WOW, it's a good thing that Luther came along 1,600 years later to set Catholics straight....just in the nick of time...WHEW!! It's a good thing that he knew more about Christian beliefs and teachings than did 16 centuries of church leaders....pathetic
It’s a good thing that he knew more about Christian beliefs and teachings than did 16 centuries of church leaders....
Yes, he did know more!
The Catholic church had completely lost the Gospel. They were selling “indulgences”! They had a nice little religion thing going, a centuries-old scam. No relationship to Christ and His teachings whatsoever.
Thank God for Luther and the other reformers!
To be fair, the bulk of Luther's disputes with the church were about doctrines which were either medieval, or had been around but not particularly promulgated until the late middle ages--e.g., indulgences had been around for centuries, but until the printing press they were not readily available to all the figurative pew-sitters.
If anything, Luther was bringing back much of what had been Augustinian doctrine, which had been affected by all the medieval attempts to compromise the pure gospel, with Plato in the early middle ages, or with Aristotle in the later middle ages. So it wasn't that Luther knew more than 16 centuries of church leaders, but rather that the church leaders of the 16th century had forgotten a lot of what the early centuries of church leaders had known, and Luther helped bring it back.
Does the Catholic Church still sell indulgences? If not, score one for Luther.