Was the Reformation an Experiment gone wrong?

[Root of Jesse]

The problem is that you are taking one favorable verse out of the Bible to justify the RCC's errors by building a hollow theory concerning its dense history. You cannot do that. Paul clearly spoke of the possibility that even an apostle of God may speak of different gospel than the genuine gospel of God.

P.S. I will try to reply to your replies on my posts on the forum by this Saturday.

That's not so. It's all over the New Testament:
Mark 13:31 - heaven and earth will pass away, but Jesus' Word will not pass away. But Jesus never says anything about His Word being entirely committed to a book. Also, it took 400 years to compile the Bible, and another 1,000 years to invent the printing press. How was the Word of God communicated? Orally, by the bishops of the Church, with the guidance and protection of the Holy Spirit.

Mark 16:15 - Jesus commands the apostles to preach the Gospel to every creature. But Jesus did not want this preaching to stop after the apostles died, and yet the Bible was not compiled until four centuries later. The word of God was transferred orally.
Mark 3:14; 16:15 - Jesus commands the apostles to preach (not write) the gospel to the world. Jesus gives no commandment to the apostles to write, and gives them no indication that the oral apostolic word he commanded them to communicate would later die in the fourth century. If Jesus wanted Christianity to be limited to a book (which would be finalized four centuries later), wouldn't He have said a word about it?
Luke 10:16 - He who hears you (not "who reads your writings"), hears me. The oral word passes from Jesus to the apostles to their successors by the gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit. This succession has been preserved in the Holy Catholic Church.
Luke 24:47 - Jesus explains that repentance and forgiveness of sins must be preached (not written) in Christ's name to all nations. For you Protestants to argue that the word of God is now limited to a book (subject to thousands of different interpretations) is to not only ignore Scripture, but introduce a radical theory about how God spreads His word which would have been unbelievable to the people at the time of Jesus.
Acts 2:3-4 - the Holy Spirit came to the apostles in the form of "tongues" of fire so that they would "speak" (not just write) the Word.
Acts 15:27 - Judas and Silas, successors to the apostles, were sent to bring God's infallible Word by "word of mouth."
Rom. 10:8 - the Word is near you, on your lips and in your heart, which is the word of faith which is preached (not just written).
Rom. 10:17 - faith comes by what is "heard" (not just read) which is the Word that is "preached" (not read). This word comes from the oral tradition of the apostles. Those in countries where the Scriptures are not available can still come to faith in Jesus Christ. 1 Cor. 15:1,11 - faith comes from what is "preached" (not read). For non-Catholics to argue that

 

[Abrahamist]

Of course, but what Martin Luther was speaking out against was false doctrine(teachings).

ROTFLMBO

The irony in this statement is just too much.

 

[Abrahamist]

My own suspicion is that the Roman Church will still be with us in a hundred years but it will look and operate exactly like a Protestant church. And that change IS already underway.

If I thought for a second there was any truth at all of that happening, I wouldn't be a Catholic but instead either go with EO or the Jews.



(staff edit)

 

[WinBySurrender]

Have you ever tried repeating something you heard someone say to another person? Have you gotten the message exactly right every time? I don't think so. To assume that the apostles, who were human, were completely avoid of the "grapevine syndrome" is rather naive.

Apparently you think the Holy Spirit spoke to them but once, and then left.

 

[Abrahamist]

Apparently there was, because Luther was only following a well-travelled path in posting as he did, and doing so where he did. And of course you want to ignore the fact that Luther wrote to the archbishop. That counts as communicating with the church, if you ask me.

I'm sure this has already been covered but you are mistaken about that. There was no precedent for communicating with the church by nailing documents to doors.

I have read in more than one source that the story is more the stuff of folk lore than history and probably never actually happened. One of those George Washington's cherry tree kind of things.

 

[Abrahamist]

The problem with this thread is, that those saying the Reformation was a mistake are misrepresenting what Protestantism is. However, the Reformation was not a mistake if Protestant theology is correct. It is that simple.

That is true. However, since there is no unifying "protestant theology" beyond a rejection of the Church, it can hardly be said that protestant theology is correct.

 

[UnamSanctam]

That is true. However, since there is no unifying "protestant theology" beyond a rejection of the Church, it can hardly be said that protestant theology is correct.

No one rejects "the Church". There are plenty, however, who reject the self-proclaimed status of the Roman church as "the Church".

 

[UnamSanctam]

ROTFLMBO

The irony in this statement is just too much.

An RC being confronted with false doctrine might have problems seeing it. He or she is so used to finding some sophist way of explaining away contradictions and errors in exegesis, that he's become blind to them. No surprise there.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

An RC being confronted with false doctrine might have problems seeing it. He or she is so used to finding some sophist way of explaining away contradictions and errors in exegesis, that he's become blind to them. No surprise there.

I know protestants that do that too.

 

[Albion]

That is true. However, since there is no unifying "protestant theology" beyond a rejection of the Church, it can hardly be said that protestant theology is correct.

I guess we can stop all that arguing about Sola Scriptura then.

 

[WinBySurrender]

I guess we can stop all that arguing about Sola Scriptura then.

And predestination, election, eternal security, eschatology, soteriology ... etc., etc., etc.

 

[Pfaffenhofen]

Apparently you think the Holy Spirit spoke to them but once, and then left.

Yeah, some people think that God was with the Early Church and then took a vacation up to Luther, when He awoke from hibernation and spoke again to the Protestant Founders. Surrealist...

 

[Pfaffenhofen]

If I thought for a second there was any truth at all of that happening, I wouldn't be a Catholic but instead either go with EO or the Jews.

From what I have seen and experienced of protestants and Protestantism, I would have a to say a person is better off being an atheist.

So, after death, everything finishes.?

 

[Pfaffenhofen]

I cannot say if the Reformation was an experiment gone wrong. I will leave that up to God to say. However, it would seem that the splitting of Western Christianity into hundreds or even thousands of different ecclesiastical communities has NOT been helpful in terms of showing a unified witness to non-Christians. If the Protestant Revolt was as all justified, it is a shame that the Protestants could not have stayed together as one united Protestant faith group. Hence, in that one specific area anyway, it may have been an experiment gone wrong. However, we could also ask this question? What has caused more harm to the cause of winning non-Christians to Christ in our modern era, the Protestant Revolt which split Western Christianity into countless groups or the institutionalized use of torture by the Holy Office of the Inquisition for five centuries during the Middle Ages, since said violence was NOT consistent with the Gospels?

Now, a case can be made for the RCC being the Church founded by Christ for the salvation of mankind. However, since the teachings of Vatican II "effectively" renounced the Unam Sanctam and Cantate Domino infallible Papal decrees that deal with salvation for those outside of the RCC, there seems to be little urgency for Protestants to return home to Holy Mother Church. Maybe the cause of Christ would have been served better if Luther had joined the Eastern Orthodox Church and brought Northern Europe into the Orthodox fold?

Inquisition is a badly solved problem.
Christians are sinners. Inquisition was a sin. Why does it stand out? why are other greater sins forgotten?
The Church has always been a Church of sinners. So, why throw to the rubbish the RCC for one sin? Bad theology .... With this theology you would throw St.Peter out for his thrice denial and all the apostles for fledding on crucifixion.
So, this is bad theology.
St Paul explained it all: we carry golden treasures in frail pots. So, till the end of the world you may point the finger to RCC sins.
But which pot carries the gold (RCC, Protestant or EO), it is up to God to decide, not us.
From the sign of the times (John XXIII), it seems to be the RCC.

 

[Abrahamist]

An RC being confronted with false doctrine might have problems seeing it. He or she is so used to finding some sophist way of explaining away contradictions and errors in exegesis, that he's become blind to them. No surprise there.

I'm not a cradle catholic. I'm a convert. I converted after studying both early Christianity and Judaism prior to the time of Christ. I even attended synagogue services for a good eight months before attending RCIA.

The conclusion that I reached after examining Christianity's parent religion was that the "real" Christianity had to either be the EO and/or the Catholic Church. It couldn't be any reform or protestant church because reform and protestant christianity is too far removed from the source.

The process I went through was something like this:

I looked at the practice and teachings of the religion that Jesus came from, that being the Pharisee branch of 1st century Judaism and then looked at the protestant churches I grew up in. The question was, "How do we get the latter from the former?" The short answer is we don't. The longer answer is that different teachings and practices had been abandoned and replaced over the centuries so many times that, by the time my old church came into being, an incomplete bible was the only thing that had remained intact.

I realized I knew nothing at all of the real Christianity began by the real Jesus and so I began a quest to find the historical Christianity. Working both forwards and backwards, forward from 1st century Judaism and backward from modern day protestantism, I examined the teachings and history of different branches of christianity and traced Christianity back to the Catholic/Orthodox Church.

I also compared histories. The Jews, the Catholics, the protestants, secular history, etc. all have their own take on the history of the Church and these different takes on history vary to certain degrees. But where everyone but the protestants seem to agree was that the first Christian churches were Orthodox/Catholic and that it was they who canonized the Christian Bible.

Also, the teachings and practice of Orthodox/Catholic Christianity extend from and build upon Rabbinical Judaism where as reform/protestant Christianity breaks off from it.

And so I concluded it was the Orthodox/Catholics.

The deciding factor was that the Catholic Church simply had more Biblical support and followed the model of Jesus' teaching more closely than the Orthodox who were not in communion with Rome.

First, in the Bible, Jesus does in fact appear to put Peter in charge. Looking at just the text within Matthew 16 and taking into account the whole conversation and the circumstances surrounding it, it is pretty clear that Jesus is talking specifically to Simon Peter and no one else. The protestant interpretations all ignore that Jesus twice identified Peter in a room full of other people and so that is the only person who could have been talking to.

Although there is scant record of when Peter actually went to Rome or what exactly he did while he was there, there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence (in the from of letters exchanged between the second generation of apostles) that he was martyred there by being crucified upside down. The NT even contains a letter to Rome and so we know that the Church in Rome began before the NT was completed (or before the gospels were even written).

Also, Jesus very much appears to have had in mind a unified Church, not a divided one.

I only got confirmed last night. So no, you are wrong, I'm not used to hearing anything. I came to this conclusion largely (not entirely) without the help of the Church.

 

[Abrahamist]

So, after death, everything finishes.?

No. That's not what I meant. What I meant was a person is often times better off without an answer than the wrong one.

I have been to plenty of protestant nondenom churches that teach a religion that borrows much of the language of Christianity without actually being the least bit Christian. The preacher at my old protestant church teaches to this day that Jesus didn't come to start a new religion, that God doesn't want us to do "boring religion" and that his time with God is "Preacher time, not religious time." They teach that to be saved, that person needs to ask Jesus into their heart and have a personal relationship.

The services there are rock concerts followed by sermons where the preachers stroke their own over inflated ego and tell the congregants the lies that they want to hear.

My nieces attend this church and so their concept of Christianity is mindless entertainment. And this serves as an obstacle to generate any interest in real Christianity.

 

[Albion]

They teach that to be saved, that person needs to ask Jesus into their heart and have a personal relationship.

What a notion! I'm stunned.

 

[Abrahamist]

What a notion! I'm stunned.

It is an unbiblical notion. Many people came to Jesus asking him what one must do to be saved and he never once answered, "Ask me into your heart to be your personal lord and savior." There is no mention at all of asking Jesus into your heart to be your personal lord and savior anywhere in the entire Bible.

 

[Albion]

It is an unbiblical notion.

That would be something for a person who trusts the Bible to be completely true and sufficient to decide.

Many people came to Jesus asking him what one must do to be saved and he never once answered, "Ask me into your heart to be your personal lord and savior." no mention at all of asking Jesus into your heart to be your personal lord and savior anywhere in the entire Bible.

Oh please. the NT has many references to the need to believe on Jesus as the one sent by God the Father. I assumed that you'd understand the meaning of the common expression "ask Jesus into your heart." No, we don't actually think that he can be injected into your vein and travel in bodily form to the chambers of your heart.

 

[Abrahamist]

That would be something for a person who trusts the Bible to be completely true and sufficient to decide.

I believe the Bible is completely true. It might be sufficient but our ability to understand it is obviously not and so we need an objective guide by which to understand it.

But aside from that, all you have to do is shoe me the verse or verses where Jesus said, "Ask me into your heart to be your personal lord and savior." If it's in there, it's in there.

But it isn't in there.

Oh please. the NT has many references to the need to believe on Jesus as the one sent by God the Father.

Yes, the Gospels, especially John, emphasizes the need to believe in Jesus. But there was a whole lot more that came with it. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul mind strength and spirit, Love your neighbor as yourself, confess your sins, repent of them, keep the commandments, the list goes on.

There are churches that teach that if you ask Jesus into your heart, that is enough. And their idea of that is saying a short prayer where you ask Jesus to come into your heart.

They don't so much say the other stuff isn't necessary so much as they just don't mention it at all. At my old church, a very cheap and shallow version of some of this stuff was taught. For example, loving your neighbor as yourself meant turning to your neighbor and saying, "I love you." And there. The requirements filled.

I assumed that you'd understand the meaning of the common expression "ask Jesus into your heart." No, we don't actually think that he can be injected into your vein and travel in bodily form to the chambers of your heart.

I didn't think that but I'm honestly not sure what it IS supposed to mean. I suspect the phrase is common because it's just vague enough to be completely meaningless in and of itself which makes it versatile.

Regardless of whatever meaning is attached to the phrase, the phrase itself is found nowhere in the Bible.

If something Jesus did teach can be taken to mean this, I suggest we teach this instead.