Posted on 10/21/2005 5:37:01 AM PDT by sheltonmac
Although provoked by the indulgences peddled by Johannes Tetzel, the very first proposition which Luther offered for public debate in his Ninety Five Theses put the axe to the root of the tree of medieval theology: "When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said 'Repent,' he meant that the entire life of believers should be one of repentance." From Erasmus' Greek New Testament, Luther had come to realize that the Vulgate's rendering of Matthew 4:17 by penitentiam agite ("do penance") completely misinterpreted Jesus' meaning. The gospel called not for an act of penance but for a radical change of mind-set and an equally deep transformation of life. Later he would write to Staupitz about this glowing discovery: "I venture to say they are wrong who make more of the act in Latin than of the change of heart in Greek!"
Is it not true that we have lost sight of this note that was so prominent in Reformation theology? We could well do with a Luther redivivus today. For a number of important reasons evangelicals need to reconsider the centrality of repentance in our thinking about the gospel, the church and the Christian life.
One of our great needs is for the ability to view some of the directions in which evangelicalism is heading, or perhaps more accurately disintegrating. We desperately need the long-term perspective which the history of the church gives us.
Even within the period of my own Christian life, the span between my teenage years in the 1960s and my forties in the 1990s, there has been a sea-change in evangelicalism. Many "position" which were standard evangelical teaching are now, after only three decades, regarded as either reactionary or even dinosauric.
If we take an even longer-term view, however, we face the alarming possibility that there may already be a medieval darkness encroaching upon evangelicalism. Can we not detect, at least as a tendency, dynamics within evangelicalism which bear resemblances to the life of the medieval church? The possibility of a new Babylonian or (more accurately, following Luther) the Pagan Captivity of the Church looms nearer than we may be able to believe.
Consider the following five features of medieval Christianity which are evident to varying degrees in contemporary evangelicalism.
Repentance has increasingly been seen as a single act, severed from a life-long restoration of godliness.
There are complex reasons for this--not all of them modern--which we cannot explore here. Nevertheless, this seems self-evident. seeing repentance as an isolated, completed act at the beginning of the Christian life has been a staple principle of much of modern evangelicalism. It is sad that evangelicals have often despised the theology of the confessing churches. It has spawned a generation who look back upon a single act, abstracted from its consequences, as determinative of salvation. The 'alter call' has replaced the sacrament of penance. Thus repentance has been divorced from genuine regeneration, and sanctification severed from justification.
The canon for Christian living has increasingly been sought in a 'Spirit-inspired' living voice within the church rather than in the Spirit's voice heard in Scripture. What was once little more than a mystical tendency has become a flood. But what has this to do with the medieval church? Just this. the entire medieval church operated on the same principle, even if they expressed it in a different form: the Spirit speaks outside of Scripture; the believer cannot know the detailed guidance of God if he tries to depend on his or her Bible alone.
Not only so, but once the 'living voice' of the Spirit has been introduced it follows by a kind of psychological inevitability that it is this living voice which becomes the canon for Christian living.
This view--inscripturated Word plus living voice equals divine revelation--lay at the heart of the medieval church's groping in the dark for the power of the gospel. Now, at the end of the second millennium we are on the verge--and perhaps more than the verge of being overwhelmed by a parallel phenomenon. The result then was a famine of hearing and understanding the Word of God, all under the guise of what the Spirit was still saying to the church. What of today?
The divine presence was brought to the church by an individual with sacred powers deposited within him and communicated by physical means.
Today an uncanny parallel is visible wherever cable TV can be seen. Admittedly it is no longer Jesus who is given by priestly hands; now it is the Spirit who is bestowed by physical means, apparently at will by the new evangelical priest. Special sanctity is no longer confirmed by the beauty of the fruit of the Spirit, but with signs which are predominantly physical.
What we ought to find alarming about contemporary evangelicalism is the extent to which we are impressed by performance rather than piety. The Reformers were not unfamiliar with similar phenomena. In fact one of the major charges made against them by the Roman Catholic Church was that they did not really have the gospel because they lacked physical miracles.
The worship of God is increasingly presented as a spectator event of visual and sensory power, rather than a verbal event in which we engage in a deep soul dialogue with the Triune God.
The mood of contemporary evangelicalism is to focus on the centrality of what 'happens' in the spectacle of worship rather than on what is heard in worship. Aesthetics, be they artistic or musical, are given a priority over holiness. More and more is seen, less and less is heard. There is a sensory feast, but a hearing famine. Professionalism in worship leadership has become a cheap substitute for genuine access to heaven, however faltering. Drama, not preaching, has become the 'Didache' of choice.
This is a spectrum, of course, not a single point. But most worship is to be found somewhere on that spectrum. There was a time when four words would bring out goose-bumps on the necks of our grandfathers: 'Let Us Worship God'. Not so for twentieth-century evangelicals. Now there must be colour, movement, audio-visual effects, or God cannot be known, loved, praised and trusted for his own sake.
The success of ministry is measured by crowds and cathedrals rather than by the preaching of the cross and the quality of Christians' lives.
It was the medieval church leaders, bishops and archbishops, cardinals and popes, who built large cathedrals, ostensibly Soli Deo Gloria--all this to the neglect of gospel proclamation, the life of the body of Christ as a whole, the needs of the poor and the evangelism of the world. Hence, the 'mega-church' is not a modern, but a medieval phenomenon.
Ideal congregational size and specific ecclesiastical architecture thankfully are matters of indifference. That is not really the central concern here. Rather it is the almost endemic addiction of contemporary evangelicalism to size and numbers as an index of the success of 'my ministry'--a phrase which can itself be strikingly contradictory. We must raise the question of reality, depth and integrity in church life and in Christian ministry. The lust for 'bigger' makes us materially and financially vulnerable. But worse, it makes us spiritually vulnerable. For it is hard to say to those on whom we have come to depend materially, 'When our Lord Jesus Christ said "Repent!" he meant that the whole of the Christian life is repentance.'
Wow, an interesting article and one I happen to agree with. The evidence is there but few seem to be paying attention.
Thanks. An interesting and convicting read...
Great article - hits the nail right on the head. Concepts of sin and repentance have been replaced with "Touched by an Angel" feelgoodism.
It's nice to see an article that begins with such an open admission of complete ahistorical cluelessness, and ends by asserting that the movement spawned by the (so-called) Reformation is guilty of exactly what it was founded to oppose!
Luther wouldn't have known the "tree of medieval theology" if it had bitten him on the rump -- most of it was relegated to libraries before he was born -- and Protestantism owes almost as much to medieval Catholic theology, with St. Anselm as a prime example, as it does to Luther. The idea that the essence of medieval Catholic theology -- as distinct from medieval popular piety -- was the failure to understand the difference between performing a work of penance, on the one hand, and leading a repentant and recollected life on the other is, well, stupid.
1. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible (a) rule of all saving Knowledge, Faith and Obedience; Although the (b) light of Nature, and the works of Creation and Providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and His will, which is necessary unto Salvation. (c) Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that His will unto his Church; and afterward for the better preserving, and propagating of the Truth, and for the more sure Establishment, and Comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan, and of the World, to commit the same wholly unto (d) writing; which maketh the Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of Gods revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.
6. The whole Councel of God concerning all things (i) necessary for his own Glory, Mans Salvation, Faith and Life, is either expressely set down or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture; unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new Revelation of the Spirit, or traditions of men. ~ 1689 London Baptist Confession. (Chapter 1)
It never ceases to amaze me how much of the church is into secret gnostic type ways to get at God's will for their lives. It is as if they actually hate what the Scriptures have to say about it so they are trying to get God to make exceptions for them. Example: Instead of judging whether or not to attend a church based upon whether or not they teach the truth, they decide to pray about it and wait for God to tell them where to attend. They look for nice fuzzy feelings about it.
Did you notice how that show never mentioned the name of the Lord?
I even watched an episode where they specifically changed Scripture to leave out the name of Jesus in their citation.
A few of these "mystics" were heretics and were pointed out as such by church leaders. Most were wonderful Christians and contributed to the spiritual growth of many other Christians. Visionaries are not the same as mystics. There always were some who had the gift of prophecy, ever since the daughters of Philip in the New Testament. The medieval church leaders also understood that prophecy can be counterfeited by the devil, so formal processes existed to distinguish genuine from false prophecy. Indiscriminate use of the term "mystic" usually indicates that the author doesn't know what he's talking about.
The same applies to repentance. A wide variety of ways of expressing one's heartfelt sorrow for sins were practiced. Some people gave up career and marriage to live a life of repentance, both within monasteries and as consecrated lay people. Some lived "normal" lives in business and agriculture, repenting of sins sometimes soon, sometimes long after but caring about their eternal destiny. Some people lived utterly unrepentant lives and were scoundrels--at all levels of society.
But belief in Jesus Christ as God Incarnate dominated the culture, and belief that one was saved by Christ's work on the cross was taught without exception. Did everyone follow this, did everyone act on this? No. But this articles charges are totally without merit. Belief in Christ and his teachings, for instance, on marriage in Mt. 19, totally transformed a Germanic culture in which women were "married" by being snatched up by whichever man was strongest (the term was raptus, abduction) and then discarded for the next woman--transformed it into a culture where married women were protected by insistence on monagamy and had more rights in marriage than at any time between 1500 and 1950. Christianity totally transformed a Germanic culture of sheer power and warfare into a culture in which criteria for justified war were in place, even if not always followed--but bishops, at the cost of their lives stood up to kings conducting unjust wars--Hugh of Lincoln did just that agains Richard I in the late 1100s. Christianity transformed a culture in which the rule of laws emerged rather than the rule of sheer power (to which we have now reverted in many ways). A king was not free to do whatever he wanted. Both the high nobles and the bishops served as a check on the king--who, after all, was an elected ruler. Did kings sometimes ignore bishops or nobles when they pointed out that the king was doing something unjust? Yes. Did they sometimes listen and change their behavior? Yes (Henry II would be an example). At no time between the ancient world of Alexander the Great and the establishment of the American republic or perhaps the English unwritten constitution of 1688 was there such a degree of rule of law and protection of people's rights against arbitrary power domination than in the Middle Ages. This is the result of Christianity's deep embeddedness because Christianity insisted that kings were not better before God than peasants--no one was above God's law as laid down in the Bible, and Jesus set up a pretty high standard of behavior in the Sermon on the Mount. This was built into the practices of the Middle Ages. Was it often ignored and disobeyed? Yes. Were those who disobeyed these laws called to account? In many cases yes, in many cases no.
Was it a perfect society? No. Was it a Christian society? Yes. Compared to the ancient Romans or Greeks or Persians or the medieval Muslims, the deep impact of Christian faith, of the belief that Jesus Christ was God incarnate and would hold people to account for their sins is clearly evident.
Was there much needing reform? Yes. But none of the things this author mentions in his vague, useless terminology, touch on either the stellar or the despicable aspects of medieval Christian culture. What this author has done is trot out phantoms of his own prejudices as fact. I doubt that he has ever read a single actual text or historical document in its complete form.
The "selling of indulgences" was denounced by reformers of the 1400s and by the Sorbonne theologians in the early 1500s long before Luther raised the issue. Were there corrupt popes? Yes. Were all popes corrupt? No. Were there corrupt bishops? Yes. Were all bishops corrupt? No. Powerful voices were raised calling for reform of the corruptions throughout the later Middle Ages. The biggest single factor (and there were many factors) inhibiting full-scale reform of the corruptions was the slow coopting of the church (the bishops) by the emerging consolidated nation state from about 1200-1500. That's what destroyed the effort to reform via church councils in the 1400s--the kings and princes tried to grab control of it to use the church to gain control over every aspect of society. This is the period in which the groundwork was laid for absolutist kingship. Henry VIII and Francis I were the first absolutist monarchs. Henry VIII, for instanced, banned all freedom of the press--you had to submit everything to the king's agents before it could be printed. He wanted to control everything, including the church.
Luther's call for reform might have succeeded in reforming the Church without splitting it had the kings and princes not chosen sides and had Luther not turned into a radical between 1519 and 1520 (he was badly provoked by doubledealing on the part of some of the Curia--he was dealt with unjustly by them and he was right to be mad at it, but his response was to launch into claims about the pope as the antichrist and to reject the very notion of the church that he held up to that point--he overreacted--which is understandable given the specific provocations of 1518 but nonetheless a fatal error on his part). In the end, however, it was the choosing of sides by the kings and princes that torpedoed any chance of reaching agreement about what reforms needed to take place and implementing them. That's what turned the Protestant Reformation from a reforming movement into the catalyst for state churches in both Catholic and Protestant countries.
Thank-you for being the voice of clarity here. This article starts out with some false premises and then just gets worse.
I couldn't bear to watch it, save to remind myself how blessed I am to not buy into it's mysticism.
I remember one episode where a young boy was going to shoot his abusive father. The angel couldn't intervene because that would "violate the boys free will".
However, later when the father went to hit the child, the angel stepped in and intervened. Free will for one but not another? lol
Although, I suppose a show titled "Called by the Holy Spirit" wouldn't sell too well with the masses? Not "touchy-feely" enough.
FWIW, my wife was at a women's conference and the producer of the show (I believe a Jewish convert to Christianity) was one of the main speakers. She was asked about that. She said the creators would have preferred to be more openly Christian, but realized they had to be more "generic" (that's my term, I forget how she actually phrased it) to get by CBS and the sponsors.
That's not a defense of the show. Just some trivia I had taking up space in my brain.
I suppose popularizing a German translation of the Bible was rather radical back then.
>>but realized they had to be more "generic"...to get by CBS and the sponsors<<
The same CBS that has no problem with openly homosexual contestants and characters on it's shows. Not surprising.
>>Just some trivia I had taking up space in my brain.<<
Now, with me, I've found that if I exercise the useless trivia, it frees up some room for other useless stuff. I'm conviced there's a finite amount of space up there, and eventually we reach maximum capacity. If I have a mmeeting at work and need to learn the new Corporate Mission Statement, I forget how to get home..
ROFL! Been there.
I believe this stems on the concept of Sola Scriptura taken to its illogical end. When people begin to realize that the Bible IS NOT simple to understand - that many people contradict each other on foundational beliefs - they will look to other questionable sources. How does a preacher KNOW he is correct, but the preacher across the street is wrong on the same subject while using private interpretation of the Scriptures? And of course, Rome certainly couldn't be right...
Thus, people will look to some other "source" to clarify and determine contrary opinions. Unfortunately, man's intellect is clouded. More often than not, we are subject to delusional thoughts and Satan, interpreting these as "movements from God". Thus, the need for an outside source of authority from ourselves is imperative. One that is trustworthy and can be relied upon - from God.
Regards
Oh boy. You just may recall that Johannes Guttenberg -WHO DIED IN 1468!! - printed his Bible in German. That would be a Catholic Bible, in a Catholic Germany, over 50 years before Luther's trip to a certain cathedral door.
An outstanding rebuttal to the tenor and specifics of the piece heading this thread, Mr. D!
I have a relative who watches the show religiously. So, every time I visit, we get to watch over and over on syndication. The show seems very Catholic to me. I can't stand it, but I know bunches of people who love it and think it so spiritual.
And Wulfilas, who died 1000 years before that in 381, translated the Bible into Gothic--a Germanic predecessor of German. Here's a page of same.
>>but I know bunches of people who love it and think it so spiritual.<<
And lots of people think candy isn't bad for them either. :-)
There's a retail store down the street from me, which sells "Angels, Crystals, Incense, and other Spiritual Stuff". Not a single Bible can be found on the property.
Junk food mysticism and warm fuzzy feelings - that's all it is.
Yes, I am well aware that Luther's translation wasn't the first. But he was key to the popularization of the vernacular Bible.
The assumption that Luther's German translation, which was the first to be widespread via printing, made the Bible more directly accessible than it had been is based on modern assumptions about everyone being able to read. Devout medieval Christians knew their Bible very well, but most did not know how to read it either in German or English or in Latin. But since when does knowing how to read mean you can't know things? Most of the college students I teach are now incapable of taking a textbook and reading it for comprehension. They simply do not know how to master the meaning of a text. They think they've read a chapter when they've followed across line by line with their eyes. They don't know how to distinguish major points from minor points, how to take notes, how to outline the points made. One can, painstakingly, try to teach them how to do this--but it almost requires one-on-one tutoring and practically speaking, one can't do it. So we give them crib sheets and summaries--do their notetaking for them. Or they depend on our lectures, just as most people in the culture today, despite widespread literacy, actually learn most of what they learn from other people's summaries, the depend on TV or movie "texts" etc. Perhaps 10 or 20 % of college students do know how to read for meaning; the rest do not. High schools used to teach this; they do not do so any longer. A new illiteracy is upon us--people get their information in icon-forms, via visual and audio presentations of various forms. We are reverting to the situation before widespread literacy in the 1800s.
. One hundred years ago, at the peak both of general literacy and of ability to read a paragraph and understand it, perhaps more people could read and understand Scripture on their own. But that has been the great exception over the last 2000 years of Christian history. Even today, even among Bible Christians (among whom I spent the first 40 years of my life), very few Christians truly gain their own understanding of Scripture on their own. Instead they depend on this or that guru, this or that pastor. When I was in college, Ray Stedman was all the rage; today its James Kennedy, R. D. Sproul, John MacArthur and dozens of others (I hope I do not offend by leaving anyone's favorite off the list). There is no such thing as naked reading of scripture--people read the text with a set of guidelines in their heads, guidelines derived from their Sunday School or parents or pastors. Exactly the same thing was true in the Middle Ages. Monks and priests and university trained elites read Latin Bibles themselves but even their learned guidelines for interpretation from their own teachers. Average people could not read German or Latin so they heard the Bible read to them: in church, in sermons, in stained glass windows, in conversations with others. Most people didn't pay much attention--just like today. The devout did pay attention to sermons, to devotional books read to them, to stories of great Christians whose lives were "books" illustrating the Gospel stories and illustrating the teachings of St. Paul and St. Peter and St. John etc.
From my research over the past 30 years I would put the average knowledge of the Bible by devout medieval Christians up against the average knowledge of the Bible by devout Christians today any time--as being comparable. Of course, not everyone cared, not everyone was devout. So what else is new?
The canard that medieval people were kept from knowledge of the Bible by the mean old Church is just that, a propaganda piece stemming from the time of the Protestant Reformation--sort of like trusting the New York Times' version of Plame-gate today. Now, the NYT might well be trustworthy in its reporting of what its fellow liberals are doing but I wouldn't trust it for ten seconds in its reporting about Karl Rove or George Bush. The Protestant reports from the 1500s about themselves need to be taken seriously (but discerningly). But what the Reformers claimed about the medieval Church, given their vested interest in damning it to hell, need not be taken very seriously at all.
I'm sure I can speak for many Catholics in saying that there is nothing discernably "Catholic" in TBAA. It is not only touchy-feely "feel-goodism," as someone on this thread said, it is also syncretistic and univeralist in the bargain. It serves to give a 'non-judgmental and spiritual" glow to a large percentage of Americans who couldn't be bothered/don't want the moral baggage of living a Christian life. If it's anything, it goes a long way to fulfilling 2Timothy 3:5-7.
It may "seem very Catholic" to you, but it only resembles your perception of "Catholicism" from the vantage point of one outside of it. No thinking Catholic would consider the show to be anything more than sentimentalist trash, at least as it pertains to expositions of authentic Christianity.
You bounce around from the late 1100 to the 1500-1600s. I can’t tell what century you’re writing about. There was a vast difference from “medieval” times to the time of the Renaissance. The middle ages are generally thought to be before the Renaissance from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Renaissance is generally thought to be from the 14th to the 17th century so there is a little bit of overlap. It’s inconsistent to give credit to “non-medieval” things that happened in 1100AD (12th century) during the middle ages.
One thing many Catholics don’t understand is the doctrinal perversion the Renaissance had on the Catholic Church from 1100-1500. The Renaissance with its man-centered humanism played an important role in not only reshaping society but reshaping the culture of the Catholic Church. By the time Luther came around the Catholic Church, with all its prominent Renaissance scientists, inventors and artists, was steeped in a humanistic belief structure where man can choose his own destiny. Many of the Catholic Church writings by prominent “saints” of this time reflect these humanistic Renaissance beliefs. The Catholic website, newadvent.com, is unabashed at proclaiming this. Doctrine was shaped by the times, not by scripture.
The great Renaissance scholar Erasmus was pals with Luther but unlike Luther who sought for doctrinal and practice reform, Erasmus in true Renaissance style placed reason above scripture and wanted only moral reform within the Catholic Church. Erasmus defined free-will or free choice as "a power of the human will by which a man can apply himself to the things which lead to eternal salvation or turn away from them." which was a significant departure from the Augustinian view but not inconsistent with the Renaissance belief of humanism nor the Catholic Church at this time. The Catholic Church needed Erasmus to fight Luther. Luther had no choice to leave if he wished to be consistent with Augustine and the founding beliefs of the western church. What Erasmus got was his beliefs recorded as official Catholic doctrine at the Council of Trent.
Second of all, humanism was certainly a product of the Renaissance. And unfortunately for the Church, Erasmus was a humanist. Thus, he was not an able defender of the Catholic position on free will (as I believe you would agree with). It is certainly false to say that Trent is a move away from Augustine and a move towards humanism. Trent is clear that man can do nothing ALONE. With God, we can. That is the big difference that Protestantism cannot fathom - that man united with the Spirit, can actually do good. There is no need for such legal fictions as imputed righteousness. Just as when the Person Jesus Christ's hypostatic union allowed us to say that a man has redeemed the world, we, too, can say in truth that we are being transformed and can take note that we are pleasing to God when God Himself moves us to obey Him. Scripture is clear that there is a similar union between us and God in our acts of faith and love.
Luther wasn't forced out, he left on his own after Eck got the better of Luther - who made the grievous error that a Council was fallible. After that point, Luther had lost all notion of unity with the Church.
And finally. Augustine never denied free will. And while some have interpreted Augustine to lean towards double predestination (God positively reprobates to hell), this is a mis-interpretation - as we have thoroughly covered previously. The Council of Orange never mentions such doctrines that you give to Augustine. Thus, the Church has been able to hold nature and grace in tension (not perfectly, but never has grace been thought to overcome nature. Christ doesn't push us out when He comes to us)
Brother in Christ
I have read that the Mentel Bible was printed in German by Guttenberg c. 1465, and another one, whose name escapes me, was printed in 1473, after his death but largely due to his work.
Indeed, but you never said that in your original post. You were content to insinuate that there were no vernacular translations of the Bible in Germany before Luther.
Johhanes Gutenberg was a German printer, but the Gutenberg Bibles was printed in Latin. The Bible is available on-line.
Well, we’ve certainly have beaten the Council of Orange/Council of Trent dead horse down on other threads. I would just add that your statement is the very thing most Protestants (not to be confused with Reformers) believe today-and something I would reject if I understand the statement correctly. Most Protestants believe that if they have faith in God (united with the Spirit), God will use them to accomplish great things. Certainly Pentecostals believe this and something I was taught and believed for many years. This seems to be the essences of what you are saying.
I would respectfully disagree with this belief. It is God who works through us that we accomplish any works independent of our actions. God will set a bush on fire, give a donkey the ability to speak, prophesy through a false prophet, or impregnate a virgin handmaiden without asking permission. He knows our hearts and He works everything to His will. He is the one who produces our fruit independent of anything we might do. If He has to He’ll have a giant fish sallow us and throw us up somewhere once we are submissive to His will. As Augustine stated:
God commands and gives us the resources-everything including our will-to accomplish His tasks.
Doctrine is ALWAYS shaped, in some sense, by the society that men exist within. The men of the Church do not exist in a vacuum.
Yes, I would agree. But unlike Catholics who based their scriptural interpretation on traditions, for a Reformer the foundation are traditions based upon the scriptures. Creeds or doctrine made by the Church during the Renaissance where humanism was rampant are binding. It becomes difficult to tell a good creed, from an OK creed, from a bad creed.
For example the filoque in the Nicene Creed is a major sticking point between the Orthodox and the RCC. The EO believes the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son who proceeds from the Father. The RCC believe the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Son and the Father. Some say it was added by some unauthorized monk hundreds of years later. No one knows. What do you do? It’s an official creed. Is the RCC willing to change the Nicene Creed or just ignore it?
For a Reformer we would look at the history to be sure but then go back to the scriptures to see what it states. Personally I believe the EO is correct on their interpretation. Does that mean I reject the entire Nicene Creed? No, the rest of it seems correct. I only reject those areas that may be tainted by one thing or another.
Doctrine is far easier to be changed and modified with a sola scriptura perspective so long as there is solid justification.
Blessings
Certainly true. Yet, this omits that God INCLUDES man in His Divine Plans. All men are objectively saved by the Redemption, but some willingly choose not to repent of their sins, etc. This cannot be God's positive responsibility, as the Scripture tells us over and over that it is man who is at fault for being condemned. Man has a certain responsibility towards his eternal destiny - but he cannot do this without God's gift of grace. I am not aware of any Christian Father before Luther who blamed God for the sinful actions of man or took away man's responsibility to obey the Commandments.
But enough of that! We will never fully comprehend God's Divine Providence and our interaction on this side of heaven.
I wrote : Doctrine is ALWAYS shaped, in some sense, by the society that men exist within. The men of the Church do not exist in a vacuum.
You wrote : Yes, I would agree. But unlike Catholics who based their scriptural interpretation on traditions, for a Reformer the foundation are traditions based upon the scriptures. Creeds or doctrine made by the Church during the Renaissance where humanism was rampant are binding. It becomes difficult to tell a good creed, from an OK creed, from a bad creed.
Thus, we should use our own interpretations outside of the Traditions of our Forefathers? The Reformers, unfortunately, EXCLUDES Tradition. This leads to culture determining what we should believe. Consider birth control. Universally unacceptable by ALL Christianity until 1930, the Catholic Church is one of the few that remains faithful to the teachings of Tradition given by 2000 years of the Church. If we rely on our own particular conventions OUTSIDE of this line of Tradition, what prevents you, Harley, to deciding for yourself that the Trinity has too much Platonic overtones - it is time to change these definitions... As you probably know, the Scripture is unclear or nearly silent on many things that we practice and believe. Whether you realize it or not, YOU ALSO rely on Traditional interpretations of Scripture! Consider reading more of the Church Fathers to see that they, too, had to deal with heretics who slung verses out of context to support their fanciful ideas of God OUTSIDE the confines of Apostolic Tradition.
For example the filoque in the Nicene Creed is a major sticking point between the Orthodox and the RCC. The EO believes the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son who proceeds from the Father. The RCC believe the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Son and the Father. Some say it was added by some unauthorized monk hundreds of years later. No one knows. What do you do? It’s an official creed. Is the RCC willing to change the Nicene Creed or just ignore it?
This is a big misunderstanding. Both us and the Orthodox believe the same thing regarding the Divine Procession. But sometimes, words can be twisted or taken out of context. Recall that during the Filioque controversy, Rome and Constantinople weren't exactly cozy partners full of understanding for the other's pastoral situations. "The Spirit proceeds from the Father THROUGH the Son" is the correct formula. Some in Spain resurrected the Adoptionist heresy (Jesus was not of the essence of God, but was 'adopted' by the Father). The bishops of Spain (with Rome agreeing) removed the word "through". This was done even during Augustine's time by some theologians. The East thought that this meant that there are 2 divine principles as a result: The Spirit comes from two essences... Yet, the West has ALWAYS affirmed the divine nature and the oneness of God. When they were saying "Father and Son", they are saying the same divine essence or substance is equally contained in all three Persons. At the Council of Florence, the East agreed with the Western formula - theologically, they were saying the same thing with different words. Unfortunately, political problems prevented the re-unificiation. But the Filioque is more a misunderstanding than a difference of theology. East and West both believe the same thing about the Trinity, while emphazing different charecteristics; the East the Three Persons, the West the One Nature.
Doctrine is far easier to be changed and modified with a sola scriptura perspective so long as there is solid justification.
It sounds good on paper. But you, of all believers, should be aware and believe in the "depravity" of man. How does man come to the truth with his own powers if you refuse my argument above? Doesn't it sound contradictory that man can come to the knowledge of God, of His truth, unaided, but cannot do good, even aided by the Holy Spirit Himself? You can't have it both ways. History, also, proves the idea wrong - even Luther realized that there were as many ideas on Christian belief in Protestantism as there were Christian heads.
Brother in Christ
***She said the creators would have preferred to be more openly Christian...***
I'm sorry, but that really doesn't make much sense to me. They never mentioned Christ, nor any other name of the Lord; they never preached a gospel message of salvation (how can you preach the gospel without using the name of Christ).
What they did do was teach that people should just basically be good and call on angels and some nebulous undifferentiated "god."
Just exactly what is even remotely Christian about that show?
Men have always hated the light.
Did you notice how that show never mentioned the name of the Lord?
It's permissible to say "the big Potentate in the sky," "the Creator," or even "God."
But the name, Jesus Christ, is not permitted to be spoken on TV or films. It is the great divide.
Did you read my post? All I did was relay what she said.
It doesn't look like German to me. Here's a link where you can see each page:
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/gutenberg/web/pgstns/01.html
Click to enlarge the single page to get the type large enough to easily see.
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bump for later
No. All men are not saved by the Redemption. This is the view of the Arminian Remonstrants who echoed the Pelagius error. Those chosen of God are saved by God’s grace and through the faith that He instills in us. God hand is not shorten that it cannot save. Has He not said and will He not fulfill it?
I am not aware of any Christian Father before Luther who blamed God for the sinful actions of man or took away man's responsibility to obey the Commandments.
With all due respect, you do not understand Luther because Luther never blamed God for the sinful actions of man. I would suggest you read Bondage of the Will by Luther for a more precise picture of what Luther believed.
Consider birth control. Universally unacceptable by ALL Christianity until 1930, the Catholic Church is one of the few that remains faithful to the teachings of Tradition given by 2000 years of the Church…. As you probably know, the Scripture is unclear or nearly silent on many things that we practice and believe.
I’ve heard this before. While I applaud the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion, I don’t see writings on using condoms or diaphragms within the context of marriage in Augustine’s or Jerome’s writings.
The Spirit bears witness to our spirit of what is right or wrong:
These are just two examples where the apostles tell us to THINK FOR OURSELVES. We are to seek God’s will, search the scriptures, look at the paths of other Christians (yes-tradition) and ask it of God. The apostles rarely sat down specific guidelines but gave advice.
But the Filioque is more a misunderstanding than a difference of theology.
No, it's no misunderstanding. There is a specific legitimate disagreement on the Filioque as it is written. You apparently haven’t seen some of the posts on this issue. When the Catholic Church or the EO changes their view and the text on the Filioque to make it consistent get back to me.
How does man come to the truth with his own powers…Doesn't it sound contradictory that man can come to the knowledge of God, of His truth, unaided, but cannot do good, even aided by the Holy Spirit Himself?
I don’t know where you got this information. On all the posts and threads that we have discussed this issue I have made it abundantly clear that we come to the knowledge of God by God Himself ALONE through His Holy Spirit. God doesn’t “aid” us. God does the work. God the Father chooses us. God gives us grace. God regenerates us. God gives us our faith to come to Him. God gives us to our Lord Jesus. God seals us with His Holy Spirit. God works through us and gives us our good works. Our Lord Jesus keeps us and sees us home.
It is all to His glory. There is NOTHING that we have received that was not given to us. Like Elizabeth, Mary, John the Baptist, Paul, Jeremiah, Abraham, David, Samuel, Samson, Ester, Gideon, Isaiah, Adam, Noah, Peter, etc. They never made a decision. We never make a decision.
With all due respect, Catholic doctrine is the one erroneously saying man needs to “cooperate” with God. Not me. God does it all without our cooperation to the praise of His glory. Amen.
Ecclus. 15
14 God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel.
15 He added his commandments and precepts.
16 If thou wilt keep the commandments and perform acceptable fidelity for ever, they shall preserve thee.
17 He hath set water and fire before thee: stretch forth thy hand to which thou wilt.
18 Before man is life and death, good and evil, that which he shall choose shall be given him:
Num 30:14 If she vow and bind herself by oath, to afflict her soul by fasting, or abstinence from other things, it shall depend on the will of her husband, whether she shall do it, or not do it.
1 corinth 7:37 37 For he that hath determined, being steadfast in his heart, having no necessity, but having power of his own will: and hath judged this in his heart, to keep his virgin, doth well.
*I could cite many other examples from Scripture. I will end with a quote from St. Augustine
He was handed over for our offenses, and he rose again for our justification.’ What does this mean, ‘for our justification?’ So that He might justify us; so that he might make us just. You will be a work of God, not only because you are a man, but also because you are just. For it is better that you be just than that you be a man. If God made you a man, and you made yourself just, something you were doing would be better than what God did. But God made you without any cooperation on your part. For you did not lend your consent so that God could make you. How could you have consented when you did not exist? But He who made you without your consent does not justify you without your consent. He made you without your knowledge but He does not justify you without your willing it.
Great post, thanks.
Council of Trent-CANON IV.-If any one saith, that man's free will moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of Justification; that it cannot refuse its consent, if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive; let him be anathema.
CANON IX.-If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.
Catholic Website Newadvent-"If we take the attitude of free will as the dividing principle of actual grace, we must first have a grace which precedes the free determination of the will and another which follows this determination and co-operates with the will. This is the first pair of graces, preventing and co-operating grace (gratia praeveniens et cooperans).
HELLO?!? Wake up Catholics. Don't you see a difference in theology between Augustine and the current position of the Catholic Church that happened at Trent?
Please re-read what I posted about Augustine's ideas about our cooperation with Grace and then tell me how that differs from Trent.
Your picture of the Renaissance represents the assesssment given about 100 years ago by Jacob Burckhardt. Tons of research over the last 100 years has shown that while some Renaissance humanists were somewhat secular and challenged some aspects of Church authority, these were the clear exceptions. The leading Renaissance humanists were devoutly Christian and sought to recovery the Patristic heritage as well as the ancient classical heritage. Your view of the Renaissance is actually a secularized one accenting the recovery of pagan antiquity, which was one part but only part of and integated with a recovery of Christian humanism. Among dozens of books, I would recommend Charles Trinkaus, In His (the?) Image and Likeness (1972?) which examines in great detail the Christian (and Augustinian) centrality of the leading Italian Renaissance figures.
It is simply incorrect to say that the Renaissance perverted Catholicism and to blame it for most of what went wrong. The fallacy lies in thinking that all "humanism" or man-centered thinking is wrong. That is actually a Calvinist position. Christian humanism glorifies man but rightly does so because man is God's greatest creature. A false kind of humanism glorifies man in the absence of God. The late medieval Renaissance humanism was almost exclusively of the first type, not the second. It was in the interest of Enlightenment enemies of Christianity to make it out to have been an example of the second type. You (and many other Catholics) unwittingly buy into that. So did the Evangelical Protestant Francis Schaeffer, who blamed Renaissance humanism for everything going wrong. Schaeffer did a lot of good at L'Abri etc. but he was not a very good historian. (He was much closer to being right about the two-story universe of Kant than he was about the Renaissance.) The Enlightenment “secularized” view of the Renaissance is deeply embedded in standard textbooks and has seeped into some Catholic writing.
Erasmus was not really "pals" with Luther. THey had an intense fight over the freedom of the will in 1525. I don't particularly like Erasmus--I think his Catholicism had unhelpful accents and emphases. He stayed within the boundaries of orthodoxy, yes, but his view of monasticism and his recommendations for reform were not among the best, in my view. Thomas More represents a much healthier Catholic humanism.
Scholars over the last 50 years (Paul O. Kristeller etc.) have emphasized the many ways that Renaissance humanism actually grew out of medieval scholasticism. I could go on at length, but the main point remains: the Renaissance, whether in Italy or in Northern Europe was anything but a revolt of man-centered idolatry against Christian faith.
The movement that did corrupt everything, in my view, was, as I mentioned, the development of the all-powerful nation-state in which the king claimed authority to control everything, including the Church. To the degree, for instance, that Machiavelli or Bodin or Hobbes represent "humanism" or "Renaissance" then the Renaissance contributed to this development. But I would argue that a much larger trend was at work here, one with roots going way back but which was stalled off, prevented from triumphing in the high Middle Ages by papal resistance under Gregory VII and Innocent III etc., namely, the movement to put things in terms of raw power and dominance of the state rather than seeing the temporal ruler (the state) as under God's governance. This movement was pushed by medieval rulers (Frederick II, for instance) but did not triumph until the Protestant Reformation. The theoretical justification for it is found in writers from the 1500s and 1600s (Hobbes, Bodin) but practice preceded theory--kings were pushing for it in fact before intellectuals justified it, though one might see elemetns of it in Machiavelli or Lorenzo Valla or Marsilius of Padua in or even perhaps Dante in the 1200s, 1300s, 1400s.
Now, if you want me to make further qualifications and clarifications I can do that. But I thought it not good to bore people with too much detail, which is why I made larger generalizations. Rest assured, I made my generalizations based on what I consider to be a careful reading of the details. And yes, I am aware of great change between the early and later Middle Ages. But seen as a whole, the entire period from say 600 to 1500 also has some broad continuities when compared to, say, the 1600s or 1800s on the one hand and the 100s or 400s on the other hand.
German or English or Italian were used for day-to-day life, for business. This means that no one learned in school to read things written in vernacular. You had to sound out the text as you read and as you did that, you heard the word take form and understood it then. Peasants and tradesmen could not read in German. Only someone who already had learned to read in Latin could have read something written in German out loud to the average person. All of this means that, in fact, printing a text in German before Luther meant it had a limited readership though it might have reached more people aurally.
Publishing in Latin meant more widespread reading than publishing in the vernacular. When the devotional writings of, say the Cloud of Unknowing, were composed in English rather than Latin or the writings of Johann von Ruusbroeck in old Dutch rather than Latin, they could be read only in the limited region of England. The best of them were actually then translated into Latin so that they could be read across Europe.
Now, Luther's genius was to select for his translation a dialect (his own) from the middle of the range of German dialects (running from south to north, Saxony was in the middle). Thus his German could be more readily understood by more German-speakers than it would have been had he published in Swiss or North (Low) German dialect. That his Bible did reach a lot of people (in many but not all cases aurally, because by his day, learning to read German writing was growing) is evident in that his Saxon dialect gradually became the basis for a standard, school-taught, German. But that took decades if not centuries. In his day, translations were also published in Low German and Swiss etc. because people in those regions found it easier to read them.
The situation in England was different. There two basic clusters of dialect dominated--north and south. The northern, alliterative style was still flourishing in the late 1300s but Chaucer wrote in the "Southern" style characteristic of London and probably as a result of the dominance of London (much like Paris) the London-southern dialect crowded out the northern entirely as far as literary purposes was concerned. Germany had dozens of major cities of equal importance in various regions rather than one huge dominating capital like France and England. For that reason, people continued to write and print in Swiss and Low German and Bavarian dialect well into the 19th century. Today there's a revival of dialect writing but for a time, school-German, derived from Luther's choice of Saxon dialect for his translation, crowded the dialect writing out, though dialect, of course, remained standard for oral communication.
In this sense, Luther did disseminate vernacular translations more widely but he could do so in large part because a growing public was becoming literate in German. Such a public did not yet exist in 1450--it was emerging but was not there yet. So Latin texts were actually a better marketing choice in 1450 than German texts. The situation had changed by 1525.
You'll find that Augustine's veiw changed over time which he freely admits in his writings; especially with the Pelagius heresy. Here is an excerpt from his works, "On Grace and Free Will".
As Augustine states, God turns the will as He so pleases and changes the will from bad to good. He has Lordship over our wills.
The Mentel Bible was printed at Strasburg in 1466. I assume, though I have not researched it, that it would have represented an upper-German dialect (Alemannic, related to Swiss) and thus would have been at least to some degree unintelligible to the extreme North Germans but quite comprehensible to Swiss and Alsatians.
In any case, it should not be called a Gutenberg Bible because its publisher, I assume, was named Mentel. All Gutenberg bibles are in Latin. The Mentel Bible is important because it does represent a Catholic attempt to make the Bible available to German-speakers. But it was a narrower-aimed publication than Gutenberg's Latin Bible, for reasons given in my earlier post.
BTW, Augustine can be quoted as seeming to appear to deny free will; but he doesn't.
I can find dozens of such examples from his works. Here he is in City of God (which I reread recently) Book 5, chap. 9 Now if there is for God a fixed order of all causes, it does not follow that nothing depends on our free choice. Our wills themselves are in the order of causes, which is, for God, fixed, and is contained in his foreknowledge, since human acts of will are the causes of human activities. therefore he who had prescience of the causes of all events certainly could not be ignorant of our decisions, which he foreknows as the causes of our actions.
*The more you read Augustine the better you will understand he does not deny free will or the necessity of our cooperating with Grace.
Book 12, Chapter 9 "I likewise know that when an evil choice happens in any being, then what happens is dependent upon the will of that being; the failure is voluntary, not necessary, and the punishment that follows is just."
*Dozens of such examples abound.
I have read Augustine. It was through Augustine I became a Reformer.
It has been a while since I've read Thomas More. If memory service me correctly (and a few checks seems to confirm this) Thomas More advocated in Utopia that power be put into the hands of a few ruling politicians. In other words he was advocating what is now know as communism. This btw was the stance of the Catholic Church of the Renaissance who saw their political power of the middle ages slipping under the Reformation idea of giving power to the people.
The fallacy lies in thinking that all "humanism" or man-centered thinking is wrong....Christian humanism glorifies man but rightly does so because man is God's greatest creature.
And there you have it, the Renaissance thinking of glorifying man which encompasses EVERYTHING we do today. The ME generation. That's what it all comes down to. You will be hard press to find anywhere in scripture that we are to glorify man. This is a lie that goes back to the Garden itself when Eve was told, "...you will be like God".
"...but the main point remains: the Renaissance, whether in Italy or in Northern Europe was anything but a revolt of man-centered idolatry against Christian faith."
I never said it was a revolt. Church history shows documented evidence of the Augustinian/Pelagius-Council of Orange/Semi-Pelagius disputes. While Church councils formally declared semi-Pelagian with it's man centered beliefs as heresy, Popes sat on this dispute for hundreds of years. The Renaissance, with its humanistic beliefs found roots in the semi-Pelagian beliefs in parts of the Church and Augustine's beliefs, highlighted at the Council of Orange, were washed away by the Council of Trent.
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