Looking Back at what the Reformation has Done

[Topper17]

Hi Edwin,

Thanks for your response. I agree that we need to pare things down a bit. Well, more than a bit actually.

There are many kinds of “good theologians.” And my experience as a historian of theological ideas is that very few people see ahead in that way.

Eck, supposedly Luther’s ‘inferior’ saw it clearly, and in fact, saw much better than Luther where Luther’s beliefs were going to lead, which was of course, heresy. Eck was not the only one. Eck may not be ‘creative and original’ enough to suit you, but he had a lot more foresight than Luther, and he was NOT going to split the Western Church. Personally, I think that Theologians with that kind of inability connect the dots, should NOT be allowed to be ‘creative and original’, at least not in terms of changing established Christian doctrines.

Enemies are often more clear-sighted about the unintended implications of one’s ideas than one is oneself, and that makes sense. Luther’s ideas remain fruitful and powerful and interesting. That’s all I’m saying. My major frustration with you is that it seems as if you want to talk about everything except Luther’s actual ideas. Protestants do the same. The Whig narrative leads people to ignore Luther’s actual content, because what really matters is Luther the icon of freedom.

I have never said that EVERYTHING Luther taught or every of his teachings were heretical. But I do not see the ‘necessity’ of giving him credence as if he has not been excommunicated as a heretic. Help me on this one Edwin.

There was a Saint who, prior to the Reformation, stated that he WOULD read the writings of heretics, but would only do so standing on one led, barefoot on a cold stone floor. You see, he wanted a constant reminder of what he was reading. He did not want to be beguiled by the words of heretics. As you have pointed out, they can be quite convincing.

This saint, did not want to have his mind filled with the teachings of heretics because he apparently did not trust himself to separate the wheat from the chaff. It seems that he was worried that heresy might seep in to HIS beliefs without his real realizing it.

I can certainly understand your affection for Luther and of his poetic abilities. If he was actually a genius at anything, it was in language and rhetoric.

The Church has always demanded the burning of the writings of heretics, because it has always known that innocent people, especially the less educated, are very prone to be attracted to heresy. Of course you could respond with the number of educated Theologians who responded positively to Luther. I would be perfectly happy to have that discussion.

Edwin, I don’t have any reservations about someone with your education and abilities being able to sort it all out and accept only the “good side” of Luther’s teachings. However, especially in Luther’s time, when roughly 5% of the people were literate, having Luther’s extremely attractive (but damaging) teachings available to all didn’t turn out all that well.

You have an idea in your head of what a good theologian looks like, and you judge Luther by that. Fine. I really don’t much care, except that you keep dismissing or ignoring the actual reasons why Protestants admire Luther.

To put it bluntly, if I want to read inspirational or devotional writings, or reflections on the nature of man’s relationship with God, I am NOT going to read Luther. Why would I do that when there are so many Catholic saints who have written on ALL of those subjects, Saints who did NOT intentionally do so much damage to the Catholic Church, Saints who did NOT write so much that was CLEARLY Anti-Scriptural?

 

[Topper17]

This is why, yet again, I wish you would lay out your thesis clearly so we aren’t flailing around in the dark.

Edwin, you apparently did not response to my post number 542. I will repost it here, in direct response to your question. If you don’t consider it to be an acceptable ‘thesis’ then just say so. If it prompts questions I would be happy to respond. I would consider this to be an opportunity to clarify my position and so I welcome it. On the other hand I am very aware that if I were in one of our classes, you would surely flunk me, if for no other reason than for my obstinacy. Which by the way leads me to ask if you have ever seen any reference to any of Luther’s students refuting him on class. Can you imagine?

At any rate, post 542 included the following:

Originally Posted by Contarini:

“So how about a clear post in which you state explicitly what you think people ought to conclude about Luther, and list the specific reasons why they ought to draw it. Save the citations and quotations to back up your specific points if people challenge them.
It’s really quite simple Edwin, but when I have summarized it in the past it draws even more howling than just the quotes of the Scholars.”

My response: Luther claimed an astonishing amount of personal authority. He took in upon his own shoulders to change dozens of important doctrines, in effect assuming FAR MORE than any Bishop of Rome ever did. In fact, no Bishop of Rome or any 10 Bishops of Rome ever took as much doctrinal authority as did Luther. His claims included references to his being a prophet and he claimed that if you didn’t believe as he did you might not be saved. He taught and acted as if he had the authority to rebuke/correct/teach EVERYBODY and allowed NO ONE to rebuke/correct/teach him. It was on his personal self-proclaimed authority that he challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, and it was also on this personal authority that he founded a ‘competitive communion’.

He was either right or he was wrong. There are no shades of gray here as many would like to have us think. Either Luther was led by God to ‘do what he did’ or he was not. If he was, then Protestantism is a legitimate expression of Christianity. If he was not, then it is a heresy, which is exactly the way it is described by Catholic Answers in their tract: “The Great Heresies”

catholic.com/tracts/the-great-heresies

There is no middle ground. There is no ‘staying positive’ and ignoring the issue. There is far too much at stake with regards to the future of Christendom.

This is NOT about Luther’s personal sins. It is about his teachings and whether those (very ‘under-reported’) teachings could POSSIBLY be from God, which is exactly what Luther thought they were. Were his recommendations about the executions of rabbis, peasants, Anabaptists, and ‘reluctant wives’, inspired by the Holy Spirit? Of course not. So why in the world should anyone believe that his teachings on the antichrist, and the nature of the Church, Salvation by Faith Alone, etc. be viewed as being from the Holy Spirit? The very under-reported teachings impugn the validity of the better known teachings, and that is exactly why the under-reported teaching are under-reported.

All of those lesser known teachings of Luther make it extremely clear that he was NOT being led by the Holy Spirit, at least on those issues. So why should anybody believe that he was ‘inspired’ on some of them but not on the others?

If we come to the conclusion that he was NOT led by the Holy Spirit in the manner that he thought he was, and claimed he was, it means that the ‘Reformation’ which he founded was not from the Holy Spirit, but is simply a ‘more successful’ than usual heresy.

Topper

 

[Topper17]

Now back to my current post.

My impression is that your argument is basically: “Luther was a brash, thoughtless person who attacked Church authority and didn’t have the scholarship or theological acumen to understand the implications of his own ideas. Hence, his ideas are obviously bad and should not be taken seriously, no matter how appealing they may seem.” That’s what I think I’m getting from your posts. But I don’t know, because you won’t just lay it all out there as an argument with a thesis and supporting points.

There is no question about the first sentence above. However, those personal ‘qualities’ do not disqualify him from being taken seriously as a Christian Theologian, and especially as one whose self appointed role was to change SO MUCH of Christian doctrine. What disqualifies him is his own ‘lesser-known’ teachings, the ones that ALL of Christianity considers to be aberrant. His writings on the Jews, death for the Anabaptists, ‘reluctant wives’, the peasants, the pope as the Antichrist PROVE that he should not be trusted as one to revise Christian doctrine, and that is exactly WHY they are ‘under-reported’.

I agree that this is a major point. When your opponents say, “X will happen,” and you say, “No it won’t,” and then it does, the supposedly boring and corrupt opponents need a second look. (By the way, do you know David Bagchi’s book Luther’s Earliest Opponents? I think you would find it interesting, and no doubt useful to cite since Bagchi is a Protestant!).

Maybe you could try to get a Protestant response to this point.

And yes, the Whig narrative has a lot to do with why people ignore this. In the Whig narrative, liberty is the ultimate good, so the fact that Luther’s Reformation led to what you call “chaos” isn’t necessarily seen as a bad thing. One of the points to drive home is that the Reformers (the Reformed more so than Luther himself) cared deeply about unity. The pre-Reformation era was not an era of uniformity–it was an era of what most people found terrifying diversity and conflict. Calvin claimed that the Reformation was bringing unity to this chaotic, fractious religious world. And obviously he was wrong. People in 1500 had no idea just how chaotic and conflict-ridden the world of 1600 would be. If they had, they probably would have just fallen down and died en masse and there would have been no Reformation at all. (OK, that’s massive hyperbole!)

As you know, the absolute LAST thing Reformation produced was religious liberty. I disagree that Luther cared deeply about unity. He wanted unity of course but unity around HIM. That’s not such a subtle distinction.

As you can see, we have a lot of agreement. Part of my frustration with your posts is that you are deeply invested in having Protestant antagonists. I get this, since there are a lot of Protestants who are smug and triumphalist. But as I keep saying, it isn’t really clear what your basic argument is and what Protestants would need to do in order not to fall under your condemnation. Become Catholic, obviously, but you seem to be aiming at something more limited than that

I understand that Edwin and have my own frustrations here. Actually I am NOT at all interested in having ‘antagonists’. What I am interested in his having an open and honest dialogue, dialogue in which people can actually make points, ask questions and receive a response, meaning exactly the way you and I dialogue.

What would Protestants ‘need to do’ in response to my arguments? Well - they would be more ABLE to form a more informed opinion IF they were exposed to the arguments of both sides and if they were exposed to something other than the ‘Whig narrative’ which as you admit, is NOT fair to the Church. The actual history of the early Reformation, might cause people to be more inclined to consider the Catholic point of view.

You know of course what Bishop Boussart said about the history of the Reformation:

“If Protestants knew thoroughly how their religion was formed; with how many variations and with what inconsistency their confessions of faith were drawn up; how they first separated themselves from us, and afterwards from one another; by how many subtleties, evasions, and equivocations they labored to repair their divisions, and to reunite the scattered members of their disjointed reformation; this reformation of which they boast would afford them but little satisfaction, or rather, to speak my mind more freely, it would exite in them only feelings of contempt.” “The History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches”, Bishop James Benign Bossuet, pg. 1

I think that there is a reason why many of these things are ‘under-reported’ by Protestantism, and as you know, there have been many comments here on the CA threads who mention that learning the Truth About Luther, and the factual history of the Reformation had a role in their conversion. You might think it unseemly to bring these things to light, but then there is a place for disagreement on the matter – isn’t there?

God Bless You Edwin, Topper

 

[Topper17]

Hi Jon,

Thank goodness he’s clothed.

Jon

I think that you should now be looking over your shoulder constantly. Those black helicopters are designed to be stealthy you know. I want to see you continue to post here, but if you stop, I will understand the reason.

God Bless You Jon, and Good Luck to You, Topper

 

[TertiumQuid]

The quote in the Lunn/Coulton book is accurately cited. And I wondered how Rupp might compare to the Weiner title, which I assumed was the same as the alternate title you gave. For one not knowing much about Luther, I’m finding familiar stuff in this exchange. I thank you both. GKC

Thanks for checking the Lunn/Coulton book, I’m not familiar with it.

The Weiner and Rupp books are writings from a particular period in history (1940’s). I own early editions of both. I rarely open them because they’re in poor shape (here’s a picture of my copy of Rupp). Probably because it’s so controversial, Weiner’s book has been available online for years, and its contents have been cut-and-pasted extensively. Rupp’s is much harder to track down. Weiner’s book is far more than simply a presentation of Luther’s views on the Jews. It’s more a snapshot of the typical anti-Luther rhetoric that had been around for years. What Weiner did was take the old calumnies and attach them to the current war events of his day. Previous to WWII, I find it fascinating that not all that much attention (compared to after WWII) was given to Luther’s anti-Jewish writings. The major problem with Weiner is that his documentation relied heavily on secondary sources, and those secondary sources were typically hostile (Grisar, Denifle, Janssen, Frantz Funck-Brentano, etc.). Rupp demonstrates that Weiner put together a spurious historical treatment of Luther.

While Rupp does an adequate job demonstrating Weiner’s inadequacies on Luther, I don’t think he was able to completely exonerate Luther from his statements against the Jews, either in his response to Weiner or his later short pamphlet, Martin Luther and the Jews. As I inferred previously to Abu, blaming Luther for the Nazis is a bit myopic, failing to take into account the rampant and well-established anti-Judaism that Luther was born into.

 

[TertiumQuid]

I was discussing Peter Weiner’s lack of comprehension - and unless he’s a poster here I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Ironically I spent the last few days in Weiner’s book checking something he said, and the reference appears to be bogus. Many of his citations and use of quotes are questionable.

I think Weiner seized the moment of his day, and was making an attempt to uncover the roots of Nazism and national socialism- sort of like how all sorts of people are now trying to figure out ISIS. Unfortunately, he presented a rather lopsided view of Luther.

Eric Gritsch recently put out* Martin Luther’s Anti-Semitism: Against His Better Judgment* (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012). He calls Weiner’s book “sheer propaganda” which was filled with “a chain of historical distortions.” Gritsch goes on to point out Gordon Rupp “offered a devastating, yet elegantly executed critique.”

 

[GKC]

Thanks for checking the Lunn/Coulton book, I’m not familiar with it.

The Weiner and Rupp books are writings from a particular period in history (1940’s). I own early editions of both. I rarely open them because they’re in poor shape (here’s a picture of my copy of Rupp). Probably because it’s so controversial, Weiner’s book has been available online for years, and its contents have been cut-and-pasted extensively. Rupp’s is much harder to track down. Weiner’s book is far more than simply a presentation of Luther’s views on the Jews. It’s more a snapshot of the typical anti-Luther rhetoric that had been around for years. What Weiner did was take the old calumnies and attach them to the current war events of his day. Previous to WWII, I find it fascinating that not all that much attention (compared to after WWII) was given to Luther’s anti-Jewish writings. The major problem with Weiner is that his documentation relied heavily on secondary sources, and those secondary sources were typically hostile (Grisar, Denifle, Janssen, Frantz Funck-Brentano, etc.). Rupp demonstrates that Weiner put together a spurious historical treatment of Luther.

While Rupp does an adequate job demonstrating Weiner’s inadequacies on Luther, I don’t think he was able to completely exonerate Luther from his statements against the Jews, either in his response to Weiner or his later short pamphlet, Martin Luther and the Jews. As I inferred previously to Abu, blaming Luther for the Nazis is a bit myopic, failing to take into account the rampant and well-established anti-Judaism that Luther was born into.

I thank you for the additional biblio-info. The Coulton/Lunn exchange was likewise in the 40s, though it, and Lunn’s other epistolary exchanges on religious themes, were in no wise flavored by the war, beyond having to cope with the shortage of paper, for the printings done at that time. And your observations in the last para are most apt.

GKC

 

[TertiumQuid]

But what happened when the Jews refused to join Luther’s church? Seems to me that he went off in a rage when Jews did not join his revolt.

The Jews did not convert when Luther published his 1523 treatise. His major written attacks against the Jews began sometime around 1538. He died in 1546. This is hardly going “off in a rage when Jews did not join his revolt.”

 

[TertiumQuid]

No persona interested in substantive discussion is ever non grata with me

Dr. Tait,

Thank you for your comments. I read through your comments in this post a few times, and decided the most prudent response was to actually make sure I understood what you were saying before wasting Catholic Answers bandwidth with unnecessary banter and wasting your time.

Here’s a brief outline of what I perceive you to be saying:

I. Luther’s Antinomian Elements
A. Is proven by statements from Luther that “disparaged the law repeatedly.”
B. Is proven by his view that good works flowed automatically from love, rather than exhortations from the law.
C. Is proven by controversies in regard to antinomianism that occurred after Luther’s demise.

II. Luther’s Responsibility
A. The question of responsibility is not the same as the question of causality.
B. If Luther did teach error, he’s responsible for later developments of that error.
C. Those who disagree with Luther naturally hold him responsible for later developments, and this is not unreasonable because of a preexisting theological worldview (or starting point, presuppositions, etc.) a person (or religious body) holds .

My apologies if I’ve presented any distortions or caricatures of your post. My intention is to simply make sure I understand what you’re saying. At least for me, sometimes I get farther by slowing down (now there’s a good paradox ).

JS

 

[TertiumQuid]

This is another example of Luther placing himself above Christ’s Magisterium which proclaimed infallibly which writings form the Word of God. No wonder Christ’s teaching has been misrepresented.
A “claim” evidently false, as Christ’s Catholic Church has not taught, and cannot teach, error in dogma and doctrine to the whole Church on faith and morals that denial of Christ’s authority to His Church exposes the error involved.
The offering here is not “my beliefs”, though aspects enter in, but the teaching of Christ’s Church and the need to realize that no reunion can occur without realising that assent to Her dogma and doctrine is an essential consequence of that reality.

I appreciate your zeal, and I thank you for reading my comments. It appears to me though the thrust of your responses to me are basic presuppositional statements of your core beliefs. This is not really something I have time to dialog on. I’m sure though there are others here to engage on your points. A good springboard for an interested party would be your comment “no reunion can occur without realising that assent to Her dogma and doctrine is an essential consequence of that reality…” and how that particular attitude effects one’s understanding of ecumenism (i.e., Catholic and Protestant understandings of ecumenism).

 

[KathleenGee]

Good resource: Called to Communion…online…www.calledtocommunion.com

Likewise, Luther saw worse contradictions to Christianity than how believers were before the
reformation…splitting apart does nothing good because it is not what God wills for us.

Pride and taking scandal…we are warned about this.

 

[spina1953]

It seems to me from what I have read of Luther’s writings that he did go into a rage when the Jews refused to join Luther’s revolt and believe his theology and teachings.

 

[TertiumQuid]

It seems to me from what I have read of Luther’s writings that he did go into a rage when the Jews refused to join Luther’s revolt and believe his theology and teachings.

Like most Reformation-related subjects, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

 

[MaryT777]

Like most Reformation-related subjects, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Perhaps sometimes it’s just that simple as well.

 

[spina1953]

Perhaps sometimes it’s just that simple as well.

Hi Mary 777: Agreed!

 

[Per_Crucem]

It seems to me from what I have read of Luther’s writings that he did go into a rage when the Jews refused to join Luther’s revolt and believe his theology and teachings.

This makes no sense, spina. Why would Luther expect non-Christian Jews to leave the Catholic Church and become Lutheran? They weren’t part of the CC

 

[spina1953]

This makes no sense, spina. Why would Luther expect non-Christian Jews to leave the Catholic Church and become Lutheran? They weren’t part of the CC

Hi Per Crucem: Never said that Jews were part of the CC where did you get that?

 

[Contarini]

Edwin, you apparently did not response to my post number 542.

I’m so sorry. I remember reading the first part about the lurkers on the forum.

On the other hand I am very aware that if I were in one of our classes, you would surely flunk me, if for no other reason than for my obstinacy.

I don’t know why people assume this sort of thing about professors. . . . Actually, when I was a professor, I generally gave very good grades to people who argued with me, even if I thought their arguments had a lot of holes. (I tried always to bear in mind that it’s easy to see the holes in arguments you disagree with–which by the way is one reason why I’m not as impressed with Eck’s “foresight” as you are.) I didn’t flunk many people at all (generally just people who plagiarized or downright didn’t do the work). It was hard to get an A, but the best way to do so was to argue with me

My response: Luther claimed an astonishing amount of personal authority. He took in upon his own shoulders to change dozens of important doctrines, . . . It was on his personal self-proclaimed authority that he challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, and it was also on this personal authority that he founded a ‘competitive communion’.

As I’m sure you know, Luther would say that it was on the authority of the Word of God. How seriously he took the “prophet” language he sometimes used is hard to tell, given Luther’s fondness for extravagant, tongue-in-cheek language. But I think a good case can be made that both he and Calvin had a very high view of their own theological ideas–probably one reason why the two of them are the two most famous Protestant theologians from the era, even though Calvin in his own day was just one of many Reformed theologians and in no way a founding figure.

Protestants agree with Luther, though, insofar as they agree with him, because they think his ideas are Scriptural. I know we’ve been over that before. To refute Luther you need to show Protestants that his ideas are not as Scriptural as they think.

I think the basic problem here is that you, like many conservative Catholics (and sorry, I do think the word “conservative” is appropriate and indispensable here), reduce everything to a question of authority. And you see Protestantism the same way. You believe things because the Church says so, and so you assume that Protestants believe things because Luther said so. At least that’s how it looks to me.

He was either right or he was wrong. There are no shades of gray here as many would like to have us think.

Either Luther was led by God to ‘do what he did’ or he was not. If he was, then Protestantism is a legitimate expression of Christianity. If he was not, then it is a heresy,

OK. This is the fundamental place where we disagree. The legitimacy of Protestant communities has nothing to do with whether Luther was led by God or not. It has to do with baptism, the proclamation of the Word, acceptance of the Creeds, the life of charity–and I would add the Eucharist, but I won’t try to argue that point with you

Whether these communities ought to be separated from Rome is another matter. You know I don’t think they should be, although if the Doctrinal Notification to Ad Tuendam Fidem represents Rome’s conditions for ending the separation, then I think the blame may not entirely be on one side.

There is no middle ground. There is no ‘staying positive’ and ignoring the issue. There is far too much at stake with regards to the future of Christendom.

Funny. I agree with the last sentence and that’s why I think finding the middle ground–or rather, telling the truth, which in this case (and in most others) does not match the black-and-white picture that some folks want to paint–is essential!

This is NOT about Luther’s personal sins. It is about his teachings and whether those (very ‘under-reported’) teachings could POSSIBLY be from God, which is exactly what Luther thought they were. Were his recommendations about the executions of rabbis, peasants, Anabaptists, and ‘reluctant wives’, inspired by the Holy Spirit? Of course not. So why in the world should anyone believe that his teachings on the antichrist, and the nature of the Church, Salvation by Faith Alone, etc. be viewed as being from the Holy Spirit? The very under-reported teachings impugn the validity of the better known teachings, and that is exactly why the under-reported teaching are under-reported.

The answer to your question is that people who believe the latter set of teachings and reject the former (which are arguably opinions more than teachings) do so because they believe the latter are in accord with Scripture and the former aren’t.

Again, you’re assuming that the intrinsic merits of ideas don’t matter or are inaccessible to us, so that we can only figure out who has authority and then follow that person or institution blindly. I think that view makes no sense at all and is in fact morally corrupting.

 

[Contarini]

On the other hand, we have common ground on the point that the mythological exaltation of Luther helps confirm Protestants in their adherence to certain beliefs they need to question, and in particular reinforces the idea that breaking with tradition in order to follow one’s own theological opinions is a noble and necessary thing.

So I’m with you in the need to educate Protestants on just how strange and repugnant some of Luther’s views were. But I think you don’t go deep enough. You seem content simply to list things that you’re confident people will find repugnant, and worse, to pile up secondary-source quotations as if they made your points for you.

On Luther’s “lesser known teachings,” I think there’s a difference between opinions he expressed that were essentially those of his culture, and those where he was breaking new ground. You asked in an earlier post, for instance, where Eck had said things about the Jews similar to those of Luther. And the answer would be: in his “Refutation of a Jew Book,” which was written in response to the Lutheran Andreas Osiander, who (unlike Luther) had defended Jews against the charge of ritual murder. The practical measures Luther advocated against Jews were of a piece with all kinds of expulsions and persecutions and pogroms endured by the Jews in the later Middle Ages. Luther wasn’t breaking with anything in late medieval Christianity in his attitude to the Jews. At most, we can say that because of Luther’s rhetorical extravagance and the influence he had over rulers he may be a bit more responsible than someone like Eck who was just defending a traditional opinion (again, against a Lutheran who was defending the Jews). And certainly the point (which someone made in a previous conversation on this subject on this forum) that if Luther was going to question traditional views under the guidance of the Holy Spirit you would think he might start here. . . . Our friend Tertium Quid has helpfully documented Eck’s attitude to Jews here. Two sources he doesn’t mention are Heiko Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism, and an article by Steven Rowan published in the Sixteenth Century Journal in 1985: “Luther, Bucer and Eck on the Jews.”

Luther’s opinions on marriage are a different matter, because as you point out he attacked Catholic marriage law savagely. At the same time, his view that the state should compel women to “pay the marriage debt” on pain of death is at most a more extreme expression of a traditional view: that both spouses were obligated to have sexual intercourse as part of marriage. I certainly agree, though, that people need to know about these extreme, horrifying statements by Luther. The bigger conversation that needs to happen about Luther’s view of marriage (and that of the Reformers generally–my friend Bucer is another excellent example) concerns the combination of what we would now think of as “liberal” and ferociously conservative elements in their thought.

Luther in particular secularized marriage. In the same work you cite, The Estate of Marriage, Luther dismisses the traditional view that Christians shouldn’t marry non-Christians, arguing that marriage is a worldly institution, so one can marry non-Christians just as one can work with them. Marriage is seen as part of the godly order of this world. Thus, it falls under the power of the state. (Highly relevant for contemporary debates, isn’t it?) But this means, for Luther, that the state should execute adulterers, compel women to have sex with their husbands, etc. And of course, he also said, in the same treatise again, that if women wear themselves out and die child-bearing, that’s OK, because that’s their purpose in life. Swan points out rightly that in context Luther says that child-bearing keeps women healthy, because it’s a natural function. And more to the point he is again expressing a traditional opinion. But the Reformation did narrow attitudes to women insofar as it rejected the monastic life and gave women no purpose other than to be wives and mothers. Anyway, the point is that all of this needs to be discussed fairly, in context, in order for us to think through the effect of the Reformation on the present crisis in our society’s understanding of sexuality and marriage.

If we come to the conclusion that he was NOT led by the Holy Spirit in the manner that he thought he was, and claimed he was, it means that the ‘Reformation’ which he founded was not from the Holy Spirit, but is simply a ‘more successful’ than usual heresy.

Topper

No, that doesn’t follow. Protestantism is heretical if Protestantism denies some settled, necessary part of the Faith. And contrary to you, I don’t think that’s a black and white issue.

Certainly the Church disagrees with your insinuation that all heresies are equal except in the degree of their success. The Church does not treat Protestantism the same way as Arianism or Gnosticism, nor does it treat all Protestants the same.

I myself am not sure if Trinitarian Protestantism ought to be described as heretical at all, although all forms of Protestantism certainly have some serious theological defects, varying in kind and degree from one tradition to another. (In other words, I still hold to some form of the much-reviled “essentials/nonessentials” distinction, and “mere Christianity” still has great appeal for me, though clearly it has a center and the center is Catholicism and/or Orthodoxy).

And that is one of my biggest sources of uncertainty about conversion to Catholicism.

Edwin

 

[Per_Crucem]

Hi Per Crucem: Never said that Jews were part of the CC where did you get that?

You said that Luther was incensed that the Jews would not join his “revolt”. Why would Luther expect them to when they had nothing to revolt against?