Dave, since you're eager for people to comment on this ongoing discussion, let me be the first.
I'm glad to see from your extensive citations that you recognize the manifest evils of the Church of Luther's day and are willing to see those as significantly impacting Luther's thought and actions. However, I think you're still missing a major point when you agree with Catholics who say Luther "overthrew" the Church. Let's see--who exactly was it who was in charge of the Church in Luther's day? I believe it was the papacy, no? Like a captain who's spent all night drinking himself out of all rational and moral capacity then running his ship into an iceberg, a viciously corrupt, theologically inept, shockingly worldly pope who lived in a legal-social context in which nobody on earth could hold him accountable for his foul deeds threw Luther out of the Church.
This result was totally contrary to all of Luther's own expectations and had nothing to do with his intentions toward the pope or the Church. Until Leo X threw him out, Luther actually naively expected the pope to take his quite reasonable protests seriously and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Luther had no idea when he started opposing Tetzel just how far the corruption had spread, had no idea how utterly uninterested in spiritual responsibility the popes had become. It is simply and egregiously false to suggest that he set out to "overthrow" the Church. I grant that it's a fine piece of question begging on the part of Catholics, simply assuming the equation papal hierarchy = visible Church, and then arguing that to attack the former is to attack the latter, but it is in no way a historically or theologically responsible argument to make.
Theologians and canon lawyers and bishops had been struggling mightily with questions about the extent of the pope's authority for centuries prior to Luther. There was no "Catholic consensus" on the point that only "rebels" and "heretics" were daring to challenge. What there were were factiones (factions) within the one single Catholic Church who argued for centuries about the papacy's power, and never did come up with a solution agreeable to all.
This is why you can have Huggucio of Pisa, the teacher of Innocent III, struggling to find an answer to what would happen if the pope ever openly taught a heresy. The problem is, Huggucio said, is that idiots and simpletons would believe the heresy merely because the pope taught it. That tells you something important about the state of discourse on papal power in the 13th century--300 years before Luther. The theologians and bishops backed into a corner by the excessive unitarian-monarchicalism coming out of the 11th century, as exemplified by Gregory VII's Dictatus papae and several rather seriously false citations about papal power that became canonical sources thanks to Gratian of Bologna putting them in his Decretum.
From there it just got worse, a
[cont]
From there it just got worse, as any by now standard scholarly source on the constitutional battles of the later Middle Ages will show the diligent inquirer. "Papal authority" simply was not this simple, black-or-white given, and resistance to various manifestations of it which were considered problematic and / or excessive were not simply instances of "rebellion." Such portrayals of the Medieval situation, which even if you, Dave, don't make them, are in fact made by vast numbers of Catholic apologists, are ludicrously irresponsible and amount to nothing more than specious Catholic question-begging.
It's the same problem someone recently pointed out on Reformed Catholicism with Benedict XVI saying that because of the problems of the day Luther came to experience the visible Church as the adversary of salvation. That's simply not true, as the commenter pointed out, what Luther saw as the adversary of salvation was the papal system which had accreted all power to itself in the visible Church.
In other words, for all the fine pieces of Catholic scholarship you cite that deal with the profound corruptions of the 16th century hierarchy, very serious problems still remain in Catholic rhetoric. It's not enough to acknowledge the grave problems that existed. At some point Catholics need to stop making excuses for the broken system of the 16th century and just admit that wicked, theologically inept and power-mad tyrants wearing the garb of shepherds overreacted to a completely reasonable reform movement and blew the Western Church apart. It's not Luther's fault. Luther wasn't in charge. It's the papacy's fault because the papacy was in charge. When the captain drinks himself out of his skull and runs the ship into an iceberg, it's totally improper for either him or the officers loyal to him to blame the passengers who tried to get him away from the wheel before the disaster happened.
The papacy has made a good start with its various apologies over the last few years, but more apologies--and then REPENTANCE BEARING FRUIT--need to follow.
At some point Catholics need to stop making excuses for the broken system of the 16th century and just admit that wicked, theologically inept and power-mad tyrants wearing the garb of shepherds overreacted to a completely reasonable reform movement and blew the Western Church apart. It's not Luther's fault. Luther wasn't in charge. It's the papacy's fault because the papacy was in charge.
To put 100% of the blame on the papacy is really quite hard to accept. Following leaders unless and until those leaders make a mistake (in your eyes) is hardly good enough. You need to follow imperfect leadership and let God worry about His church.
Did you see Dave's paper on 50 ways to leave your church?
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...d-
departed.html
Can you honestly read that and call what Luther was doing a "completely reasonable reform movement?" I think there is blame to be laid on both sides. Ultimately the blame has to lie with Luther. He was called to obey(Heb 13:17). We all are. Not just when we agree but always. Did the pope make it hard? Sure he did. But if obedience was easy it would not be a virtue.
Thanks for your comments, Tim.
It is simply and egregiously false to suggest that he set out to "overthrow" the Church.
That's never been my position (not that you were necessarily suggesting it was my own, but just to clarify). I think Luther was an idealistic, naive, passionately committed man, who sincerely believed he was right, and had a good motivation, but was simply mistaken. He had been led astray by nominalism, as Bainton, McGrath, Lortz, Bouyer and other historians all agree.
So when he came to the Church and expected her to overthrow at least 50 of her previous doctrines (as I have documented from the three great treatises of 1520 alone), he was foolish enough to think that he could be right in all these things where previous Christian tradition had not been.
That I find implausible in the extreme. He was asked to recant and did not, thus leaving the Church no choice but to excommunicate him. We are thus blamed for causing the schism, that the Lutherans didn't desire, but we had no choice, facing 50 things where we had to agree with one man. That's an absurd notion. Meanwhile, of course, the Lutherans were stealing Catholic church proprties all over the place and flatly refused to give back the confiscated property at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530. Hardly a conciliatory gesture . . .
So did he want to start a new church? No. He would have said this was impossible to do anyway. But because of his intransigence and unwillingness to accept the slightest correction from the Church (he had to be right on everything), the situation arose where tragic sectarianism and division became inevitable. Thus the result is sectarianism. I would argue that any fair-minded observer at all could see what would happen if Luther followed his course, but Luther did not. "Prophets" never do, because they are infallible; even practically inspired.
That is how I can be a Catholic who believes Catholic stuff but at the same time not have an "anti-Luther" attitude. I dot have to run him down personally. In fact, I admire much about him (always have). But I have a right to disagree where Christian truth and apostolic tradition are concerned.
Were many of the popes in that period corrupt and immoral? Absolutely. No argument there. Still doesn't justify massive, revolutionary dissent and schism. The Church has always had decadent period and cycles of revival. There were huge problems in the very first churches, as we see in the Bible. Sin is sin. Why should it ever surprise us when it occurs?
I grant that it's a fine piece of question begging on the part of Catholics, simply assuming the equation papal hierarchy = visible Church, and then arguing that to attack the former is to attack the latter, but it is in no way a historically or theologically responsible argument to make.
To the contrary there is a ton of historical evidence for papal primacy, and Luther himself fully recognized it (and greatly agonized over this very thing, according to Althaus) before his break.
I agree that we bear a great share (if not the lion's share) of the blame for the split happening: certainly in allowing corruption to get so bad before waking up later in the century. However, that doesn't justify overturning 50 different things just because Luther says so. Why should anyone believe he was right about all that, and the Church wrong in its previous 1500 years? Does that really make any sense?
If one believes that indulgences and moral corruption were the only issues (as McGrath and others are now denying, as I showed), then it might make some sense (and this remains the myth of the beginning and causes of the "Reformation"), but when one understands that many issues were up for grabs (as subsequent Lutheran and Protestant history prove beyond a doubt) then it is clear that the Catholic Church headed by the pope had no choice but to denounce Luther's errors, just as the pope had no choice but to not cave into Henry VIII, and thus England was lost, even though some four-fifths of her people at the time were still Catholics and had to be forced at gunpoint (or under pain of being drawn and quartered) into Protestantism, just as German peoples were absurdly forced to adopt the religion of the secular leaders. So much for freedom of the religious conscience . . .
I am typing my comments in Word as I read, and I must say from what I have read so far this is great stuff. On one hand there was corruption, but on the other hand Luther would not back down from his novel doctrines.
This quote was amazing:
++ it is unacceptable to determine the state of the pre-Reformation European church through the eyes of its leading critics, such as Luther and Calvin. It is increasingly clear that attempts to depict the late medieval church as morally and theologically corrupt, unpopular, and near-terminal decline cannot be sustained on the basis of the evidence available ++
The shocking thing here is that now that I think about it, HOW MUCH weight have historians been putting on the “accuracy” of the Pretend Reformer’s words? If most or even a significant amount of Church “history” is being drawn up based on using the Reformer’s writings then I must say this is unsettling. Their writings contained gross exaggerations and lies (both intentional and unintentional).
Here is a quote that stood out as well:
++ [B]oth are thinking in nominalistic terms. Luther proceeds from this way of thinking with due consistency to the denial of Catholic dogmas. Eck, proceeding from the same nominalistic thought, is unable to illuminate theologically even in a measure satisfactorily the Catholic theses to which he firmly holds++
What exactly does this paragraph, specifically “nominalistic terms”, mean? I noticed the term "nominalism" appear quite a few times in this article but I dont know what it means.
Another HUGE thing that I just learned (why has nobody said this earlier?) was that Luther apparently didn’t study or know the teachings of St Thomas and other such Doctors!! I have read quotes where Calvin mentions St Thomas, but all this time I have wondered if Luther and Calvin really had a good grasp of St Thomas. I am no where near a theologian, but the more I find out about St Thomas the more convinced I am for Catholic theology.
Another quote:
++
From the moment of their creation, the Protestant Churches were merely the works of man. In so far as they manage to attain any authority at all, it is always the authority of a man, either of a founder or organiser or of a simple minister, and, if that fails, they break up into fragments, to the sole profit of the authority of each individual, his private views, tendencies or experiences.++
How true this is. Note how Luther and Calvin and such were the head of their own denominations while, ironically, they were opposed to the Pope as head of the Church. What happens when the “founder” of a purely human institution dies? That institution splits within a generation or two.
A quote from Pope Ratzinger:
++There is no appropriate category in Catholic thought for the phenomenon of Protestantism today. It is obvious that the old category of “heresy” is no longer of any value.++
Im not sure why the Pastor Larry quoted Ratzinger here. Clearly what this passage mea
++Pastor Larry: Our question was how is the AC not apostolic? Our question was NOT, “how is the AC not patristic?
Dave: Fair enough. I may not have properly answered that particular question++
That was a poorly worded question, after all what does “apostolic” mean in this context? All I can see is that it means the AC is derived from either Scripture or Tradition (which the ECFs are involved with) or both. Clearly he didn’t mean, “how is the AC not Scriptural,” thus leaving the other option, “how is the AC not Traditional/Patristic”.
Now is where you ask the real question: Pastor Larry, can you please name one ECF whom you consider a solid orthodox Christian that is a testimony to your distinct Lutheran doctrines?
This was one of the most informative articles I have ever read. Seriously, if Luther wasn’t aware of and dealing with St Thomas and such then basically he was attacking and refuting strawmen.
Wow, I thought I would be sore by the time I got done with this second leg of the Tour de Armstrong (and the Tolle, lege! finish line 
), but instead I was captivated and it everything flowed well.
p.s. What does "Tolle, lege!" mean?
From the moment of their creation, the Protestant Churches were merely the works of man. In so far as they manage to attain any authority at all, it is always the authority of a man, either of a founder or organiser or of a simple minister, and, if that fails, they break up into fragments, to the sole profit of the authority of each individual, his private views, tendencies or experiences.++
How true this is. Note how Luther and Calvin and such were the head of their own denominations while, ironically, they were opposed to the Pope as head of the Church. What happens when the “founder” of a purely human institution dies? That institution splits within a generation or two.
Can the same thing not be said of the Catholic Church? After all it is formed around an infallible pope who is nothing other than a man, called by God. And what happened in the 16th century when the utter corruption of the papacy and its hierarchy were openly challenged? What about 1054 when the primacy of the pope was called into question?
When the focus is placed upon the man, glory is wrongly taken from God and ascribed to the man. Rather, should we not be looking at the work of God accomplished in and through the man? This is precisely what happens when we look only at the persons of the pope or Luther, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, etc. vis a vis the work God has called such men to do. The argument that the Churches that followed Calvin and Luther are only institutions of men is specious at best. Certainly both Calvin and Luther made great contributions to Christianity. Was it by their own reason and strength that they did so or did God use them as His instruments to accomplish His Will and purpose? Did God have a hand in establishing those churches, or was it purely the work of the devil? Remember, the pope had the power to call a council, as Luther and his party requested a number of times. Instead, the pope demanded recantation, then followed the refusal with excommunication. A council was not called until just before Luther's death. Once the die was cast, Luther certainly made choices that set him at odds with the papal party, and made reconciliation extremely difficult.
Also, the point that Pastor Nichols makes about having to win the argument at whatever cost should be heeded. We need to get past the I'm right and you're wrong, so make your point, but I'll still show you I'm right and you're wrong. My opinion and will does not really matter in the end. Rather, it is God whose Will is to be done and who will decide our fate, not the pope or leader of any church.
Randy, I'm not talking about blame. I'm talking about responsibility. Catholics need to learn the difference, and stop focusing on blaming people who resist grossly irresponsible leaders.
"Tolle lege" = "take up and read"; from a line in St. Augustine (Confessions, I believe).
I noticed the term "nominalism" appear quite a few times in this article but I dont know what it means.
It was a school of philosophy that arose out of Scholastic thought in the 14th century; many consider it a corruption of true Scholasticism (though its true nature has sometimes been distorted also). I wrote a lengthy article on it:
The Influence of William of Ockham and Nominalism on Martin Luther and Early Protestant Thought
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...ockham-
and.html
Randy, I'm not talking about blame. I'm talking about responsibility. Catholics need to learn the difference, and stop focusing on blaming people who resist grossly irresponsible leaders.
The point is we ARE to resist irresponsible leaders but not to the point of breaking up the church. Luther takes the blame for that because he went too far in a good cause. He needed to respectfully point out the errors of the church. They were legit leaders so they had every right to prevent him from teaching what they defined to be error.
Consider Hilary of Poitiers:
http://amywelborn.wordpress.com/...0/conciliation/
He allowed himself to be exiled by Arian bishops. He was right but they had legit authority so he obeyed. He did not start his own church despite the fact that most laymen agreed with him. That is what Luther was called to do. The fact that the leaders he was resisting were not holy is a separate issue. It gives him no reason at all to split up the church.
It is like the husband who says he comitted adultery because his wife was disrespectful. That may be true but it in no way justifies the adultery. It may make the temptation greater but it does not make it OK.
I dont want to derail this discussion (maybe this isnt derailing) but regarding this Nominalist issue. Im trying to get through that link Dave posted, but it is really painful/tough, my head is spinning. Im about halfway done and plan on finishing, the problem is on one hand I see comments that Ockham is going against Aquinas and on the other hand see that he respects Aquinas's theology, on one hand he rejects natural reason on the other hand he has no problem with it, etc, etc.
Here is a quote I found that sums up where I am so far:
++ Therefore Ockham's is an irenic separatism that rejects the prototypically
Catholic intellectual project of unifying classical philosophy and the Christian
faith in such a way as to exhibit the latter as the perfection of the former, and
yet that stops short of disdaining the light of natural reason in the manner of
radical intellectual separatism. Perhaps this explains why, on the matters we
have been discussing here, Ockham will always be viewed as something of an
outsider both by the radical separatist, who is bent on isolating faith and reason
completely from one another, and by the mainstream Catholic thinker, who
seeks a genuine synthesis of faith and reason. ++
Ill comment more when Im done, but until then I must say this is complex stuff, especially for people without a philosophy background.
Here are my comments as I am reading the second half of Dave's Nominalist ariticle:
Here is an interesting quote:
++Hence God can command everything with this power, except not to obey Him. As soon as a human person knows that a certain command is the will of God, he is bound to obey.++
Let me start off saying Im not a philosopher by any means, but this seems to me perfectly Catholic and reasonable. Yet, there are Protestants out there, especially Reformed that say stuff like “God commands everyone to repent, but He only enables a select few to actually repent” which to me flies contrary to that quote above. Of course these Protestants who talk like that emphasize Total Depravity and such.
++However, it is well known that Ockham admitted that God can command by His absolute power that a person should hate Him or at least not love Him.++
I think I see where this is going now and why Dave included this. If I had to guess this is the erroneous/problematic line of thinking Luther adopted. But Ill have to keep reading to find out.
++The Occamists were at the other extreme, for they not only separated faith and knowledge but also faith and reason. Aquinas was in between. Faith and knowledge are to be distinguished, but reason leads up to and illustrates faith. In the Protestant camp Luther's view was Occamism grown religiously vital. Faith was pitted even more violently against "the harlot reason," but faith was mightily sure of itself.++
I don’t want to oversimplify this, but it seems the issue here was one of faith (divine revelation) against reason. The only reason why this would make sense is if someone believed in Total Depravity or something. I really don’t know though.
As I kept reading I came across that McGrath quote which Dave cited for Pastor Larry about Luther never knowing Aquinas and instead being raised with Ockham and such. McGrath said, “Denifle argued that Luther's rejection of catholic theology was ultimately a reflection upon the particular type of 'catholic' theology with which Luther was familiar.”
++Luther came ruthlessly to condemn all the Schoolmen and the whole Middle Ages ostensibly on the ground of the pretended poisoning of the faith by Aristotle, but really because he himself had set up a contradiction between faith and reason. He says in 1521 that the Scholastics, headed by Aquinas . . . had smuggled philosophy into the world, though the Apostle had condemned it++
Wow! I agree with this because this is in fact how I see many Protestants react in regards to philosophy. From what I have come to believe (though Im open to correction) is that many (not all) Protestant traditions lack any philosophical foundation and when this is missing at the seminary/formation level then their outlook on theology as a consequence will be limited, which is what I see in groups like Baptists and such (Im not sure how much philosophical training Lutherans get).
The rest of the article basically s
You're still missing the point, Randy. Luther didn't break the Church up. The pope did. Just like the drunken captain who runs the ship into the iceberg, the papacy, the captain of the ship, ran it into an iceberg. It's no accident that that exact metaphor, the drunken captain at the helm of the ship of the Church, is used by Wessel Gansfort several decades prior to Luther's birth.
The theme of the responsibility of leaders for everything that happens on their watch is writ large in Western history. All tyrants eventually find this out. Though they often shrilly maintain their absolute inability to be held accountable all the way up until the point when their grand system comes crashing down around their ears, they eventually find out how God's world really works. Unfortunately, other than political tyrants in the secular sphere, Catholics are about the only ones who consistently fail to get this very simple point.
If the pope wants to talk the talk about authority, he has to walk the walk, and that means owning up to the consequences of his actions, not pushing them off on others. Luther did not split up the Church. The pope did. Luther was a minor officer on the ship. The pope was the captain of the ship. Think about it.
So we were supposed to lay down before the mighty Luther, admit he was right about the 50 + things he dsiagreed with, dismantle the papacy, give Luther the keys of the kingdom that Peter and the See of Rome had had for 1500 years, and everything would be hunky dory and no split would take place?
All we had to do was admit that some form of Lutheranism or Calvinism or Anglicanism or Anabaptism was correct, admit that previous Catholicism was gravely in error all those years (along with the fathers from whom it developed) and we avoid the entire schism . . .
Of course, the reader immediately sees the huge difficulties of this. Which brand of Protestantism do we adopt? Even if the Catholic Church conceded in dust and ashes and dismantled itself (because sin had proven that its claims were spurious and false), then there would immediately be four claimants as the cat's meow of True Ecclesiology, so the problem really wouldn't go away. They would continue wrangling with each other till Kingdom Come, just as in fact they have been doing WITH the Catholic Church also still here.
Dave, my remark about the equation papal hierarchy = visible Church was not referring to "papal primacy." The two are different in that it's one thing to acknowledge the pope has some type of primary authority, but it's another thing to argue that he and his associated hierarchy ARE the visible Church such that to disagree with him is to disagree with the Visible Church. THAT, and not merely "papal primacy," was a big issue for Luther--and for not a few Catholic theologians, canon lawyers, and bishops for several centuries prior to Luther.
Luther's earliest reform pleas evidence a strong desire to remain united with the pope. He spares little expense in magnifying the pope's role and authority in Christendom to lead the much needed reforms. It's only after (1) some fairly radical papal monarchist apologists, whose names escape me at the moment, began to viciously attack him by falsely alleging he wanted to overthrow the papacy itself, and (2) when he discovered that the corruption and refusal to implement reasonable reforms that had been being called for for somewhere around 150 years prior to himself, that he himself started writing the scathing jeremiads against the papacy for which Catholics seem to best know him. Luther would have been quite happy to submit to the pope, and he says so in several places early on. The problem was that the pope didn't want to submit to any authority outside himself--not canon law, not theology, not even Scripture himself. The pope had in effect become his own law, or, to borrow a term from political discourse, a tyrant.
You can see this if you examine the rise of what scholars call "the papal monarchy" from the later 11th century through the late 14th century. The pope and his creatures increasingly developed the notion that no authority on earth could ever ask the pope why he had done something, and that no authority on earth could ever be competent to judge the pope. This was a serious problem of excessive monarchicalism, and interestingly, it cut directly against the whole grain of classical political theory's idea of limitation of powers which so many fathers and doctors had spent so much effort maintaining for centuries.
The fact of the matter is that the popes of the later Middle Ages, and of the pre-Trent period of the 16th century, were basically just lawless tyrants, lording it over hapless Christians, throwing their weight around unreasonably, senselessly fomenting wars and revolutions merely for their own bloated sense of personal priority, fathering grossly unspiritual bastards and stuffing the hierarchy full of them, extorting money from kings and their people to underwrite purely secular concerns, and, more egregiously, teaching heresy by their out of control practice of simony.
This is all a matter of fact, not mere Protestant opinion. Everything I am saying can be demonstrated from the sources--the only problem being, I guess, that the sources aren't as widely a
This is all a matter of fact, not mere Protestant opinion. Everything I am saying can be demonstrated from the sources--the only problem being, I guess, that the sources aren't as widely available or as cheap as, say, Karl Adam's books.
I applaud the work you've done digging out Catholic citations admitting the gross problems of the Church. That's a start that should be respected. But more needs to come forth from the Catholic side, because given (1) the authority rhetoric of the Catholic side, and (2) the multi-faceted nature of the Western Christian political tradition, and (3) the complexity of the relevant historical examples (e.g., the controversies / debates surrounding the actions of Nicholas I, Gregory VII, Innocent III, Eugenius IV, Paul IV) the burden of proof lies on the Catholic side to come up with an account that doesn't just admit to corruption but actually goes the necessary extra step and says "And it was the pope's responsibility for what happened, and the pope's duty to repent of it and fix it, not anyone else's."
Nick,
Read the primary texts, don't just take Dave's word for it. If you haven't done so, look at Luther's Heidelberg disputation, and the exchange Luther had with Erasmus in Erasmus' Diatribe on Free Will and Luther's response in the Bondage of the Will. These texts give a fair overview at what Luther thought was at issue at the time in the prevailing theological though of the day, and the Heidelberg Disputation sets forth the framework of Luther's thinking. As I understand it, Luther did not reject reason, but, in matters of faith and salvation, the elevation of man's reason over and above the work of Christ. Luther saw that there was a tendency to ascribe to man in the thought of the Scholastics too much power to know and understand the mind of God, and thus to attribute too much to man's own ability in matters of salvation. Luther had a tremendous awe and respect for the power and nature of the Triune God, and his writing reflects the mystery of God and His power. In Luther's mind, at least from what I have read, the Scholastics diminished God and His power by creating logical, philosophical categories to describe the salvific work of God through Christ. In the end, for Luther, it was a First Commandment problem -- man's reason leads him to re-create God in a way in which man can understand Him -- a First Commandment problem. See the distinction between the Theologian of Glory and the Theologian of the Cross in the Heidelberg Disputation (a theologian of glory calls evil good, and good evil , a theologian of the cross calls a thing what it actually is -- this is a harsh distinction, but the point is to get man and reason out of the way and let God be God).
I realize that I am painting with broad strokes here, and I am by no means a trained theologian or scholar in this area. The point is if you want to understand Luther, Occam, and that period, read the primary texts, and don't rely on what others tell you and the conclusions they have drawn, for each has a particular purpose they are trying to accomplish. For Dave in this instance, it is to defend the Catholic Church against Luther's thought. Draw your own conclusions. I wish you well in your reading of these texts, if you choose.
Dave, your response is going awry at precisely the point where you write as if the only options were "Get rid of 50+ things that had always been believed" or "Keep maintaining what had always been believed." There were more options than that available to the popes at almost every point up to the final split. If you back up to a point prior to when Luther just sort of started "letting it all hang out" and examine the issues in their broader context and without question-begging caricatures about "authority" and "rebellion," the picture will look much different.
But anyway, I have two major papers and two exams to prepare for, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to call it quits from my end. Thanks for listening.
Andrew,
Thanks for the advice. I have not heard of Luther's Heidelberg disputation, but I have heard of his "Bondage of the Will".
I have been meaning to read Bondage for a while now, but it inst an easy task, 250 pages. I guess though some time or another I need to read it.
I still don't know what the Church was supposed to do about the 50 things Luther dissented on. If they weren't supposed to cave on all 50, then Luther would have had to back down on some of them. But he backed down on none, that I am aware of. They were all in place in his thought before 1521 and the Diet of Worms, because they are from the three treatises of 1520. But no one wants to talk about them. This isn't just about the papacy at all. It is about the entire body of Catholic doctrine, save for those Nicene Creed-types of doctrines that all Christians hold in common. Here are the 50 things:
1. [Formal] Separation of justification from sanctification.
2. Extrinsic, forensic, imputed notion of justification.
3. Fiduciary faith.
4. Private judgment over against ecclesial infallibility.
5. Tossing out seven books of the Bible.
6. Denial of venial sin.
7. Denial of merit.
8. The damned should be happy that they are damned and accept God's will.
9. Jesus offered Himself for damnation and possible hellfire.
10. No good work can be done except by a justified man.
11. All baptized men are priests (denial of the sacrament of ordination).
12. All baptized men can give absolution.
13. Bishops do not truly hold that office; God has not instituted it.
14. Popes do not truly hold that office; God has not instituted it.
15. Priests have no special, indelible character.
16. Temporal authorities have power over the Church; even bishops and popes; to assert the contrary was a mere presumptuous invention.
17. Vows of celibacy are wrong and should be abolished.
18. Denial of papal infallibility.
19. Belief that unrighteous priests or popes lose their authority (contrary to Augustine's rationale against the Donatists).
20. The keys of the kingdom were not just given to Peter.
21. Private judgment of every individual to determine matters of faith.
22. Denial that the pope has the right to call or confirm a council.
23. Denial that the Church has the right to demand celibacy of certain callings.
24. There is no such vocation as a monk; God has not instituted it.
25. Feast days should be abolished, and all church celebrations confined to Sundays.
26. Fasts should be strictly optional.
27. Canonization of saints is thoroughly corrupt and should stop.
28. Confirmation is not a sacrament.
29. Indulgences should be abolished.
30. Dispensations should be abolished.
31. Philosophy (Aristotle as prime example) is an unsavory, detrimental influence on Christianity.
32. Transubstantiation is "a monstrous idea."
33. The Church cannot institute sacraments.
34. Denial of the "wicked" belief that the mass is a good work.
35. Denial of the "wicked" belief that the mass is a true sacrifice.
36. Denial of the sacramental notion of ex opere operato.
37. Denial that penance is a sacrament.
38. Assertion that the Catholic Church had "completely abolished" even the practice of penance.
39. Claim that the Church had abolished faith as an aspect of penance.
40. Denial of apostolic succession.
41. Any layman who can should call a general council.
42. Penitential works are worthless.
43. None of what Catholics believe to be the seven sacraments have any biblical proof.
44. Marriage is not a sacrament.
45. Annulments are a senseless concept and the Church has no right to determine or grant annulments.
46. Whether divorce is allowable is an open question.
47. Divorced persons should be allowed to remarry.
48. Jesus allowed divorce when one partner committed adultery.
49. The priest's daily office is "vain repetition."
50. Extreme unction is not a sacrament (there are only two sacraments: baptism and the Eucharist).
For more documentation and detail, see my paper on this:
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...d-
departed.html
Bottom line: all Protestants MUST justify Luther's revolt or else they cut out their own foundation and reason for existing. So they have no choice merely by virtue of being Protestants in the first place. If they can't, however, make a decent biblical or historical argument for the Protestant revolt, then they are left with the accusation of moral corruption. That is essentially the old Donatist and Montanist perfectionistic, rigorist arguments about sin disqualifying one from office: debates that were resolved centuries back, in Augustine's time.
Now the problem is that if the "sin argument" is undercut by historical arguments such as by McGrath, that I noted (he says things weren't as bad as traditionally believed, and that this wasn't even the primary reason for the "Reformation"), then where do Protestants go, then? Maybe to a purely emotional disdain for Catholicism?
Something else that Tim fails to grasp (and I hope that he gets to read this after his papers and exams) is the nature of excommunication. Excommunication is designed not only as punative but also corrective. It is designed to show the "targets" (I can't come up with a better word now) that they have taken a step that has placed their soul in danger and that they are in need of correction.
Tim,
I think I shall respond on the open forum. I don't know how many people will find comments this far down.
Tim, you keep saying that the Popes were "responsible" and that they should have "taken responsibility" when someone says that Luther was "to blame" for the Reformation.
One thing I don't think I've seen - it is possible I've just missed it, but I don't recall ever having seen it - is a description from you of just what you mean by these terms. What do you mean when you say that the Pope should have "taken responsibility"? What would that have looked like? What tangible actions should they have taken that they didn't take at, say, Trent?
If you say that Trent was "too late" for dealing with the abuses of the time - on the one hand that seems easy to say with the benefit of hindsight; on the other hand, I wonder who we are to judge the Holy Spirit's timing.
At any rate, if I leave my car unlocked and someone steals my radio, I am "responsible" in that I should have been more careful with my stuff. But my negligence doesn't excuse the thief. Let's grant that the popes were negligent then. That fact in no way excuses Luther, Calvin, and the rest. If you think that it does, please explain why - and please use small words so that I can understand.
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