Portrait of Young John Calvin
Unknown Flemish artist
Espace Ami Lullin of the Bibliothèque de Genève
Posted on 06/04/2010 5:43:13 AM PDT by markomalley
This is a guest post by Dr. David Anders. David and his wife completed their undergraduate degrees at Wheaton College in 1992. He subsequently earned an M.A. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1995, and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 2002, in Reformation history and historical theology. He was received into the Catholic Church in 2003. He will be on EWTN Live on June 23rd, 7:00 pm Central (8 EST), and may be discussing some of the material from this article.
Portrait of Young John Calvin
Unknown Flemish artist
Espace Ami Lullin of the Bibliothèque de Genève
I once heard a Protestant pastor preach a “Church History” sermon. He began with Christ and the apostles, dashed through the book of Acts, skipped over the Catholic Middle Ages and leaped directly to Wittenberg, 1517. From Luther he hopped to the English revivalist John Wesley, crossed the Atlantic to the American revivals and slid home to his own Church, Birmingham, Alabama, early 1990s. Cheers and singing followed him to the plate. The congregation loved it.
I loved it, too. I grew up in an Evangelical Church in the 1970s immersed in the myth of the Reformation. I was sure that my Church preached the gospel, which we received, unsullied, from the Reformers. After college, I earned a doctorate in Church history so I could flesh out the story and prove to all the poor Catholics that they were in the wrong Church. I never imagined my own founder, the Protestant Reformer John Calvin, would point me to the Catholic faith.
I was raised a Presbyterian, the Church that prides itself on Calvinist origins, but I didn’t care much about denominations. My Church practiced a pared-down, Bible-focused, born-again spirituality shared by most Evangelicals. I went to a Christian college and then a seminary where I found the same attitude. Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Charismatics worshiped and studied side-by-side, all committed to the Bible but at odds on how to interpret it. But our differences didn’t bother us. Disagreements over sacraments, Church structures, and authority were less important to us than a personal relationship with Christ and fighting the Catholic Church. This is how we understood our common debt to the Reformation.
When I finished seminary, I moved on to Ph.D. studies in Reformation history. My focus was on John Calvin (1509-1564), the French Reformer who made Geneva, Switzerland into a model Protestant city. I chose Calvin not just because of my Presbyterian background, but because most American Protestants have some relationship to him. The English Puritans, the Pilgrim Fathers, Jonathan Edwards and the “Great Awakening” – all drew on Calvin and then strongly influenced American religion. My college and seminary professors portrayed Calvin as a master theologian, our theologian. I thought that if I could master Calvin, I would really know the faith.
Strangely, mastering Calvin didn’t lead me anywhere I expected. To begin with, I decided that I really didn’t like Calvin. I found him proud, judgmental and unyielding. But more importantly, I discovered that Calvin upset my Evangelical view of history. I had always assumed a perfect continuity between the Early Church, the Reformation and my Church. The more I studied Calvin, however, the more foreign he seemed, the less like Protestants today. This, in turn, caused me to question the whole Evangelical storyline: Early Church – Reformation – Evangelical Christianity, with one seamless thread running straight from one to the other. But what if Evangelicals really weren’t faithful to Calvin and the Reformation? The seamless thread breaks. And if it could break once, between the Reformation and today, why not sooner, between the Early Church and the Reformation? Was I really sure the thread had held even that far?
Calvin shocked me by rejecting key elements of my Evangelical tradition. Born-again spirituality, private interpretation of Scripture, a broad-minded approach to denominations – Calvin opposed them all. I discovered that his concerns were vastly different, more institutional, even more Catholic. Although he rejected the authority of Rome, there were things about the Catholic faith he never thought about leaving. He took for granted that the Church should have an interpretive authority, a sacramental liturgy and a single, unified faith.
These discoveries faced me with important questions. Why should Calvin treat these “Catholic things” with such seriousness? Was he right in thinking them so important? And if so, was he justified in leaving the Catholic Church? What did these discoveries teach me about Protestantism? How could my Church claim Calvin as a founder, and yet stray so far from his views? Was the whole Protestant way of doing theology doomed to confusion and inconsistency?
Understanding the Calvinist Reformation
Calvin was a second-generation Reformer, twenty-six years younger than Martin Luther (1483-1546). This meant that by the time he encountered the Reformation, it had already split into factions. In Calvin’s native France, there was no royal support for Protestantism and no unified leadership. Lawyers, humanists, intellectuals, artisans and craftsman read Luther’s writings, as well as the Scriptures, and adapted whatever they liked.
This variety struck Calvin as a recipe for disaster. He was a lawyer by training, and always hated any kind of social disorder. In 1549, he wrote a short work (Advertissement contre l’astrologie) in which he complained about this Protestant diversity:
Every state [of life] has its own Gospel, which they forge for themselves according to their appetites, so that there is as great a diversity between the Gospel of the court, and the Gospel of the justices and lawyers, and the Gospel of merchants, as there is between coins of different denominations.
I began to grasp the difference between Calvin and his descendants when I discovered his hatred of this theological diversity. Calvin was drawn to Luther’s theology, but he complained about the “crass multitude” and the “vulgar plebs” who turned Luther’s doctrine into an excuse for disorder. He wrote his first major work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), in part to address this problem.
Calvin got an opportunity to put his plans into action when he moved to Geneva, Switzerland. He first joined the Reformation in Geneva in 1537, when the city had only recently embraced Protestantism. Calvin, who had already begun to write and publish on theology, was unsatisfied with their work. Geneva had abolished the Mass, kicked out the Catholic clergy, and professed loyalty to the Bible, but Calvin wanted to go further. His first request to the city council was to impose a common confession of faith (written by Calvin) and to force all citizens to affirm it.
Calvin’s most important contribution to Geneva was the establishment of the Consistory – a sort of ecclesiastical court- to judge the moral and theological purity of his parishioners. He also persuaded the council to enforce a set of “Ecclesiastical Ordinances” that defined the authority of the Church, stated the religious obligations of the laity, and imposed an official liturgy. Church attendance was mandatory. Contradicting the ministers was outlawed as blasphemy. Calvin’s Institutes would eventually be declared official doctrine.
Calvin’s lifelong goal was to gain the right to excommunicate “unworthy” Church members. The city council finally granted this power in 1555 when French immigration and local scandal tipped the electorate in his favor. Calvin wielded it frequently. According to historian William Monter, one in fifteen citizens was summoned before the Consistory between 1559 and 1569, and up to one in twenty five was actually excommunicated.1 Calvin used this power to enforce his single vision of Christianity and to punish dissent.
A Calvinist Discovers John Calvin
I studied Calvin for years before the real significance of what I was learning began to sink in. But I finally realized that Calvin, with his passion for order and authority, was fundamentally at odds with the individualist spirit of my Evangelical tradition. Nothing brought this home to me with more clarity than his fight with the former Carmelite monk, Jerome Bolsec.
In 1551, Bolsec, a physician and convert to Protestantism, entered Geneva and attended a lecture on theology. The topic was Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, the teaching that God predetermines the eternal fate of every soul. Bolsec, who believed firmly in “Scripture alone” and “faith alone,” did not like what he heard. He thought it made God into a tyrant. When he stood up to challenge Calvin’s views, he was arrested and imprisoned.
What makes Bolsec’s case interesting is that it quickly evolved into a referendum on Church authority and the interpretation of Scripture. Bolsec, just like most Evangelicals today, argued that he was a Christian, that he had the Holy Spirit and that, therefore, he had as much right as Calvin to interpret the Bible. He promised to recant if Calvin would only prove his doctrine from the Scriptures. But Calvin would have none of it. He ridiculed Bolsec as a trouble maker (Bolsec generated a fair amount of public sympathy), rejected his appeal to Scripture, and called on the council to be harsh. He wrote privately to a friend that he wished Bolsec were “rotting in a ditch.”2
What most Evangelicals today don’t realize is that Calvin never endorsed private or lay interpretation of the Bible. While he rejected Rome’s claim to authority, he made striking claims for his own authority. He taught that the “Reformed” pastors were successors to the prophets and apostles, entrusted with the task of authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures. He insisted that laypeople should suspend judgment on difficult matters and “hold unity with the Church.”3
Calvin took very seriously the obligation of the laity to submit and obey. “Contradicting the ministers” was one of the most common reasons to be called before the Consistory and penalties could be severe. One image in particular sticks in my mind. April, 1546. Pierre Ameaux, a citizen of Geneva, was forced to crawl to the door of the Bishop’s residence, with his head uncovered and a torch in his hand. He begged the forgiveness of God, of the ministers and of the city council. His crime? He contradicted the preaching of Calvin. The council, at Calvin’s urging, had decreed Ameaux’s public humiliation as punishment.
Ameaux was not alone. Throughout the 1540s and 1550s, Geneva’s city council repeatedly outlawed speaking against the ministers or their theology. Furthermore, when Calvin gained the right to excommunicate, he did not hesitate to use it against this “blasphemy.” Evangelicals today, unaccustomed to the use of excommunication, may underestimate the severity of the penalty, but Calvin understood it in the most severe terms. He repeatedly taught that the excommunicated were “estranged from the Church, and thus, from Christ.”4
If Calvin’s ideas on Church authority were a surprise to me, his thoughts on the sacraments were shocking. Unlike Evangelicals, who treat the theology of the sacraments as one of the “non-essentials,” Calvin thought they were of the utmost importance. In fact, he taught that a proper understanding of the Eucharist was necessary for salvation. This was the thesis of his very first theological treatise in French (Petit traicté de la Sainte Cène, 1541). Frustrated by Protestant disagreement over the Eucharist, Calvin wrote the text in an attempt to unify the movement around one single doctrine.
Evangelicals are used to finding assurance in their “personal relationship with Christ,” and not through membership in any Church or participation in any ritual. Calvin, however, taught that the Eucharist provides “undoubted assurance of eternal life.”5 And while Calvin stopped short of the Catholic, or even the Lutheran, understanding of the Eucharist, he still retained a doctrine of the Real Presence. He taught that the Eucharist provides a “true and substantial partaking of the body and blood of the Lord” and he rejected the notion that communicants receive “the Spirit only, omitting flesh and blood.”6.
Calvin understood baptism in much the same way. He never taught the Evangelical doctrine that one is “born again” through personal conversion. Instead, he associated regeneration with baptism and taught that to neglect baptism was to refuse salvation. He also allowed no diversity over the manner of its reception. Anabaptists in Geneva (those who practiced adult baptism) were jailed and forced to repent. Calvin taught that Anabaptists, by refusing the sacrament to their children, had placed themselves outside the faith.
Calvin once persuaded an Anabaptist named Herman to enter the Reformed Church. His description of the event leaves no doubt about the difference between Calvin and the modern Evangelical. Calvin wrote:
Herman has, if I am not mistaken, in good faith returned to the fellowship of the Church. He has confessed that outside the Church there is no salvation, and that the true Church is with us. Therefore, it was defection when he belonged to a sect separated from it.7
Evangelicals don’t understand this type of language. They are accustomed to treating “the Church” as a purely spiritual reality, represented across denominations or wherever “true believers” are gathered. This was not Calvin’s view. His was “the true Church,” marked off by infant baptism, outside of which there was no salvation.
Making Sense of Evangelicalism
Studying Calvin raised important questions about my Evangelical identity. How could I reject as unimportant issues that my own founder considered essential? I had blithely and confidently dismissed baptism, Eucharist, and the Church itself as “merely symbolic,” “purely spiritual” or, ultimately, unnecessary. In seminary, too, I found an environment where professors disagreed entirely over these issues and no one cared! With no final court of appeal, we had devolved into a “lowest common denominator” theology.
Church history taught me that this attitude was a recent development. John Calvin had high expectations for the unity and catholicity of the faith, and for the centrality of Church and sacrament. But Calvinism couldn’t deliver it. Outside of Geneva, without the force of the state to impose one version, Calvinism itself splintered into factions. In her book Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism, historian Janice Knight details how the process unfolded very early in American Calvinism. 8
It is not surprising that by the eighteenth century, leading Calvinist Churchmen on both sides of the Atlantic had given up on the quest for complete unity. One new approach was to stress the subjective experience of “new birth” (itself a novel doctrine of Puritan origins) as the only necessary concern. The famous revivalist George Whitefield typified this view, going so far as to insist that Christ did not want agreement in other matters. He said:
It was best to preach the new birth, and the power of godliness, and not to insist so much on the form: for people would never be brought to one mind as to that; nor did Jesus Christ ever intend it.9
Since the eighteenth century, Calvinism has devolved more and more into a narrow set of questions about the nature of salvation. Indeed, in most people’s minds the word Calvinism implies only the doctrine of predestination. Calvin himself has become mainly a shadowy symbol, a myth that Evangelicals call upon only to support a spurious claim to historical continuity.
The greatest irony in my historical research was realizing that Evangelicalism, far from being the direct descendant of Calvin, actually represents the failure of Calvinism. Whereas Calvin spent his life in the quest for doctrinal unity, modern Evangelicalism is rooted in the rejection of that quest. Historian Alister McGrath notes that the term “Evangelical,” which has circulated in Christianity for centuries, took on its peculiar modern sense only in the twentieth century, with the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals (1942). This society was formed to allow coordinated public action on the part of disparate groups that agreed on “the new birth,” but disagreed on just about everything else.10
A Calvinist Discovers Catholicism
I grew up believing that Evangelicalism was “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” I learned from Protestant Church history that it was hardly older than Whitefield, and certainly not the faith of the Protestant Reformers. What to do? Should I go back to the sixteenth century and become an authentic Calvinist? I already knew that Calvin himself, for all his insistence on unity and authority, had been unable to deliver the goods. His own followers descended into anarchy and individualism.
I realized instead that Calvin was part of the problem. He had insisted on the importance of unity and authority, but had rejected any rational or consistent basis for that authority. He knew that Scripture totally alone, Scripture interpreted by each individual conscience, was a recipe for disaster. But his own claim to authority was perfectly arbitrary. Whenever he was challenged, he simply appealed to his own conscience, or to his subjective experience, but he denied that right to Bolsec and others. As a result, Calvin became proud and censorious, brutal with his enemies, and intolerant of dissent. In all my reading of Calvin, I don’t recall him ever apologizing for a mistake or admitting an error.
It eventually occurred to me that Calvin’s attitude contrasted sharply with what I had found in the greatest Catholic theologians. Many of them were saints, recognized for their heroic charity and humility. Furthermore, I knew from reading them, especially St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Francis de Sales, that they denied any personal authority to define doctrine. They deferred willingly, even joyfully, to the authority of Pope and council. They could maintain the biblical ideal of doctrinal unity (1 Corinthians 1:10), without claiming to be the source of that unity.
These saints also challenged the stereotypes about Catholics that I had grown up with. Evangelicals frequently assert that they are the only ones to have “a personal relationship with Christ.” Catholics, with their rituals and institutions, are supposed to be alienated from Christ and Scripture. I found instead men and women who were single-minded in their devotion to Christ and inebriated with His grace.
The Catholic theologian who had the greatest impact on me was undoubtedly St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). All of my life, I heard the claim that “the Early Church” had been Protestant and Evangelical. My seminary professors and even Calvin and Luther always pointed to St. Augustine as their great Early Church hero. When I finally dug into Augustine, however, I discovered a thorough-going Catholicism. Augustine loved Scripture and spoke profoundly about God’s grace, but he understood these in the fully Catholic sense. Augustine destroyed the final piece of my Evangelical view of history.
In the end, I began to see that everything good about Evangelicalism was already present in the Catholic Church – the warmth and devotion of Evangelical spirituality, the love of Scripture and even, to some extent, the Evangelical tolerance for diversity. Catholicism has always tolerated schools of thought, various theologies and different liturgies. But unlike Evangelicalism, the Catholic Church has a logical and consistent way to distinguish the essential from the non-essential. The Church’s Magisterium, established by Christ (Matthew 16:18; Matthew 28:18-20), has provided that source of unity that Calvin sought to replace.
One of the most satisfying things about my discovery of the Catholic Church is that it fully satisfied my desire for historical rootedness. I began to study history believing in that continuity of faith and trying desperately to find it. Even when I thought I had found it in the Reformation, I still had to contend with the enormous gulf of the Catholic Middle Ages. Now, thanks to what Calvin taught me, there are no more missing links. On November 16, 2003 I finally embraced the faith “once for all delivered to the Saints.” I entered the Catholic Church.
Paul claims the are "dead" to sin, and he calls them "saints." I don't think that reflects reality.
What he means by that is that God no longer remembers their sins; in fact, he never did since they were known to him before they even existed. Which make me wonder about blaspheming against the Holy Spirit? What's the consequence of that, a basement apartment in the heavenly condo instead of one with a view?
Do you believe that Pope Benedict XVI is a valid Pope
Yes.
Do you believe that Pope Benedict XVI is in union with the Catholic Church in his teachings?
In some things he is 180 degrees opposed to what the pre-Vatican II popes taught. The SSPX is at this moment having doctrinal discussion with the Vatican on the matter. The SSPX is not sedevacantes, neither are 99% of the traditionalists who have the same opinion as I stated above with regard to Vatican II (that on some doctrinal points it is opposed to tradition of 1960 years). That does not mean that 99% of the trads agree with me on every popint, just that they are not sedevacantes.
I have 5 children ages 8 and below, I don’t have the time to spoon feed an adult basic Catholic teaching. If you don’t know that a Catholic marriage is “till death do us part”, and can’t find a source, I can’t help you. You also don’t know what an annulment is, and I already told you how to find out. An annulment is not a divorce. I gave yopu more than enough information.
You have to be kidding me! I personally know several Catholics who were married (one was married six times), and they all go to church and receive communion.
We are talking about the Orthodox Churches allowing an Orthodox to be married in the Orthodox Church 3 times by an Orthodox priest. That is their doctrine.
The identical situation in the Catholic Church:
A married Catholic who marries another Catholic in the Catholic Church, can't remmarry a second time anywhere while his spouse is still alive or else he is excommunicated from the Catholic Church, they can't go to communion, because he is living in adultery, a MORTAL SIN.
Your acquaintance who married 6 times(???) likely married outside of the Catholic Church, and thus is not married in the eyes of the Church, he is LIVING in Adultery. I had a cousin who was married in the Catholic Church, he divorced his wife and remarried civilly, he went to communion, till people found out he was remarried. They told the priest and the priest told him that he could not come go to communion. He did not know. Those communions that he received had no efficacy sins he was in a state of mortal sin.
Here's the thing. If the Reformed elite cannot influence their salvation no matter what they do, then they are responsible for doing nothing. They can fornicate a thousand times a day and not influence their salvation whatsoever. They can rape and murder and cause widescale human misery and their status is never capable of changing. What reason do they to behave in a civilized, Christian manner? None.If the Reformed reprobate cannot influence their salvation no matter what they do, then they are responsible for doing nothing. They can be a Mother Teresa and daily save thousands of suffering people from dying; they can alleviate world hunger and bring the peace of God to the world and their status is never capable of changing. What reason do they to behave in a civilized, Christian manner? None.
The word antinomianism comes from two Greek words, anti, meaning "against"; and nomos, meaning "law." Antinomianism means “against the law.” Theologically, antinomianism is the belief that there are no moral laws God expects Christians to obey. Antinomianism takes a biblical teaching to an unbiblical conclusion. The biblical teaching is that Christians are not required to observe the Old Testament Law as a means of salvation. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, He fulfilled the Old Testament Law (Romans 10:4; Galatians 3:23-25; Ephesians 2:15). The unbiblical conclusion is that there is no moral law God expects Christians to obey.
The Apostle Paul dealt with the issue of antinomianism in Romans 6:1-2, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” The most frequent attack on the doctrine of salvation by grace alone is that it encourages sin. People may wonder, “If I am saved by grace and all my sins are forgiven, why not sin all I want?” That thinking is not the result of true conversion because true conversion yields a greater desire to obey, not a lesser one. God’s desire—and our desire when we are regenerated by His Spirit—is that we strive to not sin, out of gratitude for His grace and forgiveness. God has given us His infinitely gracious gift in salvation through Jesus (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). Our response is to consecrate our lives to Him out of love, worship, and gratitude for what He has done for us (Romans 12:1-2).
Antinomianism is unbiblical in that it misapplies the meaning of God’s gracious favor.
A second reason that antinomianism is unbiblical is that there is a moral law God expects us to obey. 1 John 5:3 tells us, “This is love for God: to obey His commands. And His commands are not burdensome.” What is this law God expects us to obey? It is the law of Christ – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40). No, we are not under the Old Testament Law. Yes, we are under the law of Christ. The law of Christ is not an extensive list of legal codes. It is a law of love. If we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will do nothing to displease Him. If we love our neighbors as ourselves, we will do nothing to harm them. Obeying the law of Christ is not a requirement to earn or maintain salvation. The law of Christ is what God expects of a Christian.
Antinomianism is contrary to everything the Bible teaches. God expects us to live a life of morality, integrity, and love. Jesus Christ freed us from the burdensome commands of the Old Testament Law, but that is not a license to sin, but rather a covenant of grace. We are to strive to overcome sin and cultivate righteousness, depending on the Holy Spirit to help us. The fact that we are graciously freed from the demands of the Old Testament Law should result in our living our lives in obedience to the law of Christ. 1 John 2:3-6 declares, “We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His commands. The man who says, ‘I know Him,’ but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys His word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.” http://www.gotquestions.org/antinomianism.html
I never said changing churchs changed a persons salvation.
See Post 285
An annulment is not a divorce. An annulment was granted for marriages that never took, because the sacrament had no efficacy because for example:
- A person was forced to marry. - One of the parties had already been married in the Church before, and had hidden the information - One of the parties did not want to have children - the marriage was never consummated
In other words the sacrament had no efficacy because the parties basically married under false pretenses (or it was never consummated). That is why there were only 35-50 per year Worldwide.
The post Vatican II 50,000-90,000 annulments in just the USA (USA despite having only 5% of the worldwide population of Catholics, grants 80% of the worldwide annulments)is an aberration in history, like the Arian heresy it will be corrected in time. It is not the normal operating procedure of the first 1960 years of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the Orthodox three marriages is their normal operating procedure from day one.
MarkBsnr answered: A broken home is no problem to you? And you call yourself Catholic?
You are right, it is a problem for the children and all the people that come in contact with the divorcees. It is a scandal. On the other hand, someimes it is for the good of the children (a drunkard wife beater). Either way, it is not a sin to separate/divorce if the two people just can't live together. There may be though, other sins related to the separation, like: neglect of home, causing hard feeling, revenge, refusing reconciliation, detraction, rash judgements... to name a few. BUT the separation is not directly a sin.
Remarrying is adultery and would be a mortal sin.
Do not finesse the Religion Forum guidelines.
It was Markbsnr who wrote that “finesse”. I was just copying it to you and highlighting it.
Do not finesse the Religion Forum guidelines.
Yes. Do you have anything else to offer?
Google : The indissolubility of marriage
God Bless,
OF THE UNITY AND INDISSOLUBILITY OF MARRIAGE
Pope John Paul II
GENERAL AUDIENCE OF 5 SEPTEMBER
At the General Audience in St Peter’s Square on 5 September, attended by more than 20,000 people, Pope John Paul II gave the following address.
1. For some time now preparations have been going on for the next ordinary assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will take place in Rome in autumn of next year. The theme of the Synod, “The role of the Christian family,” concentrates our attention on this community of human and Christian life, which has been fundamental from the beginning. The Lord Jesus used precisely this expression “from the beginning” in the talk about marriage, reported in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark. We wish to raise the question what this word “beginning” means. We also wish to clarify why Christ referred to the “beginning” on that occasion and, therefore, we propose a more precise analysis of the relative text of Holy Scripture.
Clear-cut responses
2. During the talk with the Pharisees, who asked him the question about the indissolubility of marriage, Jesus Christ referred twice to the “beginning.” The talk took place in the following way:
“And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’ He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.’ They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?’ He said to them, ‘For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so’” (Mt 19:3ff., cf. also Mk 10:2ff.).
Christ did not accept the discussion at the level at which his interlocutors tried to introduce it. In a certain sense he did not approve of the dimension that they tried to give the problem. He avoided getting caught up in juridico-casuistical controversies. On the contrary, he referred twice to “the beginning.” Acting in this way, he made a clear reference to the relative words in Genesis, which his interlocutors too knew by heart. From those words of the ancient revelation, Christ drew the conclusion and the talk ended.
From the beginning
3. “The beginning” means, therefore, that which Genesis speaks about. Christ quoted Genesis 1:27 in summary form: “In the beginning the Creator made them male and female.” The original passage reads textually as follows: “God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Subsequently, the Master referred to Genesis 2:24: “Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Quoting these words almost in full, Christ gave them an even more explicit normative meaning (since it could be supported that in Genesis they express de facto statements: “leaves. cleaves. they become one flesh”). The normative meaning is plausible since Christ did not confine himself only to the quotation itself, but added: “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” That “let not man put asunder” is decisive. In the light of these words of Christ, Genesis 2:24 sets forth the principle of the unity and indissolubility of marriage as the very content of the Word of God, expressed in the most ancient revelation.
The eternal law
4. It could be maintained at this point that the problem is exhausted, that Jesus Christ’s words confirm the eternal law formulated and set up by God from “the beginning” as the creation of man. It might also seem that the Master, confirming this original law of the Creator, did nothing but establish exclusively his own normative meaning, referring to the authority itself of the first Legislator. However, that significant expression “from the beginning,” repeated twice, clearly induced his interlocutors to reflect on the way in which man was formed in the mystery of creation, precisely as “male and female,” in order to understand correctly the normative sense of the words of Genesis. This is no less valid for the people of today than for those of that time. Therefore, in the present study, considering all this, we must put ourselves precisely in the position of Christ’s interlocutors today.
Preparation for the Synod
5. During the following Wednesday reflections at the general audiences, we will try, as Christ’s interlocutors today, to dwell at greater length on St. Matthew’s words (19:3ff.). To respond to the indication, inserted in them by Christ, we will try to penetrate toward that “beginning,” to which he referred in such a significant way. Thus we will follow from a distance the great work which participants in the forthcoming Synod of Bishops are undertaking on this subject just now. Together with them, numerous groups of pastors and laymen are taking part in it, feeling especially responsible with regard to the role which Christ assigned to marriage and the Christian family, the role that he has always given, and still gives in our age, in the modern world.
The cycle of reflections we are beginning today, with the intention of continuing it during the following Wednesday meetings, also has the purpose, among other things, of accompanying from afar, so to speak, the work of preparation for the Synod. However, it will not touch its subject directly, but will turn our attention to the deep roots from which this subject springs.
Taken from:
L’Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
10 September 1979, page 1
L’Osservatore Romano is the newspaper of the Holy See.
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I am telling you what the Church believes, and so do you.
since you have yet to sight one traditional or scriptural source for the Orthodox allowing it's members to marry 3 times in the Orthodox Church while their first two spouses are still alive
The Church has the authority to bind and loosen, and to forgive. That is all the scriptural reference needed and, might I say, between a Catholic and an Orthodox, it is rather redundant to repeat.
That was my simple question
And that is my simple answer.
The Orthodox have been doing that, according to you, since like the beginning of the Greek Orthodox separation from the Catholic Church
I do not want to get drawn into the tug-of-war who separated from the Catholic Church. On another thread, gladly. Going back to your statement, I never said that. I said that the Eastern Church recognized that people fail, resulting essentially in separation, no matter what you call it.
The Church is a hospital not a courtroom. The fact that Latins made it into a courtroom only shows how unrecognizable the Latin Church has become in its phronema.
The Orthodox place the well being of the soul above the rules. The Latin Church, like the Pharisees, would rather have the man drown on a Sabbath then do the "work" of saving him by breaking the Sabbath law.
As I said, in order to tend to her flock's spiritual health, both our Churches have found a way to deal with the reality of this world by allowing the innocent party to remarry.
Your Church did it in such a way that it looks legally acceptable. The Eastern Church did it as she always has, by compassion, disregarding the Sabbath so to say, and placing the duty to do everything to save a soul first and above all rules utilizing the authority granted her by the Lord.
That said, the Orthodox Church still considers remarriage while the ex (guilty) spouse is still living a sin and would prefer that the innocent party remain chaste if possible.
As for your endless harping about three marriages being a dogma, again I don' know what your Church defines as dogma, but in the Eastern tradition canons are not dogma. Divorce and remarriage falls canonically under oikonomia.
The three marriages is a hypothetical possibility. It was meant for widowers and widows in extreme cases. I would like to see one instance where the Church granted third marriage to someone who received two divorces and at least one of the exs was still alive.
Unlike the Orthodox the Latins would allow a windowed partner to remarry endless number of times and that is okay. In the first ,millennium, only the Ecumenical Patriarchate exercised limited number of marriages, a discipline peculiar to that Church.
If you feel there is no point in continuing this discussion, you are free to end it any time. There is no need to put me on notice.
If there is an ontological change that takes place by accepting Christ, namely that "true conversion yields a greater desire to obey, not a lesser one," then this is true of Catholics and Protestants alike. So what did church-swapping accomplish onytologically and soteriologically?
I also wander why then did Jesus give a commandment? The way Paul rpesents it, you would follow them "naturally" once you are "regenerated."
And if there is only a lesser desire to sin, then no one is "dead" in sin, as Paul claims.
The Orthodox allow two divorces, and three marriages for people previously married two times in the orthodox Church. who's first two spouses are still alive. A widower 's spouse is no longer alive, "till death do us part", parted the marriage, they can marry again.
A Catholic widower has no living spouse, therefore, can marry again in the Catholic Church. We are not talking about widowers.
The Orthodox allow two divorces, and three marriages for people previously married two times in the orthodox Church, while the first two spouses are still alive.
A widower 's spouse is no longer alive, "till death do us part", parted the marriage, they can marry again.
A Catholic widower has no living spouse, therefore, can marry again in the Catholic Church. We are not talking about widowers.
You are totally winging it and incoherent.
The Orthodox allow two divorces, and three marriages for people previously married two times in the orthodox Church, while the first two spouses are still alive.
A widower 's spouse is no longer alive, "till death do us part", parted the marriage, they can marry again.
A Catholic widower has no living spouse, therefore, can marry again in the Catholic Church. We are not talking about widowers.
By sanctioning adultery, they place the comfort of the body here on earth ahead of the eternal soul. That marriage is indissoluble is an eternal law from God, from the beginning! Your Orthodox Churches is no different than the Protestants, changing Gods law to suit man.
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