Council of Trent

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I have heard this statement from my protestant friends and wanted to put it before all you honorable people for your judgement.

“Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses addressing abuses and corrupt practices in the Church. At the Council of Trent the Church addressed some of thse theses and incorporated some of them into Church teaching.”

I am suspicious of this claim - as I know that Luther was excommunicated partly on the fact that his theses contained heresy.

What say you?
 
I would say,

“Documentation, please?”

Its true that the Council of Trent addressed abuses, some of which were mentioned in Luther’s theses, but these weren’t “additions” to her teaching. They were merely a stronger enforcement of what she had already been teaching.
 
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Lorarose:
I have heard this statement from my protestant friends and wanted to put it before all you honorable people for your judgement.

“Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses addressing abuses and corrupt practices in the Church. At the Council of Trent the Church addressed some of thse theses and incorporated some of them into Church teaching.”

I am suspicious of this claim - as I know that Luther was excommunicated partly on the fact that his theses contained heresy.

What say you?
The council counters the heretical teachings of Luther, not endorsed/incorporated them!
 
The council counters the heretical teachings of Luther, not endorsed/incorporated them!
That does not surprise me.
How did the council counter the heretical teachings?
Exactly which teachings were declared heretical?
 
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Lorarose:
That does not surprise me.
How did the council counter the heretical teachings?
Exactly which teachings were declared heretical?
Amongst other things,

It declared solemnly the Catholic teachings:
on justification,
on the Sacraments,
on the Eucharist,
on Penance and Extreme Unction,
Purgatory, saints, sacred images etc

as opposed to Luther’s teachings that are against those
 
Session VI gets read the most by non-Catholics. Especially the anethemas. Yep, Protestants read from the back first, and pound on the ones that say anything against faith alone. Little do they realize that the anethemas are talking about “human” faith, based on human reasoning. Catholics are not against faith as a gift from God.

Read from the first paragraph of CoT session VI, it is clear that Trent is saying we are saved by grace. This is in reply to the Protestant cry of “faith alone.” Trent is the counter Reformation, claiming that human faith alone is not correct, but it is the grace of God which saves us.

Trent is adament about where our justifcation comes from.
"[1] Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith
[2] taught, which the Apostles transmitted and which the Catholic Church under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost has always retained;
…God of all comfort…
[10] sent to men Jesus Christ, His own Son, …
[13] might attain to justice, and that all men might receive the adoption of sons. Him has God proposed as a propitiator through faith in his blood
[14] for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for those of the whole world…
Unless a man be** born again ** of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.[18]

It is furthermore declared that in adults the beginning of that justification must proceed from the predisposing grace of God through Jesus Christ, that is, from His vocation, whereby, without any merits on their part, they are called; that they who by sin had been cut off from God, may be disposed through His quickening and helping grace to convert themselves to their own justification by freely assenting to and cooperating with that grace; so that, while God touches the heart of man through the illumination of the Holy Ghost, man himself neither does absolutely nothing while receiving that inspiration, since he can also reject it, **nor yet is he able by his own free will and without the grace of God ** to move himself to justice in His sight."

Most importantly…

"the sinner is justified by God by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus;"

Again, CoT is the counter-reformation to the protestant cry of “Human faith alone.” CoT says we are saved by God’s Grace, who then gifts us with faith.

In answer to the statement:“At the Council of Trent the Church addressed some of thse theses and incorporated some of them into Church teaching.”

No, the council was called to order because:
“…there is being disseminated at this time, not without the loss of many souls and grievous detriment to the unity of the Church, a certain erroneous doctrine concerning justification,…”
 
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Lorarose:
I have heard this statement from my protestant friends and wanted to put it before all you honorable people for your judgement.

“Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses addressing abuses and corrupt practices in the Church. At the Council of Trent the Church addressed some of thse theses and incorporated some of them into Church teaching.”
To begin with, most of the 95 theses were completely compatible with Catholic teaching. It is on the relatively few points where he diverged from legitimate Catholic teaching that he fell into error. They can be found in Church documents before the Reformation began. Therefore, to say that the Council of Trent “incorporated some [of Luther’s theses] into Church teaching” is a false claim. If you read the documents of the Council of Trent (available in the book “The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent” by TAN publishers) you will find that almost all sessions included decrees of reform.

The fact is that there were many abuses of legitimate Church practices in the time leading up to the reformation (just as there are many abuses in the Church today). Luther was write to oppose the abuses, but he went too far in rejecting the authority of the Church as part of that. Eventually, even he began to realize the need for an authoritative Church to preserve the faith and began to make declarations as though he were infallible. He maintained that the letter of James was not scripture and did so on his own authority. He insisited on his own interpretation of Scripture as the true interpretation over any one else’s interpretation (actually, all Protestants do this although nearly all don’t realize that this is what they are doing.)

David W. Cooney o)
 
I have heard this statement from my protestant friends and wanted to put it before all you honorable people for your judgement.

“Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses addressing abuses and corrupt practices in the Church. At the Council of Trent the Church addressed some of thse theses and incorporated some of them into Church teaching.”

I am suspicious of this claim - as I know that Luther was excommunicated partly on the fact that his theses contained heresy.

What say you?
From the Council of Lateran iv, still on the same subject.
solagroup.org/articles/historyofthebible/hotb_0008.html

For the first time the doctrine of transubstantiation was declared the official doctrine of the Church. From this time onward, the Church declared that the elements of the Lord’s Supper did, indeed, become the body and blood of the Lord.
The Fourth Lateran Council, by the enactment of Canon three, declared heresy to be a crime against the civil government.
The Church became a sacramental Church by which the grace of God was given through the administration of the sacraments. As a result it was not long before the Church assumed the role of mediator between God and men. Thus, the individual became dependent upon the Church for the reception of grace and his standing before God. Additionally, the sacraments, that later became seven in number, were taught as having the power to work ex opere operato or by virtue of their own inherent power. In other words, the sacraments themselves had the power to confer the grace of God on the person.

It was against this medieval system of the efficacy of the sacraments that Martin Luther protested. It is true that the impetus for his protest was the sale of indulgences in 1517. However, Luther, through his own personal struggles over his acceptance by God, had come to understand that salvation from sin came by faith in Christ alone. No institutional Church had the authority to keep a person dependent upon the sacraments for salvation.
 
The Council of Trent suppressed the Lutheran heresy, not adopted it.
 
I have heard this statement from my protestant friends and wanted to put it before all you honorable people for your judgement.

“Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses addressing abuses and corrupt practices in the Church. At the Council of Trent the Church addressed some of thse theses and incorporated some of them into Church teaching.”

I am suspicious of this claim - as I know that Luther was excommunicated partly on the fact that his theses contained heresy.

What say you?
Greetings in Christ Lorarose,

www.catholiceducation.org
CATHOLIC EDUCATION RESOURCE CENTER
Justification by Faith
PETER KREEFT

Quote: The Protestant Reformation began when a Catholic monk REDISCOVERED a Catholic doctrine in a Catholic book.

The monk, of course, was Luther; the doctrine was JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH; and the book was the Bible.

One of the tragic ironies of Christian history is that the deepest split in the history of the Church, and the one that has occasioned the most persecution, hatred, and bloody wars on both sides, from the Peasants’ War of Luther’s day through the Thirty Years’ War, which claimed a larger percentage of the population of many parts of central Europe than any other war in history, including the two world wars, to the present-day agony in Northern Ireland — this split between Protestant and Catholic originated in a misunderstanding.

And to this day many Catholics and many Protestants still do not realize that fact.

Luther’s story is well known. Passionate, impetuous, demanding, sensitive, and pessimistic in temperament, Luther had never been able to find inner peace.
He could not overcome his sense of guilt despite all his good works, prayers, penances, and alms.

His confessor advised him to read Romans.
No more historically momentous advice was ever given by a confessor.

In Romans Luther discovered the simple BOMBSELL TRUTH that God had forgiven his sins freely, NOT because of Luther’s works in Germany BUT because of Christ’s work on Calvary.

That discovery freed Luther’s spirit and ignited a fire that swept over Europe.
The watchword of the Reformation became Saint Paul’s summary of the gospel:
“The just (justified, saved) shall live [have eternal life] by faith [in Christ]” (Rom 1: 17)

Where then do good works come in? In CHRISTIAN LIBERTY, Luther explains that after the great LIBERATION about faith — that we are SAVED BY FAITH in Christ’s work, NOT BY OUR WORKS — comes a great LIBERATION about works:
they need not be done slavishly, to BUY our way into heaven, to pile up merits or Brownie points with God, but can be done freely and spontaneously and naturally, out of GRATITUDE to God — not to get to heaven but because heaven has ALREADY gotten to us.

Thus they can be done for the sake of our neighbor, NOT for our own sake, to PURCHASE salvation.
And this is winsome.
NO ONE wants to be loved as someone else’s GOOD DID for the day. End quote. Emphasize mine.

With love in Christ,
LH.
 
Greetings in Christ Lorarose,

CATHOLIC EDUCATION RESOURCE CENTER
Justification by Faith
PETER KREEFT

Peter Kreeft is on the Advisory Board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.

Further quote: The origin of the Reformation is often said to be Luther’s act of nailing ninety-five theses against the sale of indulgences to the door of the church in Wittenberg.

Luther’s decision to go public was occasioned by the scandal of Tetzel, a Dominican monk who shamelessly peddled forgiveness of sins for a fee. He even had a singing commercial:
“Sobald das Geld im Kasten klingt,/Die Seele aus dem Fegfeuer springt!” (“As soon as the money clinks in the casket, the soul springs free from the fires of purgatory!”)

The story was told of the thief who asked Tetzel whether he could buy forgiveness for all his future sins as well as his past sins.

Tetzel said yes, but it would cost him a thousand gold pieces.
The thief paid the money, took the indulgence, and then stole back the money from Tetzel!

But the scandal of selling indulgences was only the catalyst, not the cause, of the Reformation.

The Church soon cleaned up its act and forbade the sale of indulgences at the Council of Trent, agreeing with Luther on this point.

But one does not split the Church over a practice; one splits the Church over a doctrine, for the Church can change its practice but never its doctrine.
To change a practice, one stays in the Church; to change a doctrine, one must start a new Church.

Many Catholics to this day have not learned the Catholic and biblical doctrine.
They think we are saved by good intentions or being nice or sincere or trying a little harder or doing a sufficient number of good deeds.

Over the past twenty-five years I have asked hundreds of Catholic college students the question:
If you should die tonight and God asks you why he should let you into heaven, what would you answer?

The vast majority of them simply do not know the right answer to this, the most important of all questions, the very essence of Christianity.
They usually do not even mention Jesus!

Until we Catholics know the foundation, Protestants are not going to listen to us when we try to teach them about the upper stories of the building.

Perhaps God allows the Protestant/Catholic division to persist not only because Protestants have abandoned many precious truths taught by the Church but also because many Catholics have never been taught the most precious truth of all, that SALVATION IS A FREE GIFT OF GRACE, ACCEPTED BY FAITH.

I remember vividly the thrill of discovery when, as a young Protestant at Calvin College, I read Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Council of Trent on justification.
I did not find what I had been told I would find, “another gospel” of do-it-yourself salvation by works, but a clear and forceful statement that we can do nothing without God’s grace, and that this grace, accepted by faith, is what saves us.

The split of the Protestant Reformation began when a Catholic discovered a Catholic doctrine in a Catholic book.

It can end only when both Protestants and Catholics do the same thing today and understand what they are doing: discovering a Catholic doctrine in a Catholic book. End quote. Emphasize mine.

With love in Christ,
LH
 
Greetings in Christ Lorarose,

www.catholiceducation.org
CATHOLIC EDUCATION RESOURCE CENTER
Justification by Faith
PETER KREEFT

Quote: The Protestant Reformation began when a Catholic monk REDISCOVERED a Catholic doctrine in a Catholic book.

The monk, of course, was Luther; the doctrine was JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH; and the book was the Bible.

One of the tragic ironies of Christian history is that the deepest split in the history of the Church, and the one that has occasioned the most persecution, hatred, and bloody wars on both sides, from the Peasants’ War of Luther’s day through the Thirty Years’ War, which claimed a larger percentage of the population of many parts of central Europe than any other war in history, including the two world wars, to the present-day agony in Northern Ireland — this split between Protestant and Catholic originated in a misunderstanding.

And to this day many Catholics and many Protestants still do not realize that fact.

Luther’s story is well known. Passionate, impetuous, demanding, sensitive, and pessimistic in temperament, Luther had never been able to find inner peace.
He could not overcome his sense of guilt despite all his good works, prayers, penances, and alms.

His confessor advised him to read Romans.
No more historically momentous advice was ever given by a confessor.

In Romans Luther discovered the simple BOMBSELL TRUTH that God had forgiven his sins freely, NOT because of Luther’s works in Germany BUT because of Christ’s work on Calvary.

That discovery freed Luther’s spirit and ignited a fire that swept over Europe.
The watchword of the Reformation became Saint Paul’s summary of the gospel:
“The just (justified, saved) shall live [have eternal life] by faith [in Christ]” (Rom 1: 17)

Where then do good works come in? In CHRISTIAN LIBERTY, Luther explains that after the great LIBERATION about faith — that we are SAVED BY FAITH in Christ’s work, NOT BY OUR WORKS — comes a great LIBERATION about works:
they need not be done slavishly, to BUY our way into heaven, to pile up merits or Brownie points with God, but can be done freely and spontaneously and naturally, out of GRATITUDE to God — not to get to heaven but because heaven has ALREADY gotten to us.

Thus they can be done for the sake of our neighbor, NOT for our own sake, to PURCHASE salvation.
And this is winsome.
NO ONE wants to be loved as someone else’s GOOD DID for the day. End quote. Emphasize mine.

With love in Christ,
LH.
Lion Heart,

I appreciate the passage you’ve extracted from Peter Kreeft’s work, explaining Justification by Faith as a Catholic Doctrine. However, in this passage, I believe that Peter misses the chance to explain the need to exercise one’s faith in order to maintain a living faith.

Thus, works maintain, not faith itself, but a living faith, and so have an intrinsic merit. This is easy to understand, because works are themselves a gift of God.

Thus while works follow out of Love of God, or should, it does not disqualify them from merit even though they are performed with some knowledge or hope that we may obtain merit through them. If there is only a spark of Love in the works, they are not without merit. What is a problem, however, is if the works we do which are not in faith, outweigh in their “demerits” in the producing of a deadened faith, the merits we obtain in our good acts that will produce an enlivened faith.

peace
steve
 
Lion Heart,

I appreciate the passage you’ve extracted from Peter Kreeft’s work, explaining Justification by Faith as a Catholic Doctrine. However, in this passage, I believe that Peter misses the chance to explain the need to exercise one’s faith in order to maintain a living faith.

Thus, works maintain, not faith itself, but a living faith, and so have an intrinsic merit. This is easy to understand, because works are themselves a gift of God.

Thus while works follow out of Love of God, or should, it does not disqualify them from merit even though they are performed with some knowledge or hope that we may obtain merit through them. If there is only a spark of Love in the works, they are not without merit. What is a problem, however, is if the works we do which are not in faith, outweigh in their “demerits” in the producing of a deadened faith, the merits we obtain in our good acts that will produce an enlivened faith.

peace
steve
Greetings in Christ Thenobes,

CONDITIONS THAT OUR WORKS COUNT FOR ANYTHING:

The Catholic Church clearly teaches that one MUST be in a STATE OF GRACE, MUST be a member of the BODY OF CHRIST, MUST be SAVED, MUST be already JUSTIFIED before we do a SINGLE WORK that counts for anything.

Further conditions MUST BE PRESENT to make SUPERNATURAL merit possible:

“The meritorious work must be morally good, that is, in accordance with the moral law in its object, intent, and circumstances.

It MUST be done FREELY, WITHOUT any EXTERNAL COERCION or INTERNAL NECESSITY.

It MUST be SUPERNATURAL, that is, AROUSED and ACCOMPANIED by ACTUAL GRACE, and proceeding from a SUPERNATURAL motive.

Strictly speaking only a person in the STATE OF GRACE can merit, as defined by the Church.” (Denzinger 1576, 1582)

JUSTIFICATION IN CATHOLIC TEACHING by Jimmy Akin

Quote: “The essence of supernatural love is unselfishness—doing something NOT BECAUSE IT WILL HELP US SOMEHOW, but because we want to do it out of SHEER LOVE for the other person, whether that person is God or one of our fellow human beings out of the love of God.

This is THE ONLY KIND of love that ultimately pleases God and therefore the ONLY KIND that ultimately gets us a reward IN heaven.” End quote. Emphasis mine.

If we believe: Work is condition of our salvation, then our works can NEVER BE UP TO THE ABOVE STANDARDS because we do it for ourselves to purchase salvation not for love and for the Glory of God, and ALL our work goes up in smoke at the judgment. In reference 1 Cor.3:11-15.

CANNOT BE OVER EMPHASIZE: This is THE KEY to do supernatural merit that God accepts and recognize!!! – There is NO other way to achieve supernatural merit which is the only good works.

JOINT DECLARATION ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church

4/25 We confess together that sinners are JUSTIFIED BY FAITH in the saving action of God in Christ. WHATEVER in the JUSTIFIED PRECEDES or FOLLOWS the free gift of FAITH is NEITHER THE BASIS of justification NOR MERITS it.

4/27.The Catholic understanding also sees FAITH as FUNDAMENTAL in justification. FOR WITHOUT FAITH, NO JUSTIFICATION CAN TAKE PLACE. Thus justifying grace never becomes a human possession. While Catholic teaching emphasizes the RENEWAL OF LIFE by justifying grace, this RENEWAL in FAITH, HOPE, LOVE is always dependent on God’s unfathomable grace and CONTRIBUTES NOTHING TO JUSTIFICATION

Rom.4:5 (Jerusalem Bible)
“When a man has NOTHING to show EXCEPT FAITH in the one who justifies sinners, than his faith is COUNTED AS JUSTIFYING HIM.”

Rom.4:5 corresponding with 1 Cor.3:15; If anyone’s WORK is burned (NOTHING to show EXCEPT FAITH), he will suffer loss; but he himself will be SAVED, yet so as through fire (no work, no reward). – If work would be a condition of salvation, those whose work burned, they would end up in hell.

Work MUST be done FREELY, WITHOUT any EXTERNAL COERCION or INTERNAL NECESSITY.

If we would have to work in order to maintain a living faith, and so to have an intrinsic merit, that would PUT us into an EXTERNAL COERCION and INTERNAL NECESSITY, and we would have to work to purchase our salvation not for love and for the Glory of God, and ALL our work would go up in smoke at the judgment. In reference 1 Cor.3:11-15.

With other words: If we would have to work to maintain a living faith, then work would be compulsory for salvation and then NO ONE could work for the GLORY OF GOD!!!

God’s gift of faith for us is a LIVING and FORMED FAITH, and it is a LIVING and FORMED FAITH before God as well.

But it is a DEAD FAITH before our neighbors if we don’t work and our neighbors wouldn’t believe we are saved!!! – This is what James talking about.

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ALONE by James Akin

Quote: “In fact, in TRADITIONAL WORKS OF CATHOLIC THEOLOGY, one regularly encounters the statement that FORMED FAITH IS JUSTIFYING FAITH. If one has formed faith, one is justified. Period. End quote. Emphasize mine.

With love in Christ,
LH.
 
*Until we Catholics know the foundation, Protestants are not going to listen to us when we try to teach them about the upper stories of the building.
*

Simply brilliant comment!

Having been raised Catholic, left the church and come back with both barrels blazing, I say AMEN to that brother!

Folks may argue about saints and sacraments but in my experience (when I was in a protestant church) the number one issue non-Catholics bring up is “Catholics teach salvation by works.”

It’s “both/and” not “either/or.” We should make a decision for Christ AND receive him in Holy Communion every week. We should have a personal relationship with Jesus AND go to confession often to renew and strengthen this relationship. We should read our Bibles, quote scripture AND know our Baltimore Catechism.

I just got back from serving at mass, distributing ashes and Holy Communion to a church full of people. I pray: if we could combine the fullness of truth and tradition here with the passion and fervor I saw in my old evangelical church… Jesus, Jesus, we could evangelize the world, just like the apostles did back in the day with no jets, internet or television!

Amen. :extrahappy:
 
Thanks for the great posts in this thread. I had understood that faith and good works go together but that in doing good works it is out of love for God not to get into heaven.
 
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