Protestants: Why wasn't this guy the first Protestant?

[SIA]

And that is what we see to base it on. Different interpretations

I don’t think that you can equate Purgatory with grace. I wouldn’t even lend that one to interpretation.

 

[ralphinal]

I don’t think that you can equate Purgatory with grace. I wouldn’t even lend that one to interpretation.

It is linked with God’s mercy. We retain an attachment to sin, and Purgatory cleanses that from us

 

[SIA]

We retain an attachment to sin

Oh really? So then Christ’s sacrifice in those terms would not be sufficient then. That’s anti-biblical.

 

[ralphinal]

Oh really? So then Christ’s sacrifice in those terms would not be sufficient then. That’s anti-biblical.

I would think that you define yourself as being a Chirstian and a follower of Christ, right? Can i also safely say that 100% of your temptations are external in nature or do you from time to time get tempted in thought as well? Do you ever feel like you are just kind of drifting from God when you slack up on your prayer life or in your focus?

Christ’s sacrifice saves all who beleive, but Paul also said that something was lacking in it…

 

[SIA]

I would think that you define yourself as being a Chirstian and a follower of Christ, right? Can i also safely say that 100% of your temptations are external in nature or do you from time to time get tempted in thought as well? Do you ever feel like you are just kind of drifting from God when you slack up on your prayer life or in your focus?

Christ’s sacrifice saves all who beleive, but Paul also said that something was lacking in it…

our nature to sin.

 

[Hesychios]

You’re right. He did live outside the errors that some of the leadership had committed. However, that does not answer the question.

Why was Venerable Bede not the first Protestant? He studied Scripture with great dilligence. Why didn’t he come to the conclusions that the Lord’s Supper is “only a symbol” or “baptism isn’t necessary for salvation” or other innovative doctrines that sprang up from the 16th centuries onward? Why didn’t he reach the conclusion that “salvation is by faith alone” or “the Bible is the sole authority of faith.”

This man was a Scripture scholar and yet never held to any of those positions. Why wasn’t he the first Protestant? He had access to all the things that Protestants had access to when they broke away.

Alaha minokhoun,
Andrew

Not just Bede, but hundreds of thousands of monks, east and west. Any one could have been heretics. Some probably were, but are lost to history as just anonymous monastics whose ideas would not be known.

Instead of Bede one might just as well ask why it was not Erasmus who introduced the errors. In fact, some people would say it was Erasmus who launched the Reformation, and it split into a Catholic and a Protestant movement later.

Erasmus preceded Luther in the same general religious climate and time frame, and he called mightily for reform, condemning the widespread church corruption. He was a great scholar in his day, and had accumulated a few enemies in the church. He would not go where Luther was prepared to go.

But at least let us look at Martin Luther and his circumstance.

I read somewhere that of his 95 thesis, not one would be applicable as a complaint against the modern Latin Catholic church. Could that be correct? I read that from Catholic apologists (but frankly, I never read his 95 thesis myself to verify).

Luther did not start out as a heretic, he developed into one. By all accounts he was a model of piety and an example of a sincere and faithful monk. But there was something about the church of the day that disillusioned him, and not only him, but many Catholic priests, monks and bishops in those decades. Perhaps they became so open to new ideas and willing to see them in scripture because the tradition they were given had finally lost it’s credibility with them

Erasmus and Luther were products of their age, to be sure, just as Bede was a product of his and Anselm a product of his. Bede and Anselm never had to deal with the church under the Medici. I think if Luther had been born in Bedes’ day, he would have been lost to history as just another one of many hundreds of anonymous monks suffering a serious case of scruples.