Luther said killing of heretics went against the will of the Holy Spirit. The Church said Luther was wrong because no one is in the position to claim the will of the Holy Spirit with the human mind.
No, that is your highly strained and fanciful interpretation of what Pope Leo said. Pope Leo simply listed this statement as something that was either heretical or scandalous to pious ears or whatever the other usual categories were. He didn’t clarify. However, the most reasonable–indeed, pretty much the obvious–interpretation of the condemnation is that Leo was defending the standard practice of “relaxing” obstinate or repeat-offender heretics to the secular arm for burning at the stake. You are trying desperately to avoid that conclusion, and your efforts are misguided. What you are saying makes absolutely no sense to anyone who has any knowledge of the cultural and religious environment of the 16th century.
We’ve been round and round this before. I have repeatedly provided multiple pieces of evidence: the theological teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, the decrees of IV Lateran, and the bull of Pope Leo in question. I have pointed out that Erasmus of Rotterdam, who was generally seen as an edgy, dangerous thinker, did criticize the burning of heretics and had to modify his position later
because in the more conservative climate brought on by the reaction to Luther any questioning of the practice of burning heretics was seen as unorthodox.
The obvious reading of Pope Leo’s words is in agreement with every piece of evidence we have from the era.
Your reading–that he was simply objecting to the “presumption” in Luther’s claim–is totally anachronistic.
Now if Exsurge Domine is taken to be infallible and we must “save” it from error, then one could argue that your meaning is the one the Holy Spirit intended even if probably not the one the Pope did. Even then, I find it questionable. I think we can say with confidence that the Holy Spirit never wanted people burned at the stake for their religious opinions, just as we can say with confidence that the Holy Spirit does not desire other cruel actions.
But I don’t think Exsurge Domine needs to be defended as infallible.
Luther later did recan that statement, I disagree with you again.
Where did he recant it? I have already pointed out that the statements you were referring to are not a recantation of the principle that heretics should not be burned. Blasphemy went beyond heresy; the Anabaptists were condemned for sedition in Lutheran territories, not heresy; and the death penalty in general is not the same thing as burning.
You cannot state what the mind of all Church leaders were at that time, Rather or not some agreed or some did not is not the question.
Exactly. What we can ascertain is the public, consistent position taken by Church leaders and the people who were accepted as orthodox theological experts. And that position was solidly in favor of the burning of heretics. Those who questioned the burning of heretics were invariably regarded as theologically suspect themselves. That is historically indisputable. You only dispute it because, not to put a fine point upon it, you don’t know much about the history of the period.
You need to produce an official teaching of the RCC that Heretics being burned was the will of the Holy Spirit. If you cannot you have no case.
By any reasonable historical interpretation, the document in question says that. You have invented, or if I remember rightly borrowed from James Akin, a highly strained interpretation to solve a problem that I don’t think exists. As I have said many times before, rinnie, I do not argue that Exsurge Domine is infallible by the standards set forth in Catholic teaching. The case I have made over and over in the past is simply that most people in the early sixteenth century thought that the orthodox Catholic position was to burn heretics, and that the statements of Church leaders and theologians gave them every reason to think this. It turned out that they were wrong.
The Pope himself and Bishops today can’t even do it. They have the Power to speak in the name of Christ only if its from the Holy Spirit.
If we can’t say that cruelty is wrong, we might as well all close up our churches and go home.
This is simply a point where people in the sixteenth century had not yet fully discerned the mind of the Spirit. Luther was right on this point. As you say, he retreated from the clarity of his early position later (though it wasn’t a direct contradiction). Luther is not the model here. (Erasmus is, on this point, far more admirable, though even he later hedged.) But he was certainly closer to the mind of Christ, and the eventual mind of the Church, than Pope Leo or St. Thomas Aquinas on this particular point.
I don’t think you do the cause of Catholic orthodoxy any harm in admitting this. You are doing some harm by obstinately and unconvincingly denying it.
Edwin
