In reality, the view of saints’ merits and intervention in Hussite and Utraquist teaching varied among different fractions of the religious movement, from refusal by the radicals to acceptance by conservatives....
With the influence of Matthew of Janov, and wyclifite ideas on the Hussite theologians Jacobellus of Stříbro and Nicolas of Dresden, the radical Hussite party’s view of the contemporary Catholic cultic practices of veneration of saints’ relics and images was largely negative....
[quoting Nicolas Biskupec of Pelhřimov] "from the authority of the doctors it is clear that invocations and prayers are (forms of) cult that are appropriate only for God…Therefore we do not pray and invoke the saints, nor do we seek help from them and thus impede the cult that only God deserves"...
Nicolas’ ideas were developed in the writings of Petr Chelčický (c. 1390–1460), an original thinker, close to the radicals, in his writings of 1430s-1440s. The founding ideology of what came to be the Unity of Brethren takes on a similar critical view on the cult of saints, refusing the intercession of the Virgin Mary and the saints.
Some of the more radical Hussites were premillennialists for a while (Murray Wagner, Petr Chelcicky [Scottsdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1983], 33).
Atwood writes that "The churches that developed out of the Hussite reforms made congregational singing a central part of worship decades before Martin Luther set Protestant doctrine to tavern tunes." (The Theology Of The Czech Brethren From Hus To Comenius [University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009], 52)
Regarding literacy, education, and the reading of scripture: "The Czech Reformation had made lay reading of the vernacular Bible a key component of reform, but in Prague it was primarily the aristocracy and wealthy burghers who had this privilege. The Taborites extended biblical literacy to the common people. This ideal of an educated, active laity would bear rich fruit in the Unity, especially in Comenius's advocacy of universal education." (111)
I don't see any real "proof" for anything pre-Reformation here. What I see is a desperate appeal to fringe groups who are known to be heretical today. It should go without saying that the early Church was indeed Roman Catholic, and no student of church history would deny that the earliest believers upheld the primacy of Peter and transubstantiation. Irresponsible at best.
ReplyDeleteI was addressing the pre-Reformation Hussites, so making unsupported claims about other sources in earlier church history is a changing of the subject. And claiming that the Hussites are "fringe" and "heretical" by your standards is insignificant, since I wasn't claiming to meet your standards, and you've given us no reason to agree with your standards. Appealing to "the primacy of Peter" is inadequate, since that's a vague term that can be and has been defined in multiple ways that don't involve a papacy. Your claim about transubstantiation, like your other claims, is undocumented and ridiculous. You're changing the subject, making disputed claims without arguing for them, and failing to interact with what I and others here have said about the topics you've brought up in other places, places where those topics were relevant. If you want to keep posting in this thread, you need to stay on topic and take some other basic steps to improve the quality of your posts.
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