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Childish behavior. |
Posted on 10/26/2009 4:16:56 PM PDT by Patrick Madrid
A few years ago, I slipped into the back of a large Methodist church in the area to hear a sermon delivered by the pastor which had been advertised for several days on the marquee on the lawn in front of the handsome Neo-Gothic stone edifice. I really wanted to hear what he had to say on that particular Sunday.
The occasion of this sermon was what Protestants celebrate as "Reformation Sunday," in remembrance of the sad, tragic rebellion against the Catholic Church. Of course, that's my take on what Reformation Sunday symbolizes. The pastor whose sermon I heard that day had a much different view. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at patrickmadrid.blogspot.com ...
Thank you, Mr. Rogers. They sure do love to quote Luther’s part about sin boldly, don’t they? And they don’t understand the context of why he said that. Sigh.
That's exactly what Luther is saying. His theology is that we can commit fornication or murder thousands and thousands of times a day and get away with it, i.e. it does not put salvation at risk.
So, do you "sin boldly" as instructed by the hero of the reformation?
Please don't mind read and tell me what are my favorite Scriptures.
FAITH COMES FIRST, always.
You're changing the discussion from faith alone to what comes first. The concept of faith alone is proscribed by Scripture.
We all understand the context. The question is whether the context is correct. Scripture demonstrates it isn't. Once saved, always saved is a man-made tradition.
Luther was as guilty of sarcasm as I am of anger. However, the context of that letter, IIRC, was to asking about ‘sins’ such as how Eucharist was taken, and marrying a former nun, etc - and Luther replied, in the closing of his letter:
“If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly; but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness, but, as Peter says, we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.”
For a longer discussion, see http://www.ntrmin.org/Be%20a%20sinner%20and%20sin%20boldly%20web.htm#a2
Please grant that one might use language in a private letter to a good friend that would mislead, if published and taken out of context.
Get Cracking, Catholics!Related threads:
A formative, family-friendly factoid from a recent study or survey in the news.
November 19-25, 2006 Issue
Posted 11/16/06 at 8:00 AMAccording to a study released in September by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, evangelical Protestants are a whopping eight times more likely than Catholics to read the Bible on a weekly basis. Of course, the survey only looked at private Bible reading; it did not take into account the Scripture passages Catholics take in at every Mass. Still, we tip our hats to our separated brothers and sisters in Christ for their zeal for the Word of God.
Synod to Focus on Proper Use of Scripture
The Church should combat widespread "Biblical illiteracy" among the Catholic faithful, Archbishop Eterovic said
A Literate Church: The state of Catholic Bible study today
...while fewer believers know much about the Bible, one-third of Americans continue to believe that it is literally true, something organizers of the Synod on the Word of God called a dangerous form of fundamentalism that is “winning more and more adherents…even among Catholics.” Such literalism, the synod’s preparatory document said, “demands an unshakable adherence to rigid doctrinal points of view and imposes, as the only source of teaching for Christian life and salvation, a reading of the Bible which rejects all questioning and any kind of critical research”....
....The flip side of this embarrassment is the presumption among many Catholics that they “get” the Bible at Mass, along with everything else they need for their spiritual lives. The postconciliar revolution in liturgy greatly expanded the readings, with a three-year cycle in the vernacular that for the first time included Old Testament passages. Given that exposure, many think they do not need anything else. As Mr. McMahon put it, “The majority still say you go to Mass, you get your ticket punched, and that’s it for the week.”
Barna Survey: The God Gap in American Politics Alive and Well
By the numbers:Percentage of "liberals" who:
33%: read the Bible, other than at church events, during the past week
35%: attended a religious service during the past week
76%: prayed to God, other than at a religious service, during the past week
39%: shared their religious beliefs with others, during the past year (among the born again Christians interviewed)
06%: have ever participated in a short-term missions trip, either within the U.S. or in another countryPercentage of "conservatives" who:
57%: read the Bible, other than at church events, during the past week
62%: attended a religious service during the past week
91%: prayed to God, other than at a religious service, during the past week
56%: shared their religious beliefs with others, during the past year (among the born again Christians interviewed)
12%: have ever participated in a short-term missions trip, either within the U.S. or in another country
Percentage of "liberals" who believe:
27%: "the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches"
17%: that Satan is real
23%: have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs with others
54%: their religious faith is very important in their life
23%: a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by doing good deeds or being a good person
38%: faith is becoming an increasingly important moral guide in their life
37%: their church is very important in helping them find direction and fulfillment in life
33%: Jesus Christ did not commit sins during His time on earth
43%: their primary purpose in life is to love God with all their heart, mind, strength and soulPercentage of "conservatives" who believe:
63%: "the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches"
36%: that Satan is real
48%: have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs with others
82%: their religious faith is very important in their life
37%: a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by doing good deeds or being a good person
70%: faith is becoming an increasingly important moral guide in their life
62%: their church is very important in helping them find direction and fulfillment in life
55%: Jesus Christ did not commit sins during His time on earth
76%: their primary purpose in life is to love God with all their heart, mind, strength and soul
It IS faith alone, for it is faith that brings the new birth and the Holy Spirit and the ability to DO good works. Apart from faith, there ARE no good deeds.
One cannot separate Jesus as Savior from Jesus as Lord. One Jesus. But apart from faith, works are dead, for our hearts are still in rebellion against God.
Interpret James in light of Jesus: “28Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” - John 6
***I read somewhere that someone preceded Bede, even. And the account I read of Bede was quite touching, as he tried to finish while dying.***
A great man, very overlooked in the religious history of the West (especially the English west).
***But by 1300, Bede’s translation would have been largely unreadable. And by 1300, Catholic doctrine had developed enough that it had developed right away from the Orthodox.***
I would have to disagree on both counts. Remember that literacy was very tiny in the 1300s, and the two wings of the Church still maintained a common belief. There have been a handful of disagreements, but not a chasm.
***But there were stirrings, at first from those who would correct the Catholic Church - and I believe there were a number of reformers WITHIN the Catholic church, although I won’t reveal my pitiful scholarship by trying to cite them.***
There have always been theologians and those who have tried to improve things. The difference is that there is not the authorization of a single man to achieve these things; the Consensus Patrum is required and has maintained Orthodoxy to the extent that it has even to this day. The very fact that the Orthodox are in serious talks with the Latins about reuniting shows that the gulf is small and is over relatively few things. Not bad for a thousand years, eh?
***Wycliffe was one of the first in western Europe to outright reject the Catholic Church, and to do so based on scripture...OK, on HOPIOS (his own personal interpretation of scripture). However, he had enough confidence in HOPIOS to believe that simply distributing scripture would suffice to win his argument.***
Most of the first millennium heretics used Scripture as justification and so have most of the second millennium ones. Wycliffe was not the first, not by a long shot. But he got a lot of publicity.
***That the Bible was not available to the common man in English in 1400, and that the Catholic Church took steps to stop Wycliffe by stopping the distribution of scripture in English, is not.***
Let’s loook at these two points.
http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/Book%20Reviews/historyofreading.html says that: “ In the High Middle Ages, literacy rates in cities were only 5%, and in the country they were essentially zero.”, and, “Another surprise was the cost of books throughout most of history. These things were labor-intensive, and regularly cost hundreds to thousands of times as much as a worker’s daily wage.”
Putting these two together, one must conclude that almost nobody could read and couldn’t afford the books even if they could.
Versions of the whole or parts of the Bible in the language of the common people first appeared in Germany in the eighth century, in France and Hungary in the twelfth, and Italy, Spain, Holland, Poland and Bohemia in the thirteenth century. (Catholic Encyclopedia.) In the 1500’s in Italy, there were more than 40 vernacular editions of the Bible. France had 18 vernacular editions before 1547, and Spain began publishing editions in 1478, with full approval of the Spanish Inquisition.
In all, 198 editions of the Bible were in the language of the laity, 626 editions all together, and all before the first Protestant version, and all having the full approval of the Church. (Where We Got the Bible, TAN Publishers)
The biggest reason that English was one of the very last is because England before the 1300s was a minor unpopulated backwater with a very small population. Another thing: while I was researching this reply, I was struck by the number of times I ran into articles stating the hostility of Henry Tudor (typical of the English monarchy) to English language Bibles because of the control by the secular monarchy, not the control of the Church.
Remember too, that Gutenburg, a Catholic, printed his first book (the Vulgate) in 1452, authorized by the Church. The Church was trying to keep bad translations from the people, not good translations of Scripture. And let us also not underestimate the importance of Latin. Sir Isaac Newton wrote his Principlicae Mathematica in Latin for publication, not English in 1660.
***Yes, I allowed my temper to get the better of me***
Tsk, tsk. You should be more like me - calm, serene, never losing my temper or cussing at somebody on FR, never saying an unkind thing. LOLZ.
I’m personally not convinced that every person who goes to the altar for salvation is truly saved. Many don’t study God’s word or attend church and I believe these folks can and do fall away. This is not dogma to me.
Absolutely not. I have the Holy Spirit in me to convict me of sin AND a godly husband, LOL.
That’s right. Faith is what brings us to salvation. Not works. But we do need to do works after we’ve been saved, the works that God intended for us to do from the beginning. Works are dead without faith.
It's comforting to know you view this only as sarcasm and don't really believe it.
Ah, you catholics and your mind reading problems, sigh.
The problem of literacy was faced by all sides, as was the challenge of making copies prior to the printing press.
Had the response to Wycliffe been to distribute scripture in an approved English translation to the congregations and people, then I would concede your point. However, the response was to try to stop any unauthorized translation, and then either not make an authorized one, or not distribute it, thus preventing common men from reading scripture - if they could read, or knew someone who did.
Wycliffe and the Lollards had significant success getting scripture out in spite of being in danger of their lives. What could the Catholic Church have done, had it wanted to? Tyndale was successful while hunted - how much more if More had corrected it as needed, added notes as desired, and published with the authority of the government and church!
I fully grant there were serious challenges facing ANYONE trying to get the Word of God to the common man. My complaint against the Catholic Church is not that it wasn’t up to the challenge, but that it tried to stop those who were!
FWIW - for Germany, I suspect the problem was the type of German, and Luther succeeded because he went for the vernacular instead of the higher German languages. That is a guess - I haven’t read enough to feel comfortable with that guess, and have maxed out my Amazon.com budget for October the way Obama has maxed out the US budget for 2009!
And Jesus appointed the first pope. He handed authority to him.
Thank God I'm not a Papist.
I follow Christ, the founder and head of the Catholic Church.
No, it is not faith alone. It is not just the ability to do good works. You must actually do them. As it says in James 2:26, for as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. Clearly it's not just faith alone.
Yes, faith is necessary. Without it, we cannot love, hope, repent, or grow in Christ. We must grow in knowledge of Christ, we must do God's will, we must become disciples of Christ. Are you not familiar with Christ's teachings on discipleship? Pick up your cross daily? Christ calls for a radical conversion, not just a "faith declaration". Without love, we are nothing. Without faith, we cannot love properly. Separating faith from love is senseless and is against the teachings of the Apostles.
So then you haven't come to Christ?
Martin Luther never shared your glee as he surveyed the damage that his rebellion against authority had caused. His writings show that he lamented his deed when he penned the following remarks.
"This one will not hear of Baptism, and that one denies the sacrament, another puts a world between this and the last day: some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that: there are as many sects and creeds as there are heads. No yokel is so rude but when he has dreams and fancies, he thinks himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and must be a prophet."
De Wette III, 61. quoted in O'Hare, THE FACTS ABOUT LUTHER, 208.
That is why there are now 30,000+ churches that call themselves christian but disagree with each other. There is a steady increase in the acceleration rate of the endless splitting of the Body of Christ by non-Catholic ecclesial communities, despite this command directly from the lips of Jesus Christ... "...and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." John 10:16
We are commanded by Scripture to be of one mind, in one spirit, and with one mouth to glorify GOD. Romans 15:5-6, Philippians 1:27, 2:2
St. Paul wrote - "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all say the same thing; and that there be no dissensions among you, but that you be perfectly united in one mind and in one judgment." 1Corinthians 1:10
Had the Reformation succeeded, there would be only one Church. Instead, Luther lead a revolt.
"Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it." - Psalms 127:1
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