How to Think About Luther?

Crisis Magazine ^ | July 12, 2017 | James Kalb

[ebb tide]

How to Think About Luther?

James Kalb

Traditionally, Catholics have viewed Luther as a heresiarch, and the Lutheran break from Rome as a religious and civilizational catastrophe. More recently, in line with current ecumenical and pastoral initiatives, that view has softened.

The softening has been quite noticeable during the current pontificate. The pope recently took part in a joint liturgy with the Church of Sweden to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of Luther’s rebellion. He has also suggested informally that a Lutheran married to a Catholic might legitimately decide to receive communion from a Catholic priest, and that disputes between Catholics and Lutherans over the doctrine of justification, the basic point at issue in Luther’s split with Rome, are now a thing of the past.

More generally, some papal language regarding law and mercy suggests movement away from the Catholic view that grace enables us to overcome our sins toward Luther’s view that it simply frees us from their consequences. Examples include the comment in Amoris Laetitia that

conscience can … recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking … while yet not fully the objective ideal.

So if you think it’s all you can do, that’s probably all God is looking for. Luther’s pecca fortiter, “sin boldly,” was based on a similar line of thought.

Are these moves in the right direction? The Church is hierarchical, and it is the pope and other clergy who are charged with teaching doctrine and determining appropriate pastoral and ecumenical efforts. Even so, laymen can hardly avoid forming their own views, and many Catholics find that recent ecumenical efforts have done more harm than good, as has a tendency to confuse “pastoral” with “accepting that people do whatever they do.”

Laymen have the right and even obligation to present these concerns. The issues matter a great deal, and not simply for churchly reasons. Our secular authorities are convinced they have the solution to all social and political problems, at least in principle, and can put it into effect through a global managed system that recognizes nothing human outside it, no authoritative God above it, no enduring human nature beneath it, and no significant history behind it other than the history of its own coming into being. Everything is a social construction, and they will do the constructing.

The project is unfounded, overreaching, and destructive, and Catholics should oppose it. But the ecumenical and interfaith movements, along with proposals for loosening sacramental discipline to accept common practices in the name of “accompaniment,” support it by sidelining specific religious principle. They turn it into something like the British monarchy, which lends historical depth and dignity to a modern utilitarian bureaucracy but does not affect its substance. So those who view current political and social trends as anti-Catholic and anti-human have an additional reason for concern regarding ecumenical and pastoral tendencies in the Church that support them.

Concern regarding the changing Catholic attitude toward Luther is all the more justified because he’s the man who initiated the Protestant split from Rome, a fundamental event in the emergence of the modern world, and a variety of liberal and radical movements have claimed him as an inspiration. So if we are troubled by the trend toward a global society organized through and through on wholly secular and increasingly intolerant principles, and want to understand where the trend comes from, we should know something about his thought and deeds and their consequences.

A recently published collection of essays put out by the Roman Forum, an organization founded by Dietrich von Hildebrand, can help. Luther and His Progeny: 500 Years of Protestantism & Its Consequences for Church, State, and Society includes pieces by a dozen European and American scholars of varying backgrounds, each with his own outlook and concerns, but all troubled by the man, the movement he launched, and current efforts to enlist them, along with Catholicism, in a grand scheme of political, social, and religious unification. Each essay is independent of the others, but collectively they cover the basic issues that led Luther to reject the Church, as well as the effects of his rebellion on European thought and society.

Taken together they present the picture of a revolution in religion, politics, law, ethics, economics, and even the natural sciences, the effects of which profoundly shape our present world. At bottom, what seems to have led Luther to break with Rome was his overwhelming sense of guilt over his inability to keep the moral law. He was in a mess, and the Catholic road of humility, penitence, forgiveness, sacrament, grace, and sanctification didn’t seem to be working for him, so he decided that the world itself is one huge irreversible mess. Man is totally depraved, reason a snare, free will an illusion, and the Church can do nothing and so is fundamentally useless. To make matters worse, God himself is willful, incomprehensible, and even self-contradictory, since he is good but makes man incapable of anything but evil.

Under such circumstances what do we do, if it makes sense to ask the question when we have no inclination or ability to think or choose rightly? Basically, Luther’s answer was to rely wholly on the mercy of Christ, who might—or might not—choose to cover up our sins and accept us as justified even though we would inevitably remain as corrupt as ever.

These are not reasonable views. How, for example, is a God worthy of love, worship, and trust who condemns to eternal torment sinners he made incapable of acting otherwise, but then arbitrarily chooses some, who are no better than the others, for forgiveness and eternal bliss? The best that can be done for such views intellectually, one of the essayists suggests, is to view them as a precursor of German idealism, which treats contradiction as fundamental to reality and its dialectical resolution as the basis of the self-construction of the Absolute. At the transcendent level that means, as Luther put it, that “God must first become the devil before he becomes God.” And at the human level, it means faith goes through radically different stages, with the transitions involving overwhelming temptations to unbelief and blasphemy, and ultimate resolution not possible in this world.

Some people think that sort of explanation makes sense, others don’t. A more psychological and likely more comprehensible approach that some have recently proposed is to portray him as a “mystic of mercy,” overwhelmed by the infinitude of divine grace, whose words cannot be taken literally. (Muslims take the same approach with their own mystics, whose words are rarely compatible with orthodox Islam.)

That approach may explain something of the man, but not the movement he started: people don’t look to the incoherent outbursts of mystics for practical tips on the reform of Church, State, and doctrine, but that’s exactly what Luther offered, and what people took from him.

The specifics are complicated. His thought wasn’t coherent, so people took from it what suited them. At bottom, though, denying the practical effectiveness of religion tended strongly to liberate secular affairs from religious concerns, and destroy the authority and the sacramental structure of the Church. And that, it appears, was the reason for the success of his rebellion. By insisting on the irrelevance of divine law to what men actually do, Luther enabled secular powers to shake off the authority of the Church, set themselves up as absolute within their domains, and incidentally enrich themselves and their supporters with the property that an ineffectual Church could no longer justify possessing.

All of which remains relevant today. Secular authorities still don’t like religious limitations, so if a contemporary religious leader wants to exchange scorn for adulation, all he has to do is ignore distinctions, loosen restrictions, and proclaim mercy without penitence or emendation of life. Neither talent, virtue, nor rational coherence is needed, only a willingness to go along in order to get along. And there are many high-ranking churchmen who are eager to accept the deal.

Editor’s note: Pictured above is Pope Francis with the General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation Rev. Martin Junge (right) and the President of the Lutheran World Federation Bishop Munib Younan (far left) attending an ecumenical prayer service at the Lutheran cathedral in Lund, Sweden, Oct. 31. (Photo credit: CNS photo/Paul Haring)

[Elsie]

Unfortunately the “me and my Bible” theology has done more harm to Christianity than all the heathens and Mooslims have done throughout history.

Mighty bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!

[Elsie]

The same is true of the Mormons, I see no acknowledgement of some of their uglier episodes, all I see is a rather put-upon attitude that only they have been persecuted.

They learned well from the Catholics; I think.

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The

DOCTRINE AND COVENANTS

OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

SECTION 71

Revelation given to Joseph Smith the Prophet and Sidney Rigdon, at Hiram, Ohio, December 1, 1831. HC 1: 238–239. The Prophet had continued to translate the Bible with Sidney Rigdon as his scribe until this revelation was received, at which time it was temporarily laid aside so as to enable them to fulfill the instruction given herein. The brethren were to go forth to preach in order to allay the unfriendly feelings that had developed against the Church as a result of the publication of some newspaper articles by Ezra Booth, who had apostatized.

1–4, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon are sent forth to proclaim the gospel; 5–11, Enemies of the saints shall be confounded.

1 Behold, thus saith the Lord unto you my servants Joseph Smith, Jun., and Sidney Rigdon, that the time has verily come that it is necessary and expedient in me that you should open your mouths in proclaiming my gospel, the things of the kingdom, expounding the mysteries thereof out of the scriptures, according to that portion of Spirit and power which shall be given unto you, even as I will.

2 Verily I say unto you, proclaim unto the world in the regions round about, and in the church also, for the space of a season, even until it shall be made known unto you.

3 Verily this is a mission for a season, which I give unto you.

4 Wherefore, labor ye in my vineyard. Call upon the inhabitants of the earth, and bear record, and prepare the way for the commandments and revelations which are to come.

5 Now, behold this is wisdom; whoso readeth, let him understand and receive also;

6 For unto him that receiveth it shall be given more abundantly, even power.

7 Wherefore, confound your enemies; call upon them to meet you both in public and in private; and inasmuch as ye are faithful their shame shall be made manifest.

8 Wherefore, let them bring forth their strong reasons against the Lord.

9 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you—there is no weapon that is formed against you shall prosper;

10 And if any man lift his voice against you he shall be confounded in mine own due time.

11 Wherefore, keep my commandments; they are true and faithful. Even so. Amen.

 

The Official Scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
© 2006 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.
Rights and use information. Privacy policy.

[Elsie]

As is surely true, PRIDE GOETH BEFORE THE FALL!

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Therefore, if anyone says that it is not by the institution of Christ the lord himself (that is to say, by divine law) that blessed Peter should have perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole Church; or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema.

--Vatican 1, Ses. 4, Cp. 1

[Elsie]

At this juncture, you’ve evidently never read Martin Luther’s scripturally referenced diatribe against the Jews.

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To some the beauty of Psalm 139 is shattered by these words:

O that Thou wouldst slay the wicked, O God; depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed. For they speak against Thee wickedly, and Thine enemies take Thy name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate Thee, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against Thee? I hate them with the utmost hatred; they have become my enemies (Ps. 139:19-22).

[RegulatorCountry]

I’ve always been somewhat amused that King James English is invariably what is spoken by Mormon angels and Mormon prophets, in the 1800’s. It does have a certain majesty to it, a certain poetic beauty and power, but it’s about two centuries out of sync, there.

[Elsie]

Oceania had always been at war with; uh; EastOrtho.

[Elsie]

There’s obsessive, pathological hate shining through on this thread, but it isn’t coming from Metmom.

(Catholics; take a short break.)

And have a look at what some neo-Luthers have said:

 

 

Orson Pratt proclaimed: "Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the 'whore of Babylon' whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent" (The Seer, p. 255).

 

 

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Questions put to Joseph Smith: "'Do you believe the Bible?' [Smith:]'If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does, for there are none of the religious sects of the day that do'. When asked 'Will everybody be damned, but Mormons'? [Smith replied] 'Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 119).

Joseph Smith: "for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible" (from Pearl of Great Price 1:12). "What is it that inspires professors of Christianity generally with a hope of salvation? It is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the devil, by which he deceives the whole world" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.270).

 

 

 

Brigham Young stated this repeatedly: "When the light came to me I saw that all the so-called Christian world was grovelling in darkness" (Journal of Discourses 5:73); "The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God" (Journal of Discourses 8:171); "With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world" (Journal of Discourses 8:199); "And who is there that acknowledges [God's] hand? ...You may wander east, west, north, and south, and you cannot find it in any church or government on the earth, except the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (Journal of Discourses , vol. 6, p.24); "Should you ask why we differ from other Christians, as they are called, it is simply because they are not Christians as the New Testament defines Christianity" (Journal of Discourses 10:230).

 

 

 

 

Orson Pratt also said: "This great apostasy commenced about the close of the first century of the Christian era, and it has been waxing worse and worse from then until now" (Journal of Discourses , vol.18, p.44) and: "But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of people Christian Churches, because they profess to be ...But there has been a long apostasy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance" (Journal of Discourses , 18:172).

 

 

President John Taylor stated: "Christianity...is a perfect pack of nonsense...the devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the Christianity of the nineteenth century." (Journal of Discourses , vol. 6, p.167); "Where shall we look for the true order or authority of God? It cannot be found in any nation of Christendom." (Journal of Discourses , 10:127).

 

 

 

James Talmage said: "A self-suggesting interpretation of history indicates that there has been a great departure from the way of salvation as laid down by the Savior, a universal apostasy from the Church of Christ". (A Study of the Articles of Faith, p.182).

 

 

 

President Joseph Fielding Smith said: "Doctrines were corrupted, authority lost, and a false order of religion took the place of the gospel of Jesus Christ, just as it had been the case in former dispensations, and the people were left in spiritual darkness." (Doctrines of Salvation, p.266). "For hundreds of years the world was wrapped in a veil of spiritual darkness, until there was not one fundamental truth belonging to the place of salvation ...Joseph Smith declared that in the year 1820 the Lord revealed to him that all the 'Christian' churches were in error, teaching for commandments the doctrines of men" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, p.282).

 

 

 

More recent statements by apostle Bruce McConkie are also very clear: "Apostasy was universal...And this darkness still prevails except among those who have come to a knowledge of the restored gospel" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol 3, p.265); "Thus the signs of the times include the prevailing apostate darkness in the sects of Christendom and in the religious world in general" (The Millennial Messiah, p.403); "a perverted Christianity holds sway among the so-called Christians of apostate Christendom" (Mormon Doctrine, p.132); "virtually all the millions of apostate Christendom have abased themselves before the mythical throne of a mythical Christ whom they vainly suppose to be a spirit essence who is incorporeal uncreated, immaterial and three-in-one with the Father and Holy Spirit" (Mormon Doctrine, p.269); "Gnosticism is one of the great pagan philosophies which antedated Christ and the Christian Era and which was later commingled with pure Christianity to form the apostate religion that has prevailed in the world since the early days of that era." (Mormon Doctrine, p.316).

 

 

 

President George Q. Cannon said: "After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon" (Gospel Truth, p.324).

 

 

President Wilford Woodruff stated: "the Gospel of modern Christendom shuts up the Lord, and stops all communication with Him. I want nothing to do with such a Gospel, I would rather prefer the Gospel of the dark ages, so called" (Journal of Discourses , vol. 2, p.196).

[Elsie]

No, Dr. Freud, I simply feel the LCMS’ curriculum is willfully negligent when it excludes historical facts regarding full scope of what its ICON wrote.

Did you reveal all of your warts and faults to your future wife while wooing her?

[Elsie]

Yank harder on the tiller. It seems to be stuck.

[Elsie]

[Elsie]

[RegulatorCountry]

Oh snap, I forgot about the magic salamander. I wonder if (I’m going to assume a gender here) he spoke all fancy-like in thees and thous, too?

[Elsie]

I do know that she is on every thread related to Catholicism (except caucus threads) with lying, snarky, bitter attacks on (her cartoon version of) Catholicism.

Please.

Allow me to soothe some of your pain...

---

 

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The 15 promises of Mary

(Given to St. Dominic and Blessed Alan de la Roche)

1	Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive powerful graces.
2.	I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary.
3.	The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies
4.	It will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of people from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.
5.	The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall not perish.
6.	Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying Himself to the consideration of its Sacred Mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise Him in His justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just, he shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life.
7.	Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the Sacraments of the Church.
8.	Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plentitude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the Saints in Paradise.
9.	I  shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary.
10.	The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven.
11.	You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary.
12.	All those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities.
13.	I  have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death
14.	All who recite the Rosary are my children, and brothers and sisters of my only Son, Jesus Christ.
15.	Devotion of my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.

 

"The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem,

no matter how difficult it is, wheter temporal or above all spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families...that cannot be solved by the Rosary.

There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary."

Sister Lucia dos Santos

[Elsie]

Then you need to be reading the Inspired Version.

The translation that GOD directed JS to do to CORRECT the 'error' found in the KJV edition.

[Elsie]

Oh snap, I forgot about the magic salamander.

 

 

The generic kind?

 

 

Or the specific MORMON kind?

[Elsie]

The translation that GOD directed JS to do to CORRECT the 'error' found in the KJV edition.

Note item #8...

Here is MORMONism's own creed:

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Articles of Faith

The Articles of Faith outline 13 basic points of belief of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Prophet Joseph Smith first wrote them in a letter to John Wentworth, a newspaper editor,
in response to Mr. Wentworth's request to know what members of the Church believed.
They were subsequently published in Church periodicals.
They are now regarded as scripture and included in the Pearl of Great Price.

 

THE ARTICLES OF FAITH
OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS
History of the Church, Vol. 4, pp. 535—541

 

 

1. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.
   
2. We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression.
   
3. We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.
   
4. We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.
   
5. We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.
   
6. We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.
   
7. We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, and so forth.
   
8. We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
   
9. We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
   
10. We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.
    
11. We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.
    
12. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.
    
13. We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

Joseph Smith

 

[HLPhat]

>>how is it she had no idea about this

It wasn’t part of the LCMS’ curriculum from Kindergarten through University.

[HLPhat]

>>So, the answer is yes, but it’s not decisive as you seem to believe it to be.

Who’s inertial frame did each of those 6 days transpire in - and how long was a day, in it?

[piusv]

Not this Catholic.

[HLPhat]

>>Why is that? Consensus science?

Is that what cruise missiles use to navigate in Regulator land?

Here in reality land they use GPS systems that incorporate the reality of the time dilation predicted by Special and General Relativity.

What happens to T as E approaches infinity and what impact does that have in the context of the 6, literal, 24 hour Creation days asserted by LCMS (with an established pattern of concealing facts) dogma?