Would Martin Luther approve?

[jmcrae]

2nd Gen,
I’ll grant you that , but that wasn’t my question. Clearly, translating into the common language was a clear defiance of the Pope. No argument.

Bad translations were always forbidden, but there were always good translations around - this was never forbidden.

My question is was it wrong for the laity to have the scriptures in their own language? And, when do you think the Church would have approved a common language Bible had Luther not done it?

The Church had already been doing it, since the 700s AD. Martin Luther was not the first person to translate the Bible into a European language; many faithful Catholics had already been doing that work. Gutenberg was a good Catholic; the first Bible in German that was cheaply available was his, and it was a Catholic Bible, with an imprimatur and a nihil obstat, and everything.

Keep in mind that the European languages were only just starting to differentiate from Latin in the late Middle Ages; there was no such thing as “French” or “English” or “German” in 600 AD - these were all different dialects of Latin that were perfectly understandable to each other. Those who could read were reading in Latin, because there was nothing else, yet, other than Greek and Hebrew, which of course were also taught in the schools. But various factors including a series of plagues, a mini-ice age, and the effects of feudal warfare caused a kind of “Babel” effect when communications were cut off and education became scarce, and that’s when the various Latin dialects started differentiating into different languages - and it was shortly after that that the Venerable Bede started translating the Gospels into English, a good six hundred years before Martin Luther thought of it.

 

[bklynbrat]

Zwingli…Marty wanted to burn him at the stake.

Yet this is what Zwingli said about Mary:

**Ulrich Zwingli:

"It was given to her what belongs to no creature, that in the flesh she should bring forth the Son of God."11

"I firmly believe that Mary, according to the words of the gospel as a pure Virgin brought forth for us the Son of God and in childbirth and after childbirth forever remained a pure, intact Virgin."12 Zwingli used Exodus 4:22 to defend the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity.

"I esteem immensely the Mother of God, the ever chaste, immaculate Virgin Mary."13

"Christ … was born of a most undefiled Virgin."14

"It was fitting that such a holy Son should have a holy Mother."15

“The more the honor and love of Christ increases among men, so much the esteem and honor given to Mary should grow.”**

Since these men believed in the BVM as we do, how long was it before BVM was pushed aside in protestism? Was it immediate? Or something that gradually occured?

God Bless

 

[rpp]

“Sin cannot tear you away from him [Christ] even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders.”

[Martin Luther, letter to Melanchton, Aug. 1, 1521]

 

[reteeks21]

The Luthern Church has harmed its members immensely in countries where it is a state religion. From my experience, the Luthern Church has relinguished its moral authority in the countries with large luthern populations. There is no condemnation of sexual immorality, abortion, living together, alcohol abuse etc. It has become a worldly religion that caters to modern times and not to the bible.

***It is rather sad to see so many people misled into believing that one cannot change his or her spiritual circumstances or even attempt to strive toward holiness. ***
In the luthern church, anything goes as long as one does not hurt others.

Martin Luther would be very sad to see his church today.

That is a blanket, and very false statement. Read the cathechism that Lutherans in the ELCA use. Read what they have posted on their website. They do not espouse anything you just said. Some may have perverted it, but they have done so out of ignorance.

 

[rpp]

2nd Gen,
I’ll grant you that , but that wasn’t my question. Clearly, translating into the common language was a clear defiance of the Pope. No argument. My question is was it wrong for the laity to have the scriptures in their own language? And, when do you think the Church would have approved a common language Bible had Luther not done it?

Luther’s translation of the Bible into German was not the first. The difference was that some of the earlier versions were approved and unlike Luther’s version, were not translated in a manner to promote certain doctrine nor were they the abridged versions which has become popular among protestants.

 

[Steadfast]

It’s very difficult for anyone to say what Luther would say about anything.

There are, probably, a dozen people in the whole world qualified to even make a guess and none of them are, that I know of, regular posters on this message board.

Luther was a prolific writer and speaker. Much of what we have from him was written down by others who heard him preach or just hold forth over the family table.

The full corpus of everything we have that he either wrote or is attributed to him hasn’t even been translated into English yet.

He worked at a time when mass-publication was just taking off and the things he was saying were considered very important. So, there is a LOT of it out there.

In addition, Luther was not a systematist, he wasn;t a detail guy, he was a pattern/big picture guy and he didn’t always have much of a filter.

In short, he was, primarily, a preacher. This is very important to remember when we take him to task for his more radical statements.

You can major in “Luther-Studies” in most Lutheran Seminaries, taking a graduate degree in the same.

The point is that neither you nor I are really qualified to do much more than look like asses when we try to figure out what he would think about this or that.

He changed his mind on several issues during his life time and the early Luther is a very different person than the later Luther.

One would hope that those culling him for juicy sound bites would learn to take this into account.

 

[LutheranDK]

Keep in mind that the European languages were only just starting to differentiate from Latin in the late Middle Ages; there was no such thing as “French” or “English” or “German” in 600 AD - these were all different dialects of Latin that were perfectly understandable to each other. Those who could read were reading in Latin, because there was nothing else, yet, other than Greek and Hebrew, which of course were also taught in the schools. But various factors including a series of plagues, a mini-ice age, and the effects of feudal warfare caused a kind of “Babel” effect when communications were cut off and education became scarce, and that’s when the various Latin dialects started differentiating into different languages - and it was shortly after that that the Venerable Bede started translating the Gospels into English, a good six hundred years before Martin Luther thought of it.

Erm…I think you need to go to the historians with that information, along with the proof to back it up, because if it is true, the history books need to be rewritten.
I’m talking about your “there were no European languages…all spoke dialects of Latin and could understand eachother”-thesis.

Latin died out as a spoken language in the early decades after the fall of the Western Empire…and outside of Italy, it was never used other than as the language of the garrisons, city-dwellers, and of the administration.
Please bear in mind that at this period in history, most of Europe’s population did NOT live in the cities.

While it is true, that the modern languages known as “French”, “German”, “Danish”, etc, were not formed by 600 AD, neither is it true that there was one common language that all understood. A peasant from a small village in northern France would not be able to understand a peasant from the SOUTH of France, not to say anything about one from Italy or England.

 

[Steadfast]

Yeah, that’s fraught with inaccuracies.

German is not descended from Latin but is from the other major Indo-European sub-group.

It’s true that French, Italian and Spanish are all regional forms of Latin but it is not true that they could understand one another even as early as the 7th century.

English, which is a Germanic language has, probably the highest concentration of Latin “borrow words”. There are a number of theories as to why this is one of which has to do with the influence of the church.

On the other hand many of the people we now call “French” are, ethnographically speaking, Germanic even though their language is “Romance”.

Anyway, in Western Europe there are two major language groupings (three if you count the Celts), Germanic and “Romance” i.e. Latinate. No one knows exactly what it was like in the early middle ages but we do know that Danes and Anglo-Saxons could understand enough of what they were saying to eachother to hammer out a legal agreement without the help of Latin-speaking churchmen since the Danes were, at the time, still pagan.

Over time the differences between the continental Germanic languages and the Scandinavian family have grown though they retain enough intermural similarity that an educated German can, more or less, make sense of most of a Dutch newspaper while a Dane a Norwegian and a Swede can understand eachother with about the same ease a Highland Scot would have understanding a Texan.

Or, so I am told.

 

[rpp]

Keep in mind that the European languages were only just starting to differentiate from Latin in the late Middle Ages; there was no such thing as “French” or “English” or “German” in 600 AD - these were all different dialects of Latin that were perfectly understandable to each other. Those who could read were reading in Latin, because there was nothing else, yet, other than Greek and Hebrew, which of course were also taught in the schools. But various factors including a series of plagues, a mini-ice age, and the effects of feudal warfare caused a kind of “Babel” effect when communications were cut off and education became scarce, and that’s when the various Latin dialects started differentiating into different languages - and it was shortly after that that the Venerable Bede started translating the Gospels into English, a good six hundred years before Martin Luther thought of it.

I am not certain that this is entirely accurate. There were many local languages in Europe before Roman times and these language evolved. Certainly when it comes to written languages, Latin was the language of the empire, but it was never used exclusively everywhere.

Of course, I am not an expert on the development of languages, but I do believe that there were always local languages in Europe, bot before and after the Roman Empire fell. Another point is that the Roman Empire never encompassed much of Germany. It really only ever held southern Bavaria. The bulk of the Germanic lands remained out of Rome’s grasp and in the hands, eventually, of the Huns.

 

[AgnosTheist]

I suspect a lot of folks would be shocked today - not just Luther, but also Augustine, Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, Ambrose, John Chrysostom…

JESUS himself will be shocked by what christians and catholics made out of his ideas.

 

[JonNC]

JESUS himself will be shocked by what christians and catholics made out of his ideas.

Two thoughts:

1. Catholics ARE Christians. They are not two distinct groups, as your “Christians and Catholics” might imply.
2. He would be even more shocked that many have not come to believe in Him at all.

 

[jmcrae]

Erm…I think you need to go to the historians with that information, along with the proof to back it up, because if it is true, the history books need to be rewritten.
I’m talking about your “there were no European languages…all spoke dialects of Latin and could understand eachother”-thesis.

There were tribal languages, just as there are today, but for communicating outside of one’s tribe, they used Latin, in the same way and for the same reason that I am writing in English right now instead of in our local Siksika’a dialect (which I’m sure is not understandable to anyone on planet earth outside of my local neighborhood).

(Well, that plus the fact that my Siksika’a is also not very good, anyway. )

 

[LutheranDK]

There were tribal languages, just as there are today, but for communicating outside of one’s tribe, they used Latin, in the same way and for the same reason that I am writing in English right now instead of in our local Siksika’a dialect (which I’m sure is not understandable to anyone on planet earth outside of my local neighborhood).

(Well, that plus the fact that my Siksika’a is also not very good, anyway. )

It is true that Latin was the lingua franca of the day. I just see nothing which indicates that knowledge of Latin among people outside of the clergy, nobility, and royalty, extended much beyond BARELY being able to keep up at Mass.

It is quite possible that I missed the point alltogether, if the point was that nobility, royalty and clergy was able to communicate across borders. This is proven. But I got the impression that the point made was that COMMON man could converse in Latin, which I find nothing that indicates, and extremely hard to believe, the state of the education system in Europe during the Dark Ages taken into consideration

 

[jmcrae]

It is true that Latin was the lingua franca of the day. I just see nothing which indicates that knowledge of Latin among people outside of the clergy, nobility, and royalty, extended much beyond BARELY being able to keep up at Mass.

It is quite possible that I missed the point alltogether, if the point was that nobility, royalty and clergy was able to communicate across borders. This is proven. But I got the impression that the point made was that COMMON man could converse in Latin, which I find nothing that indicates, and extremely hard to believe, the state of the education system in Europe during the Dark Ages taken into consideration

I wasn’t talking about the Dark Ages (that’s when the “babel effect” that I was referring to came about) - I was talking about before that, when the structures of civilization were still intact, and people who could only speak and write in four or five languages (like the Apostles of Jesus Christ) were considered “uneducated”.

Those “uneducated men” would have been considered Ph.D.s by our standards, I think.

 

[LutheranDK]

That is a blanket, and very false statement. Read the cathechism that Lutherans in the ELCA use. Read what they have posted on their website. They do not espouse anything you just said. Some may have perverted it, but they have done so out of ignorance.

One thing I don’t like doing is agreeing with people from the Roman church when it comes to the state of protestant churches. But the post you replied to was, unfortunately, right on the money! I can TELL you that it is true - because I live in one of those countries, and know the status of the State Church. And to make it short and simple: It resembles Laodicea more than Smyrna or Philadelphia, that’s for sure.

The ECLA and the Lutheran State Churches may SAY the right words, but their actions, or lack thereof, and opinions make those correct statements null and void. I know that there ARE Christians left within the State Church, and I assume it is also the case with the ECLA - but both places as the exception rather than the rule…

 

[LutheranDK]

LOL - that’s the best way of putting it I’ve heard in a long time

Yeah, that’s pretty much the case. Dependant on regional dialects, of course. There are dialects of Norwegian and Swedish that just sounds like babble to me. But then again - so does the dialect people speak in the south of Jutland, only some 130 kilometres away

Oh, if only our ancestors hadn’t started building that wretched tower of Babel

 

[rpp]

One thing I don’t like doing is agreeing with people from the Roman church when it comes to the state of protestant churches.

I think you are safe there.

rteeks21 is “Protestant” and WhyMe is Mormon.

You can relax now, you id not have to resort to agreeing with a Catholic!

(Please accept this in the humorous tone it was meant. )

 

[rpp]

One thing I don’t like doing is agreeing with people from the Roman church when it comes to the state of protestant churches.

I think you are safe there.

rteeks21 is “Protestant” and WhyMe is Mormon.

You can relax now, you did not have to resort to agreeing with a Catholic!

But can you at least find some of us funny? http://bestsmileys.com/oneofakind/11.gif

(Please accept this in the humorous tone it was meant. )

I will add that it is sad when any religious group compromises their teaching, either formally or informally, in an effort to “cast a wider net”. Invariably this results in a relaxed, or even relativistic moral stance. Such things do not help people gain control of their lives or escape the slavery of sin.

I do not know enough about the goings on in the Lutheran Church to comment, but I agree with you in principal. (Is it okay if a Catholic agrees with you, and remains a Catholic? )