Posted on 03/12/2015 9:30:16 PM PDT by Steelfish
Increasing Number of Lutherans Are Coming Into The Catholic Church
BY Tim Drake
One of the most under-reported religious stories of the past decade has been the movement of Lutherans across the Tiber. What first began with prominent Lutherans, such as Richard John Neuhaus (1990) and Robert Wilken (1994), coming into the Catholic Church, has become more of a landslide that could culminate in a larger body of Lutherans coming into the collectively. In 2000, former Canadian Lutheran Bishop Joseph Jacobson came into the Church.
“No other Church really can duplicate what Jesus gave,” Jacobson told the Western Catholic Reporter in 2006. [How could it? Had Jesus desired that there could be more than one Church, He would have said that or He would have founded more than one.] In 2003, Leonard Klein, a prominent Lutheran and the former editor of Lutheran Forum and Forum Letter came into the Church.
Today, both Jacobson and Klein are Catholic priests. Over the past several years, an increasing number of Lutheran theologians have joined the Church’s ranks, some of whom now teach at Catholic colleges and universities. They include, but are not limited to: Paul Quist (2005), Richard Ballard (2006), Paul Abbe (2006), Thomas McMichael, Mickey Mattox, David Fagerberg, Bruce Marshall, Reinhard Hutter, Philip Max Johnson, and most recently, Dr. Michael Root (2010).
“The Lutheran church has been my intellectual and spiritual home for forty years,” wrote Dr. Root. “But we are not masters of our convictions. A risk of ecumenical study is that one will come to find another tradition compelling in a way that leads to a deep change in mind and heart. Over the last year or so, it has become clear to me, not without struggle, that I have become a Catholic in my mind and heart in ways that no longer permit me to present myself as a Lutheran theologian with honesty and integrity.
This move is less a matter of decision than of discernment.” [I was nothing like a theologian at the time, but what he describes I could have written about my own conversion and entrance into the Catholic Church.] It’s been said that “no one converts alone,” suggesting that oftentimes the effect of one conversion helps to move another along a similar path. [Take a look at Joseph Pearce’e Literary Converts.]
That’s exemplified through Paul Quist’s story. He describes attending the Lutheran “A Call to Faithfulness” conference at St. Olaf College in June, 1990. There, he listened to, and met, Richard John Neuhaus, who would announce his own conversion just months later. “What some Lutherans were realizing was that, without the moorings of the Church’s Magisterium, Lutheranism would ineluctably drift from it’s confessional and biblical source,” wrote Quist.
Many of the converts have come from The Society of the Holy Trinity, a pan-Lutheran ministerium organized in 1997 to work for the confessional and spiritual renewal of Lutheran churches. Now, it appears that a larger Lutheran body will be joining the Church. Father Christopher Phillips, writing at the Anglo-Catholic blog, reports that the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church (ALCC) clergy and parishes will be entering into the U.S. ordinariate being created for those Anglicans desiring to enter the Church.
According to the blog, the ALCC sent a letter to Walter Cardinal Kasper, on May 13, 2009, stating that it “desires to undo the mistakes of Father Martin Luther, and return to the One, Holy, and True Catholic Church established by our Lord Jesus Christ through the Blessed Saint Peter.” That letter was sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Surprisingly, in October 2010, the ALCC received a letter from the secretary of the CDF, informing them that Archbishop Donald Wuerl had been appointed as an episcopal delegate to assist with the implementation of Angelicanorum coetibus. The ALCC responded that they would like to be included as part of the reunification.
Benedict XVI is the Pope of Christian Unity.
Yes, but there is a difference between isolated papal utterances and theological interpretations made ex cathedra.
You disagreements are just that, disagreements.
The apostate and/or liberal Lutheran synods (like the ELCA) are the ones experiencing member losses.
My Catholic brethren and sistern should be careful before they rejoice in these folks infiltrating their Church...a Church and membership for which I have the greatest respect.
Leni
Jesus wasn't a bishop...Neither was John the apostle...And we don't know if John was married with a family or not...
If John was a bishop (but he wasn't) he most certainly was married with a family...The apostles weren't about to buck the scriptures like your religion does...
That wasn't Christ's Christianity, that was/is Constantine's religion...
Peter the apostle wasn't given any 'Petrine' authority...He had no more authority than any other apostle...The only Peter in Rome at the time was Simon 'Peter' Magus...And he had a LOT of followers...
Bible Christians can swim only in the shallow end of scriptural interpretation, take them over to the deep end and they drown. Hence, the reference to this “Neuhaus fella’
Bible Christians swim around in belief of the scriptures, not the unbelief and private interpretation of the Roman Constantine Church...
So “your” view of theology and historical scholarship trumps that of the early Church fathers, and those of Aquinas, Augustine, Newman, Benedict (whose works form part of the core curriculum of the theological departments in major colleges and universities) and a long list of eminent Protestant scholars of all denominations including learned Jewish Rabbis who have studied this matter and converted to Catholicism?
Bible-Christians swim around the belief of scripture whose books were assembled by infallible Petrine authority in the Synod of Rome in AD 382 and as scripture itself tells us Christ did and said many things that were not written down but became part of the great oral traditions and liturgical rituals and beliefs of the Church. This is why Bible Christians fear to swim into the deep end of the pool of theological inquiry.
Your church lied to you...Ignatius' writings didn't take place til 250-300 years after Ignatius died, you know, around the time of Constantine with his sidekick Eusebius...
It was not until the Synod of Rome (382) and the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) that we find a definitive list of canonical books being drawn up, and each of these Councils acknowledged the very same list of books. Including the Council of Trent. From this point on, there is in practice no dispute about the canon of the Bible, the only exception being the so-called Protestant Reformers, who entered upon the scene in 1517, an unbelievable 11 centuries later.
The Protestants were protesting against your religion in 50 AD (see Paul the Apostle)...Sinners were being born again with assurance of a heavenly home hundreds of years before your religion even accepted the fact that there was a Trinity let alone acknowledge the scriptures that were known as the words of God...
End of time??? Of course not...Jesus was speaking of his words, the scriptures, not your religion...As you stated, HIS teaching and HIS infallibility, not your religion's...
He was also speaking of the Holy Spirit as related to an individual...
Joh 14:21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
Joh 14:22 Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?
Joh 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Jesus didn't make his abode with any religion...He makes his abode with individuals who make up the body of Christ...
And it has thought it meet that a list of the sacred books be inserted in this decree, lest a doubt may arise in any one's mind
If the canon of scripture had already been set with infallible Pertine authority, why would there be a doubt?
None of the councils you listed were ecumenical. We do not know the original statement from Pope Damasus because it was edited several times.
Before Trent, there was no infallible Petrine authority about the canon of scripture. I agree that were wasn't any great debate about most of the books, but for the qualifications of infallible according to the Roman Catholic Church (Pope speaking ex cathedra or an ecumenical council), you would have to point to Trent.
Not this one... I swim around the bible that the Jews of Israel and Jesus believed in...And the New Testament text that originated in the area of Jerusalem and where people were first called Christians in Antioch, Syria...There is no connection between that bible and yours...
So “your” view of theology and historical scholarship trumps that of the early Church fathers, and those of Aquinas, Augustine, Newman, Benedict (whose works form part of the core curriculum of the theological departments in major colleges and universities) and a long list of eminent Protestant scholars of all denominations including learned Jewish Rabbis who have studied this matter and converted to Catholicism?
I have no interest in pagan philosophical 'theology' that makes up your Church's religious beliefs...Jesus warned us about that as well...
I do not for a second believe that God used anyone nor gave anyone spiritual enlightenment to authoritatively teach his scriptures who was not married and did not have a family, especially a raging queer like Newman, who you guys fawn over...
There are plenty of non Catholic bible scholars and theologians out there who dance circles around anyone Catholic...I am not one of them...But I have read many of their works...They actually know the bible and know Jesus...
Let me ask you this:
When Paul wrote his epistles to the believers in Rome, Galatia, Corinth, Ephesus, Colossi, Thessaloniki, to Timothy, to the Hebrews and to Titus and Philemon, did he intend for those letters to be copied, dispersed to all the local churches and obeyed? How about Peter? When he wrote his two epistles? How about Jude? James? John when he wrote Revelation? Do you think these men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit and did they recognize the work of the Holy Spirit in the writings of the others? Did they exhort their disciples to hear and obey what was spoken in these writings and to ensure ALL others did as well or did they just decide to wait until a church "council" made the decision three hundred years later?
This scenario you paint of some "church" council centuries after all these Apostles had died getting together with a pile of writings and deciding which ones were and which ones were not Divinely-inspired is a myth constructed to try to prove mere men were given the right by God to decide what they would accept from Him. It's foolishness! It borders on blasphemy. Did God expect the Jewish nation to do that with the writings of the Holy Prophets He sent to them or did He expect them to hear and obey? Unto the Jews were given the Oracles of God, Paul said. Should we presume they didn't know what those were until 382 A.D.?
These are questions every person must consider and come to realize that God has NOT left us to our own devices. He has given us HIS sacred word, the Word of Life, the Sword of the Spirit, and we are to hear Him and obey Him before ANY man - even IF he claims he is "infallible".
The process of compiling the New Testament canon was organic, and a consensus slowly emerged. But spurious books were disputed. Even some books that we accept today as canonical were disputed, such as Revelation.
There is even an ancient Ethiopian church today that regards the Didache as inspired.
And of course the OT canon remains contentious to this day.
So who has the authority to determine the canon?
You?
Luther?
An anti-Christian remnant of Jews who gathered in Jamnia 70 years after Pentecost?
Catholics “listen to the church” that Christ founded, as He commanded us. We trust “the pillar and foundation of truth” to determine what writings are divinely inspired.
Finally, there aren’t any biblical or ancient writings that mention the Bible being the ultimate rule of faith, because there was no universally agreed upon canon of the Old Testament, or even the New Testament, until the Councils of the fourth century.
And even then, the doctrine wasn’t practically possible until the invention of the printing press, 1100 years later.
And those that don't are ignorant and unschooled?
No one had ever challenged the canon prior to Luther to the point of printing Bibles with a Prefaces that said seven books in the Old and four books in the New Testament were not inspired.
The Catholic Church had to make a statement when they did saying the canon as it existed to Luther's throwing books in the garbage was the one and only acceptable canon of the Old and New Testaments so that in 2015 Alynsky style anti-Catholic chatterboxes wouldn't be saying trash like,
"The Church didn't change what they used but they never officially stated that the Anti-Christ Pharisee Approved Luther Subset of the Bible wasn't acceptable."
Followed by a lot of faulty logic about how if they knew the Luther Subset was wrong they would have spoken up but since they didn't it's an admission that they know Luther was right blah, blah, blah
Know Nothings is an extremely good description of the anti-Catholic crowd to this very day.
The transparent Alynsky game of damned if you do damned if you don't isn't characteristic of Christians, it's characteristic of frauds pretending to be Christian while working hard to divide Christians against one another.
Yawn. Have a nice day
Those are your words.
How would you describe the Moonies; followers of Jehovah’s Witnesses; Mormons, mainline denominations like Lutherans and Episcopalians who now ordain gay married lesbians and homosexual bishops, the vapid nonsense of the Billy Grahams; Jeremiah Wrights; or Joel Osteens; Tammy Faye Bakers; Jimmy Swaggarts; Benny Hinns; Jim Jones and the David Koresh’s?
Are we to take “your” and someone else’s interpretation by folks who crack open the pages of the Bible and offer us their interpretations? From a Bible whose books did not fall from the skies and self-assemble themselves but were infallibly assembled by the Catholic Church after sorting through hundreds of writings and cross-checking their veracity with the received tradition and firmly acknowledging these books to be the written “Word of God” and have interpreted this written word infallibly 2000 years as the ONE Church speaking the ONE truth?
Having been a student of theology myself, I’d rather follow the faith of the early Church fathers, and the the irrefutable doctrine of Petrine authority and the ONE Church Christ founded for all time.
What you’d call folks like us, or Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, or Benedict or for that matter the pre-eminent list of Protestant theologians who have decamped and converted to the Catholic faith I would not know? Or for that matter such laypeople as Justice Thomas, Judge Robert Bork, Laura Ingraham?
Don't kid yourself. This has been happening since Vatican II with its false ecumenism.
Catholics do like the name dropping group think safety don’t they? They fear comparing their beliefs to scripture and what it teaches however. Sad that.
Name dropping begins with Christ and Peter.
There were many men engaged in reform in the Catholic Church when Luther arose, including Erasmus and Thomas More and a couple of future popes. What made Luther dangerous, and what caused him to be condemned by the German diet, was he preached doctrines like those of Hus, which had led to civil war in Bohemia. In the Middle ages, civil unrest and new religious doctrines went together, as could be seen in the career of Zwingli. Luther, unlike most zealots was a political conservative, which was shone in his support of the suppression of the Peasants’ revolt by the princes. But his reforms became a cause behind which some princes resisted the new Emperor and Rome. The young Karl, unlike his predecessors, had a personal inheritance that gave him the power to mold Germany into a single state, as the French king had done in the Frankish lands. Religious division, however, denied him the ability to control the Church. The demand on his interests elsewhere prevented him from focusing on Germany until after the death of Luther, won adamantly opposed any reconciliation with Rome, and that carried the day because of his great prestige in Germany. But Charles failed and by 1555 he was forced to come to terms with the Princes and to allow them to decide which faith should dominate in his realm.
Take a few minutes to read the following and then decide if you want to hold to the errors you espouse:
From The Formation of the New Testament Canon:
But the Old Testament books were not the only ones which the apostles (by Christ’s own appointment the authoritative founders of the church) imposed upon the infant churches, as their authoritative rule of faith and practice. No more authority dwelt in the prophets of the old covenant than in themselves, the apostles, who had been “made sufficient as ministers of a new covenant “; for (as one of themselves argued) “if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory.” Accordingly not only was the gospel they delivered, in their own estimation, itself a divine revelation, but it was also preached “in the Holy Ghost” (I Pet. i. 12); not merely the matter of it, but the very words in which it was clothed were “of the Holy Spirit” (I Cor. ii. 13). Their own commands were, therefore, of divine authority (I Thess. iv. 2), and their writings were the depository of these commands (II Thess. ii. 15). “If any man obeyeth not our word by this epistle,” says Paul to one church (II Thess. iii. 14), “note that man, that ye have no company with him.” To another he makes it the test of a Spirit-led man to recognize that what he was writing to them was “the commandments of the Lord” (I Cor. xiv. 37). Inevitably, such writings, making so awful a claim on their acceptance, were received by the infant churches as of a quality equal to that of the old “Bible “; placed alongside of its older books as an additional part of the one law of God; and read as such in their meetings for worship — a practice which moreover was required by the apostles (I Thess. v. 27; Col. iv. 16; Rev. 1. 3). In the apprehension, therefore, of the earliest churches, the “Scriptures” were not a closed but an increasing “canon.” Such they had been from the beginning, as they gradually grew in number from Moses to Malachi; and such they were to continue as long as there should remain among the churches “men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”
We say that this immediate placing of the new books — given the church under the seal of apostolic authority — among the Scriptures already established as such, was inevitable. It is also historically evinced from the very beginning. Thus the apostle Peter, writing in A.D. 68, speaks of Paul’s numerous letters not in contrast with the Scriptures, but as among the Scriptures and in contrast with “the other Scriptures” (II Pet. iii. 16) — that is, of course, those of the Old Testament. In like manner the apostle Paul combines, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Luke under the common head of “Scripture” (I Tim. v. 18): “For the Scripture saith, ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn’ [Deut. xxv. 4]; and, ‘The laborer is worthy of his hire’” (Luke x. 7). The line of such quotations is never broken in Christian literature. Polycarp (c. 12) in A.D. 115 unites the Psalms and Ephesians in exactly similar manner: “In the sacred books, . . . as it is said in these Scriptures, ‘Be ye angry and sin not,’ and ‘Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.’” So, a few years later, the so-called second letter of Clement, after quoting Isaiah, adds (ii. 4): “And another Scripture, however, says, ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners’” — quoting from Matthew, a book which Barnabas (circa 97-106 A.D.) had already adduced as Scripture. After this such quotations are common.
What needs emphasis at present about these facts is that they obviously are not evidences of a gradually-heightening estimate of the New Testament books, originally received on a lower level and just beginning to be tentatively accounted Scripture; they are conclusive evidences rather of the estimation of the New Testament books from the very beginning as Scripture, and of their attachment as Scripture to the other Scriptures already in hand. The early Christians did not, then, first form a rival “canon” of “new books” which came only gradually to be accounted as of equal divinity and authority with the “old books”; they received new book after new book from the apostolical circle, as equally” Scripture “ with the old books, and added them one by one to the collection of old books as additional Scriptures, until at length the new books thus added were numerous enough to be looked upon as another section of the Scriptures.
The earliest name given to this new section of Scripture was framed on the model of the name by which what we know as the Old Testament was then known. Just as it was called “The Law and the Prophets and the Psalms” (or “the Hagiographa”), or more briefly “The Law and the Prophets,” or even more briefly still “The Law”; so the enlarged Bible was called “The Law and the Prophets, with the Gospels and the Apostles” (so Clement of Alexandria, “Strom.” vi. 11, 88; Tertullian, “De Præs. Hær.” 36), or most briefly “The Law and the Gospel” (so Claudius Apolinaris, Irenæus); while the new books apart were called “The Gospel and the Apostles,” or most briefly of all” The Gospel.” This earliest name for the new Bible, with all that it involves as to its relation to the old and briefer Bible, is traceable as far back as Ignatius (A.D. 115), who makes use of it repeatedly (e.g., “ad Philad.” 5; “ad Smyrn.” 7). In one passage he gives us a hint of the controversies which the enlarged Bible of the Christians aroused among the Judaizers (“ad Philad.” 6). “When I heard some saying,” he writes, “‘Unless I find it in the Old [Books] I will not believe the Gospel,’ on my saying, ‘It is written,’ they answered, ‘That is the question.’ To me, however, Jesus Christ is the Old [Books]; his cross and death and resurrection, and the faith which is by him, the undefiled Old [Books] — by which I wish, by your prayers, to be justified. The priests indeed are good, but the High Priest better,” etc. Here Ignatius appeals to the “Gospel” as Scripture, and the Judaizers object, receiving from him the answer in effect which Augustine afterward formulated in the well-known saying that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is first made clear in the New. What we need now to observe, however, is that to Ignatius the New Testament was not a different book from the Old Testament, but part of the one body of Scripture with it; an accretion, so to speak, which had grown upon it.
This is the testimony of all the early witnesses — even those which speak for the distinctively Jewish-Christian church. For example, that curious Jewish-Christian writing, “The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs” (Benj. 11), tells us, under the cover of an ex post facto prophecy, that the “work and word” of Paul, i.e., confessedly the book of Acts and Paul’s Epistles, “shall be written in the Holy Books,” i.e., as is understood by all, made a part of the existent Bible. So even in the Talmud, in a scene intended to ridicule a “bishop” of the first century, he is represented as finding Galatians by “sinking himself deeper” into the same “Book” which contained the Law of Moses (“Babl. Shabbath,” 116 a and b). The details cannot be entered into here. Let it suffice to say that, from the evidence of the fragments which alone have been preserved to us of the Christian writings of that very early time, it appears that from the beginning of the second century (and that is from the end of the apostolic age) a collection (Ignatius, II Clement) of “New Books” (Ignatius), called the “Gospel and Apostles” (Ignatius, Marcion), was already a part of the “Oracles” of God (Polycarp, Papias, II Clement), or “Scriptures” (I Tim., II Pet., Barn., Polycarp, II Clement), or the” Holy Books “or “Bible” (Testt. XII. Patt.).
The number of books included in this added body of New Books, at the opening of the second century, cannot be satisfactorily determined by the evidence of these fragments alone. The section of it called the “Gospel” included Gospels written by “the apostles and their companions” (Justin), which beyond legitimate question were our four Gospels now received. The section called “the Apostles contained the book of Acts (The Testt. XII. Patt.) and epistles of Paul, John, Peter and James. The evidence from various quarters is indeed enough to show that the collection in general use contained all the books which we at present receive, with the possible exceptions of Jude, II and III John and Philemon. And it is more natural to suppose that failure of very early evidence for these brief booklets is due to their insignificant size rather than to their non-acceptance.
It is to be borne in mind, however, that the extent of the collection may have — and indeed is historically shown actually to have — varied in different localities. The Bible was circulated only in hand-copies, slowly and painfully made; and an incomplete copy, obtained say at Ephesus in A.D. 68, would be likely to remain for many years the Bible of the church to which it was conveyed; and might indeed become the parent of other copies, incomplete like itself, and thus the means of providing a whole district with incomplete Bibles. Thus, when we inquire after the history of the New Testament Canon we need to distinguish such questions as these: (1) When was the New Testament Canon completed? (2) When did any one church acquire a completed Canon? (3) When did the completed canon — the complete Bible — obtain universal circulation and acceptance? (4) On what ground and evidence did the churches with incomplete Bibles accept the remaining books when they were made known to them?
The Canon of the New Testament was completed when the last authoritative book was given to any church by the apostles, and that was when John wrote the Apocalypse, about A.D. 98. Whether the church of Ephesus, however, had a completed Canon when it received the Apocalypse, or not, would depend on whether there was any epistle, say that of Jude, which had not yet reached it with authenticating proof of its apostolicity. There is room for historical investigation here. Certainly the whole Canon was not universally received by the churches till somewhat later. The Latin church of the second and third centuries did not quite know what to do with the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Syrian churches for some centuries may have lacked the lesser of the Catholic Epistles and Revelation. But from the time of Irenæus down, the church at large had the whole Canon as we now possess it. And though a section of the church may not yet have been satisfied of the apostolicity of a certain book or of certain books; and though afterwards doubts may have arisen in sections of the church as to the apostolicity of certain books (as e. g. of Revelation): yet in no case was it more than a respectable minority of the church which was slow in receiving, or which came afterward to doubt, the credentials of any of the books that then as now constituted the Canon of the New Testament accepted by the church at large. And in every case the principle on which a book was accepted, or doubts against it laid aside, was the historical tradition of apostolicity.
Let it, however, be clearly understood that it was not exactly apostolic authorship which in the estimation of the earliest churches, constituted a book a portion of the “canon.” Apostolic authorship was, indeed, early confounded with canonicity. It was doubt as to the apostolic authorship of Hebrews, in the West, and of James and Jude, apparently, which underlay the slowness of the inclusion of these books in the “canon” of certain churches. But from the beginning it was not so. The principle of canonicity was not apostolic authorship, but imposition by the apostles as “law.” Hence Tertullian’s name for the “canon” is “instrumentum”; and he speaks of the Old and New Instrument as we would of the Old and New Testament. That the apostles so imposed the Old Testament on the churches which they founded — as their “Instrument,” or “Law,” or “Canon” — can be denied by none. And in imposing new books on the same churches, by the same apostolical authority, they did not confine themselves to books of their own composition. It is the Gospel according to Luke, a man who was not an apostle, which Paul parallels in I Tim. v. 18 with Deuteronomy as equally “Scripture” with it in the first extant quotation of a New Testament book of as Scripture. The Gospels which constituted the first division of the New Books, — of “The Gospel and the Apostles,” — Justin tells us, were “written by the apostles and their companions.” The authority of the apostles, as by divine appointment founders of the church, was embodied in whatever books they imposed on the church as law, not merely in those they themselves had written.
The early churches, in short, received, as we receive, into their New Testament all the books historically evinced to them as given by the apostles to the churches as their code of law; and we must not mistake the historical evidences of the slow circulation and authentication of these books over the widely-extended church, for evidence of slowness of “canonization” of books by the authority or the taste of the church itself.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.