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A Reformed Presbyterian thanks you!

Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Very profound verse. Believers are God's work. They are created in Christ. God prepared our good works before we even knew Him. God directs our path to walk in these good works.

Satan always works to refute, or cast doubt on or ridicule, justification by faith alone, using any and every available fool as his surrogate. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit defends the Word of truth in many ways, including by this excellent article. May it reach those who need informing and reminding.

How does one reform something by leaving it?

At this moment in time, the big winner of the reformation is servitus (via descartes and the universities)

tell that to Martin Luther --

At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, "In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, 'He who through faith is righteous shall live.'" There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, "He who through faith is righteous shall live." Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.

NOTE -- it's about justification through faith. NOT the "alone" bit this article falsely says that this was when he put it as 'faith alone'

For Tyndale, the article puts a false statement. Where did Tyndale write "merry, glad and joyful tidings"?

“The New Testament is a book, wherein are contained the promises of God and the deeds of them which believe them, or believe them not.

Evangelion (that we call the gospel) is a Greek word and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy.
– William Tyndale (c. 1495-1536), “A Pathway into the Holy Scripture”, in Doctrinal Treatises, 8-9

-- this quote was Tyndale's reaction to the gospel not to justification by faith alone

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I don't know the 3rd guy, but for these two, the references in the article are falsely linked to the "faith alone" philosophy

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Europe had been without a Bible the people could read for something like a thousand years.

Ok, this is again false

Firstly "could read" -- the literacy rate of the people was about 10% (commonly bandied figure) or lower, so most people "heard" the Bible read to them or saw the enactments in passion plays or in the church tinted glass. People heard these throughout the ages -- even in England, Germany etc. where the Bible was KNOWN to the people

Secondly, the Latin Vulgate bible was fully available in the churches for people to read - we read about them being chained to the altar - but that's because books were valuable then, being so rare, and the Bibles were richly decorated. But people who could read were able to go and read

Thirdly, "Europe"? Let's see - the scholarly language or lingua franca was Latin -- in which language did Isaac Newton write his scientific discourses? Latin - because every educated person in western Europe could read Latin and they could read the Latin bibles freely available in the churches

It must be understood that from the viewpoint of learned Europeans in medieval times, Latin was in no way a “dead” language. .

And of course in the Orthodox portion there were bibles in church Slavonic, which all religious could read and also was understandable to most Slavic speakers until about the 1300s when the Slavic languages diverged.

Fourthly, the reasons given was "a little knowledge (without learning other things) is a dangerous thing" - Readily-available Bibles for all and any who has only mastered basic reading skills have undoubtedly paved the way for a myriad more-or-less wacky reinterprations of the Bible, with kooks and cranks like William Miller, Joseph Smith or Charles Taze Russel originating entire new movements (Adventism, Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses, respectively).

Fifthly -- The Bible WAS translated into Old English and other languages in the middle ages - Bede (c. 672–735) produced a translation of the Gospel of John into Old English

King Alfred (849–899) circulated a number of passages of the Bible in the vernacular. These included passages from the Ten Commandments and the Pentateuch, which he prefixed to a code of laws he promulgated around this time. Alfred is also said to have directed the Book of Psalms to have been translated into Old English, though scholars are divided on Alfredian authorship of the Paris Psalter collection of the first fifty Psalms.

And then you have the Lindisfarne Gospels dated toe 715 AD IN English

and it wasn't just into English - The first Catalan Bible , and the Spanish Biblia Alfonsina date from the thirteenth century. All medieval translations of the Bible into Czech were based on the Latin Vulgate. The Psalms were translated into Czech before 1300 and the gospels followed in the first half of the 14th century. The first translation of the whole Bible into Czech was done around 1360. Up to the end of the 15th century this translation was revised and edited three times. In 1478, there was a Catalan translation in the dialect of Valencia . The Welsh Bible and the Alba Bible , a Jewish translation into Castilian , date from the 15th century. Altogether there are 13 medieval German translations before the Luther Bible

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So, conclusively, this statement that "Europe" had been without a Bible the people could read for 1000 years is false, very, very false

And then I wikipedia'd Thomas Bilney :) -- thanks for giving me that name, I had never heard of him before.

Here's what wikipedia says of him

During his reading in the Epistles, he was struck by the words of 1 Timothy 1:15, which in English reads, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am the chief." "Immediately", he records, "I felt a marvellous comfort and quietness, insomuch that my bruised bones lept for joy, Psal. 51:8. After this, the Scripture began to be more pleasant unto me than the honey or the honeycomb; wherein I learned that all my labours, my fasting and watching, all the redemption of masses and pardons, being done without truth in Christ, who alone saveth his people from their sins; these I say, I learned to be nothing else but even, as St. Augustine saith, a hasty and swift running out of the right way".

- absolutely nothing that this was due to him creating the "faith ALONE" philosophy

And the article you posted is lying about that and also that "Thomas Bilney had thus never encountered the words " -- he DID encounter it, for heaven's sake - he just was struck when he read it again as this would have been read to him in church and he would have encountered it in his studies

Luther, Tyndale and Binley were able to read in Latin as were other educated people - so saying that the Bible wasn't available is flatly a lie.

it was a positive movement, about moving toward the gospel. - the article states that, but then quotes about "faith alone" are primarily shown from the Epistles, not from the Gospels.

In fact that is an interesting exercise - how similar would various churches be, if say you from a Presbyterian background and I from a Catholic background, only referenced the gospels and the Septuagint OT (as that was the scripture that Jesus used) as "basis for arguments"

I haven't gone down that question path, but it would be interesting to try that with a learned person like yourself.

Is there justification for well justification by faith (or a process of becoming holy) without referring to the epistles or Revelation as "proof" or "counter evidence"? Similarly sola fide, sola scriptura - would arguments for or against them work if one refers only to the 4 Gospels and the 46 books of the Septuagint Old Testament? Or even if one just references the Gospels?