Questions about Martin Luther

[Verita]

Steadfast, this thread is about Luther. It is not about Chrysostom or the Catholic Church. The Church has made many, many mistakes. Far more in fact than the Protestant Churches because it has been around longer and has faced more problems. But that’s not what this thread is about. This thread is about Luther and his mistakes.

Pointing out the faults of other people does in no way lessen or justify the mistakes of Luther. And pointing out those mistakes in an attempt to cast the blame off of Luther is a very underhanded thing to do. Luther is repsonsible for his faults just as Chrysostom is for his and the Church is for hers. But THIS thread is about Luther and no one else.

One can argue back and forth all day about what various historians say about what Luther wanted or did not want to do, or what he did and did not do. However, it seems to me that the most telling testimony of a man’s character and desires is his very own words. You cannot justify many of the things that man said. They are truly horrifying.

To get the thread back on topic and address the issues that were originally brought up, Martin Luther never really left the Church. From the beginning of the reformation for a time period of about a generation, none of the reformers had any intention of leaving the Church. They did not intend to set up a rival branch of Christianity. They did not intend to form a separate Church. During all of the fighting between the Church and the reformers, the assumption was that one would emerge victorious. That in the end there would still be only one. But neither the Reformers nor the Church could triumph over the other. So it was only later that men realized that Christianity had been truly divided.

 

[JoeyWarren]

Steadfast, As Iraneaus pointed out.

Would a True Man of God remove certain books from an established sequence and place them in an appendix and give a negative and doubtful preface as to cause doubt amongst christians as to whether they were actually inspired or not?

What Luther did, is it something that represents a “Work of God” or does it represent a “Work of Satan”?

My honest opinion tells me it is a “Work of Satan”.

 

[JoeyWarren]

Luther placed the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation at the end of his translation and failed to note their page numbers in the index.

Was it Luther’s intention to hide these books. It seems so. He willfully excluded them from the index. Was he relying on people to not read them because they were not in the index.

He wrote a preface to James claiming it “contradicts Paul by teaching justification by works” M243. In the earliest editions Luther wrote his now famous comment: “St. James Epistle is really an epistle of straw compared to [St. Paul’s letters], for it lacks this evangelical character” Deutsche Bibel 6 as quoted in P988.

What type of person would place verbage in a Bible stating that God’s Holy Writ contains contradictions? Not any true Christian I know of.

The Facts are placed before you. You decide.

 

[JoeyWarren]

Many Church historians speculate that Luther was prepared to drop what he called the “non-canonical books” of the New Testament but refrained from doing so because of possible political fall-out.

Did Luther come to this realization himself or did his supporters point this out to him?

 

[JoeyWarren]

Courtesy of geocities.com/aprofaith/bible.htm

In fact his fellow Protestants balked at removing books from the New Testament, particularly since there was no other reason for their removal than that they contradicted Luther’s views. The four New Testament Books that Luther had placed in the Apocrypha, were reinserted in future Protestant Bibles, along with most of Esther. But if Luther had had his way, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation would not be in Protestant Bibles.

 

[sadie2723]

Steadfast, As Iraneaus pointed out.

Would a True Man of God remove certain books from an established sequence and place them in an appendix and give a negative and doubtful preface as to cause doubt amongst christians as to whether they were actually inspired or not?

What Luther did, is it something that represents a “Work of God” or does it represent a “Work of Satan”?

My honest opinion tells me it is a “Work of Satan”.

Goodness me, this has turned into a fun one. I will suggest this for you to all chew on. Lets say that there has been one Christian Church for 1500 years. Then, a group of guys decide for several reasons that they do not like it. So, they set out to found their own church. It is clear that it would have a few requirements:

1. It could not be the same as the first church. If it was the same, and had the same teaching, why would anyone join it?
2. It would have to teach something pretty different than the first church. If it did not, nobody would leave the first church to join it.

So, Luther and his buds decided that if they were going to form a new church, they needed to alter the teaching enough to make people want to follow them. Thus, you take a few books out here, and change some teaching over there. Simple as that. People try and make this way too complicated. They want to portray Luther as some purist that wanted to get back to the original teaching of Christ or some demon that wanted to destroy the Church. Luther was neither of those things.

So what was Luther?

Luther was a man that became angry over many aspects of the Catholic Church and did the unthinkable…he broke from it. Now the funny part about this is that I know more than a few Lutheran ministers that would give their left arm to have the Lutherans and the Catholics merge again.

The thing of it is that Luther did what he had to do in order to be credible. If you want somebody to join your Church…you gotta make it different from the church that they are in.

Also, lets not forget that Luther set out to make his church “easier” for the average person. Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide are both designed for this purpose. Faith is all you need…no need to worry about works anymore…what a deal. The Bible is all you need…no more dealing with all that tradition stuff and all that goes with it. This was the first step down the path to things like OSAS…it is people trying to make salvation something that is easy. Hey, just tell God you accept him one time, and it is a done deal. Yahoo!!! The only problem with all of that is that the Bible fails to support it.

Cheers!

 

[Mickey]

Having been exposed as a liar, he seeks to derail.

It is the refuge of a hack.

Even if someone frustates you–even if you believe that they speak untruths–it is not charitable or beneficial to call them liars and hacks.

 

[Mickey]

No, I’m not interested in playing this game.

Ah, yet you are playing the game. Someone accuses Luther of something that you see as calumny, and you immediately point fingers at Rome and the Holy Catholic Saints without any context. It would be beneficial for you to step back and take a deep breath.

 

[Steadfast]

Even if someone frustates you–even if you believe that they speak untruths–it is not charitable or beneficial to call them liars and hacks.

But Mickey, what do you call someone who lies, if not a liar?

And what do you call someone who cannot think for themselves but must cut and paste the hard work of others if not a hack?

 

[Rachel_Malloy]

If one wishes to expose liars and hacks, please do so by providing evidence to refute the “lies” as is reflected in proper debate.

Do your best to prove your position, and leave OUT the personal comments or attacks.

Also, please stay on topic. This threads is regarding Martin Luther and questions people have about him.

Thank you and God bless-

Rachel

 

[JoeyWarren]

Courtesy of greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00ByGx

If he had his way Protestants would be missing 10 books of God’s Holy Word instead of just 7. But fortunately his followers wouldn’t hear of throwing out portions of the New Testament. Of course that leaves them in the awkward position of claiming that salvation is by faith alone, while the letter of James tells us repeatedly that works are essential to salvation. James was one of the books Luther intended to delete, for obvious reasons.

 

[Steadfast]

Ah, yet you are playing the game. Someone accuses Luther of something that you see as calumny, and you immediately point fingers at Rome and the Holy Catholic Saints without any context. It would be beneficial for you to step back and take a deep breath.

You’ve completely missed my point.

I don’t care what Chrysostom said, I even understand why he said it, after all I happen to have actually read the sermon. The point is not to tear him down but to point out the hypocrisy and double standard of Roman Catholics in this kind of discussion.

The point was the same on the annulment issue. I don’t care what your church does about marriages and I understand perfectly well how it should work, but it is the height of hypocrisy to call Luther into question for a private recommendation when at one point your church was in the very business of doing the same thing.

So, to the one who said that the Church has done a lot of bad things I say, fine, I agree, and so did Luther. But why bring it up in the context of a discussion on what he did with his translation of the Bible if not to triangulate and deflect attention from the fact that, at least Joey, in this discussion has lied maliciously and has been found out?

So, forget what Chrysostom did or didn’t do. Let’s just forget all of it and remember only that JoeyWarren, like many others before him believes, or, rather wants very badly to believe, even though he’s been corrected many times, that Luther removed books from the Bible.

As I say, he’s been corrected on this. But he persists in the lie that Luther removed books, or, more accurately, he attributes the intent to him because of comments Luther made early in his life. That he later modified his opinions of these books considerably is not mentioned because it doesn’t work in Joey’s agenda.

 

[Steadfast]

Then, frankly, and it should be clear for everyone to see, JoeyWarren lies to us again and tells us that Luther’s supporters, advisers and counselors persuaded him to include books in his translation of the Bible that he didn’t want to include.

He read it somewhere on the internet. He’s going to find it and show us all some day.

This is nothing but a slander and a lie. Joey made it up himself. It makes sense to him because he hates Luther and will stop at nothing to ascribe all manner of evil and pusillanimity to him.

It’s nothing else.

Then again, Luther did say some strange things about certain books of the Bible. He said things that we, today, in a post-fundamentalist America find troubling at best and downright heterodox at worst.

But when Luther lived what would the view of such opinions have been?

I can tell you though you won’t want to hear it:

The view would have been that a doctor of Sacred Scripture may hold such opinions. He may want to be more careful in how he articulates them, but he is entitled to them.

Would it be understood that he wanted to redo the Bible, excising these texts? No, it wouldn’t. All that would be understood is that a certain Saxon biblical scholar had some strong words about certain parts of the Bible.

And yet, JoeyWarren presents these comments, comments which Luther later modified, as the most damning evidence and pretends to build a case against Luther to the effect that Luther wanted to Marcionize the Bible.

What is this if not conjecture?

And what do we call biased conjecture in the service of polemical diatribe?

We call it, at best, inconsequential opinion and, at worst, we call it bearing false witness.

So then, I am the troublemaker here? I am the one not answering?

I didn’t even enter this discussion until JoeyWarren had already entered his first post about how Luther “rejected” books from the Bible.

Since then I have harped on the single point that Joey’s presentation of the situation is neither nuanced, fair nor honest. The adduction of extraneous points (annulments, Chrysostom) was not to widen the field but to provide context for the additional charge that such an argument as Joey offers is not only dishonest but hypocritical.

We can deal with whether Chrysostom was an anti-semite elsewhere, or whether the annulment system as it was often practiced at certain stages of history made polygamists of men and harlots of women. Or we can leave it alone. It’s all one to me.

All I want to accomplish here is the exposure of one person in this thread as being in violation of the eighth commandment.

 

[Steadfast]

Courtesy of greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00ByGx

You’re serious? I should take this conjecture seriously? This is nothing more than another Catholic with an axe to grind spouting an opinion he made up in a bbs discussion. Who is Paul Cox? Why should I believe him?

Dave Hunt says Catholics worship statues, can I quote him and end all discussion?

How about something a little more substantial than a guy with an internet connection.

 

[Mickey]

You’ve completely missed my point.

No I have not. While attempting to defend Luther, you attack one of the Church’s greatest saints–St John Chrysostom. The sermons that you refer to were intended by the saint to be polemics against those in 4th century Antioch who would try to Judaize the Christians. Today, many read them as racist invective. Personally, I do not care what Luther did or did not do–but when you attack the saints–I will defend them.

As the moderator has asked, please stick to the topic of Luther.

 

[Verita]

Steadfast, I admire your desire to expose the truth and by no means do I condone Joey’s use of seemingly random and definetly untrustworthy websites, but you haven’t offered any references either. If you want to show us the real MArtin Luther you can’t just say “This is how it is because I know this is how it is and he doesn’t.”

You at the same time accuse Joey of not providing sources for his arguments and then when he does you accuse him of not thinking for himself.

It occurs to me that you are not really much better than he is.

 

[JoeyWarren]

I can come up with more, but it’s goin to take a while to go thru 500,000 plus posts about Martin Luther and WANTING TO REMOVE NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS FROM THE BIBLE.

From a certain standpoint he did remove them from the Bible. He removed them from their proper and accepted position within the well established New Testament and placed them in an appendix in the back without benefit of an index to let the reader know that they were located within the binding of the Bible.

 

[Steadfast]

Steadfast, I admire your desire to expose the truth and by no means do I condone Joey’s use of seemingly random and definetly untrustworthy websites, but you haven’t offered any references either. If you want to show us the real MArtin Luther you can’t just say “This is how it is because I know this is how it is and he doesn’t.”

You at the same time accuse Joey of not providing sources for his arguments and then when he does you accuse him of not thinking for himself.

It occurs to me that you are not really much better than he is.

The burden of proof is not on me. There is plenty of good material out there on the Reformer.

It’s not my problem that Joey can’t find any.

And he’s the one who lied.

 

[JoeyWarren]

Joey’s use of seemingly random and definetly untrustworthy websites

Not exactly random. I am doing what I did a year ago when researching Martin Luther. I did a search on certain words to minimize the hits. I am posting each one I get to. As to whether they are trustworthy are not is another issue. One could equally say that this forum is not trustworthy. One of the reasons I provided the link is that you could read it for your self.

The fact is on my particular search I got over half a million results says alot in itself. I have provided 2references just skimming the first 3 pages of hits.

 

[Steadfast]

I can come up with more, but it’s goin to take a while to go thru 500,000 plus posts about Martin Luther and WANTING TO REMOVE NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS FROM THE BIBLE.

From a certain standpoint he did remove them from the Bible. He removed them from their proper and accepted position within the well established New Testament and placed them in an appendix in the back without benefit of an index to let the reader know that they were located within the binding of the Bible.

Joey,

I don’t care about that.

All I want to know is who got him to include the books he didn’t want to include and what they said to get him to do it and when they did so.

I would like to see this from a reputable source.

So far you’ve given me bupkis.

If you can supply me with this I will publicly withdraw my accusations and just as publicly beg your pardon.

But I know you won’t be able to.

And in that event I would like a public apology from you for bearing false witness against someone who can’t be here to defend themselves.

I’ll continue to watch and bump this thread and remind you of your burden.