Lutheran Leaders Emphasize 'Quest for Unity' with Catholic Church

Catholic Culture ^ | 2/9/16

[trisham]

Thanks for the ping, wagglebee. Excellent posts.

[Kolokotronis]

“But the truth, when you look at what they actually believed and the ramifications of those beliefs, is that they were truly heretics.”

And as we know, the weed of heresy always, always, always bears bitter fruit.

[wagglebee]

And as we know, the weed of heresy always, always, always bears bitter fruit.

Very true.

Arians and Nestorians weren't sola scriptura "Bible Christians" who were being "oppressed" by the Church, they were heretics espousing dangerous beliefs that questioned the divinity of our Lord.

[rwa265]

Excellent post. I wonder what the reformers would think of the beliefs of some present day Protestants.

[Kolokotronis]

“... sola scriptura “Bible Christians”....”

So far as I know, there were no “sola scriptura” Christians, oppressed or otherwise, until, at the earliest, the Protestant Revolution.

[wagglebee]

I wonder what the reformers would think of the beliefs of some present day Protestants.

The early Reformers had people burned at the stake for much of the heresy that is pushed by modern Protestants.

Luther and Calvin didn't consider teaching about the Blessed Mother to be in dispute, they understood that these beliefs had been the hallmark of orthodox Christianity from the beginning.

[wagglebee]

I've always found it ironic that an entire religious movement is based upon the necessity of and invention that didn't exist a century before it started.

Few things in history have had the impact that the invention of the printing press had. The Protestant Reformation COULD NOT have happened with the printing press because their entire doctrine is predicated upon each person being able to read the Bible.

Prior to the 16th century books simply weren't available except to the VERY WEALTHY. Very few people could read, not because learning was suppressed, but because there was nothing for them to read (and it didn't matter that no Bibles were in the vernacular because EVERYONE who was able to read could read Greek and Latin).

My opinion has long been that the Protestant Reformation was a foregone conclusion. It was going to happen, it was just a matter of where and how soon. Martin Luther wasn't the first person to come up with new ideas, but he was the first person with the technology available to disseminate these ideas throughout Christendom regardless of attempts to suppress them.

[Kolokotronis]

“Prior to the 16th century books simply weren’t available except to the VERY WEALTHY. Very few people could read, not because learning was suppressed, but because there was nothing for them to read (and it didn’t matter that no Bibles were in the vernacular because EVERYONE who was able to read could read Greek and Latin).”

In the East prior to the Fall of Constantinople, education was widespread. Most people, especially in the great cities, could read and write and, as you have noted, Greek was the vernacular from Egyptian North Africa through the Levant up into the Balkans. That didn’t lead to anything like the Reformation, but it did mean that the people were very engaged in liturgical and theological discussions. At the time of the 2nd Ecumenical Council, +Gregory of Nyssa complained:

“The whole city is full of it, the squares, the market places, the cross-roads, the alleyways; old-clothes men, money changers, food sellers: they are all busy arguing. If you ask someone to give you change, he philosophizes about the Begotten and the Unbegotten; if you inquire about the price of a loaf, you are told by way of reply that the Father is greater and the Son inferior; if you ask Is my bath ready?, the attendant answers that the Son was made out of nothing.”

That level of informed theological engagement in the East may well be the origin of the Orthodox Laity’s role as the Guardians of Orthodoxy.

I don’t doubt for a moment that the printing press made the Reformation possible, but there were other things going on in the West, the very limited education of the population, the pyramidal, “top down” structure of medieval Western society, those sorts of things which simply weren’t the case in the East and may have contributed to making societal conditions ripe for change.

[wagglebee]

I don’t doubt for a moment that the printing press made the Reformation possible, but there were other things going on in the West, the very limited education of the population, the pyramidal, “top down” structure of medieval Western society, those sorts of things which simply weren’t the case in the East and may have contributed to making societal conditions ripe for change.

You are correct, political conditions in western Europe were VERY DIFFERENT from eastern Europe, and have largely remained so until the present.

What you say about the East with regards to education was certainly true in major cities like Constantinople, but it certainly wasn't the case in Russia and the Balkans which retained medieval serfdom for centuries after the West had abandoned it.

Another factor that cannot be discounted is the Black Death and the profound effect it had on society. For the first time it seemed as if God was punishing Christendom and nobody had any good answers. The massive scale of deaths had immediate effects on the economy and marked the beginning of a shift in western Europe from the farms to the cities.

I guess my overall contention is that conditions in western Europe were ripe for the Reformation. The same circumstances that prompted the Renaissance led to the Reformation.

[Kolokotronis]

"What you say about the East with regards to education was certainly true in major cities like Constantinople, but it certainly wasn't the case in Russia and the Balkans which retained medieval serfdom for centuries after the West had abandoned it."

It was true in Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria all of which retained their educational systems, run by The Church, into the 19th century. Serfdom was gone in Greece under the Empire, as was also true in Serbia and Bulgaria. The Turks brought back a sort of serfdom but not like in Russia or Poland or Rumania. I've never heard of anything like serfdom in Greece in the time since Christ but maybe at one point there was.

In Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, during the Turkokratia, educating the people was forbidden so The Church ran what were called "hidden" or "secret" schools which the children went to at night, "by the light of the moon" to meet with the priest in a cave, or cleft in the rocks or the forest or in the church crypt where they learned to read and write and "of the things of God".

Here's a little poem every Greek Orthodox child, me included, has learned (in Greek of course) for well over 100 years:

Little moon, so bright and cool

Light me on my way to school

Where to study I am free

And God's Word is taught to me.

Here's a famous painting of one such Krifo scholio:

[wagglebee]

Thanks, I had a roommate in college who was Greek Orthodox and I remember him having that poem.

[redgolum]

It wasn’t just the printing press. If I had to place any event as the source of the Reformation it would be the fight between the Papacy and the HRE over who controlled the crowning of the Emperor.

That set the stage for a long drawn out fight between the Catholic Church and Empire, and resulted in the political situation where both sides saw Luther as more than just a monk asking questions. He became (and to an extent remains to this day) a focus of all the hopes and hates of the time (similar to the view the English had of the Pope post Henry VIII).

In reading Luther’s words, he was a bit surprised for all the fuss made after the 95 Theses. Now, he was a German and grabbed the ball and ran with it the direction he felt he had to, but a split was not his desire (and doesn’t remain a desire among most Confessional Lutherans).

The printing press expanded things, but remember the Cathar’s predated the press, yet it took a couple decades of war to stop them.

[wagglebee]

If I had to place any event as the source of the Reformation it would be the fight between the Papacy and the HRE over who controlled the crowning of the Emperor.

Also, important was the fact that if there was a "national church" (i.e. the Church of England), the government would have a lot more say over what happened with tithes and property.

The emerging European nation states DID NOT want to be subordinate to the papacy and there were only two ways to accomplish this: The first was to be so strong militarily and economically that there was nothing the Vatican could do, this was the method employed by France, Spain and the southern portion of the HRE. The second option was to get rid of the Catholic Church and assume control, this was employed in the northern HRE and England among other place.

The printing press expanded things, but remember the Cathar’s predated the press, yet it took a couple decades of war to stop them.

True, but very few people outside the region really knew at the time what the religious views of the Cathars was, they only heard the "official line" from the Church. The printing press made it impossible to control the spread of ideas.

[terycarl]

It is taking many years for unification with the SSPX to occur, if it happens at all. Unification with Lutherans is many decades away. The Lutherans I know make it a point to point out differences between the two religions; they don’t want to be Catholic.

They already are...Baptized and everything, they just have to admit that Martin was WRONG and return to the fold....very easy, just wake up and smell the roses!!!.

[terycarl]

My opinion has long been that the Protestant Reformation was a foregone conclusion. It was going to happen, it was just a matter of where and how soon. Martin Luther wasn't the first person to come up with new ideas, but he was the first person with the technology available to disseminate these ideas throughout Christendom regardless of attempts to suppress them.

The earlier dissidents were condemned for what they were...heretics and the protestants are on the very edge.