Luther vs Catholic Church

[Friend-of-Jesus]

I have found it interesting lately learning a little about Luther and the Pope / Catholic Church.

I am only just starting to find out more! Why? I need to find out his beliefs, how he viewed the CC hierarchy and how pious was he?

Some of the things I have recently learned have opened my eyes a bit and I want to dig deeper but with an open mind on it all.

Luther started out as a Catholic. He must have had strong faith in the church? What were the main reasons why he turned on the church? Was he in the right with the beliefs he had about the Pope and the Bible etc?

Anyone here delved into his life and beliefs in detail?

Martin Luther did a bad, bad thing by removing some books of the Holy Bible. That was a terrible thing to do. Who was he to deprive Christians of some part of the sacred word of God?!

 

[Albion]

....and if they were not the sacred word of God? What then?

 

[dqhall]

The Catholic Church was in the business of selling pardons/indulgences in order to raise funds for church building. Luther objected.

Some of Luther's 95 Theses from Project Wittenberg, public domain:
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/ninetyfive.html

36. Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon.

52. The assurance of salvation by letters of pardon is vain, even though the commissary, nay, even though the pope himself, were to stake his soul upon it.

56. The "treasures of the Church," out of which the pope. grants indulgences, are not sufficiently named or known among the people of Christ.

75. To think the papal pardons so great that they could absolve a man even if he had committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God -- this is madness.

82. To wit: -- "Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial."

86. Again: -- "Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?"

 

[Goatee]

Interesting posts.

How would one know if the scriptures removed were not sacred? They had been part of the Bible for many many years! Why remove them after such a long time?

 

[Albion]

Interesting posts.

How would one know if the scriptures removed were not sacred? They had been part of the Bible for many many years! Why remove them after such a long time?

For the same reason that the Roman Catholic Church modified the Apocrypha only a few years after Luther, I suppose. But if these books are surely the "sacred word of God,"' no tampering at all would be acceptable would it? Catholics insist that Luther did wrong by translating one word in the book of Romans differently, for example.

These books had always been in question. The Jews were divided about them, and they were included in the canon during the 4th century only provisionally. They are quite unlike the other books of the OT, and no doctrine is dependent upon something that's found in them. So, they are not really what some people want to think they are.

 

[Goatee]

For the same reason that the Roman Catholic Church modified the Apocrypha only a few years after Luther, I suppose. But if these books are surely the "sacred word of God,"' no tampering at all would be acceptable would it? Catholics insist that Luther did wrong by translating one word in the book of Romans differently, for example.

These books had always been in question. The Jews were divided about them, and they were included in the canon during the 4th century only provisionally. They are quite unlike the other books of the OT, and no doctrine is dependent upon something that's found in them. So, they are not really what some people want to think they are.

But, the way I see it is, if the whole Bible was assembled via the Holy Spirit then it should remain that way.

Did not the Apostles use those books in their teachings?

 

[Albion]

But, the way I see it is, if the whole Bible was assembled via the Holy Spirit then it should remain that way.

Then all sides are at fault.

Did not the Apostles use those books in their teachings?

Probably so, but that doesn't make them inspired. You know that Anglicans and Lutherans still use them in worship but do not consider them to be Bible books. They are--in the wording of the Anglican Articles of Religion--important for instruction in morals and manners, but not to establish any doctrine.

 

[Athanasius377]

Interesting posts.

How would one know if the scriptures removed were not sacred? They had been part of the Bible for many many years! Why remove them after such a long time?

The books in question were part of the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Old Testament. A couple of thoughts on this discussion. The modern Roman church does not use the same listing of books that it did in sixteenth century.. In fact, Rome did officially proclaim the canon by dogmatic decree until 1546 at the council of Trent. Even now, Rome makes a distinction between these books and the canon by calling them "Deuterocanonical" because even Rome can see there are problems in the books themselves. Second, the books in question were never accepted as scripture by the vast majority of Jews of first century. The claims that the canon was in flux simply isn't as strong as some would have you believe. Simple question: Were these books were "laid up" in the Temple? Did these books make the "hands unclean". If the answer is no then these books do not belong in the Old Testament. Even St. Jerome who translated the Bible into Latin (Vulgate) did not accept the apocrypha as scripture. In fact, the more a church father knew about Hebrew the more they were likely not to accept the apocrypha as scripture. The books have numerous errors in regards to people and place names. For example Judith 1:5 (DRB) "Now in the twelfth year of his reign, Nabuchodonosor king of the Assyrians, who reigned in Ninive the great city, fought against Arphaxad and overcame him. . . "



Luther in my estimation was correct for excluding these books from the Old Testament canon. Luther on his discussion on the New Testament canon is another issue altogether different as his heirs generally reject his thoughts on the canonicity that he held shortly after his break with Rome.

 

[hedrick]

Let me suggest a consideration: Jews, and if Athanasius377 is right, Catholics, have a "stepped canon." That is, books are of varying degrees of centrality. For traditional Protestantism, that's a problem, since for it, any part of Scripture has absolute authority. While no one put it in those terms, I think this may have led Protestants to choose only the more central portion of the canon.

However there were also reasons for it to use the Hebrew canon. The motto of the Renaissance was "ad fontes." As such, they wanted to go back to the original Hebrew of the OT. I actually agree that this was a reasonable idea. During the Apostolic period, both were in use. I'd guess Jesus would have used the Hebrew canon, but I'm sure some of the early Christians used the Greek canon.

My own mainline tradition takes a more flexible view of Scripture. We evaluate each book on its own terms. We use the Protestant canon because we're Protestant. But we wouldn't object to the larger canons.

 

[ubicaritas]

The doctrine of justification was key to understanding Luther's work, especially the 95 Theses. Unlike Zwingli, the doctrine was central to his desire for reform. As Hedrich pointed out, he was concerned about peoples souls, especially the risk of false assurance. The first of the 95 theses is that the whole of the Christian life should be about repentance, and not merely confining the notion to an external "act of contrition" coupled with buying an indulgence.

 

[ubicaritas]

Just FYI: later in his life Luther did translate the apocryphal/deuterocanonical books. They were in Lutheran bibles for centuries. Technically, we have an open canon, and we do not have a strictly "biblicist" approach to the Scriptures. Books of disputed apostolicity, including New Testament books such as James or Revelation, do not have the same dogmatic authority as the Gospels and undisputed books of Paul. The Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books would fit in the same category (antilegomena). They can't carry dogmatic weight, even though they undoubtedly contain edifying material.

 

[ViaCrucis]

What started it all in the first place was Luther's disagreement with the Church's selling of indulgences- an indulgence at the time was paying the Church a sum of money to absolve either a past or future sin.
Theologically speaking, it omitted severity in Purgatory for said sins.

Not quite. What you are describing is the selling of indulgences, which very much was something Luther took issue with--and Tetzel in particular.

But an indulgence does not, itself, involve monetary transaction. Though Luther did have a problem with the idea of indulgences in and of themselves; it was really the selling of indulgences that got under Luther's skin. And, it's worth noting, that he was hardly alone, many in the Church were deeply offended by these abuses; Tetzel himself ended up getting in serious trouble.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

Just to specify one thing about the selling of indulgence, the Vatican never approved of it. Johann Tetzel acted on his own, obviously under the approval of his bishop but not endorsed by the Vatican nor the pope himself.

That being said the selling of indulgence was disgusting indeed.

It was in part that he reported the issue to Albert (the abuses were approved and sanctioned by Albert, and so Luther's appeal seems to have been interpreted by him as the that of an uppity nobody of a monk) that probably started the path to him getting in trouble; along with the translation and distribution of the 95 Theses which was done by his students without his knowing; the Theses were written in Latin and nailed to the church door to invite academic debate.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

Martin Luther did a bad, bad thing by removing some books of the Holy Bible. That was a terrible thing to do. Who was he to deprive Christians of some part of the sacred word of God?!

He didn't remove them. They were, and still are, in the German Lutherbibel (1545, 2017).

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

But, the way I see it is, if the whole Bible was assembled via the Holy Spirit then it should remain that way.

Did the Holy Spirit do this before or after Trent? Because the Tridentine Canon had fewer books than the pre-Tridentine Canon. Technically, it was the Council of Trent that removed books. The Clementine Vulgate and the Lutherbibel differ largely only in that Luther shifted all the Deuterocanonical to their own appendix, where the Council of Trent shifted only a few of the Deuterocanonical books to their own appendix, specifically 1 & 2 Esdras (3 & 4 Esdras), and the Prayer of Manasseh.

So this business of "removing books" is, frankly, quite overstated.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Mountainmike]

I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic schools most of my youth. I would recommend you putting everything else down and pick up the Bible and read it. Everything else is just opinions of men. Listen to the words God is speaking to you. Read the Bible.

In Christ
Daniel

Indeed. That includes your manmade opinion on what it means, replacing tradition which tells you what Jesus meant, as handed down by apostolic succession and dogmatised by councils, and visible in writings of early fathers.

The very reason there are so many denominations , is the faulty belief that anyone can read it and interpret it correctly.

Luther himself despaired of the chaos he helped to ceate with the false doctrine of bible alone. He said
" it is the greatest scandal, every milkmaid now has their own doctrine". " there are now as many sects as heads" " " we must now pay" for the disaster he helped to create, But he was too late. Pandora could not be put back in the box.

Two things will surprise many about Luther.

First, how catholic many of his views remained on such as our lady.

Second, how in later life he regretted his actions and sincerely wished he could undo them.

And yet the main focus of his theses were paid indulgencies, and had he just waited until the next council he would have heard the pope himself speak out against them too! So in many ways His schism proved pointless, even in his own frame of reference.

 

[Mountainmike]

Ameriselle, you should know by now that I speak in hyperbole. I exaggerate.

No shame in that! So did Jesus!

 

[amariselle]

Indeed. That includes your manmade opinion on what it means, replacing tradition which tells you what Jesus meant, as handed down by apostolic succession and dogmatised by councils, and visible in writings of early fathers.

The very reason there are so many denominations , is the faulty belief that anyone can read it and interpret it correctly.

Luther himself despaired of the chaos he helped to ceate with the false doctrine of bible alone. He said
" it is the greatest scandal, every milkmaid now has their own doctrine". " there are now as many sects as heads" " " we must now pay" for the disaster he helped to create, But he was too late. Pandora could not be put back in the box.

Two things will surprise many about Luther.

First, how catholic many of his views remained on such as our lady.

Second, how in later life he regretted his actions and sincerely wished he could undo them.

And yet the main focus of his theses were paid indulgencies, and had he just waited until the next council he would have heard the pope himself speak out against them too! So in many ways His schism proved pointless, even in his own frame of reference.

It is well known that Luther did not get everything right.

Rejecting "tradition" and man-made doctrine when it goes against Scripture, however, is entirely justified.

Also, anyone who thinks there is no division within the Catholic Church nor ever has been, does not know their history. A common accusation often made by Catholics is some version of, "those foolish Protestants and their 30,000 denominations, I'm so glad I'm Catholic!" Suggesting of course that all Catholics are perfectly united and in agreement in all things and always have been.

History tells a different story entirely. And even today, if you asked 100 Catholics questions regarding some basic Catholic doctrine and "tradition", you will find that not all agree on everything the Church teaches. On the surface it may look like the Catholic Church has more unity because of their papal hierarchy and structure, but there is just as much division within Catholicism as within Protestantism.

To say nothing of the so called "apostolic succession." That is actually one of the greatest examples of division and treachery imaginable. Everyone should really research Papal history. Pretty eye opening.

 

[Mountainmike]

To be Catholic you are obliged to accept the dogma and catechism. The door out is not locked. So those who disagree with dogma are not catholic when they do so.

I presume you mean disagrees with YOUR interpretation of scripture. And there of course is the problem, supposing you can interpret it correctly. 10000 Protestant flavours and counting proves you can't, else why do you all disagree with each other? Let alone us?

You cannot reject tradition, it was the way the faith was passed down.

It is well known that Luther did not get everything right.

Rejecting "tradition" and man-made doctrine when it goes against Scripture, however, is entirely justified.

Also, anyone who thinks there is no division within the Catholic Church nor ever has been, does not know their history. A common accusation often made by Catholics is some version of, "those foolish Protestants and their 30,000 denominations, I'm so glad I'm Catholic!" Suggesting of course that all Catholics are perfectly united and in agreement in all things and always have been.

History tells a different story entirely. And even today, if you asked 100 Catholics questions regarding some basic Catholic doctrine and "tradition", you will find that not all agree on everything the Church teaches. On the surface it may look like the Catholic Church has more unity because of their papal hierarchy and structure, but there is just as much division within Catholicism as within Protestantism.

To say nothing of the so called "apostolic succession." That is actually one of the greatest examples of division and treachery imaginable. Everyone should really research Papal history. Pretty eye opening.

 

[amariselle]

To be Catholic you are obliged to accept the dogma and catechism. The door out is not locked. So those who disagree with dogma are not catholic when they do so.

I presume you mean disagrees with YOUR interpretation of scripture. And there of course is the problem, supposing you can interpret it correctly. 10000 Protestant flavours and counting proves you can't, else why do you all disagree with each other? Let alone us?

Nope, I don't mean "my interpretation"
at all. I mean what the Bible actually teaches.