Lessons From Other Holidays

We can learn some lessons from other holidays about how to make the most of Reformation Day. Holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July are as influential as they are partly for reasons that are applicable to Reformation Day as well. Themes like risking and sacrificing and individuals laying down their lives for a good cause resonate with people, earn their respect, and often move their emotions, form lasting memories, and motivate them to do good things they wouldn't do otherwise. The principles, events, and movements of the Reformation should be discussed, but also the stories of the individuals involved.

A good resource to use in homes, churches, and other contexts is Ken Connolly's documentary The Indestructible Book. It's about the history of the Bible, especially how it got to America in the English language. It starts at the time of Moses and concludes with Plymouth Rock. It doesn't go into much depth, but it's good for introductory and motivational purposes. It often touches on themes like the ones I mentioned in the opening of this post, and there are many segments of the documentary that would be good to use in that context. It's good at conveying the work that went into giving us the Bible, the significance of scripture, and the cost many people paid to bring it to us. Some parts of it, like the segments on John Wycliffe and the ones on Thomas Bilney and other martyrs around the time of the Reformation, are especially moving. You can watch the whole thing here. It gets especially good starting here, with the material on Wycliffe. And here's a section on the martyrdom of Wycliffe's followers. Here's an account of Bilney's conversion, and here's the segment on his martyrdom. Those are just a few examples. The whole thing is worth watching, though the quality varies from one portion to another.

The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture

I've quoted and/or interacted with Iain Provan's The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture, which was published, not coincidentally, during the 500th anniversary or the Reformation. 

i) It's an uneven book. On the plus side, it makes some important contributions to the case for the Protestant canon, literal interpretation (as Provan defines it), and typology. And it's very well documented.

ii) On the minus side, he rejects inerrancy. In addition, he fails to directly rebut or solve the alleged problem of "pervasive interpretive pluralism" spawned by sola scriptura. He doesn't seem to have a full-blown answer to that. He stakes out a compromise position similar to Keith Mathison, as well as Allen and Swain in Reformed Catholicity. For reasons I've detailed on other occasions, I think that's a conceptually confused and unstable mediating position. 

iii) However, he doesn't seem to think it's that big a deal. For one thing, he doesn't seem to think the Bible is that ambiguous or obscure. He remarks on how Jesus and Paul directly appeal to the OT to prooftext their positions. And they do this in public speeches to rank-and-file Jews, not just the experts. Likewise, Paul takes for granted that a Gentile audience should be able to follow his OT-based arguments.

iv) In addition, since Provan doesn't think the Church of Rome has a living oracle, the invidious contrast between fallible Protestant interpretation and infallible Catholic interpretation is illusory. Catholics are in the same boat as Protestants: they just pretend that they occupy a different boat. If interpretive pluralism is a problem, that's a problem for both sides. It's just that Rome tries to camouflage the problem. 

v) Provan also notes that the Catholic church has come around to Protestant positions on hermeneutics and textual criticism, so that diminishes the contrast. 

vi) There's the further fact that Provan is an academic whose Catholic dialogue partners are fellow academics. There's a difference between the quaint Catholicism of lay Catholic pop apologists and mainstream Catholic Bible scholarship representing spokesmen with Catholic training and institutional positions. The reactionary antimodernist scholarship of Brandt Pitre (and his sidekick John Bergsma, a convert to Catholicism) is virtually a lone exception.

So to some extent I think Provan's book is a failure. It doesn't provide a fully-satisfactory alternative to Catholicism (although that wasn't it's only aim). It can, however, be cannibalized from some very useful spare parts. 

Luther's early reception

What is also striking in the historical record prior to Worms–in an era when people had more and more access to primary scriptural and patristic sources against which the teaching of the medieval Church could be measured–is just how often those who heard and read Luther became convinced by his arguments, even if they had begun by resolutely opposing him on the basis of their immersion in medieval scholastic theology. In 1516, Luther's Wittenberg colleague Karlstadt, for example, "who did not even own a Bible when he earned the doctor of theology degree or for many years afterward," appears in the record "as an opponent of Luther's interpretation of Augustine" and some of his other opinions. Yet very shortly thereafter Karlstadt "became convinced of Luther's views," not least because he had bought Augustine's works and actually read them for himself finding as he did that "the scholastic edifice collapsed." Another Wittenberg opponent, Thomas Dielsch, describes his own bondage to medieval scholasticism before Luther–impressing him in debates about Scripture–persuade him to turn instead to the study of the Church Fathers and the Bible. Faced for the first time with Luther's provocative tract The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), Johannes Burgenhagan "felt that Luther was the wickedest heretic; however, after examining it thoroughly he believed that Luther was the only man who had recognized the truth in the prevailing blindness and darkness." Luther's arguments did "prevail" for many people in the Church of his time–including many who ultimately chose not to join the Protestant movement–and the hierarchy of the Church was widely perceived on the other hand as resorting to power in the place of cogent argument. It was this that led John Eck to lament that even the papal bull of 1520 threatening Luther with excommun cation "lacked a refutation of Luther's errors on the basis of the Bible, the chuch fathers, and the decisions of church councils," I. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Baylor 2017), 291-92.

Did Calvin teach secondary justification?

http://puritanreformed.blogspot.com/2020/02/did-john-calvin-teach-doctrine-of.html

Anti-Arminians

https://leegatiss.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/anti-arminians-by-stephen-hampton/

Was it a Reformation?

Predictably, many lay Catholic pop apologists denounced the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. However, a more useful benchmark is presented by Cardinal Müller, whom Benedict XVI made prefect of the CDF. As such, his reaction to the Protestant Reformation is a barometer of contemporary Catholic theology from the standpoint of the center-right faction. I'll comment on his article:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-mueller-luthers-reform-was-against-the-holy-spirit

There is great confusion today when we talk about Luther, and it needs to be said clearly that from the point of view of dogmatic theology, from the point of view of the doctrine of the Church, it wasn’t a reform at all but rather a revolution, that is, a total change of the foundations of the Catholic Faith.

In a sense that's true. The errors in Roman Catholic theology were already too structural and systematic to be amendable to reform. It was necessary to scrap the entire paradigm. 

It is not realistic to argue that [Luther’s] intention was only to fight against abuses of indulgences or the sins of the Renaissance Church. Abuses and evil actions have always existed in the Church, not only during the Renaissance, and they still exist today. 

That was the difference between Luther and Erasmus. It wasn't just a case of abuses, but the underlying theology. 

We are the holy Church because of the God’s grace and the Sacraments, but all the men of the Church are sinners, they all need forgiveness, contrition, and repentance.

I don't think sacraments make the church holy. 

This distinction is very important. And in the book written by Luther in 1520, “De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae,” it is absolutely clear that Luther has left behind all of the principles of the Catholic Faith, Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition, the magisterium of the Pope and the Councils, and of the episcopate. In this sense, he upended the concept of the homogeneous development of Christian doctrine as explained in the Middle Ages, even denying that a sacrament is an efficacious sign of the grace contained therein. He replaced this objective efficacy of the sacraments with a subjective faith. Here, Luther abolished five sacraments, and he also denied the Eucharist: the sacrificial character of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and the real conversion of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, he called the sacrament of episcopal ordination, the sacrament of Orders, an invention of the Pope — whom he called the Antichrist — and not part of the Church of Jesus Christ. Instead, we say that the sacramental hierarchy, in communion with the successor of Peter, is an essential element of the Catholic Church, and not only a principle of a human organization.

That is why we cannot accept Luther’s reform being called a reform of the Church in a Catholic sense. Catholic reform is a renewal of faith lived in grace, in the renewal of customs, of ethics, a spiritual and moral renewal of Christians; not a new foundation, not a new Church.

Good for Luther! What was needed was a root-and-branch repudiation of the Roman Catholic paradigm. Not a reform of the status quo, but a reclamation of the Biblical exemplar. Indeed, Luther didn't go far enough, but given where he started, given his theological conditioning, he made remarkable strides. He had the courage to be consistent to his vision. 

It is therefore unacceptable to assert that Luther’s reform “was an event of the Holy Spirit.” On the contrary, it was against the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit helps the Church to maintain her continuity through the Church’s magisterium, above all in the service of the Petrine ministry: on Peter has Jesus founded His Church (Mt 16:18), which is “the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15). The Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself.

That's a logical reaction, given Müller's Catholic standard of comparison. However, the rote prooftexting is part of the problem. Consider, for instance, how he attaches a passage from one author (Matthew) to another author (Paul), as if both of them have the same referent, without regard to the very different context of each. 

We hear so many voices speaking too enthusiastically about Luther, not knowing exactly his theology, his polemics and the disastrous effect of this movement which destroyed the unity of millions of Christians with the Catholic Church. 

That's part and parcel of the Catholic polemic. Luther rent the body of Christ. Luther committed the sin of schism. The "sin of separation from the Church"–as Müller later says. 

But in reality, the pre-Reformation "church" whose demise Catholics lament was simply the state religion. And what made it the state religion was its adoption by the ruling class. Historically, that's how particular religions and religious sects acquire a monopoly. If they capture the favor of the king or emperor or empress, then that in turn is imposed from the top down through forcible mass conversion. Cuius regio, eius religio. 

What Luther disrupted was a religious monopoly, which achieved that unchallenged status through royal patronage. There's nothing idealistic about that. It's the marriage of church politics with power politics. 

The Reformation established the principle that the ruling class doesn't choose my religion for me. It took a while for that to be implemented consistently, but it was a necessary mid-course correction. The Reformation was a restoration movement. 

We can evaluate positively his good will, the lucid explanation of the shared mysteries of faith but not his statements against the Catholic Faith, especially with regard to the sacraments and hierarchical-apostolic structure of the Church.

Nor is it correct to assert that Luther initially had good intentions, meaning by this that it was the rigid attitude of the Church that pushed him down the wrong road. This is not true: Luther was intent on fighting against the selling of indulgences, but the goal was not indulgences as such, but as an element of the Sacrament of Penance.

Luther was right to discern that the problem ran deeper than hawking indulgences. The source of the problem was the theology of penance. Kudos for Luther! 

Nor is it true that the Church refused to dialogue: Luther first had a dispute with John Eck; then the Pope sent Cardinal Gaetano as a liaison to talk to him. We can discuss the methods, but when it comes to the substance of the doctrine, it must be stated that the authority of the Church did not make mistakes. Otherwise, one must argue that, for a thousand years, the Church has taught errors regarding the faith, when we know — and this is an essential element of doctrine — that the Church can not err in the transmission of salvation in the sacraments.

Again, that's a logical reaction, given Müller's sectarian frame of reference, but it's unconvincing to anyone who doesn't already share his partisan assumptions. And notice his selective appeal to divine guidance. Yet both sides can't be right, so however you slice it, God didn't preserve one side from error. But in that event, why assume the Catholic side was protected from error rather than the Protestant side? Müller's appeal is arbitrary. 

One should not confuse personal mistakes and the sins of people in the Church with errors in doctrine and the sacraments. Those who do this believe that the Church is only an organization comprised of men and deny the principle that Jesus himself founded His Church and protects her in the transmission of the faith and grace in the sacraments through the Holy Spirit. His Church is not a merely human organization: it is the body of Christ, where the infallibility of the Council and the Pope exists in precisely described ways. 

That's a false dichotomy. Rejecting the pretensions of Rome doesn't entail belief that the church is a merely human, merely fallible organization, which wasn't founded by Christ. And it doesn't require a Catholic view of sacerdotalism and sacramentalism. For instance, a Protestant can believe the church is indefectable in the sense that God preserves a remnant from apostasy. 

All of the councils speak of the infallibility of the Magisterium, in setting forth the Catholic faith. 

Notice the blatantly circular appeal. The Magisterium vouches for the infallibility of the Magisterium! As if that patently self-serving claim is evidential in its own right. 

Amid today’s confusion, in many people this reality has been overturned: they believe the Pope is infallible when he speaks privately, but then when the Popes throughout history have set forth the Catholic faith, they say it is fallible.

Of course, 500 years have passed. It’s no longer the time for polemics but for seeking reconciliation: but not at the expense of truth. One should not create confusion. While on the one hand, we must be able to grasp the effectiveness of the Holy Spirit in these other non-Catholic Christians who have good will, and who have not personally committed this sin of separation from the Church, on the other we cannot change history, and what happened 500 years ago. It’s one thing to want to have good relations with non-Catholic Christians today, in order to bring us closer to a full communion with the Catholic hierarchy and with the acceptance of the Apostolic Tradition according to Catholic doctrine. It’s quite another thing to misunderstand or falsify what happened 500 years ago and the disastrous effect it had. An effect contrary to the will of God: “… that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou has sent me” (Jn 17:21).

i) Rome wasn't always so magnanimous about the effectiveness of the Holy Spirit in Protestant believers.

ii) The context of Jn 17:21 isn't ecclesiastical, but Trinitarian. In Jn 14-17, as well as 1 Jn 1, there's a threefold unity. There's the intra-Trinitarian fellowship of Father, Son, and Spirit. Then there's Christians in fellowship with the Father, Son, and Spirit. Indeed, they wouldn't even be Christian apart from that. Then there's the mutual fellowship of Christians by virtue of their fellowship with the Father, Son, and Spirit. In Johannine theology, the unity of Christians is grounded in their participation in the paradigmatic unity of the Triune God. To be one with God is to be one with each othre. That's the source. It has no connection with "the sacramental hierarchy, in communion with the successor of Peter"–which is completely absent from Johannine theology. 

95 Theses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvOWocILfTo

One sinking ship–or many lifeboats?

This year, Reformation Day was a bit more significant than the average Reformation Day because it marked the 500-year-anniversary of the Reformation Day. Admittedly, picking a particular day is somewhat arbitrary. The significance is symbolic. But that's often true for commemorations. We don't celebrate the Lord's Supper on the same calendar date as the Last Supper. We don't even know when that was. 

On this occasion, Ryan T. Anderson, a high-profile Catholic culture warrior, posted a volley of antagonistic, denunciatory tweets. Perhaps it's not worth commenting on, but I'll say a few things. Before commenting on the particulars, I'll make a few general observations:

i) What was Ryan trying to accomplish? I understand that as a pious Catholic he won't join in the "celebration". He disapproves of the Reformation. 

But what's striking about his reaction is that he made no effort at rational persuasion. He gave Protestant readers no reasons to share his point of view. It was one question-begging assertion after another. A string of tendentious talking-points. 

So what's the point? Who's the intended audience for his tweets? If he thinks Protestant theology is that bad, shouldn't he be reaching out to Protestants by patiently explaining to us why he's right and we're wrong? 

Admittedly, Twitter is a poor medium for rational discourse, but then, why not use Facebook or write an essay or arrange a formal debate or series of debates? Just telling Protestants they are wrong without presenting an argument is totally unconvincing. 

ii) In addition, there's an ironic quality to his tirade. Is his own Catholicism consistent with post-Vatican II theology? His belligerent disapproval perspective would make more sense if our eternal salvation were at stake. It would make more sense if Protestants were hellbound. And that's the position Rome used to take regarding everybody who wasn't in communion with Rome. But nowadays, the Magisterium is flirting with hopeful universalism. So it's not as if Protestants have much to lose, even from a Catholic standpoint. 

iii) Another problem with his tweets is bigotry. To judge by what he said, it seems highly unlikely that he's had many, if any, conversations, with evangelical philosophers, theologians, Bible scholars, and church historians. His uninformed comments are a textbook case of prejudice.   

iv) In addition, he's like a man standing in front of a burning house, which happens to be his own house, while he lectures the neighbors on how their house is an eyesore. We watch him stand there, scolding us, while right behind him we see his own house in flames. 

Pope Francis is an aggressive modernist who's torching social conservatives like Ryan. Yet there stands Ryan, with that burning house at his back, scolding Protestants because we don't rush into his burning house. His angry comparison between Rome and the Protestant movement is unintentionally comical when his own denomination is on fire, and the sitting pope is the arsonist. 

And that's not primarily the impression of a Protestant observer. Many devout Catholics are terrified at what they see Pope Francis doing. This includes cardinals and bishops as well as conservative Catholic academics. Shouldn't Ryan be helping them douse the raging fire before he presumes to draw an invidious contrast between his own denomination and the Protestant movement? 

Many poorly formed Catholics become Protestant. Whereas many converts to Catholicism were once fervent devout Protestants. An asymmetry.

What is Ryan's sample? Is that a representative comparison? What's the data-base for Ryan's generalization? Or is this just anecdotal, based on his insular experience? 

"Orthodox Protestantism"? Which version of Protestantism is "Orthodox Protestantism"? Lutherans disagree with Calvinists, with Baptists, etc.

Okay, but which version of Catholicism? Francis is unweaving the Catholicism of Benedict XVI and John-Paul II. What about the long-gone but not forgotten Catholicism of anti-modernist popes like Pius IX and Leo XIII? 

“The more I prayed, studied history & theology, read the Bible & Church Fathers, the more I felt God calling me to be Protestant” said no one.

Even assuming that's hyperbole, just about any major Protestant seminary has one or more church historians. How many conversations has Ryan had with Protestant church historians? Or Protestant pathologists? Or Protestant theologians and Bible scholars? 

For that matter, modern-day Catholic Bible scholars typically debunk traditional prooftexts for Catholicism. Modern-day Catholic church historians typically debunk the traditional narrative of the papacy. 

The knots Protestants tie themselves into to deny the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. John 6, Last Supper, 1 Cor 11, all symbolic..

What Protestant commentaries has Ryan even studied on the subject? And not just Protestant commentators. Take Jerome Murphy-O'Connor's commentary on 1 Corinthians. 

Reforming the church (good) and creating a pseudo church (bad) are two very different things.

Does post-Vatican II theology regard Protestant denominations as pseudo-churches? Or is Ryan out of step with contemporary Catholic theology? 

2,000 years of unbroken Christian practice, east and west, Catholic and Orthodox, rejected. That’s the Reformation today.

If you turn a blind eye to all the internal dissension.

Because of the Reformation, millions of Christians lack intimacy with Christ in the Eucharist. That’s just tragic.

Which assumes that Christ is to be found in a wafer. But what if that's a pious projection? What if Catholics are fellowshipping with an ordinary cracker? Like pagans who pray to an idol. No one's home. 

Orthodox Churches have valid Eucharist. Reformation bodies do not.

Is that the position of post-Vatican II theology?

BTW, why does the Eucharist require a Catholic priest to be valid, but baptism does not? What's the principle? Or is the distinction ad hoc? 

At best, Reformation was tragic necessity. In actuality, much worse. Celebrating the division and disunity in the body of Christ is obscene.

i) To begin with, there's a difference between a celebration and a commemoration. 

ii) Ryan assumes that his religious sect is the body of Christ. I get that. But he doesn't give Protestants any reason to see things his way. Instead, he resorts to shaming rhetoric. 

iii) If, by contrast, we view the Roman church on the eve of the Reformation as a morally and theologically corrupt religious monopoly, then competition is a good thing. It was good to give people options. It was good to have emergency exits. From an evangelical perspective, moreover, the church of Rome has gone from bad to worse. 

What's better–one sinking ship or many lifeboats? Should everybody stay on board a sinking ship? If all the passengers go down with the ship, that's unity–but I'll take my chances with a lifeboat. 

iv) I don't normally think about being Protestant. I just study the Bible with the wealth of resources at my disposal. 

Martin Luther’s work from 1512–1517

Following up on some thoughts of mine to the effect that we ought to be thinking about a Reformation Season, I wanted to post some background information about Martin Luther. Much of this is something that many of us are familiar with, but as well, in the spirit of Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll, you’re never too advanced to remember to practice the fundamentals.

Luther combined the threefold office of sub-prior, preacher and professor. He preached both in his convent and in the town-church, sometimes daily for a week, sometimes thrice in one day, during Lent in 1517 twice everyday. He was supported by the convent. As professor he took no fees from the students and received only a salary of one hundred guilders, which after his marriage was raised by the Elector John to two hundred guilders.

He first lectured on scholastic philosophy and explained the Aristotelian dialectics and physics. But he soon passed through the three grades of bachelor, licentiate, and doctor of divinity (October 18th and 19th, 1512), and henceforth devoted himself exclusively to the sacred science which was much more congenial to his taste. Staupitz urged him into these academic dignities, and the Elector [Frederick the Wise] who had been favorably impressed with one of his sermons, offered to pay the expenses (fifty guilders) for the acquisition of the doctorate. Afterward in seasons of trouble Luther often took comfort from the title and office of his doctorate of divinity and his solemn oath to defend with all his might the Holy Scriptures against all errors. He justified the burning of the Pope’s Bull in the same way. But the oath of ordination and of the doctor of theology implied also obedience to the Roman church (ecclesiae Romanae obedientiam) and her defence against all heresies condemned by her.

With the year 1512 his academic teaching began in earnest and continued till 1546, at first in outward harmony with the Roman church, but afterward in open opposition to it.

The Benefit Of Christ's Death

From a sixteenth-century book about justification, titled The Benefit Of Christ's Death:

let us run unto [Christ] with the feet of lively faith, and cast ourselves between his arms, [since] he allureth us so graciously, crying: "Come unto me, all you that labour and are heavy laden; and I will refresh you;" what comfort or what joy in this life can be comparable to this his saying there, when as a man, feeling himself oppressed with the intolerable weight of his sins, understandeth so sweet and amiable words of the Son of God, who promiseth so graciously to refresh and rid him of his great pains?...

O great unkindness! O thing abominable! that we, which profess ourselves Christians, and hear that the Son of God hath taken all our sins upon him, and washed them out with his precious blood, suffering himself to be fastened to the cross for our sakes, should nevertheless make as though we would justify ourselves, and purchase forgiveness of our sins by our own works; as who would say, that the deserts, righteousness, and bloodshed of Jesus Christ were not enough to do it, unless we came to put to our works and righteousness; which are altogether defiled and spotted with self-love, self-liking, self-profit, and a thousand other vanities, for which we have need to crave pardon at God's hand, rather than reward….

Now, if the seeking of righteousness and forgiveness of sins, by the keeping of the law which God gave upon mount Sinai, with so great glory and majesty, be the denying of Christ and of his grace [Galatians 5:4], what shall we say to those that will needs justify themselves before God by their own laws and observances? I would wish that such folks should a little compare the one with the other, and afterward give judgment themselves. God mindeth not to do that honour, not to give that glory to his own law; and yet they will have him to give it to men's laws and ordinances. But that honour is given only to his only-begotten Son, who alone, by the sacrifice of his death and passion, hath made full amends for all our sins, past, present, and to come…

let us give the whole glory of our justification unto God's mercy and to the merits of his Son; who by his own bloodshed hath set us free from the sovereignty of the law, and from the tyranny of sin and death, and hath brought us into the kingdom of God, to give us life and endless felicity….

for the love of his only begotten Son, [the Father] beholdeth [Christians] always with a gentle countenance, governing and defending them as his most dear children, and in the end giving them the heritage of the world, making them like-fashioned to the glorious image of Christ….

O happy is that man that shutteth his eyes from all other sights, and will neither hear nor see any other thing than Jesus Christ crucified; in whom are laid up and bestowed all the treasures of God's wisdom and divine knowledge! (15-16, 21-23, 26, 69, 93)

Reformation Videos

PBS recently aired a two-hour documentary on Martin Luther that's worth watching. The page just linked says something about "expiring" on September 27, so the video may not be available to watch for free after that date.

Here's an eleven-minute collection of clips I put together on John Wycliffe, taken from Ken Connolly's video, The Indestructible Book (Santa Ana, California: International Baptist Missions, 2004).

And here's an eight-minute video on Thomas Bilney.

“Mere Protestant” Confession Seeks to Reclaim the Word “Catholic”

By 1529, a dozen years after the start of the Reformation, there was an on-going dispute, both political and theological, between Martin Luther’s German Reformation, and the Swiss Reform led by Ulrich Zwingli. In an effort to bring the two sides together, Philip of Hesse, a local Protestant ruler, brought Luther, Zwingli, and a number of other Reformers (including the Stephan Agricola, Johannes Brenz, Martin Bucer, Caspar Hedio, Justus Jonas, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Oecolampadius, and Andreas Osiander) at the castle hall at Marburg for what has become known as the “Marburg Colloquy”. Primarily a political conference, the colloquy nevertheless marked the start of a long-standing division. According to Alister McGrath’s account:

This attempt foundered on one point, and one point only. On 14 articles, Luther and Zwingli felt able to agree. The fifteenth contained six points, on which they were able to reach agreement on five. The sixth posed difficulties. Luther and Zwingli reluctantly were forced to declare that they had not “reached an agreement as to whether the true body and blood of Christ are bodily present in the bread and wine.” From Alister McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (p. 183). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

This week, more than 250 Protestant leaders and theologians published what they call a “Reforming Catholic Confession”, “A ‘Mere Protestant’ Statement of Faith to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation”.

Just on the surface, I don’t like the word “catholic”, because of the kinds of confusion it can lead to, but this statement seems to genuinely re-capture and re-establish the proper meaning of that word.

The Curious Case of Cardinal Cajetan

http://networkedblogs.com/WaFDS

Responding to a Lutheran considering converting to Rome, Jonathan Fisk calls Roman Catholic Church the “Abomination of Desolation”

He’s kind of hard to listen to sometimes, but thanks to the magic of editing, he moves quickly, and he has some great one-liners. Here, Jonathan Fisk responds to a Lutheran who says he is considering a move to Rome:



Here are some great one-liners:

“Grace, of course, is the super-juju to help you get there [to Heaven], but if you don’t get there [on your grace-assisted own strength], you don’t get there”.

Did you ever notice that Purgatory and the Sarlacc [pit from Star Wars] are like, one [and the same – in the sense that they’ll slowly digest you over a thousand years].

Lutheranism exists because the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is so abhorrent, so connected to the Abomination of Desecration mentioned in the book of Daniel and the Gospels, that the entire northern half of a continent was forced to leave it, actually was kicked out from it, because they said, “no, Jesus is our Savior, we don’t have to submit to the pope to be saved”, and they were told, “Oh yes you do, and since you don’t, you’re going to hell, see you later, and oh by the way, wherever we find you with our armies, we’re going to kill you.” That’s the tradition that you’re buying into. Granted, most American Roman Catholics don't know the first thing about this ...

That last one is as succinct and accurate a summary of the Lutheran Reformation that you’ll find.

For those of you who won’t be watching the Super Bowl today, this is a truthful and entertaining 20 minutes.

Why Calvin and not Luther?

I certainly don't agree with everything he says, but he makes some telling points:

"Why Calvin and not Luther?"

The 95 Theses

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2013/10/31/an-interview-with-carl-trueman-on-luthers-95-theses/print/

Commemorating United Nations Day And Eid-al-Adha

I recently looked at the month of October in more than a dozen calendars (Christian and non-Christian, from different publishers, etc.). All of them mention Halloween on October 31. None mention Reformation Day. Surely some calendars do mention it, but I don't remember ever seeing it in the many calendars I've looked at over the years. Some of the calendars I recently went through mention about ten holidays in the month, including as many as three holidays on a single day. All of them have more than enough space to include a reference to Reformation Day. None mention it. Here are some of the holidays they do mention for October:

United Nations Day
Health and Sports Day (Japan)
Breast Cancer Awareness Day
National Boss Day
World Animal Day
National Children's Day
Labour Day (New Zealand)
Sweetest Day
Bank Holiday (Ireland)
Eid-al-Adha
Mother-In-Law Day
Indigenous People's Day

"Those preachers whose voices were clear and mighty for truth during life continue to preach in their graves. Being dead, they yet speak; and whether men put their ears to their tombs or not, they cannot but hear them." (Charles Spurgeon, cited in The C.H. Spurgeon Collection [Albany, Oregon: AGES Software, 1998], A Biography Pictoral Of C.H. Spurgeon, 3)

Reformation Day Free Download: R.C. Sproul’s Luther and the Reformation

As of this morning, I was still able to download this lecture series [audio version] and study guide for free.

http://www.ligonier.org/blog/reformation-day-free-download-rc-sprouls-luther-and-reformation/

Pope Leo X, Pastor Aeternus, (1516), Reaffirms Unam Sanctam

Most Protestants are familiar with the 1302 document by Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam. Within that document, we have a pope citing “the Blessed Dionysius”, a sixth-century writer whom he thought was Dionysius from Acts17:

For, according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is a law of the divinity that the lowest things reach the highest place by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back to order equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior. Hence we must recognize the more clearly that spiritual power surpasses in dignity and in nobility any temporal power whatever, as spiritual things surpass the temporal.

Too, most Protestants are familiar with the concluding statement of that document:

Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

Roman Catholic apologists I’ve seen have tried to minimize the force of those words, which fly in the face of “the Spirit of Vatican II”.

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.

But here is Pope Leo X (who was pope from 1513-1521) reiterating that statement several hundred years later:

The pope alone has the power, right, and full authority, extending beyond that of all councils, to call, adjourn, and dissolve the councils. This is attested not only by the Holy Scriptures as well as the statements of the Holy Fathers and our predecessors on the throne at Rome, but even the councils themselves ….

It is necessary for the salvation of souls that all Christian believers be subject to the pope at Rome. The Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers testify to this, as does the bull of Pope Boniface VIII of blessed memory, which begins with the words “Unam Sanctam.” Therefore, with the approval of the holy council now in session, we renew and consider this very same bull to be valid. All this is done for the salvation of believing souls, for the strengthening of the supreme authority of the pope at Rome and of the Holy See, and for the unity and power of the church which has been entrusted to him”.

At the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517), Cited in Denis R. Janz, Ed., A Reformation Reader: Primary Texts with Introductions, Second Edition, Mineapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press ©2008, pg 14.

This was the prevailing attitude of the medieval papacy. The joke was on Leo, however. It was a notion with which a lot of people did not agree, and the flood was to begin not more than a year later.

How Martin Luther “went viral”

A writer for The Economist compares the early printing and re-printing of Luther’s pamphlets with revolutionary events of our day that gained momentum through the “social media”:


http://www.economist.com/node/21541719

Scholars have long debated the relative importance of printed media, oral transmission and images in rallying popular support for the Reformation. Some have championed the central role of printing, a relatively new technology at the time. Opponents of this view emphasise the importance of preaching and other forms of oral transmission. More recently historians have highlighted the role of media as a means of social signalling and co-ordinating public opinion in the Reformation.

Now the internet offers a new perspective on this long-running debate, namely that the important factor was not the printing press itself (which had been around since the 1450s), but the wider system of media sharing along social networks—what is called “social media” today. Luther, like the Arab revolutionaries, grasped the dynamics of this new media environment very quickly, and saw how it could spread his message....

The unintentional but rapid spread of the “95 Theses” alerted Luther to the way in which media passed from one person to another could quickly reach a wide audience. “They are printed and circulated far beyond my expectation,” he wrote in March 1518 to a publisher in Nuremberg who had published a German translation of the theses. But writing in scholarly Latin and then translating it into German was not the best way to address the wider public. Luther wrote that he “should have spoken far differently and more distinctly had I known what was going to happen.” For the publication later that month of his “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, he switched to German, avoiding regional vocabulary to ensure that his words were intelligible from the Rhineland to Saxony. The pamphlet, an instant hit, is regarded by many as the true starting point of the Reformation....

The media environment that Luther had shown himself so adept at managing had much in common with today's online ecosystem of blogs, social networks and discussion threads. It was a decentralised system whose participants took care of distribution, deciding collectively which messages to amplify through sharing and recommendation. Modern media theorists refer to participants in such systems as a “networked public”, rather than an “audience”, since they do more than just consume information. Luther would pass the text of a new pamphlet to a friendly printer (no money changed hands) and then wait for it to ripple through the network of printing centres across Germany.

Unlike larger books, which took weeks or months to produce, a pamphlet could be printed in a day or two. Copies of the initial edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, would first spread throughout the town where it was printed. Luther's sympathisers recommended it to their friends....

Amid the barrage of pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts, public opinion was clearly moving in Luther's favour. “Idle chatter and inappropriate books” were corrupting the people, fretted one bishop. “Daily there is a veritable downpour of Lutheran tracts in German and Latin…nothing is sold here except the tracts of Luther,” lamented Aleander, Leo X's envoy to Germany, in 1521. Most of the 60 or so clerics who rallied to the pope's defence did so in academic and impenetrable Latin, the traditional language of theology, rather than in German. Where Luther's works spread like wildfire, their pamphlets fizzled. Attempts at censorship failed, too. Printers in Leipzig were banned from publishing or selling anything by Luther or his allies, but material printed elsewhere still flowed into the city. The city council complained to the Duke of Saxony that printers faced losing “house, home, and all their livelihood” because “that which one would gladly sell, and for which there is demand, they are not allowed to have or sell.” What they had was lots of Catholic pamphlets, “but what they have in over-abundance is desired by no one and cannot even be given away.”...

The surge in the popularity of pamphlets in 1523-24, the vast majority of them in favour of reform, served as a collective signalling mechanism. As Andrew Pettegree, an expert on the Reformation at St Andrew's University, puts it in “Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion”, “It was the superabundance, the cascade of titles, that created the impression of an overwhelming tide, an unstoppable movement of opinion…Pamphlets and their purchasers had together created the impression of irresistible force.” Although Luther had been declared a heretic in 1521, and owning or reading his works was banned by the church, the extent of local political and popular support for Luther meant he escaped execution and the Reformation became established in much of Germany.