations, and Trent came in the middle. So sorry...”
The Catholic Church spent zero years suppressing vernacular translations in themselves and Trent didn’t do it either.
“After all, they had banned them in England in 1408,”
Who is “they”?
“nearly 150 years before Trent. My bad. Forgive me.”
Only if you show real repentance. Look it up in the Douay Rheims.
“The Catholic Church did much worse than what I suggested when I said Sorbonne was following Trent.”
No. You made an error – an embarrassing one. The Catholic Church did not.
“Trent followed Sorbonne, and it also followed, as both of us know, 200 years of suppression.”
Not by the Catholic Church and not in regard to vernacular translations in themselves. As the Protestant scholar Alister McGrath, wrote in 1987: there was “no universal or absolute prohibition of the translation of scriptures into the vernacular was ever issued by a medieval pope or council, nor was any similar prohibition directed against the use of such translations by the clergy or laity.” (Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, page 124).
“In discussing ONE SENTENCE I wrote, I got suckered in to suggesting trent began the suppression.”
Oh, so Obamacare is a failure because of Republicans rather than because it was just a bad idea? No one here was suckered into anything. You posted the error. No one forced you to make it. Also, you did not “suggest” that Trent began the “suppression”. Here is EXACTLY what you wrote: “but as an example of the measures Catholics, operating in accordance with the Council of Trent, took to suppress vernacular translations - and WHY they did so.”
“Operating in accordance with” is not a suggestion of something. You are flatly stating it happened when it was, in fact, physically impossible.
“Yet we both know it had gone on for hundreds of years prior...”
Ah, mind reading. Not allowed by the mods here. And, also, I do not know what you are claiming.
“Of course, TECHNICALLY vernacular translations were allowed. All one needed was permission - which was never given to commoners.”
Sure it was. As stated by Miriam Usher Chrisman in Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519-1530, page 4: “The German Bible, first printed in 1466, went through 14 editions before1518 and was often listed in the inventories taken at the death of ordinary men and women.” She goes on to mention: “The overwhelming preponderance of scriptural quotation among the artisans confirms the existence of a strongly established Bible culture at the artisan level well before the Reformation.” (page 11) Now, granted, she was speaking of Germany and not England, but Wycliffe was in England and not Germany. Clearly people had access to Bibles.
“So there were a few copies of Wycliffe’s translation signed off individually, yet others were punished for having excerpts of the same translation. It wasn’t the translation, per se, that was objected to, but commoners owning them and reading them.”
No. As noted in Scripture Studies decades ago, Kenyon, in his early editions of Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (page 206) not that “There is no doubt that the Lollards (as Wycliffe’s followers were called) were persecuted, but it does not appear that the possession, use or manufacture of an English version of the Bible, was one of the charges specially urged against them. The subject is not raised in the extant list of articles upon which the suspected were to be questioned. One is glad that it should be so, that the leaders of the English Church should not have been hostile to an English Bible...” He changed that in later editions. I don’t claim to know why. Did he discover proof to the contrary? I don’t know. Anyway, my point is that it seems that there isn’t even unanimity on the idea that the Lollards were persecuted for possessing an English Bible. Why should I then assume “commoners owning [Bibles] and reading them” was “objected to”?
“As both Oxford in 1408 and Trent in the mid-1500s said, INDIVIDUALS could get permission, on a case by case basis.”
And, again, I have to point out to you that Trent said nothing of the kind. Your own source made that abundantly clear. This is the second time I believe I have pointed that out to you.
“ If you had enough money & power, and were firmly enough caught in the Catholic Church, you could own and use a vernacular translation - but the common man could not - for the reasons Schaff listed.”
False. As stated by Miriam Usher Chrisman in Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519-1530, page 4: “The German Bible, first printed in 1466, went through 14 editions before1518 and was often listed in the inventories taken at the death of ordinary men and women.” She goes on to mention: “The overwhelming preponderance of scriptural quotation among the artisans confirms the existence of a strongly established Bible culture at the artisan level well before the Reformation.” (page 11)
See that? Ordinary men and women. ORDINARY. Understand?
“If someone was impressed when Bill Clinton parsed the meaning of “is”, they will be impressed with the argument that the Catholic Church allowed vernacular translations - provided almost no one ever got to touch, see or read one.”
ORDINARY men and women: “The German Bible. . . was often listed in the inventories taken at the death of ordinary men and women.” OFTEN. See that?
“Contrast that with Tyndale, who was refused permission to translate by the Catholic Church, but who went ahead and did so.”
If Tyndale was refused permission it was because he was already considered a heretic - and rightly so – by at least one bishop. Why would a bishop grant permission to a man accused of heresy to translate the Bible for the faithful?
“His goal WAS to allow commoners to read the scriptures, and he rejected the arguments by the Catholic Church that common men were not allowed to read the Word of God.”
I don’t think his real goal was to “allow commoners to read the scriptures” since that was already happening. I think his goal was to push his own Lutheran like heresy. After all, he decided he was going to do whatever he wanted. That is not a man interested in the common man, but a man interested in his own designs.
“Boast, if you will, that the Catholic Church PERMITTED a few hundred to read the Word of God,”
I never said that, nor boasted that. If you’re going to say I boasted about something don’t you think you should get your facts straight – unless you simply don’t care about the facts.
“while Martin Luther and Tyndale ensured that MILLIONS could do so.”
Except that Martin Luther didn’t do that because he never published a complete translation and delegated books which disagreed with him to an unpaginated appendix. Tyndale too never finished the whole Bible so he didn’t ensure “that MILLIONS could” read the Bible either. Those are the facts, but I doubt any anti-Catholic would care.
“The difference, of course, is that Luther and Tyndale understood what access to the Word of God meant - a rejection of the deceitful theology the Catholic Church was built on.”
Luther actually seemed to conclude that his own work to ensure “access” to the Bible helped create chaos.
“No priests in the New Testament. No Purgatory. No indulgences. No transubstantiation. No Bishops. No Pope. No temporal power. The foundation of the Catholic Church - what makes it the Roman Catholic Church - doesn’t exist in scripture, and indeed is contradicted directly by it.”
Actually no. You are as wrong there as you are on so many things.
“No priests, offering a sacrifice by the authority of Bishops and the Pope. Without that, there IS no Catholic Church. And that is why Luther and Tyndale WANTED people to read the scriptures for themselves, and the Catholic Church fought to prevent it.”
Nope. And you still can’t prove what you claimed.
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