Luther, Protestant theology and the Epistle of James...

  • Thread starter Thread starter steffenlaursen
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
here_i_stand said:
Luther did not take out / throw out any books of the Bible. I’m sure others will correct me if I’m wrong, but his translation included ALL of these books, although he did include a footnote for the apocryphal books. He expressed doubts about some of the NT books (James, etc.), but - in the end - decided that they all had a proper place as part of the canon. Incidentally, his doubts mirrored some of those in the early church as the canon was being established.
Click to expand...
Calling any book of Sacred Scripture apocryphal is akin to tossing it out of the Canon. And incidentally, the Church did decide the Canon, not one man. So, who does Luther think he is?
 
Semper_Fi said:
Calling any book of Sacred Scripture apocryphal is akin to tossing it out of the Canon. And incidentally, the Church did decide the Canon, not one man. So, who does Luther think he is?
Click to expand...
The Church did not definitively define the Old Testament canon until Trent in the 16th century. Until then it was permissible for Catholic biblical scholars to take the view Luther did and a growing number were in fact doing so.

And it’s not as though the view were a complete innovation, it’s exactly the same view Jerome took.

BTW, Jerome expressed doubts about the canonicity of a number of NT books also.
 
Steadfast said:
The Church did not definitively define the Old Testament canon until Trent in the 16th century.
Click to expand...
Is your statement accurate? I though the Church in 383 AD at the Council of Rome decided on the Canon, then in 393 AD approved the same Canon (same as the canon we have today) at the Council of Hippo and in 397 AD the council of Carthage ratified Hippo.
 
Steadfast said:
The point is that Luther didn’t “reject” the Book of James. See my first post in this thread.

A point also is that the symantic that you claim he didn’t exclude NT books, he most definitly excluded and denied their teachings, both the literal interpretation and those of the church which amounts to as much as having torn the pages directly out of the book.

And simply saying that he did without reference to context or circumstance is the same kind of historiographical mishandling you would accuse people like James Swan of.

Mishandling? How do you consider “Sola” theology not historical? Me thinks liberals effect your judgement.

You say it doesn’t matter because of all these other mitigating theological factors. But that’s just a dodge.

How is it a dodge? Seems like a rational conclusion to me. Lest you be anathema.

Don’t you see that Luther is no more wrong when we are dishonest about him and no less so when we tell the truth justly?

Since when is ignorance dishonesty? Unless you prepose that Luther wasn’t culpable of his heresy then those who don’t know the full and bigger picture and thus judge Luther by the barbaric results and fruits of the protest against God given authority is no more dishonest than the result is tragic.

By their fruits you will know them. With that let me ask you what is the fruit of your accusations if not division? If you mean to educate the ignorant masses about how an upstanding guy Luther was then by all means do so. I dont think calling Christians dodgy and dishonest is the whitness you want to make.

Do you think the Church was wrong for excommunicating poor Martin? If you do then lets please hear some historical foundation for such a belief so that we may handle it historically.
Click to expand...
 
Lampo said:
Is your statement accurate? I though the Church in 383 AD at the Council of Rome decided on the Canon, then in 393 AD approved the same Canon (same as the canon we have today) at the Council of Hippo and in 397 AD the council of Carthage ratified Hippo.
Click to expand...
My thought exactly. Where should we turn for the correct answer?
 
Steadfast said:
And Mom, you may want to admit that that comment wasn’t in any edition of his commentary after 1522.

That is, his opinion had moved.

And He was a biblical scholar.

But for some reason Luther is not allowed to evolve in his appreciation of texts. Whatever we can find that he said which is worst and most damning is what we persist in repeating.

What do we mean by reject anyway? It would seem that the best way to prove that he rejected James would be for him to omit the epistle from his translation of the Bible into German, but he didn’t.

So how much did he really “reject” it?

Or did he maintain an odd scholarly reservation about it in light of the doctrine of Sola Fide as Myra indicates? And did he express that reservation in terms that seem bizarre to us?

And should we really be relying on quotations from hearers rather than documentary theological statements seeing that hearsay is never admissible in judgment against someone?

I think that too often our prejudice against Luther blinds us to balance in dealing with him.

This is a sin against charity.
Click to expand...
Indeed, his opinion moved about many things over time. I’m not disputing that. Luther rejected James (at least at one point and to further his own doctrine which was contradictory to the authority and teaching of the Church). I said nothing about his removal (or not) of it. But, if you ask me, he would have liked for the book to never have been written or included in Scripture at all.

If he retracted his statement, this does not mean that he suddenly didn’t make it AT ALL… And being a scholar doesn’t make him right either.

I have no prejudice against Luther. (I’m not even saying he didn’t have a legitimate complaint in the beginning.) I only have prejudice against the heresy he later promoted, which has done nothing but sever the body of Christ for the last 500 years. I think it’s important to remember these things, lest we fall into further Christian relativism. When we see something wrong within our church, we have the responsibility to work to correct it, not to run off and start our own church and promote contradictory doctrines.

There is an absolute truth. There is an authority that is the pillar and foundation of that truth. It didn’t belong to Luther.
 
Steadfast said:
The Church did not definitively define the Old Testament canon until Trent in the 16th century. Until then it was permissible for Catholic biblical scholars to take the view Luther did and a growing number were in fact doing so.

And it’s not as though the view were a complete innovation, it’s exactly the same view Jerome took.

BTW, Jerome expressed doubts about the canonicity of a number of NT books also.
Click to expand...
393 AD The Council of Hippo: created the list of the Old and New Testament books which is the same as the Roman Catholic list today.

397 AD The Council of Carthage: created the same list of canonical books.

419 AD Council of Carthage: offered the same list of canonical books.

1441 AD Council of Florence: the first definitive list of canonical books (BEFORE Luther)

1556 Council of Trent: The final infallible definition of canonical books for Catholic Christians due to the rejection of seven OT books by the Reformers that had been in the canon up to that time.

I think it’s pretty clear that the Bible was considered a completely decided issue by 393 AD. The Church only had to make this declaration at Trent because it was being disputed by heretics. The Church does not define truths unless someone is promoting an error on the issue. In this case, it was in response to the fact that Luther was removing books that had already been considered part of the canon for over 1000 years.

There were conflicting opinions on the matter but this does not take away from the fact that there was an unchanging list from 393 on. I believe the Holy Spirit guided the Church to make this decision, not individuals.
 
The councils of Hippo and Carthage were local councils which may be cited for precedence but whose canons are not considered binding on the oikumene.

The council of Florence could be another matter. Let’s have a look:

It was convened to attempt a rapprochement with the eastern churches and its listing of biblical books (Session 11, 4 Feb. 1442) was given in the context of a kind of position statement vis a vis the Copts, NOT as an effort to definitively promulgate a canon of Scripture. All this shows us is a majority consensus on the canon at the time, something I have never contested.

Definitive pronouncement and solid definition had to wait until Trent.

Before this time, Scholars were permitted some freedom in their opinion on the Deutero-Canonical books of the OT.

Some evidence of this fact can be seen in the very nomenclature: these books are called “canonical” but their proper designation is “of a second canon”; i.e. another one, distinct from the “first canon”.
 
Steadfast said:
The Church did not definitively define the Old Testament canon until Trent in the 16th century. Until then it was permissible for Catholic biblical scholars to take the view Luther did and a growing number were in fact doing so.

And it’s not as though the view were a complete innovation, it’s exactly the same view Jerome took.

BTW, Jerome expressed doubts about the canonicity of a number of NT books also.
Click to expand...
Actually what the council of Trent did was to define and close the canon of Scripture. Up to that point, the canon was open just in case any additional inspired writings were discovered. By that time, and because of Luther taking it on his own authority to call certain books non-scriptural, the council of Trent difinitively defined and closed the canon.
This is basically the same thing as when a Dogma is declared. The issue at hand would have been Doctrine already, but due to some serious dissent or confusion on the Doctrine, the Church in her God inspired wisdom makes a Dogmatic statement on the issue.
That is essentially what the Council of Trent did in the case of the canon of Scripture.

As for Jerome having doubts about certain books, OT or NT, his personal opinion mattered zip when it came to the compiling the canon. Nor did the individual opinions of anyone else for that matter. It is through the Church (magisterium) that the Holy Spirit worked to bring together the canon of Scripture.
 
Steadfast said:
Before this time, Scholars were permitted some freedom in their opinion on the Deutero-Canonical books of the OT.

Some evidence of this fact can be seen in the very nomenclature: these books are called “canonical” but their proper designation is “of a second canon”; i.e. another one, distinct from the “first canon”.
Click to expand...
Can you please give me a source for this?
 
Ilroy said:
Actually what the council of Trent did was to define and close the canon of Scripture. Up to that point, the canon was open just in case any additional inspired writings were discovered. By that time, and because of Luther taking it on his own authority to call certain books non-scriptural, the council of Trent difinitively defined and closed the canon.
This is basically the same thing as when a Dogma is declared. The issue at hand would have been Doctrine already, but due to some serious dissent or confusion on the Doctrine, the Church in her God inspired wisdom makes a Dogmatic statement on the issue.
That is essentially what the Council of Trent did in the case of the canon of Scripture.

As for Jerome having doubts about certain books, OT or NT, his personal opinion mattered zip when it came to the compiling the canon. Nor did the individual opinions of anyone else for that matter. It is through the Church (magisterium) that the Holy Spirit worked to bring together the canon of Scripture.
Click to expand...
It may surprise you to hear that I have very little problem with any of this, the way you have put it.

My only difficulty is with the impulse on the part of some Catholics to either simply regurgitate bad history on the one hand or repeat things they know are ultimately deceptive on the other.
 
Here also is an interesting quotation from that hero of the counter-reformation Cardinal Cajetan:
“Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecciesiasticus, as is plain from the Protogus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage.” (Cardinal Cajetan, “Commentary on all the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament,” cited by William Whitaker in “A Disputation on Holy Scripture,” Cambridge: Parker Society (1849), p. 424)
Click to expand...
Where do we read of Cajetan’s censure by Rome for holding the same view as the Reformers on the OT Canon?

Nowhere.

Why?

Because at the time he wrote this, he was allowed to have the opinion.
 
This webpage is interesting.

The author is a Catholic apologist seeking to defend against the Protestant claim that Catholics “added” books to the Bible at Trent (something, by the way, I do not claim).

In the first objection, he answers with a reference to the Cajetan cite above as evidence that though the canon was open until Trent, the precedent existed in Carthage and Hippo.

It is interesting that he cites a passage in which Cajetan explicitly denies ultimate canonicity to the OT Deuteros.

It would appear that he concedes the point that scholars, until Trent, could hold differing opinions in the interest of maintaining the point that Trent did not add books so much as definitively close the canon.

(which, for the record, is all I am saying as well.)
 
mom2three said:
More specific… Where can I find that they were “permitted” this freedom. All I have right now is your word for it.
Click to expand...
Check the next two posts. Evidently you put this up before you could see them.

🙂
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top