Posted on 08/04/2021 2:19:35 PM PDT by MurphsLaw
The promotion of Biblical interpretations serving secular, liberal political agendas of sex and race is only the latest manifestation of a centuries-old trend.
The Bible makes no explicit condemnations of transgenderism. It makes no claims as to the morality of abortion. It encourages racial reparations. Such claims can be found virtually everywhere in corporate media like the Washington Post, New York Times, or CNN, which seek to promote the various political objectives of the Democratic Party.
During his campaign for president, Episcopalian Pete Buttigieg argued that Jesus never mentioned abortion and that Bible verses censuring homosexuality were culturally conditioned, not eternal truths. The Washington Post, in turn, cites secular academics, who offer Biblical exegesis of a progressivist, feminist, and racial identitarian variety.
Of course, the Bible has always been a political document. The Old Testament was not only a religious and liturgical text but one that had much to say about the governance of the ancient kingdom of Israel. Jesus told his followers to respect and pay taxes to the Roman Empire. St. Paul described the temporal ruler as “God’s servant for your good.” (Romans 13:3-4)
For most of ecclesial history, the primary interpreters of Holy Scripture were not journalists, politicians, or secular academics, but the Catholic Church herself. Most early Church Fathers were priests or bishops. Ecumenical councils like Nicea, Chalcedon, or Lyon made determinations on theology, morality, and the meaning of the Bible.
But beginning in the fourteenth century, scholars like Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham began questioning the hierarchy’s hold on biblical interpretation. Instead, they proposed, the Bible should be under the authority of scholarly experts supported by secular political authorities. Though it would take several centuries for their ideas to proliferate, this thinking came to fruition in the Reformation and Enlightenment, and inspire trends in scriptural exegesis to this day.
This story is the focus of Scott Hahn’s and Benjamin Wiker’s book, The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book. Less than three-hundred pages, the book summarizes the central arguments of the authors’ 2012 Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300-1700, which is more than twice the size. This is a welcome development; it makes their important contributions accessible to a larger audience.
While the story begins with Marsilius and Ockham and their Erastian belief in the supremacy of the state over the Church, the reader will encounter many familiar faces. John Wycliffe, esteemed by Protestants as the “Morning Star” of the Reformation, argued that “the pope ought, as he formerly was, to be subject to Caesar.” The monarch would then employ “doctors and worshipers of the divine law” to interpret the Bible. Martin Luther also called for the German princes to wrest ecclesial power away from corrupt bishops and the Roman pontiff, and grant him unequaled interpretive authority. Indeed, Luther asked the prince of Saxony to expel fellow reformer Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt because of the latter’s radical teachings. Around the same time, Machiavelli viewed the biblical text as material for furthering secular political ends.
All of these men influenced the court of English King Henry VIII, who recognized that the Reformation offered an opportunity to consolidate his political power. Thus, he pursued the Act of Supremacy in 1534 to grant him “supreme” headship over the Church of England, followed by the dissolution of monasteries, closure of shrines, and seizure of Church wealth. His King’s Book then declared that individuals must be subject to the “particular church” of the region in which they live, and obey the “Christian kings and princes” to whom they are subject.
Other Englishmen would further endorse this thinking. In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes asserts that there is only “one chief Pastor” who is “according to the law of Nature. . .the civil sovereign.” Hobbes also rejected many of the supernatural elements of Scripture, as well as Heaven and Hell. John Locke, dismayed by the violence and distemper caused by the English Civil War, endorsed a state-controlled church whose most important feature would be “toleration,” since religious sentiments were private matters “of the mind.” For Locke, Jesus was ultimately a political messiah whose teachings focused on the perpetuation of a “civil morality.”
There are many other actors in this torrid tale – Baruch Spinoza, J. Richard Simon, John Toland – but enough is clear from the above to appreciate the consequences of these religio-political trends. Proto-Reformers called for dethroning the Catholic hierarchy’s supremacy over biblical interpretation. The Reformers, relying on princes and kings, put that wish into practice. And political philosophers and state-sanctioned scholars normalized it. Wherever the Catholic Church ceased to exert ecclesial authority, the state took up the reins.
There has always been this tension between Church and state. St. Ambrose excommunicated the emperor Theodosius because of his execution of 7,000 citizens of Thessalonica. Pope Gregory VII excommunicated the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV because of a dispute over investiture. And Thomas Becket’s resistance to English King Henry II’s attempts to control the Church resulted in his murder at Canterbury Cathedral.
There is actually something healthy about this tension: when the state and the Church both operate strong spheres of power and influence, they serve as checks upon one another. Kings and governments cannot pursue any policy without risking moral condemnation from ecclesial leadership that will undermine their popular support. And Church corruption and nepotism can be used by secular authorities eager to usurp power.
Hahn’s and Wiker’s history tracks the growing imbalance in favor of the state, a disparity whose roots can be traced back to the late Medieval period. The ubiquitous promotion of Biblical interpretations that serve secular, liberal political agendas related to sex and race is only the latest manifestation of this centuries-old trend. To reverse it requires a return to a more ancient understanding that the Bible is, before all else, the book of the Church, rather than the state or its acolytes in the media or the academy. Catholics need to support and celebrate churchmen who appreciate and seek to realize that essential mission.
Oh, my goodness, Phil. You do realize a change has happened since your quoted portion of text with regard to the operation of God’s Holy Spirit?
I am a sinner, same as YOU, MHGinTN, etc... No doubt about it. When I sin I ask forgiveness and power from the Holy Spirit to OBEY, and live the life Christ wants me to live, for Him.
I am not under the DELUSION of once saved, always saved, or that because the Holy Spirit resides in me, I CAN’T SIN, or, that I will not be judged because of those sins, which is a direct contradiction to what the bible CLEARLY teaches. (All sins automatically forgiven regardless of a lack of repentance and everyone is on the way to heaven, see you in the clouds, etc...)
What Ravi did or didn’t do is none of my business. That’s between him and God. However, there is certainly a lesson in there, right? If a person believes that no matter what unrepentant pattern of sins they commit AS A PROFESSED BORN AGAIN, SAVED BY GRACE, CHRISTIAN, matter not because their “Spirit can’t sin”, once saved, always saved, Christians won’t be judged..., THEY ARE DELUDED and they are believing a lie. YOU are in fact saying exactly that.
In other and blunter terms, do you have the means to do what he’s been accused of doing? Are you an internationally recognized figure who has to walk into temptation every single day?
What has that got to do with ANYTHING????????
Ravi gets a pass because he was an internationally recognized figure who walked into temptation every single day and he just couldn’t help it?
Void. No sale
And that would be.....
You are supposed to help a brother not condemn him to hell.
What’s wrong with you?
Nothing I can do now to help a brother (Ravi), now is there? He’s dead, Jim. And, I’m not condemning anyone to Hell. That’s God’s job. However, I am condemning your hypocrisy and double talk.
What’s wrong with you?
My point regarding RZ was that he was in a position in which he faced daily temptations that we do not and will never face. I certainly do not condone what he’s been accused of. It’s deplorable behavior for a Christian IF he even did those things. I don’t know. Not my call to make. I do know one thing, however, his sin, your sin and my sin is all sin to God. Your sin is not some sort of “better sin” than mine or RZ’s. Don’t kid yourself.
Lastly, I may be a lot of things but I’m no hypocrite. Please evidence your assertion.
“THEY ARE DELUDED and they are believing a lie.”
Did you type that with a straight face?
That is funny, but what is weird is that many folks actually believe that Paul taught in KJV English!
So Elsie, how do you address your male parent?
The 1215 Lateran council says " that they will seek, in so far as they can, to expel from the lands subject to their jurisdiction all heretics designated by the church in good faith." not "exterminate"
That's how your ilk adds words to historical document as well as to the Bible, right?
The first protesters and reformatters were in the 1500s.
“I am a sinner, same as YOU, MHGinTN, etc... No doubt about it. When I sin I ask forgiveness and power from the Holy Spirit to OBEY, and live the life Christ wants me to live, for Him.”
Once you do that, are you still saved/saved again, what? And THEN after you’ve done all that, do you ever sin again?
“How happy is that church . . . where Peter endured a passion like that of the Lord, where Paul was crowned in a death like John’s [referring to John the Baptist, both he and Paul being beheaded].” (Tertullian, The Demurrer Against the Heretics, circa A.D. 200) --> Tertullian in 200 is referring to Rome where Peter and Paul were both martyred
(Letter to the Romans 4:3 [A.D. 110]). --“Not as Peter and Paul did, do I command you [Romans]. They were apostles, and I am a convict"
Dionysis of Corinth - Letter to Pope Soter [A.D. 170], in Eusebius, History of the Church 2:25:8): “You [Pope Soter] have also, by your very admonition, brought together the planting that was made by Peter and Paul at Rome and at Corinth; for both of them alike planted in our Corinth and taught us; and both alike, teaching similarly in Italy, suffered martyrdom at the same time”
Irenaeus
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“Matthew also issued among the Hebrews a written Gospel in their own language, while Peter and Paul were evangelizing in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church” (Against Heresies, 3, 1:1 [A.D. 189]).
and
“But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the succession of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church [of Rome], because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition” (ibid., 3, 3, 2).
and
“The blessed apostles [Peter and Paul], having founded and built up the church [of Rome], they handed over the office of the episcopate to Linus. Paul makes mention of this Linus in the letter to Timothy [2 Tim. 4:21]. To him succeeded Anacletus, and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was chosen for the episcopate. He had seen the blessed apostles and was acquainted with them. It might be said that he still heard the echoes of the preaching of the apostles and had their traditions before his eyes. And not only he, for there were many still remaining who had been instructed by the apostles. In the time of Clement, no small dissension having arisen among the brethren in Corinth, the church in Rome sent a very strong letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to peace and renewing their faith. . . . To this Clement, Evaristus succeeded . . . and now, in the twelfth place after the apostles, the lot of the episcopate [of Rome] has fallen to Eleutherius. In this order, and by the teaching of the apostles handed down in the Church, the preaching of the truth has come down to us” (ibid., 3, 3, 3).
Eusebius of Caesarea
“[In the second] year of the two hundredth and fifth Olympiad [A.D. 42]: The apostle Peter, after he has established the church in Antioch, is sent to Rome, where he remains as a bishop of that city, preaching the gospel for twenty-five years” (The Chronicle [A.D. 303]).
==========
That's more than adequate evidence that Peter WAS in Rome and was martyred in Rome
if you want to deny numerous historical proofs from varied people that Peter was in Rome, you, smvoice, may also then think that Jesus was fictional (btw, that's false as well)
Really? for 2000 years bishops and priests, not to mention external forces have been trying to do that and failing
Why have they failed for 2000 years? Because Christ protects His church. There's no other explanation.
“THEY ARE DELUDED and they are believing a lie.”
Did you type that with a straight face?
Straight as an arrow (as they say).
The blasphemies now running the catholic belief system are an insult to human reason, much less a filthy insult to God's Grace in Christ.
Lastly, I may be a lot of things but I’m no hypocrite. Please evidence your assertion.
You and your crew are saying that sin is for thee, but not for me (as in consequences). You say “I do know one thing, however, his sin, your sin and my sin is all sin to God.” Yet, you can’t lose your salvation because “your Spirit can’t sin, only your flesh/soul can”. Or, the wages of sin no longer affect you. If a Christian continues to willfully sin, THEY ARE STILL GOING TO HEAVEN.
That is hypocrisy, double talk, and mumbo jumbo.
What you said is all true about Catholicism. The number of people murdered, however, is well over 100 million (and probably at least double that), including tens of millions of indigenous people in South America, Mexico, etc, who refused to convert. Murdering Protestants was the goal of the Catholic church during the reformation years (their inquisition), but it started long before that with whole groups of people being slaughtered. And, that is as matter of history (not SDA propaganda). I’m not even including the rape and torture, that’s also documented.
http://www.alphanewsdaily.com/Number-of-Protestants-Killed-By-Popes.html
Once you do that, are you still saved/saved again, what? And THEN after you’ve done all that, do you ever sin again?
Salvation is NOT once saved, always saved.
“Nowhere in the Bible is entrance into God’s kingdom tied to a momentary - or even temporary - faith experience of the past. Salvation is a dynamic, growing relationship with the only One who has eternal life to bestow. It requires continuing contact in order to receive it. The very life of God can be shared with men but NEVER APART FROM A LIVING UNION WITH CHRIST! “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” 1 John 5:12.” (see the article below)
(short of a death bed confession, etc...)
https://www.amazingfacts.org/media-library/book/e/17/t/can-a-saved-man-choose-to-be-lost-
So, yes or no?
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