What Theological Contributions Have Protestants Made?

[jmtosh]

If you bothered to read the City of God

*I mean I do not believe the doctrine that the Kingdom of God is the replacement of the Roman Emperors with the Roman Catholic Church. As Christ says in Luke 17: the Kingdom of God does not come with observation. Neither will one say look here or look there, but the Kingdom of God is within (or possibly among) you. *

Many scholars disagree. Many of them think that parts of the N.T.: the pastoral Epistles, 2 Peter, maybe even Acts–may come from the second century. How do you know they are wrong? Yes, you trust the Word of God. But what makes you so confident that all the 27 books we have are the Word of God in the first place?
I am aware that many scholars do disagree with this. Many do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ either and are approaching the subject with this presupposition. William Barclay argues that Jude, which was one of the later books, was written circa 80 AD. This would give a date for 2 Peter which is believed by some to borrow from Jude prior to the second century. I am confident that they are the word of God because they met the stringent rules of canon applied by the Church : the Muratorian fragment of 170 lists most of the books and by the end of the 4th century the consensus of opinion in the Church was that all 27 of the canonical books were acceptable.
I know this is an old Catholic-apologetics standby. Obviously I don’t think this argument proves the truth of Roman Catholicism, since I’m an Anglican myself. But it does destroy the idea that we can simply “trust the Word of God” without any reliance on the testimony of the historic Church.
*Agreed, but the fact that the documents were virtually and eventually unaminously accepted by the general / catholic Church and not by decree of a single entity is proof that God has preserved His word. I disagree with the Roman Catholic Church *claiming that they were the whole Church at that time that compiled the Bible which they were not.

Again, this assumes that the early Catholic Church (no, I don’t think that this was simply identical with the Roman Catholic Church as we know it today, but they called themselves the Catholic Church so that’s the term I’m going to use) was right in its determination of the 27-book NT canon. If they were wrong, then not all the books we have are in fact God’s Word, so God has not promised to preserve them. (Note that I’m not saying they had to have been “infallible” in the RC sense, only right.)

*I see your point. I can only state that the Church as a whole had the mind of Christ when deliberating these matters. I know that Jude and the Revelation were very controversial books at one time yet eventually were accepted by the Church as being canonical , i.e. written by an Apostle or by whom they purported to be written. *
That’s not true. There were plenty of claims of prominence before, and Gregory himself did not make anything like the claims that were made later. Sure, he was a very strong leader and helped cement the authority of Rome in the Western Church, but it was one moment in a larger story, and in fact Gregory’s denunciation of the patriarch of Constantinople for taking the title “universal bishop” has been quoted by Protestants and Orthodox as evidence against the legitimacy of later papal claims.

*Yes, Gregory did deny the title of Universal Bishop but the Roman Church grew into a powerful institution under him , hispredecessor and his successor. *

I do not myself use this phrase for the pre-Reformation Catholic Church.

Agreed.

This doesn’t make sense. As you admit, they didn’t have temporal power, which means in plain language tha they did not take over the role of the Roman Emperors, but (as you admit) helped install the Frankish monarchs in that role. If you seriously believe that either the Frankish “Roman Emperors” or the later “Holy Roman Emperors” (from the 10th century on) were simply puppets of the Pope, then I’m afraid you need to read a lot more medieval history. The Emperors were serious rivals of the Papacy as leaders of the Christian world right through the Middle Ages. Indeed, the rivalry between Pope and Emperor was one of the things that allowed Protestantism to flourish.
No, I don’t believe they were simply puppets of the Pope. The Papal realtionship with the Holy Roman Emperors was like a love hate relationship. Each would use the other for their own benefit and when they could execute a mutual coup they did.

Oh please. No historian uses the phrase “Dark Ages” for anything after the eleventh century, and it’s probably a misleading and not very helpful term even for the earlier Middle Ages. Only to people blinded by ideology do the 12-13th centuries appear “dark.” Of course there were lots of evils in that era, as in any era–but culturally it is one of the most glorious periods of Western civilization. (And spiritually too, in my opinion–even if you are judging things from a strictly Protestant perspective. I don’t think evangelical Protestantism would exist in the form it does today without the work of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.)
**]Granted, to be strictly historially correct the Dark ages range from the fall of Rome to the beginning of the Middle Ages about 500 - 1000 AD. I meant Dark Ages as interpreted by the Puritans. I took licence there, I am sorry. **

 

[Ignatias20]

Analogy of contrasting Sola Scriptura vs Catholic Theology.

A One legged Stool is unstable and will fall.
A Two legged Stooool is unstable and will fall.
A Three legged Stool is Stable and will not fall.

Our Catholic theology stands on Three “legs”.

1. Scripture
2. Tradition ( all the many things that the Early Fathers taught but didn’t appear in Scripture)
3. The Magisterium (The Pope with the College of Bishops/Cardinals guided by the Holy Spirit ) is guided by the Holy Spirit just as were St. Peter, the leader, and the Apostles. The Magisterium is the same spiritually as Peter and the Apostles.) Jesus handed the Keys of the Kingdom to Peter.

Protestants are said to be the “Bible Only” people, no Tradition nor Magesterium. Now:shrug: the big problem with them is Who will Interpret the Scriptures. We would expect that there would be ONE Protestant Church but since anyone of the Proteatants does interpret Scripture the result is that there are Hundreds or Thousands of Protestants sects. They cannot all be correct!

When presented with the numerous groups that arose under the banner of the Reformation that could not agree on their interpretations of the Scriptures, no doubt the second solution to the problem was the assertion that the Holy Spirit would guide the pious Protestant to interpret the Scriptures rightly. Of course everyone who disagreed with you could not possibly be guided by the same Spirit. The result was that each Protestant group de-Christianized all those that differed from them. Now if this approach were a valid one, that would only leave history with one group of Protestants that had rightly interpreted the Scriptures. But which of the thousands of denominations could it be? Of course the answer depends on which Protestant you are speaking to. One thing we can be sure of — he or she probably thinks his or her group is it.

 

[Contarini]

Seems to me when I took my seminary courses and a Jewish Rabbi came in (he was reformed) he knew of the “types and shadows” that spoke of a coming savior. Could you explain Contarini what you mean that one of today’s Jews would not know as a “Jewish interpretation.”

I never appear to have responded to this. I don’t know what “types and shadows” your rabbi recognized. But generally Reform Jews don’t believe in a personal Messiah in the first place, nor do they generally believe in a doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture that would allow there to be specific “types and shadows” intended by God, though I may be wrong on that latter point. And Jews generally tend to see different passages as Messianic than Christians do. Isaiah 53, for instance, is generally understood to refer to Israel as a whole rather than to the Messiah. And so on.

It almost sounds like you are saying that because Jews do not believe in Jesus they do not recognize the types and shadows scriptures nor do they recognize the prophesy verses.

Not all the same ones, no. It’s a mistake to think that Jews accept the same prophecies and the same basic picture of the Messiah that we do, but simply deny that Jesus fulfilled those prophecies. Indeed, much Christian understanding of messianic prophecy is constructed after the fact–we went back into the Scriptures and found passages that pointed to Jesus, which no one before the fact had understood to be Messianic. (And on the other hand, many traditionally Messianic passages did not appear to have been fulfilled by Jesus in His first Advent–which is one reason why we believe He’s coming back!) As far as I know, for instance, there was no pre-Christian Jewish tradition that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. There may possibly have been a “suffering Messiah” tradition among the Essenes. It is of course hard to know what Jews during and before Jesus’ time may have believed, since our sources are fragmentary and mostly post-Christian. Even the “pseudepigrapha” which are some of our most interesting sources for “inter-Testamental” Judaism may have been interpolated by Christians (or written by post-Christian Jews) in some cases.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

**Rome was the Capital of the cvilised world. This political fact was the chief cause of the importance which the Roman Church attained in the ante-Nicene period. **

It was certainly one factor: however, the writers of that period also mention the link with Peter and Paul, and indeed that appears to have been the major consideration for them.

a series of powerful popes succeeded in making good a claim to supreme ecclesiatical jurisdiction; among these were Leo the Great (440 - 461) and Gregory the Great (590 - 604), who were the creators of the modern Papacy

This is a standard claim made in older scholarship, but I think it paints with too broad a brush and is anachronistic. There’s a huge difference between the papacy of Leo and Gregory I and the papacy of Gregory VII and Innocent III.

By the way I did not refer to an eschatological interpretations so why mention them, is it ecause you have already stereo typed me as a certain type of Protestant fundamentalist?

I apologize.

*He preached the gospel *

Defined how?

*and was not subordinate to the Church of Rome with its extra Biblical rites and dogmas. *

Which?

Warren points out that far from Henry having sent to the pope for a definite purpose the bull reads like an attempt to encourage a hesitant king. He explains how hitherto the Irish society was similar to the Anglo Saxon Bretwaldas with numerous tribal chieftains. Irish marriage laws were contrary to the catholic church.The Irish church was also tribalised and jurisdictions were not under bishops but vested in hereditary Abbots. The English church in contrast was Romanised. *

There’s no doubt that there were practices and structures in all the Celtic churches which Rome saw as irregular and corrupt, and that the English and Scottish monarchs of the 11-12th centuries brought these far-flung parts of the Church into line with the practices of Western Christendom as a whole. But that doesn’t necessarily justify you in claiming that there was an independent “Irish Church.” I would say that a better parallel would be to folk Catholicism in places like Latin America.

Furthermore, you have provided no evidence that the beliefs and practices of the Celtic Church were those you hold. Indeed, you’ve been rather coy about your own beliefs.

The gospel is defined by St. Paul in 1 Cor 15:1-3 as: Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures was buried and rose again according to the scriptures. Faith in this makes one a Christian. Although Hus may not have believed identically with what Luther and the subsequent reformers believed he did believe and preach this.

But that wasn’t distinctive to him!How did Hus preach this in a way that differed from standard Catholicism of his day?

Hus was strongly influenced byWyclif and thus renounced the elatively recent doctrine of transubstantiation

The scholastic formulation was relatively recent.

• as idolatry *

Did Hus himself say it was idolatry? Where?

*and believed in the authority of scripture *

So did everyone. But Hus certainly was willing to set his understanding of Scripture against traditional theology in a way that foreshadowed Protestantism.

*andthe preaching of this in the vernacular. *

Again, everyone preached in the vernacular!

The issues you have mentioned do not concern the core truths of the Gospel as you described them above. So your claim remains unsubstantiated.

Edwin

Neither of these issues–transubstantiation and vernacular Scripture–