Protestant reformers reform what?

[FireDragon76]

Our freedoms and modern conveniences are not the glorious freedom of the Children of God talked of in the Gospels. They often lead more people to slavery in sin than to salvation by grace. Just taking this opportunity to point this out.

Orthodox "self-understanding" is what occurs when the Holy Spirit imparts enough grace to an Orthodox Christian soul for them to see how they are the most woeful of sinners and utterly depending upon God for any goodness at all to dwell in them. This is "Orthodox self-understanding", and it is the gift of God to receive it.

I don't know what self-understanding it was that you stopped taking seriously, but it wasn't an Orthodox Christian one.

You don't think your above statement couldn't be construed as evidence of my point? You're basically saying my entire culture is just a sin trap just because we allow people the freedom to make up their own minds.

 

[truefiction1]

Yes, lots of good stuff there but the idea that was the "one true church" was more than I could take seriously. That, and the Slavophile love of Russian Orthodoxy was a bit much when you see how much of it is just naked nationalism under all the spiritual gilding now days. If Orthodoxy has an original sin, it's being unable to distinguish nationalism from the Gospel. It's too often, and sadly, articulated in a way that's dripping with xenophobic contempt.

Watch Zorba the Greek some time to get a clue to this mindset. Beautiful movie, very accurate portrayal of rural Greeks and their attitudes towards non-Orthodox from that time period. They consider us the barbarians, all the while they are living in the ruins of a dead empire.

All that stuff that your mind finds repulsive about Orthodox Christianity is not the Orthodox Christian faith any more than the bloodbaths created in the fighting between Catholics and Protestants, or pedophile pastors, are the content of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The mind is a funny thing: producing multitudes of thoughts and perceptions often tempered by demonic persuasion and influence. How many have left the Church to join radical sectarian groups with false teachers as leaders because of the misguided manner in which they came to perceive people and things.

 

[truefiction1]

You don't think your above statement couldn't be construed as evidence of my point? You're basically saying my entire culture is just a sin trap just because we allow people the freedom to make up their own minds.

It could easily become that (sin trap) for very, very large segments of Western civilization populations (and I think that the statistical numbers prove my point). Not that I'm against technological advancement. I'm merely pointing out that the greater man becomes in this regard, the weaker the presence of faith usually becomes. People forget. No matter how comfortable life may get, without God we are dead and eternally forgotten.

Also, we may have the freedom to "make up our own minds" now. But how long do you suppose it will be before that freedom is again taken away?

 

[FireDragon76]

All that stuff that your mind finds repulsive about Orthodox Christianity is not the Orthodox Christian faith any more than the bloodbaths created in the fighting between Catholics and Protestants, or pedophile pastors, are the content of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The mind is a funny thing: producing multitudes of thoughts and perceptions often tempered by demonic persuasion and influence. How many have left the Church to join radical sectarian groups with false teachers as leaders because of the misguided manner in which they came to perceive people and things.

Now you are just digging a deeper hole for yourself.

 

[truefiction1]

Now you are just digging a deeper hole for yourself.

I should be happy to have dug one. Did you know that a certain Orthodox Christian saint spent many years living down inside a deep hole in the ground (an old water well, I think), praying without ceasing to God and barely ever eating anything, nor lying down because there wasn't any room to do so?

Saint Herman of Alaska, the first American saint, lived in a cave that he dug in the ground when he first moved to Spruce Island.

I could go on, on, and on, because we haven't begun to talk about how much and how many (vast multitudes) of Orthodox Christians loved God, both living and dying for their Love of the Lord, over the course of the entire history of Christendom.

Did you really think that when demons work unnoticed that they are going to reveal to us the unspeakable glory of God being reflected in His Orthodox Christian saints, rather than all the garbage they can find to throw at us?

 

[gideon123]

The Protestant Reformers did one FANTASTIC thing.

They put a Bible in my hands that I can read in my own language ... English. And for this I will thank them forever. Thank you, Martin Luther!

My wife and I do read our Bible together, every day, without fail. It is our great Treasure. We have read it cover-to-cover. And each January we start again at Genesis 1:1 and begin the journey anew.

We thank God for his great guidance and wisdom, especially now in a World that has totally lost its bearings.

Blessings!

 

[Maria Billingsley]

Did they really reform anything?

The greatest accomplishment of the reformation was to publish the Holy Scriptures so that ALL can find salvation through the Word of God and not through the doctrines of men.

 

[truefiction1]

I wonder if the innovative technology of the printing press wasn't going to result in the publishing of enough Bibles to go around regardless of any Protestant movement. I don't know, but I think the Bible would have been massively reproduced no matter what else was going on socially, just because people have always wanted to read it, and Christians still want their own copies of it even today.

 

[Maria Billingsley]

I wonder if the innovative technology of the printing press wasn't going to result in the publishing of enough Bibles to go around regardless of any Protestant movement. I don't know, but I think the Bible would have been massively reproduced no matter what else was going on socially, just because people have always wanted to read it, and Christians still want their own copies of it even today.

The universal church at that time forbid anyone to own, translate or disseminate the scriptures. It was Martin Luther and Mr. Gutenberg who led the translation and publishing of the Bible "The Gutenberg Bible" . This was accomplished through the reformation and would have never happened if it were not for the protests against the universal church.

 

[truefiction1]

The universal church at that time forbid anyone to own, translate or disseminate the scriptures. It was Martin Luther and Mr. Gutenberg who led the translation and publishing of the Bible "The Gutenberg Bible" . This was accomplished through the reformation and would have never happened if it were not for the protests against the universal church.

The universal Church forbid the reading of Scriptures? Maybe the Roman Catholic Church leadership did, but I doubt that the Patriarchs of the other Churches were doing that whatsoever.

 

[FireDragon76]

I wonder if the innovative technology of the printing press wasn't going to result in the publishing of enough Bibles to go around regardless of any Protestant movement. I don't know, but I think the Bible would have been massively reproduced no matter what else was going on socially, just because people have always wanted to read it, and Christians still want their own copies of it even today.

Catholics were simply not interested in printing bibles until Protestants did it first.

The first Bible in Spanish was translated in the middle of the 16th century by a Spanish Lutheran, Casiodoro de Reina, and his student Cipriano de Valera, who were living as exiles in Frankfurt. Casiodoro de Reina was an abbot in Seville who heard of Luther's teachings and joined the Reformation. Until the early 20th century, their translation of the Bible was the only one available in Spanish. Today it is known as the Reina-Valera, and it is equivalent for Spanish speakers to the King James Bible.

On the other hand, Catholics did not publish a Spanish Bible until the early 20th century.

 

[truefiction1]

Catholics were simply not interested in printing bibles until Protestants did it first.

The first Bible in Spanish was translated in the 16th century by a Spanish Lutheran, Casiodoro de Reina, and his student Cipriano de Valera, who were living as exiles in Frankfurt. Casiodoro de Reina was an abbot in Seville who heard of Luther's teachings and joined the Reformation. Until the early 20th century, their translation of the Bible was the only one available in Spanish. Today it is known as the Reina-Valera, and it is equivalent for Spanish speakers to the King James Bible.

On the other hand, Catholics did not publish a Spanish Bible until the early 20th century.

Translating the Bible, I'm sure, was no small feat, and the Church may have been of the mind that the Bible was best read in Latin (after all, didn't it take a long time for the Romans to come around to the idea that the mass itself could be done in languages other than Latin?).

Could it have just been the spirit of complacency with the established norm - especially in the face of the enormous undertaking that translation and copying of the Bible was in those days - that was responsible for a seemingly absent desire on the part of Catholics to translate and copy Bibles? Translation and printing, at that time, were enormous undertakings. Most of us are ignorant with regards to how much painstaking work both of these things would require today, let alone in the middle ages prior to innovations of technology to facilitate the easier accomplishment of these things.

 

[FireDragon76]

Translating the Bible, I'm sure, was no small feat, and the Church may have been of the mind that the Bible was best read in Latin (after all, didn't it take a long time for the Romans to come around to the idea that the mass itself could be done in languages other than Latin?).

Could it have just been the spirit of complacency with the established norm - especially in the face of the enormous undertaking that translation and copying of the Bible was in those days - that was responsible for a seemingly absent desire on the part of Catholics to translate and copy Bibles? Translation and printing, at that time, were enormous undertakings. Most of us are ignorant with regards to how much painstaking work both of these things would require today, let alone in the middle ages prior to innovations of technology to facilitate the easier accomplishment of these things.

But I think the example of Spain is a good example of the Catholic Church's attitude, they simply doubled-down on their intransigence. They refused to keep pace with a changing culture.

The first catechism in the west in the modern era was actually created by Luther himself. The Catholics only started catechizing people after this in response. Confirmation had simply been a ritual where the bishop visited and laid hands on young adults, confirming what faith they had.

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

Martin Luther form his own mouth confessed that the Reformation was a failure. He said he couldn't get enough real Christians together to have a prayer meeting. The real reformers, who get none of the credit, were the Anabaptist. It was the Anabaptist who re-introduced separation of Church and state and believer's baptism. Today they are mocked because of their simple ways and peaceful lifestyle. Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin would have us all living under totalitarianism, or worse yet, a church-state alliance that executes non-conformist.

The Anabaptists were often not peaceful at all. The Anabaptists incited the German Peasant's War and the Münster rebellion. In fact, they were the bloodiest of them all when they actually obtained any real power.

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

Our freedoms and modern conveniences are not the glorious freedom of the Children of God talked of in the Gospels. They often lead more people to slavery in sin than to salvation by grace. Just taking this opportunity to point this out.

Except in Christ the children of God have been set free from the bondage of sin. While I am far from a historian, I have read enough Church history to know there's no way I would want to try and live under an earthly Theocracy or a state sponsored Church, regardless if it started with the denomination I subscribe to or not. William Tyndale considered a forerunner of the Reformation was burned on a stake for translating the New Testament into the common type of English of his day. He did so because the laity was not permitted to read the Scriptures themselves. His punishment had as much to do with politics and power (Church laws) as anything, certainly nothing in the New Testament incites such horrific vengeful acts. I think it speaks to what was most important in Tyndale's time and especially in the specific geological location, where politics over religion, law over mercy reigned. I am thankful for our freedoms, and our sins in part have to do with the struggle of living in fleshly bodies, and the problem is chiefly in the instabilities within our hearts, not with freedom. And from history we should notice that totalitarian type governments always had people problems which tells me again, here on earth, because of the nature of man, no government can control human hearts, maybe in an idealistic world, but not the real world.

 

[Jude1:3Contendforthefaith]

Did they really reform anything?

You might enjoy this video OP :

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

To my mind no. They invented new models of Christianity and forced the Roman Catholics to reform themselves in the Counter Reformation.

 

[ViaCrucis]

The Reformation began as a protest (hence protest-ant, protestant) against the abuses of the Roman Church. Those abuses were quite real, and were addressed by the Council of Trent.

But protestantism eventually snowballed into changes of doctrines among thousands of different competing ideologies, each at odds with and often condemning the others.

Point of clarification. The term "Protestant" refers to those who formally protested the Imperial Diet of Speyer, this formal protest being known as the Protestation at Speyer, and those who protested "The Protestants". Specifically these were the Elector-Princes of the Holy Roman Empire who protested Emperor Maximilian's insistence that they force their subjects to follow Roman religious practice instead of Evangelical religious practice. The term "Protestant" spread from this.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[worshipjunkie]

Bible possession once banned by the Catholic Church! has some good evidence on the pre-Reformation/Reformation stance on the Bible by the Catholic church.

 

[Saint Steven]

Did they really reform anything?

No changes?
Does your church sell indulgences?
Does your church grant the forgiveness of sins, or is that God's job to forgive sin?
Does your church believe that Church Tradition is a higher authority than the Bible?
Does your church teach that you are saved by works, or by grace through faith?
Do you ultimately answer to the Church, or to God?
Do you have a relationship with God, or a relationship with an institution?

Five Solas:
1. Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”): The Bible alone is our highest authority.
2. Sola Fide (“faith alone”): We are saved through faith alone in Jesus Christ.
3. Sola Gratia (“grace alone”): We are saved by the grace of God alone.
4. Solus Christus (“Christ alone”): Jesus Christ alone is our Lord, Savior, and King.
5. Soli Deo Gloria (“to the glory of God alone”): We live for the glory of God alone.