T
Topper17
Guest
Hi bb,
What could be the reason for this ‘disconnection’? The answer to this question is the same as the answer to many other questions. - Martin Luther
“In Luther’s exegesis, the modern scholar learns much about Luther but little about a historical or philological approach to the Bible. Luther calls on history when it suits his purposes. But he is not interested in history as an encompassing, interconnected web of smaller truths, each joined to the whole and changing the whole whenever one is reinterpreted or called in question, as when an anachronism is discovered.” Marius pg. 99-100
I don’t think that it was all Luther’s fault that he wasn’t all that interested in the Fathers. In fact, the University of Wittenberg didn’t even begin to form a library until 1512, the year that Luther received his Doctorate. (Schwiebert, pg. 245).
“According to his (Luther’s) knowledge of early Christian literature, there was a sizeable gap in time between the writers of the New Testament and the earliest Church Fathers. Luther regarded Tertullian, who died in 230, as the earliest writer in the church after the apostles………he apparently did not know the writers who later acquired the title “apostolic fathers”. He was therefore, able to invoke the historical and chronological argument in a form no longer available to theologians of the twentieth century.” Pelikan (Lutheran to EO convert), “Luther the Expositor”, pg. 83-4
This means that Luther was unaware of the existence of the first 17 Early Church Fathers. What is strange I think though is that Tertullian fell into Montanism and that he was, at least according to Luther, the First Father.
Luther’s rather scant knowledge of Christian history resulted in a tension in his beliefs about the Church. On one hand, he had to admit that at one point in history, there actually WAS a Christian Church which taught the Gospel correctly. On the other hand, Luther knew (for a fact of course) that the Church of his day was NOT the Church. So, when, specifically and exactly did the Church become NOT the Church?
(Per Luther) “That church had continued in an unbroken line from its founding by Christ until the present, the living resonance, one might say, of God’s word spoken continuously to his creation. He strove to overcome the dilemma. On the one hand he attacked the papal church as the church of the antichrist, captured by the devil. Yet he could not maintain that everyone in the church was corrupt. His notion of the hidden church of the faithful allowed him to posit multitudes of true Christians to whom he might appeal and who knew the enlightening faith of God in Christ. When Catholics held – as they did with a clamor of voices – that Christ had promised to be with his church to the end of the world and that only the papal church had existed out of the sight of mankind but in the sight of God and that therefore Christ had kept his word.
Luther was never able to say with precision at just what moment the Catholic Church had fallen away from it’s divine calling. As he grew older, he would push the time of the church’s fall closer and closer to its beginnings, seeing, as one commentator has said, ‘the whole history of the church (seeming to be) under the enduring influence of the devil.’ Marius, pg. 272-3
Luther’s original definition of the church as being ‘only invisible’ was the concept with which he broke with the Church. He had no intention of creating his own church. However, when he realized that his ‘invisible only’ church was not working out very well in the real world, he then had to build a church.
"He would have to build a ‘Lutheran’ church. Yet that was a contradiction to everything he had been seeking until now. No wonder Jaroslav Pelikan has noted:
“’No trial opposed Luther’s spirit more often in his later years than this recognition that structure was inevitable, combined as the recognition was with a candid awareness that the institutions now being erected were not necessarily superior to those which had (often against Luther’s advice) had been swept away.” Pelikan, “Sprit versus Structure: Luther and the Institutions of the Church”, pg. 31, in Marius, pg. 273
I think that we have no choice but to wish that Luther had actually thought about the nature of the Church prior to 1519 and that he had known more about early Church history. Possibly if he had, the history of the last 500 years of Western Christendom might have been much different.
God Bless You bb, Topper
Thank you so much for posting those Father’s quotes. I am something of a ‘Father Freak’. As you know it is not just the Holy Eucharist, but on virtually every other major issue, it is the Fathers that show the connection between Catholic teaching and the early Church. In the same way, their writings show the disconnection between historic Christianity and Protestantism.
What could be the reason for this ‘disconnection’? The answer to this question is the same as the answer to many other questions. - Martin Luther
“In Luther’s exegesis, the modern scholar learns much about Luther but little about a historical or philological approach to the Bible. Luther calls on history when it suits his purposes. But he is not interested in history as an encompassing, interconnected web of smaller truths, each joined to the whole and changing the whole whenever one is reinterpreted or called in question, as when an anachronism is discovered.” Marius pg. 99-100
I don’t think that it was all Luther’s fault that he wasn’t all that interested in the Fathers. In fact, the University of Wittenberg didn’t even begin to form a library until 1512, the year that Luther received his Doctorate. (Schwiebert, pg. 245).
“According to his (Luther’s) knowledge of early Christian literature, there was a sizeable gap in time between the writers of the New Testament and the earliest Church Fathers. Luther regarded Tertullian, who died in 230, as the earliest writer in the church after the apostles………he apparently did not know the writers who later acquired the title “apostolic fathers”. He was therefore, able to invoke the historical and chronological argument in a form no longer available to theologians of the twentieth century.” Pelikan (Lutheran to EO convert), “Luther the Expositor”, pg. 83-4
This means that Luther was unaware of the existence of the first 17 Early Church Fathers. What is strange I think though is that Tertullian fell into Montanism and that he was, at least according to Luther, the First Father.
Luther’s rather scant knowledge of Christian history resulted in a tension in his beliefs about the Church. On one hand, he had to admit that at one point in history, there actually WAS a Christian Church which taught the Gospel correctly. On the other hand, Luther knew (for a fact of course) that the Church of his day was NOT the Church. So, when, specifically and exactly did the Church become NOT the Church?
(Per Luther) “That church had continued in an unbroken line from its founding by Christ until the present, the living resonance, one might say, of God’s word spoken continuously to his creation. He strove to overcome the dilemma. On the one hand he attacked the papal church as the church of the antichrist, captured by the devil. Yet he could not maintain that everyone in the church was corrupt. His notion of the hidden church of the faithful allowed him to posit multitudes of true Christians to whom he might appeal and who knew the enlightening faith of God in Christ. When Catholics held – as they did with a clamor of voices – that Christ had promised to be with his church to the end of the world and that only the papal church had existed out of the sight of mankind but in the sight of God and that therefore Christ had kept his word.
Luther was never able to say with precision at just what moment the Catholic Church had fallen away from it’s divine calling. As he grew older, he would push the time of the church’s fall closer and closer to its beginnings, seeing, as one commentator has said, ‘the whole history of the church (seeming to be) under the enduring influence of the devil.’ Marius, pg. 272-3
Luther’s original definition of the church as being ‘only invisible’ was the concept with which he broke with the Church. He had no intention of creating his own church. However, when he realized that his ‘invisible only’ church was not working out very well in the real world, he then had to build a church.
"He would have to build a ‘Lutheran’ church. Yet that was a contradiction to everything he had been seeking until now. No wonder Jaroslav Pelikan has noted:
“’No trial opposed Luther’s spirit more often in his later years than this recognition that structure was inevitable, combined as the recognition was with a candid awareness that the institutions now being erected were not necessarily superior to those which had (often against Luther’s advice) had been swept away.” Pelikan, “Sprit versus Structure: Luther and the Institutions of the Church”, pg. 31, in Marius, pg. 273
I think that we have no choice but to wish that Luther had actually thought about the nature of the Church prior to 1519 and that he had known more about early Church history. Possibly if he had, the history of the last 500 years of Western Christendom might have been much different.
God Bless You bb, Topper
My 7th grade son is better catechized than I since I joined an LCMS church as an adult in 2005, and the adult confirmation program was quite short compared to what he has gotten in Lutheran school for the past 8 years. What I really wonder about is, how do you get from “This is my body” to “the true body and blood…under the bread and wine”?
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) as being the inspired Word of God.