Posted on 11/07/2013 10:07:49 PM PST by RBStealth
The Reformation isn’t over. But Protestantism is, or should be.
When I studied at Cambridge, I discovered that English Evangelicals define themselves over against the Church of England. Whatever the C of E is, they ain’t. What I’m calling “Protestantism” does the same with Roman Catholicism. Protestantism is a negative theology; a Protestant is a not-Catholic. Whatever Catholics say or do, the Protestant does and says as close to the opposite as he can.
Mainline churches are nearly bereft of “Protestants.” If you want to spot one these days, your best bet is to visit the local Baptist or Bible church, though you can find plenty of Protestants among conservative Presbyterians too.
Protestantism ought to give way to Reformational catholicism. Like a Protestant, a Reformational catholic rejects papal claims, refuses to venerate the Host, and doesn’t pray to Mary or the saints; he insists that salvation is a sheer gift of God received by faith and confesses that all tradition must be judged by Scripture, the Spirit’s voice in the conversation that is the Church.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
“The university was not the Church. Both were Catholic, but only one was the Church.”
Sorry, but there was no separation of church and state in the 1500s. Nor did I cite the Sorbonne as an authoritative statement of church policy, but as an example of the measures Catholics, operating in accordance with the Council of Trent, took to suppress vernacular translations - and WHY they did so.
If you think the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne did not operate as an arm of the church, you need to study history some more. There was no such thing as a secular government in Europe in the 1400s and 1500s. There is a reason people fled to America in search of religious freedom. Protestant or Catholic, the governments of Europe acted IAW their state church - the C of E in England after Henry VIII, or the Catholic Church in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, etc.
The Sorbonne Index of prohibited publications was the act of the Catholic Church, for the reasons given, to suppress vernacular translations (and a great many other works, many secular) by the power of the state. Remember, this was the time of events such as the Massacre of Mérindol (1545), done with the approval of both the King of France and Pope Paul III.
One cannot draw a distinction between church and state when none of the principle actors did.
Suppose a fireman “I know the way to escape the fire. Trust in me, and you will be saved from the fire. Follow me.”
Who is saved?
The person who obeys the fireman, or the person who says, “I don’t need to leave the burning building. All I need to do is trust the fireman and be saved. If I left, I would be saving myself. So I’m going to sit here.”
Yes, Jesus said he that believes in Him is saved. He also said that if we believe in Him, we will do what He commands of us. He also said “Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of His blood, you shall not have life within you.” And y’all’re sitting in the middle of the fire saying, “he just means it figuratively.”
>> Sorry, but there was no separation of church and state in the 1500s. <<
Wrong!
The Papal Inquisition was created in 1230. Its intent was to claim jurisdiction over all religious offenses, such as heresy, so that the secular authorities could not use allegations of religious offenses to imprison, harass, suppress or execute political opponents who did not otherwise violate the law. For instance, British kings claims a right to rape newlyweds, and if you opposed that right, you were called a heretic; the Inquisition gave church authorities to assert that such a notion was counter to the Christian/Catholic faith.
No-one who denied being a Christian was subject to the Papal Inquisition, or any of the other Catholic inquisitions. For instance, the Spanish Inquisition was set up to deal with the problem of Muslims pretending to be Catholic to subvert the Catholic Church, yet overt Muslims were allowed to be judges, bankers, government officials, etc., Even Columbus’ navigator was a Muslim.
Once cleared of heresy, the state courts could not oppress the accused. That in no way meant heretics couldn’t prosecute heretics, merely that they had to do so on grounds other than heresy: The Arnoldites of Italy were also political insurrectionists; Jan Hus denied state authority to conduct war. In both cases, the Church officials found that their actions were not justified by religion, and, once found to be heretics, they were turned over to the state for prosecution on civil grounds.
There were, however, cases where the separation was taken down, most notable the Spanish Inquisition, which was done to counter the forced conversion of Spain to Islam. Although it DID apply only to those claiming to be Christian, it treated secretly being a Muslim as a crime against the state.
Much confusion over this stems from oppression born solely out the imagination of anti-Catholics: Galileo’s grand punishment was to wear a silly hat for a day and live in a beautiful estate. He was ordered not to publish his works, but was allowed to do so anyway, precisely because the order held no civil authority.
OK, I’ll admit that I don’t even know what to make out of words like “kajgw,” “o&ti,” “Petro?” and “th’/.” I often warn against tools like Blueletterbible because they don’t actually say what the Greek says, but which Greek word in their dictionary the spoken word is closest to. Thus, Kekaritoumene (”having been filled with grace”) gets simplified down to karitou (”gift”). And I appreciate that that is trying to use the accurate tenses of each word, but its using conventions I’m wholly unfamiliar with.
Actually, let me clarify: Blueletterbible is a great tool for certain purposes. It is no way to study Greek, however. Nor is any Greek concordance.
Right... just got a delayed popup offering to switch the text into the appropriate Greek font... Now I’m rolling with you. OK, the key words here are petros and petra: same word, only petra is NPF, while petros is NSM. And taute, which means, “this,” what has previously been mentioned, or what is visible and shown. If Jesus had meant to contrast Petros and Petra, the use of the word Taute makes no grammatical sense.
“Sola gratis" can mean two different things, but neither your response here or the rest of your post deals with the fact that you characterized sola fide as being rejected by Catholics because faith accompanies works, which is what Reformers actually taught, but not that the effect was the cause or basis for stultification.
Lutherans now claim that Luther didn’t mean many of the things he said literally.
Actually one of the multitudes of things Catholics disagree about is what Luther and Reformers meant, and whether the anathemas apply to Prots today. See The Roman Catholic Perspective of Martin Luther (Part Two)
did Luther correct the misunderstandings? Did he watch his loose tongue? Just the opposite! He began to say, “Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (:
Another one. Once again, you hurt your own credibility by parroting such papal polemics, and rather than quote Luther from dubious sources or without examining context or understanding the polemical language, which superficial skeptics with an agenda do (expressing indignation that Jesus commended an unjust steward, and call a women a dog, and Paul relegated all the Cretans to being lying gluttons), you would do well to research here before pasting another quote.
Rather than than informal argumentation with its hyperbole, here is some of what Luther actually taught in sermons.
In his Introduction to Romans, Luther stated that saving faith is, a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever...Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire! [http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt]
This is what I have often said, if faith be true, it will break forth and bear fruit. If the tree is green and good, it will not cease to blossom forth in leaves and fruit. It does this by nature. I need not first command it and say: Look here, tree, bear apples. For if the tree is there and is good, the fruit will follow unbidden. If faith is present works must follow.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:340-341]
“We must therefore most certainly maintain that where there is no faith there also can be no good works; and conversely, that there is no faith where there are no good works. Therefore faith and good works should be so closely joined together that the essence of the entire Christian life consists in both.” [Martin Luther, as cited by Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963], 246, footnote 99]
The Westminster Confession of Faith states:
Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love. [Westminster Confession of Faith, CHAPTER XI. Of Justification. http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/wcf.htm]
As for Calvin, what can be said of a man who tried to ban the celebration of mass?
Neither Luther or Calvin were much my mentors, but what Rome has turned the Lord supper into is not Scriptural.
Very well said, dear friend.
The spirit of the protestant reformation and the enlightenment is one of division that has built more division against true love of neighbor.
God Bless you for the difficult work you do in upholding the faith in such laziness of history by those who oppose you
Try telling it to William Tyndale...or Thomas More, even.
William Tyndale was arrested at the request of the Protestant King of England by an emperor Charles who was Catholic but eager to retain good relations with the Protestant king and was bound by the treaty of Cambrai; hence, Tyndale cried for the conversion of the King of England, not for the Emperor of Germany.
Thomas More? Really? The Thomas More who was tried for insurrection for being tied to Elizabeth Barton, but produced a letter instructing her NOT to muddle religion and state? The Thomas More who happily acknowledged Queen Anne Bolyn as rightful queen, but was hanged because he would not recognize the King’s authority over the church? The Thomas More who refused, on pain of death, to reveal his personal, religious objections to the King’s marriage for fear that it might violate the Statute of Praemunire? If ever there were a case study of a Catholic refusing to mix religion and state, it was Thomas More.
As noted, the Catholic church and the German Free (Lutheran) Church have come to a concordant on the doctrine of the means of salvation. My point is not to degrade Luther; I fully realize that he is not regarded as infallible by any Protestant, and so any Protestant can disavow anything Luther has said or done without damaging their creed.
My only point is to clarify what the Catholic Church was and was not condemning. The Church reasonably understood Luther to mean certain things. One might think he would deny such matters. Or even watch his tongue after the horrific bloodshed of the German Peasant’s War was reasonably attributable to the peasants taking at face value his statements on the invalidity of church power... and then the nobility slaughtering them by the millions because they took literally his claims that peasants were born to be cannon fodder.
It’s beside the point I’m making if he didn’t mean these things, and I understand that modern Lutherans are neither fools nor liars for claiming he didn’t. BUt if you’re saying that the Catholic Church cannot hold salvation by grace because that’s what the reformers believed in and the reformers fought with the Catholic church, then it’s important to clarify that the Catholic church’s problem was not with the modern understanding of salvation by faith alone, but with these other statements which Luther did, in fact, make.
Did Luther make statements contrary to those that offended Rome? Absolutely! He would hardly be the first politician to speak out of both sides of his mouth, or to change his mind. One moment, he was calling the Turks the hand of God and condemning those who resist them. The next he was condemning them as worthy of certain death. But wait, the Turks could tie up the Catholic princes in Germany? Let’s here it for Mohammed!!! Cried all the Lutheran princes!
“I reserve my faith for what the Bible says”.
Oh you mean that Catholic document called the Bible, or are you referring to something else.
My point was that there was no separation of church and state. Tyndale was killed by the state when the Catholic Church called him a heretic. More was killed for secular purposes in what was really a religious matter. In the 1500s, in Europe, there was no realistic separation of church and state. The Pilgrims leaving Protestant England did so for religious freedom from the State Church, which was the C of E at that point.
“Oh you mean that Catholic document called the Bible...”
Considering that most of the canon was established by Jews before the birth of Christ, I wouldn’t exactly call it a “Catholic” document.
I will only note this: the level of faith some Roman Catholics put in the traditions and creeds of Roman Catholicism certainly makes Roman Catholicism appear more like a cult than a sect.
Tyndale was certainly regarded as a heretic, but that’s not what got him killed.
But as to your larger point: There certainly was not the modern conception of the agnostic state. But I was taking you to mean that the 16th century saw some great quantum leap of innovation, when the truth was that the separation of church and state actually backslid considerably from what had existed before. And it’s an important point to me, because the Catholic church gets saddled with all of the sins of the state, prior to the reformation: how often the Papal Inquisition is thought to be the doer of the foul deeds it was founded to oppose!
What had been lacking before the Reformation wasn’t so much a separation between Church and State, but an assumption that the Christianity meant Catholicism/Orthodoxy. If you were a non-Christian, the societies were typically fairly libertarian compared to 3 centuries later. But once you claimed to be a Christian, you fell under the authority of the Catholic church; heretics were seen as misleading people into damnation, tricking people who were trying to follow Christ into instead following evil. But even as such, ecclesiastical “crimes” were met with ecclesiastical “punishments” which often didn’t mean much unless you actually did believe in certain Christian doctrines: The Church condemned anyone who published or read Galileo’s writings. But what of it?
“The new heaven and new earth are at the end of time (2 Peter 3:10)”
Peter also wrote that “the end of all things was near.” (IPeter 4:7)
He wrote that to the Jewish diaspora living during his day. (IPeter 1:1), not to us. So do you reject Peter’s words, the man whom you view to be the first pope???
“Sorry, but there was no separation of church and state in the 1500s. “
Of course there was. If there was no separation, then there never would have been a Protestant Revolution. Secular princes supported the Protestant movement. If there were no separation between Church and state then there would have been no secular princes. Everyone knows they existed and had real authority.
“Nor did I cite the Sorbonne as an authoritative statement of church policy,”
Really? And you haven’t been suggesting that the Sorbonne and the Church are one and the same? Seriously?
“but as an example of the measures Catholics, operating in accordance with the Council of Trent, took to suppress vernacular translations - and WHY they did so.”
And that doesn’t work either. Now, I want you to pay close attention to what I’m about to say because this is indicative of your whole effort so far. The Sorbonne index you cited, according to your own source, is from 1544. The Council of Trent didn’t start until December 1545! That means - unless you’re claiming the theology faculty of the Sorbonne had invented time travel - that your claim is simply impossible. What an embarrassing error.
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