Of course the point isn’t what you or I think of them, except to say that in your approach, one is almost required to assume that Calvin, or Zwingli, would have remained loyal Catholics, had it not been for Luther and sola scriptura. I just find that unrealistic.
Jon
I never thought about it. I don’t know what Calvin would have done if Luther had not broken the ice, so to speak.
The thing that made what Luther did unique is that in previous disputes or conflicts the antagonists battled over trying to get the Church to declare in favor of their positions. So with the christological heresies for example, the Arians who said Jesus was a creature did all they could to get their belief approved by the Church. A pope was martyred. Another one declared Athanasius a trouble maker. There was no pope for a couple of years and finally some deacon told the Arian bishops if he were elected he would formally deny Christ’s divinity. Notice the role of the papacy in this. He got elected and then refused to do the deed. He said woe unto me if I deny what all those who came before me held, and he was exhiled and killed, if I remember the history I read long ago…
The point is in the disputes of the ages no one presumed to start their own religion. The Orthodox beef is the papacy. They claim there are other issues, but the core of it is the papacy. The sacraments are the same, succesion, pray for the dead, to the saints, etc. It really is the same religion in essence. This is not the case with Protestantism.
Protestantism is almost undefinable in that the beliefs of its denominations are all over the place. A local minister near me tells his congregation there is no such thing as angels. How he claims this is incomprehensible when he also claims his beliefs are biblical. A friend of mine is a “bishop” in the Church of the Firstborn. The main doctrine is refusing to go to a doctor. They let their children die rather than take medicine. He claims his doctrines are from the Bible.
Appealing to the early confessions to define the religion is of no use either. They may have been an attempt to define doctrine, but they wre unable to keep the sheep from scattering in every direction in disregard of whatever the early reformers had to say. What percentage of people sitting in a Protestant pew on Sunday have ever read them? In this religion that lacks authority, what replaces authority is a sense of liberty to define one’s own doctrine. History affirms this. That is how so many denominations came into being.
A friend of mine is the principal of a Protestant school in a nearby city. It is unaffiliated with any one church or denomination. She told me she hired a fantastic religion teacher. He had all the kids fired up and enthusiastic, getting saved, right and left. She said she knew she would not be able to keep this guy, because he was going to start a church. As a Catholic I was astounded, but these people think nothing of it. It is normal for them. I said, he can not start a church, his own church. Jesus started a Church. This guy has no authority to start a church. Is he crazy?
One of the things I thought about years ago was why Luther devised his two sola doctrines. These ideas came out of the mind of the man. What motivated them?
My theory on sola fide is that it was a way to deal with the terrible scuples he suffered.
Sola scriptura is the justification for his novel doctrine. The authority behind them is scripture. He could not claim the things he did that contradicted the things the saints believed, if he claimed himself as the authority, so he claimed scripture and his read of it.
I don’t know what percentage of Protestants today are Lutherans. I suspect that most don’t care much about what the original Protestant had to say other than Catholics are wrong. They have all they need, their Bibles.
Some will say the way to fix the mess is get back to the confessions. Others say, what confessions, who cares about them. It really is chaos and the division first triggered by Luther has wrought so much damage and confusion on our civlization that we can no longer figure out men marry women.
God save us.
Funny. I just had a bowl of popcorn.
opcorn:
Infant baptism!