Replies

Here's the thing. Was Luther right in that there were abuses in the Church that had to be fixed? Yes. I admit that freely. But what ended up happening? In order to get those things fixed to Luther's satisfaction he had to throw everything out. That wasn't right. As a result the discard of theological truth gave rise to philosophical ideals that puts us in this mess we have today. The elevation of self as the arbiter of what is scriptural or non-scriptural. In this construct the individual reins supreme. Sure protestants might say, "It's not me. It's Jesus, or the Bible." But is it really? At the end of the day does a protestant say, "Hey that sounds good. I'll go with that because it speaks to me." So what do you have now? You've got billions of people out there determining Truth based on how it resonates with them. Is it any surprise that we now have a country whose operating principle is relativistic: your truth vs. my truth. Do we honestly think we're going to have a nation (or civilization)that will survive such a dynamic.

Waxing a bit hyperbolic, are we? It's good you recognize that the Roman Catholic Church was in dire need of reformation. What you fail to acknowledge is that Luther didn't "throw everything out" because they didn't meet his satisfaction, he was excommunicated and a death warrant was made against him because he refused to recant that Scripture was supreme and his accusers were incapable of proving him wrong. Luther didn't - contrary to popular opinion - rewrite the Bible, exclude books from "his" Bible, change basic tenets of the Christian faith as held from the start or invent his own religion (Lutheranism came after he was gone). He didn't "throw out" the Trinity, the virgin birth, the incarnation, the resurrection, the sacrificial death of Christ and his atonement for the sins of the world, Christ's return in glory and any number of widely and universally held doctrines. What he fought against were the abuses in the church hierarchy and only later, the perversion of the gospel by Rome, the restrictions against Bible reading and the innovative/novel dogmas brought into the Catholic church that even the Orthodox disagreed with.

The Reformers - and there were many more than just Luther - desired to return the Christian church to the faith as it was once delivered unto the saints. The resistance against them resulted in the Counter-reformation and the Inquisitions with death decrees enacted - and some carried out - against all those the Catholic church declared as "heretics". What was deemed heresy, remarkably, could be proven to have at one time BEEN catholic doctrine. The decrees of the Council of Trent further cemented the anathemas against the ideas of the Reformation and the Vatican dug in her heels rather than make the needed changes exposed by the Reformers. Power, wealth, influence and pride all worked within the church to force the schisms within just as it had happened five hundred years prior with the Eastern Orthodox.

Protestantism is NOT the cause of the relativism of our time. It is a result of an estrangement from the true God and a denial of absolute truth. The SAME absolute truth the Reformation defended. Perhaps, just perhaps, if the Roman Catholic Church had enacted the changes that needed to be made and Catholics today were held to the standards that defined Christianity, a larger part of society would be truly Conservative and the moral nosedive going on today in the world might be abated for a while longer. Either way, we already know that there will come a falling away from the faith in the last days and I'd say the time is ripe for the return of our Lord after the Time of Jacob's Trouble is past. It is inevitable. May HE find us faithful.