Ping
I’m going out on a limb and will say “Global Warming” since it seems to cause almost everything else.
Thank you.
Let Christ smite adherents of Mad Mo’.
That's what caused the so-called "Reformation."
It was ignorance of Scripture that made the Reformation necessary. It was the recovery of the Scripture that made the Reformation possible. And it was the power of the Scripture that gave the Reformation its enduring impact, as the Holy Spirit brought the truth of His Word to bear on the hearts and minds of individual sinners, transforming them, regenerating them, and giving them eternal life.
Case in point:
Calvin's preaching was of one kind from beginning to end: he preached steadily through book after book of the Bible. He never wavered from this approach to preaching for almost twenty-five years of ministry in St. Peter's church of Geneva - with the exception of a few high festivals and special occasions. "On Sunday he took always the New Testament, except for a few Psalms on Sunday afternoons. During the week . . . it was always the Old Testament". The records show fewer than half a dozen exceptions for the sake of the Christian year. He almost entirely ignored Christmas and Easter in the selection of his text. To give you some idea of the scope of the Calvin's pulpit, he began his series on the book of Acts on August 25, 1549, and ended it in March of 1554. After Acts he went on to the epistles to the Thessalonians (46 sermons), Corinthians (186 sermons), pastorals (86 sermons), Galatians (43 sermons), Ephesians (48 sermons) - till May 1558. Then there is a gap when he is ill. In the spring of 1559 he began the Harmony of the Gospels and was not finished when he died in May, 1564. During the week of that season he preached 159 sermons on Job, 200 on Deuteronomy, 353 on Isaiah, 123 on Genesis and so on. One of the clearest illustrations that this was a self-conscious choice on Calvin's part was the fact that on Easter Day, 1538, after preaching, he left the pulpit of St. Peter's, banished by the City Council. He returned in September, 1541 - over three years later - and picked up the exposition in the next verse.-- excerpted from John Piper's The Divine Majesty Of The Word
Previously Catholic, now Lutheran. Never ran into anti-Protestant hate until FR. I’m proud that Martin nailed those theses to that door all those years ago!
As for the reformation in England, this paragraph could very accurately be rewritten:
The common thread, from Reformer to Reformer, was an undying commitment to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, such that they were willing to sacrifice everything, including their own lives, the lives of innocent priests, monks and nuns, virtually all art, nearly all statues, hundreds of ancient Christian churches built as witness to the Glory of God, and most of the books in the great libraries of England, to get the Word of God as they interpreted it into the hands of the people."
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/10/08/a-sad-reminder-of-the-art-lost-in-the-years-after-the-reformation/
"The Tate estimates we lost 90% of our religious art. It was probably even more than that. The destruction was on a scale that far outstrips the modern efforts of Islamist extremists. And it was not only art we lost, but also books and music."
I think his ‘I Have a Dream’ thesis did the trick.
The sociopolitical reshaping of Europe as a result and the effect on government and governance, the resulting warfare (which was often a continuation of previous warfare), and the sometimes abrupt shift in national interests in numerous countries is a topic of endless fascination from so many angles. The process as it occurred in Scotland is of particular interest, IMHO.
The printing press and the desire of princes to no longer be under the thumb of the Bishop of Rome. Without either one Luther would have ended up as charred remains in some town square.
Davidson traced it to the Catholic Church’s welfare system known as “feast days”. Today we refer to the “feast of St. Anthony” but don’t connect it with a feast in terms of food. In the medieval period, it was an actual feast. There were nearly 100 feast days per year, and those under feudalism who had money (lords) were required to put on a feast almost every three days for those who didn’t (serfs and vagabonds, whom we refer to today as "bums”). The middle class participated in feast days, but that middle class was small and lacked the kind of money possessed by the lords. It wasn’t easy for the middle class of that period. The key to this was the Catholic principle that to be saved, one must have faith and perform good works. Those feast days constituted the good works for most lay Catholics.
The Black Death depopulated Europe and ended feudalism. Serfs walked off the land they had been bound to for generations. Some went into the towns and cities, started their own businesses and joined the middle class. They inundated the medieval guild system, causing it to collapse in some areas of Europe. But some serfs took on the life of vagabonds, sitting in the town squares, calling “Alms! Alms for the poor!” to every passerby.,
Put yourself in the position of a draper, a curtain maker, in a city in northern Europe. You or your ancestor left the land to which he had been bound, went into the city and built a business. You beat the guild system. You have a hard life working, but you have come to see work as something good in and of itself. Not for you is this life “a vale of tears” in preparation for Heaven. It’s the place you work to earn a living. But every three days you have to put on a feast for those bums who sit in the town square begging, and that grates on you. The Catholic price of salvation is getting a little too high.
A good example encapsulates the problem. One day you go into the town square to hire some casual labor to move large boxes of cloth around. You approach one bum and tell him you’ll pay him one silver crown for a day’s work. The bum turns you down.
“I just offered you money for some work.”
“Work? Work?! I am but a poor sparrow living on the grains removed from cow dung. This is my place, according to Holy Mother Church. Your place is to feed me every three days, according to Holy Mother Church. By faith and good works you will be saved, I will be happy to take your money, good sir, but work for it? Excuse me, sir, I see a rich man entering the square. Alms! Alms for the poor!”
You walk away from that bum ready to support anyone who can make these people work.
Along comes Luther. Unlike Tyndale, Wycliffe and Hus, he has come along after Europe has been changed by the Black Death. He has also come along when primitive capitalism is replacing feudalism. Luther says that by faith alone you will be saved.
If you are a member of the rising, but financially harassed, middle class, and you hear this message, it resonates. In my best John Wayne impersonation, you respond, “Father Luther, if that means I don’t have to support those bums in the town square anymore, then pilgrim, call me a Lutheran!”
This is an approximation, but Davidson’s belief is that all societal, and even religious, change is based on following the money. He calls it “megapolitical change”, and economist Martin Armstrong has blazed new territory in connecting historical change to capital flows.
Polls taken by the Vatican...
Amen.
Luther
“My God, what have I done? Even the milkmaids think they can interpret Scripture!” - Martin Luther.
At least he got that one right.
“In 1526, William Tyndale completed a translation of the Greek New Testament into English. A few years later he also translated the Pentateuch from Hebrew. Shortly thereafter he was arrested and executed as a heretic—being strangled and then burned at the stake. According to Fox’s Book of Martyrs, Tyndale’s last words were “Lord, Open the King of England’s Eyes.” And it was just a couple years after his death that King Henry VIII authorized the Great Bible in England—a Bible that was largely based on Tyndale’s translation work. The Great Bible laid the foundation for the later King James version (which was completed in 1611).”
Hang on a minute. (no forthcoming pun intended) We are berating the Catholic Church for burning folks at the stake, etc., etc. etc. Yet pointing to Henry VIII as a paragon of Protestant virtue? Didn’t he lop off a couple of his wives heads? Put to death a few dozen (or hundred) folks?
But it’s all good because Ol’ Hen put together the “Great Bible?”
Come on man.