Why? You know perfectly well that I don’t agree with this claim. I’ve said it over and over, in disputes with you on this very point (unless I’m mixing you up with someone else).
But your defense is unconvincing.
What is really at stake here, I think, is the status of presently controversial issues such as birth control and women’s ordination. If the staunch defenders of orthodoxy in the sixteenth century could be wrong about the burning of heretics–and they clearly were–then their contemporary counterparts might be wrong about this issue too.
But I think that “liberals” and “conservatives” alike in the Catholic Church are far too concerned with the question of whether a certain teaching could or could not be changed. it’s clear that infallibility doesn’t provide much certainty, given the difficulty in discerning what is or is not infallible. I think that’s just barking up the wrong tree from the beginning.
“Might” be wrong isn’t the same thing as “is wrong.”
This is not about “infallible teaching.” But to claim that the leaders of the Church did not actively promote and encourage the execution of heretics, and that they did not purport to be acting as “the Church” in an authoritative way when they did so, is to claim something that is about as historically plausible as the claim that the Holocaust didn’t happen. (I am not claiming that the two things are morally equivalent–clearly they aren’t, apart from the huge difference in numbers, since heretics were adults killed for actions they had taken, while the Holocaust was the slaughter of people, including children, for something they could not help. In that sense the victims of the Holocaust, and the victims of abortion, were far more clearly innocent than those who were burned for heresy. The Church has never condoned the killing of innocent people, but Church leaders have made mistakes in their definition of the category “innocent people.”)
Edwin
But Edwin as I stated that is exactly what this whole thing is about. The Church was accused as it being a infallible teaching of the RCC. I stated that clearly before.
My other question is also clear. No One can claim that they can speak for the Holy Spirit with the human mind.
As I said before although many agree with what Luther said about heretics being burned at the stakes by the Law at that time, which I have never said I did not agree with myself. But as I stated I nor Luther can speak for the Holy Spirit about anything.
Just because people use human will to have a abortion in no way means it was the will of God. . Just because God does not will evil to happen it happens with human will. We know that the will of God is for us to obey his commands,
But someone goes against the will of God using free will to do evil, they still have free will from God, Just because he does not stop it no way means it could not have stopped it. We have been told numerous times he lets it happen for a reason. BUt we have no power to say why he lets things happen, We do not have his mind.
If evil went against the will of God people could not sin and have free will to choose him or their own will.
It was proved on the trial of Christ. When told, do you not know I have the power to release or have you killed. Christ said you have no power unless given to you by my Father.
No one knows why Christ had to die, why he even had to pay for our sins, because we know not the mind of God.
No one can state either way what God lets happen and why. You cannot tell me human will can beat the will of God, And humans can know the will of God.
Regardless of what happens. We have to trust God for what he lets happen with human will. So you are going to have to prove to me that although it was human will to let humans be burned at the stake that it went against his will to let it happen. Its quite simple.
No one knows the mind of God.
