What happened to the sacraments?

[Tomyris]

Because Protestant sources are never gravely suspect…

Contarini and I discussed this a bit - please see posts 13 and 14 on this thread. This was answered before you posted.

 

[Isaiah45_9]

Contarini and I discussed this a bit - please see posts 13 and 14 on this thread. This was answered before you posted.

I read it and it still doesn’t really make your original post any better.

A simple request for a source would have been enough without having to bunch together all Catholic sources as gravely suspect. It’s the same as a Catholic bundling all Protestants in the same category, just as bad.

 

[sennincatholic]

I read it and it still doesn’t really make your original post any better.

A simple request for a source would have been enough without having to bunch together all Catholic sources as gravely suspect. It’s the same as a Catholic bundling all Protestants in the same category, just as bad.

:sad_yes:

 

[Tomyris]

I read it and it still doesn’t really make your original post any better.

A simple request for a source would have been enough without having to bunch together all Catholic sources as gravely suspect. It’s the same as a Catholic bundling all Protestants in the same category, just as bad.

I thought I explained it in the second post. It would have been clearer if I had said

I would want to see this from a Protestant source, as a Catholic source would be gravely suspect in this instance.

I had thought this was implicit from the context. I will repeat, I do not consider all Catholic sources as gravely suspect, nor was that what I said. I did NOT say since all…suspect, therefore I want to see a P. source.

And it would have been better if I had simply asked for a source. Period. You are correct.

Hopefully this is cleared up.

 

[Contarini]

So I think, in that sense, there is some justification for some cynicism regarding undocumented sources.

Of course. But my point remains: there are good, well-attested ways of distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources. The best is to consult multiple sources and to see how a given source is spoken of by other sources. Scholarly credentials are important though neither necessary nor foolproof. And so on.

All I’m saying is that making the confessional identity of the source the primary consideration is a mistake. I’m not claiming that it’s irrelevant by any means.

Edwin

 

[GKC]

Of course. But my point remains: there are good, well-attested ways of distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources. The best is to consult multiple sources and to see how a given source is spoken of by other sources. Scholarly credentials are important though neither necessary nor foolproof. And so on.

All I’m saying is that making the confessional identity of the source the primary consideration is a mistake. I’m not claiming that it’s irrelevant by any means.

Edwin

Wise words.

GKC

 

[Tomyris]

Of course. But my point remains: there are good, well-attested ways of distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources. The best is to consult multiple sources and to see how a given source is spoken of by other sources. Scholarly credentials are important though neither necessary nor foolproof. And so on.

All I’m saying is that making the confessional identity of the source the primary consideration is a mistake. I’m not claiming that it’s irrelevant by any means.

Edwin

At the risk of digging my hole deeper, I will say that if I want to know what a Calvinist thinks or believes, I will turn to Calvinist dogmatics, likewise with Lutherans, Methodists, or Catholics. My first discovery, typically, is that there is too much to digest and ever get through, even in one school of thought.

Some documents are innately reliable, regardless of outside attestation. The Westminster Confession of Faith for the Reformed, for example, the 39 Articles for the Anglicans, or the Catechism of the Catholic Church, regardless of how many in each respective church regards them as authoritative.

You have to select your reliable sources, which means you have to have selection criteria. All true Scotsmen agree with me. If you decide that only critiques from higher criticism are worth it as voices to listen to, or redheads, or Republicans, or left-handed redheads (see Scotsmen) you are in trouble from the get-go. If you only listen to those who you already agree with, where does that get you? Or, further, if you only listen to those you approve of, without examining the grounds for that approval, of what benefit is that to you?

The Catholic Church once was recognized throughout the West as having teaching authority of the sort that said it was worth listening to, and what it taught was right, and it taught on the sacraments. But then it got interested in politics (see Julius III, for one, with whom I disagree) and did not bother teaching at all (sounding pretty dog-gone Protestant here) except to a few, such as in the universities, and not to the common priest (one thing Trent addressed).

I will, for a moment, invert the OP’s paradigm and say that Protestants believed Christ was real in the sacraments, which is why they left, seeing the lack of faith present in the institutionalized church. In a book on Luther I read, it tells of his appalling trip to Rome, where priests at Mass would say, “bread thou art, and bread thou wilt remain.” My suspicions in this inversion are that Catholics romanticize the late medieval church and Protestants disparage it, not coincidentally due to preconceptions, based on those they regard as authoritative. In reality it is unbelievably complex: that Reformation thing. We ought to try a thread on it sometime.

Anyway, that gets us back on topic. Lousy segue, but live with it. I think there was living, passionate, loving, working, saving faith, and still is, on both sides of the Catholic-Protestant divide.

 

[Isaiah45_9]

My suspicions in this inversion are that Catholics romanticize the late medieval church and Protestants disparage it, not coincidentally due to preconceptions, based on those they regard as authoritative.

I don’t see any romanticism at all . It’s a real world account of a Greek tragedy.

But that’s just me

In reality it is unbelievably complex: that Reformation thing. We ought to try a thread on it sometime.

I agree on the complexity.

As for a thread, I think it would require many. Although, we have had some very interesting threads regarding Church history - besides the rabbits holes and the fighting.

 

[JonNC]

I have had a theory for awhile about why Protestants don’t have or use all of the Sacraments. If I understand it correctly in the past they all did but in time dropped them here and there. Could this be because in the beginning the priests and bishops who left Catholicism did have valid orders and the sacraments did work. Then over time when the priests and bishops died and the lines back to Peter and Jesus vaniahed, that they stoped workng. So if the people and churches where not getting anything from the sacraments why not start believing that they are not needed and drop them. I see the same problem with Catholics that do not receive the Eucharist with a clean soul. They stop believing Jesus is truly present because if you recieve Him while in a state of sin more harm comes to you than good. They do not experience the power of the Eucharist and then can’t believe He is truly there.

Well, of course we Lutherans believe He is truly there in the Eucharist.
But to the point of the sacraments, from the Apology of the Augsburg Confession:

If we call Sacraments rites which have the command of God, and to which the promise of grace has been added, it is easy to decide what are properly Sacraments. For rites instituted by men will not in this way be Sacraments properly so called. For it does not belong to human authority to promise grace. Therefore signs instituted without God’s command are not sure signs of grace, even though they perhaps instruct the rude [children or the uncultivated], or admonish as to something [as a painted cross]. 4] Therefore Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Absolution, which is the Sacrament of Repentance, are truly Sacraments. For these rites have God’s command and the promise of grace, which is peculiar to the New Testament. For when we are baptized, when we eat the Lord’s body, when we are absolved, our hearts must be firmly assured that God truly forgives us 5] for Christ’s sake. And God, at the same time, by the Word and by the rite, moves hearts to believe and conceive faith, just as Paul says, Rom. 10:17: Faith cometh by hearing. But just as the Word enters the ear in order to strike our heart, so the rite itself strikes the eye, in order to move the heart. The effect of the Word and of the rite is the same, as it has been well said by Augustine that a Sacrament is a visible word, because the rite is received by the eyes, and is, as it were, a picture of the Word, signifying the same thing as the Word. Therefore the effect of both is the same.

As for the other 4:
bookofconcord.org/defense_12_sacraments.php

Just know that Lutherans ordain, we Confirm, we marry, and we visit and even (sometimes) anoint the sick.

Jon