What Theological Contributions Have Protestants Made?

[KathleenGee]

About Catholics divorcing…look at the culture of today…

 

[adstrinity]

Nobody accepts or rejects my earlier contribution to this thread?

 

[Shin]

How about a majority of them got together (with Masons, Catholics, and others) to come up with, “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator…”

If it wasn’t for King Henry VIII saying he wanted a divorce…again…and again, other Protestants would not have protested against what they saw and felt was an affront to God and at one point, decided to leave Europe for good until there were enough of them here to realize that Europe sucks, Europe as a multitude of countries and city-states and whatever else, wasn’t working politically, and decided that the best way to handle this is to NOT do what Europe was doing, leave everybody be, let them worship as they want, separate Church & State*, don’t bother your neighbour if he’s not bothering you, give people the freedom that God created for everybody to actively worship Him, passively worship Him, or deny Him altogether in however each individual defines, “God”. And, it doesn’t matter if somebody does or does not believe how you believe, the government is not going to get involved and force somebody to choose.

*I think this is my intended point.

LOL. This is a great point.

 

[Justy90]

Boy…that was a mature response, pretty typical from what I have seen from your posts.

The difference is not in the individuals ability and propensity to sin, it is in the Churches condoning such behavior.

It’s a fact that obviously you don’t like.

 

[KingAlfred]

**1. Priesthood of all believers
2. Sole authority of Scripture
3. Salvation by faith alone

…none of which I agree with.**

 

[aspirant]

Please refer to previous posts.

 

[MyRdmrLvs]

By definition, Protestantism can’t actually “contribute” anything that it didn’t originally receive from the Catholic Church, to begin with.

Keep in mind, Protestantism is a religion of subtractions; not a religion of additions. What they have (that is, that portion of their Christianity that didn’t get deleted) is fully Catholic, although it’s just a subset of the Catholic faith, and not the fulness of faith. They delete the parts they don’t like (Holy Tradition, Authority, etc.) and keep the parts they like (the Scriptures, certain lower-case “t” traditions).

We kept Jesus, were cool with Him:thumbsup:

 

[Usbek_de_Perse]

Wow. Dead silence…what conclusions should be drawn from this?

Pick a copy of Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity. You will note that the first two theologians mentioned are Soren Kierkegaard and Harvey Cox (then chaplain at Harvard).

Scholars of Ratzinger’s stature do not ask such naive questions.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Why the silence? Well, there is a flaw in the question for what I see as a huge contributions might not seem ones by others.

I don’t think you can argue with these though:

Probably the most important was to put a Holy Bible in everyone’s hands. Which spurred literacy for the common people.

Showed how slavery was against the teachings of Jesus-William Wilberforce.

How is this a theological contribution?

Wasn’t it really only a matter of technological innovation?

Prior to this, the monks had been copying as fast as they could for more than a thousand years…

 

[Randy_Carson]

I don’t understand. Catholicism is in opposition to many of these principles. How are they rooted in the faith?

Sola Fide - RCC teaches faith and good works.
Sola Scriptura - RCC teaches sacred magisterium.
Solus Christus - RCC teaches saintly intercession
Decision Theology - RCC practices infant baptism, though Confirmation could be a process of decision theology so I understand.
Unconditional Election - Catholicism does not mention this as central to their faith.

Actually, your question is important.

Since Catholics, Orthodox and even many Protestants would reject one or more of these doctrines, I’m not sure they even qualify as theological contributions to Christianity at all.

BTW, the Catholic Church does teach that we have One mediator in the sense that you originally posted it AND we can pray for one another here and in heaven as you stated it here. Both/And not Either/Or.

 

[Randy_Carson]

That your thread is pointless and a farse not worthy of responding to.

Thank you for your kind words.

I’m interested in uncovering anything I may have missed. It’s an honest question.

If I simply wanted to bash Protestants, I have far more effective tools at my disposal.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Maybe our contribution is to make you be a better Catholic.

This is my father’s view. Even God can make lemonade when handed lemons, I guess.

 

[Randy_Carson]

…that a number of us have just decided to pass on another variant of “We are better than you”.

It is a statement about your own narrow-minded sectarianism more than anything else. If you start with theological premises that exclude any openness to Protestant theology, obviously you will not be able to think of any contributions Protestants have made.

Most Catholic scholars and theologians recognize many contributions by Protestants. However, it’s useless to argue the point with you since you probably won’t recognize any of them as genuine contributions.

Edwin

Edwin beat me to it.

This is one of the more disingenuous threads here at CAF. The question is more like a talking heads tactic than a genuine question.

There are plenty of theological contributions by Protestants. But I won’t play this meaningless game either.

Have fun, Randy.

Friends, I merely want to know what contributions Protestants have made to the field of theology. It’s been 500 years, and many bright people are or have been Protestants.

Has the Catholic Church embraced a single theological development made by Protestant theologians in that time? Have the Orthodox? Can you show any influence at all?

I’m not assuming anything because I’m not a theologian; that’s way above my pay grade. I just can’t name anything, and I thought this thread would be an interesting exploration.

BTW, I notice that no one has offered any thoughts on my second question which was basically, “if not why not?”

This is not a “meaningless game” as suggested. If you have something, now is the time to share it instead of “passing”. Wouldn’t a single positive contribution to this thread have done more to refute me (if I really had an agenda). Your snarky replies do not hide the fact that you are silent on the actual question.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I think there’s a problem intrinsic to the question, which isn’t your fault. The things I can think of that are truly novel, Catholics don’t accept as contributions.

I agree with your conclusion here, but that was not my intent at the outset. I didn’t ask for novelties but contributions. I happen to think that the Pentecostal movement has had some influence on Catholicism. For example, I wonder if the call for a “new Pentecost” prior to the Second Vatican Council resulted from the explosion of Pentecostalism in the 20th century. Somewhat ironically, Fr. Peter Hocken was the president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies for many years.

Your criticism is probably valid, and my OP certainly raised a few hackles albeit unintentionally. How would you re-phrase the question in such a manner that we can identify those areas of theology that have been opened up by Protestant theologians over the past 500 years?

Is it simply a case of “all the big ideas were already taken”? Or have Catholic theologians come up with anything new during this period?

Theology of the Body comes to mind…is it novel or ground-breaking work?

 

[Contarini]

I agree with your conclusion here, but that was not my intent at the outset. I didn’t ask for novelties but contributions. I happen to think that the Pentecostal movement has had some influence on Catholicism. For example, I wonder if the call for a “new Pentecost” prior to the Second Vatican Council resulted from the explosion of Pentecostalism in the 20th century. Somewhat ironically, Fr. Peter Hocken was the president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies for many years.

Your criticism is probably valid, and my OP certainly raised a few hackles albeit unintentionally. How would you re-phrase the question in such a manner that we can identify those areas of theology that have been opened up by Protestant theologians over the past 500 years?

Is it simply a case of “all the big ideas were already taken”? Or have Catholic theologians come up with anything new during this period?

Theology of the Body comes to mind…is it novel or ground-breaking work?

Randy,

I appreciate that I may have been overly suspicious of your intentions, but I remain baffled by why you have ignored the substantive answers you have already been given. As someone else has pointed out, all you need to do is open up a book of theology by Ratzinger or any other serious Catholic theologian and you will find an abundance of openly acknowledged debts to Protestant theologians. Karl Barth alone has had a huge impact on 20th-century Catholic theology. The questions raised by the Reformers about the nature of faith, the role of the laity in the Church, the relationship of Scripture to tradition, etc., are real and meaningful questions. The answers the Reformers came up with were far from perfect. But that’s true of all theological propositions.

Of course all the substantive “contributions” by Protestants have roots in pre-Reformation theology. That is to be expected.

Edwin

 

[Randy_Carson]

Randy,

I appreciate that I may have been overly suspicious of your intentions, but I remain baffled by why you have ignored the substantive answers you have already been given.

Contarini, I did not ignore them; I read them. For example, you should have noted that I picked up on the highlighting of Pentecostalism, and I posed a further question about it connection to the preparations for Vatican II.

As someone else has pointed out, all you need to do is open up a book of theology by Ratzinger or any other serious Catholic theologian and you will find an abundance of openly acknowledged debts to Protestant theologians.

I could…if I had an infinite amount of time and money to purchase and read these works. Similarly, I should be able to point you to the Catechism and we can shut this forum down. How much fun would that be?

Karl Barth alone has had a huge impact on 20th-century Catholic theology. The questions raised by the Reformers about the nature of faith, the role of the laity in the Church, the relationship of Scripture to tradition, etc., are real and meaningful questions. The answers the Reformers came up with were far from perfect. But that’s true of all theological propositions.

Thank you. That’s the kind of substantive response I was hoping for at the outset.

Of course all the substantive “contributions” by Protestants have roots in pre-Reformation theology. That is to be expected.

Interesting. So much is going on in the fields of reproductive technology and other matters related to “pelvic theology”, I would expect a lot work in these areas by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

 

[Contarini]

Catholics already believed in this.

And this is what I and OSL mean by the “set-up.” As Randy pointed out, a contribution is not the same thing as an innovation. Sure, the idea that there is a universal priesthood was not invented by the Reformers. And on the other hand, I don’t expect Catholics to accept the formal teaching as proposed by Luther (best defined as the view that any baptized Christian may validly celebrate any of the sacraments). I have gone back and forth over the years on whether I accept it, though on the whole I’m inclined to think that Luther was right on this one. But to show a “contribution” all I have to show is that this teaching by the Protestants has furthered the conversation about the universal priesthood among Christians as a whole. And that’s indubitably true.

This is 100% Catholic.

No, it’s explicitly rejected by the Council of Trent. The link to which you cite is correct in saying that Catholics teach that you can’t have agape without faith. But Catholicism does historically teach that you can have faith (of the supernatural kind given by God) without agape. The Protestant Reformers denied this. They taught that wherever the true faith given by God is present agape will always be present. That is why they denied that faith needed to be “formed” by agape. Catholics sometimes misread Luther and other Reformers as saying that this means that faith can save even where agape is not present. But that’s not what they were saying at all. They were saying that agape does absolutely nothing to “form” or “complete” faith, because faith *qua *faith always issues in agape. They were rejecting not the idea that faith and love always go together but the idea that faith can exist by itself in a non-salvific form, but becomes salvific by the addition of love. Traditional Catholic theology teaches that “dead faith” and “living faith” are not different in and of themselves, but differ only by the fact that one of them is linked to charity and the other one isn’t. The Council of Trent explicitly condemned the view that every mortal sin results in a loss of faith.

This only appears to work because it sets boundaries.

Of course. How can I define anything without boundaries? But it certainly was a contribution.

Protestants “contributed” the penal substitution model of atonement. Catholics consider that model incompatible with the nature of God.

You misunderstand. I wasn’t talking about atonement theology but about Luther’s principle that God reveals Himself supremely through the Cross of Jesus–through weakness rather than through power, through humiliation rather than through glory. This has huge implications for ecclesiology, soteriology, and many other aspects of Christian faith and life. It can be taken in a lot of different directions–many of the radical Reformers thought that Luther himself didn’t work out its implications adequately. And of course, like all theological contributions, it builds on earlier ideas and is hardly something entirely new. But again, it’s certainly a contribution. Christians who are aware of Luther’s work and that of theologians influenced by him (such as Barth) will think about the implications of the Cross in different (and I would say richer and deeper) ways.

I can’t really comment on the Barth point, since its meaning is ambiguous to me.

And without a lengthy discussion of Barth’s theology, it will remain so. I’m no Barth expert myself. But as I’ve said before, much 20th-century Catholic theology is deeply indebted to Barth in various ways.

Does “revival and strengthening” really count as a contribution

Absolutely. Again, you are confusing contribution with innovation.

especially when we consider that most of the “revival and strengthening” was necessary because Protestantism introduced the weakness?

I don’t think that’s true. Certainly there are strong Neo-Platonic elements in Calvin, and certainly one can fault the Reformed in general for an overly spiritualizing attitude, particularly to the sacraments. But the overshadowing of the resurrection of the body by the immortality of the soul, and the idea that salvation is primarily about the salvation of the individual human soul (in contrast both to the human body and to the non-human creation) goes back to the Fathers.

I mean to say, Catholics could regard this as a partial return to Catholic roots. (Indeed, N.T. Wright has created a number of Catholic converts, however unintentionally.)

I wasn’t talking about the “New Perspective” but about Wright’s eschatology as found in *Surprised by Hope *and other places. Read Richard John Neuhaus’s review of *Surprised by Hope *in *First Things. *He suggests that Wright’s eschatology sounds too much like Mormon eschatology.

And Wright doesn’t go as far as some–he believes that there is some kind of (dreamlike) consciousness between death and resurrection. Richard Hays, the eminent Methodist Biblical scholar (and fellow New Perspective advocate), doesn’t seem to believe this–at least based on remarks I once heard him make in a talk at Duke.

Again, I’m not claiming that the more radical critics of the Christian Platonist tradition are entirely right. But again, they have certainly contributed to the broader Christian conversation about the relationship between body and soul.

Both of these existed before Protestantism

I don’t think one can read the debates of the Reformation era and not conclude that Protestants and Catholics did have substantially different evaluations of the importance of lay Bible reading. I’m not falling into the silly old “Catholics didn’t want people to read the Bible” fallacy. I’m just saying that there were very different attitudes and different practices following from those attitudes.

Edwin

 

[AmateurPianist]

I agree with your conclusion here, but that was not my intent at the outset. I didn’t ask for novelties but contributions. I happen to think that the Pentecostal movement has had some influence on Catholicism. For example, I wonder if the call for a “new Pentecost” prior to the Second Vatican Council resulted from the explosion of Pentecostalism in the 20th century. Somewhat ironically, Fr. Peter Hocken was the president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies for many years.

Your criticism is probably valid, and my OP certainly raised a few hackles albeit unintentionally. How would you re-phrase the question in such a manner that we can identify those areas of theology that have been opened up by Protestant theologians over the past 500 years?

Is it simply a case of “all the big ideas were already taken”? Or have Catholic theologians come up with anything new during this period?

Theology of the Body comes to mind…is it novel or ground-breaking work?

Randy:
I might have misjudged your intentions. The first page of this thread seemed sketchy.

I am not a theologian and this conversation has already grown way beyond what I think I have the knowledge base to address. So I will let you have this conversation with people way smarter than myself.

 

[tweetymom]

That many of us who are not Catholics do not see any point of trying to dispute the conclusion you already had in posting this.

Amen!

 

[tweetymom]

…that a number of us have just decided to pass on another variant of “We are better than you”.

Another big AMEN