I had never heard this explanation as reason to burn a satanic witch or heretical Luther !!
Isn’t it ironic that in early days of Church, when the Romans had the power and the Christians were being martyred, … heretical beliefs were tolerated/suffered. Verbal arguments with the disagreeable heretics were waged over many years, in the theater of verbal debates, etc. Examples: Polycarp with Marcion, Athanasius with Arius.
Only later, when the Church gained the power [middle ages] … did it start to treat the heathen / heretics like they had once treated the Church. This, is what set off Luther so … among other things.
Did not Christ teach us to “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” … and for us to ‘Turn the other cheek, give them your cloak too, etc’.
What happened in Middle Ages was — the Church forgot about the Beatitudes.
It’s easy to see that in the 20th century, but try to put yourself in the shoes of a medival. Remeber, its not so much a thing about religion as it is culture. Catholics AND protesetants burned heretics, or what they considered herititcs, and witches. I think this had to do with the way the culture looked at how to act in order to achive their objectives. Christianity came out of a mature culture that had refind itself over many years. With the invasion of the barbarians, that is to say my ancestors, civilization colapsed. Germanic views on things were different. They saw a problem, and the best way in their mind to solve it was to put the problem to death, after obtaining a confession from the accused. I don’t think its fair to blame this development on the Church, were it her fault we would see a discrephency between how the church dealt with things and how the protestants dealth with things, and how the state delt with things.
Consider that in protestant England many Catholics were killed and even in the American colonies people were put to death for witchcraft as late as the 1692, so its not just the “big bad catholic church” that is killing folks here. Also, ALL states put people to death for many crimes. In fact, sometimes people would blaspheme themselves in order to get a trial in the church which was usually more fare than a trial in the civil courts, but I digress.
My point is that it wasn’t the Church that forgot the Beatitues, it was the culture that didn’t live them, or at least didn’t express them in the way we understand. As for polycarp and others, a few points here.
- These were not medivals, they were ancients. Different ways of thinking and viewing culture and morals
- The church did not have the power it had later, and the civil authorities were not Christian.
Now I’m not saying that I think they were completely right in putting heretics to death, I’m saying its not a good idea to judge them for it, we are not medievals! We are moderns, we think like moderns and we act like moderns. They were medivals and thought and acted like medivals, so its hard to judge weather they were right or wrong.
We do know that legitimate authority has the right to execute prisoners, after all, the law permits it. Christ never forbid the death penalty, though you could argue that he discouraged it by sparing the woman caught in adultery.
Now as for “turning the other cheek” that mostly has to do with actions between persons, not between a person and the state/church; an important distinction. Again, I’m not saying the medievals were right, I’m just saying that we really cannot say that they were wrong.
I DO take issue with your assertion that Luther left the Church over treatment of heretics! This is not the case in anything I have studied about Luther. He left because of abuses in the Church, not because of how the church dealt with heretics.
