Another
exchange between this writer and a lay Catholic. The touchstone of our conversation was an
article in the Federalist website entitled “No,
'Mere Christianity' Isn't Enough To Keep Me Catholic Post-Scandal”. In it, Casey Chalk, a convert to Catholicism,
goes into some detail on why the present “sex scandals” provide no grounds to
leave the Catholic Church. Chalk ends
his piece:
“Catholics “truly believe that ‘our faith is
in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone.’” Yet commensurate to that belief is a
recognition that the Catholic Church–in all her magisterial authority, and all
her scandals and sins–is where the fullness of Christ dwells, especially in the
Eucharist as faithfully administered by those with apostolic succession. In the
Catholic paradigm, those two realities of human weakness and salvific glory
coexist . My appeal for all Protestants is to find out how.”
I threw in what I thought was a random
comment—sure to be ignored. My point was
that, in my humble experience, Catholics refrain from serious theological
discussions with Protestants—thus the “finding out” quest is dead before it
begins. To my surprise, Nick from
Detroit took up the cudgel. What follows
is a transcript of our conversation so far.
[It should be noted that both Nick and I have
had difficulty keeping our conversation going.
Strangely, after posting replies from my end, some disappeared from the
articles’ comment section a mere few hours later.]
The problem most
Protestants have in discussions with Catholics is that Protestants want to talk
about the theological doctrines which divide us and Catholics simply refuse to
engage. Instead, Catholics talk endlessly about the Church as "be all and
end all". It is if the Catholic response can be summed up as "The
Church says it--I believe it--that settles it". Once when I brought up my
theological problems with Catholicism with a Priest I had befriended, his reply
was "Come back to the Church and we'll sort all this out later". Not
exactly the respectful heart to heart discussion this Protestant was looking
for. Not what this Lutheran needs--at all.
Thus
Protestants and Catholics keep talking in circles around each other. Which is
tragic in that we have so much in common.
You must not have found the right Catholics, then! Ha-ha!
What would you like to know?
What would you like to know?
I'd like to know why you guys named your church after a mere man, when
Saint Paul clearly admonished the Corinthians for doing the same (cf.
1Cor.1:10-17, 3:4-8).
Was Luther crucified
for you? We're you baptized in the name of Luther? God Bless!
We were called "Lutherans" (and not in a nice way) by Catholic
wise asses like you in the 16th century. The name stuck. We use
"Lutheran" to let folk know what they'd be getting. Look at it a kind
of "truth in advertising". We wouldn't want you to get upset because
you accidentally visited one of our churches for worship.
Perhaps, we would have remained Catholics if the Pope Julius II (you
know, that "warrior Pope") hadn't kicked us out and executed many of
our theologians. Maybe he was too busy taking up the sword to keep his papal
states to bother with those pesky reformers.
You know very well we baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit. Snarky smarty-pants slander doesn't qualify as an olive branch
for dialogue.
Maybe there are
"right Catholics" out there. It's clear, however, you aren't one of
them.
I was not being snarky.
Those were sincere questions. I'm sorry that you were offended by them, Mr.
Dooley. That was not my intent.
I'm still willing to
discuss our theological differences, if you are? In a respectful manner,
please.
I'd still like to know how
Lutherans justify violating Saint Paul's admonition? (I was paraphrasing him,
when I asked if you baptize in the name of Luther.)
Are
you aware of Luther's writings on Jews, by the way? People in glass houses, and
all that. God Bless!
In Germany, our church is
called the Evangelical Church. We would have been quite happy to keep that
name. The problem came when we came to America and were faced with multitude of
various denominations—particularly when the use of “evangelical” by many of
them doesn’t mean the same thing. We are not “evangelicals” as the term is
commonly used in America—and believe me they wouldn’t have us. I have been in
many ecumenical gatherings and most evangelicals find us suspect. Most
Protestants lump us in with the Catholics. “Them Lutherans are practically
Catholics. Best avoid them.” (Given the mess of antagonistic and amorphous
theologies out there, I for one am quite happy to keep company with the
Catholics.)
[We find most Protestants
are positively allergic to what “By grace alone” actually means. We hold to
“divine monergism” rather than “synergism”.]
It might be quite curious
to you that we Lutherans draw our linage back to Saint Augustine and from there
to the Apostles. {Luther had been an Augustinian priest.} Contrary to common
notions, Luther was quite respectful to tradition. Tradition was valid to the
degree it supported Scripture. That is, tradition was to be subordinate to
Scripture. Catholics take a different view—which is where in part our mutual
differences stem.
As far as the use of
“Lutheran” in our Church’s title, I refer you back to what I have written
before. Luther himself preferred “The Christian Church”. Indeed, our theology
is principally “Christocentric”—proclaiming the “Theology of the Cross”.
Yes, we are very aware of
Luther’s “The Jews And Their Lies”. We are also aware that he had written that
ghastly tract when he quite old and sick. It was also uncharacteristic of what
he had written about the Jews beforehand. As far as it goes, “The Jews and
Their Lies” was ignored by the German princes at the time and purposely left
unread by Lutherans since. After Hitler’s resurrection of the tract from
obscurity and the holocaust, the various Lutheran synods roundly condemned it.
We forbid even reading it.
It has been long taught
among us that Luther was no saint. He was a deeply flawed man—something he
himself said about himself. Like St. Paul, he regarded himself as “the chief of
all sinners”. His importance for Lutherans is that he is an example of a
wretched man saved by the forgiveness of Christ.
Historically,
in spite of Lutheran overwhelming support for the American Revolution,
Lutherans were not warmly received here and that hostility still rears its ugly
head in unexpected places and at strange times. (During WWI, Lutherans (German
certainly—but Swedish and Norwegian ones as well) faced persecutions and many
of our churches were burned to the ground by vicious mobs.) It has only been
since Vatican II that antagonisms between Catholics and Lutherans have cooled.
Nevertheless, in discussions with Catholics, I have frequently been met with an
attitude of something of a combination between dismissiveness and bitterness.
Scandalous accusations disguised as questions. It is in this light, I take
exception to the tone of your missives.
Thank you, for a
well-thought out and respectful response. There were several points of which I
was unaware. (Sorry for the delay in my response.)
I'm also sorry that you've
encountered uncharitable Catholics in the past. That shouldn't prejudice your
dealings with the rest of us, however. Don't judge a book by its cover, and
such. My missives have only a lighthearted tone, I assure you.
I have read about Luther's
scrupulousity and Lutheran/Anglican appeals to Saint Augustine. Plus, that
Luther, along with Calvin, retained devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the
Holy Rosary. Is this tradition still taught in your particular synod?
A friend that I made, in my
senior year of high school, was Lutheran. He ended up converting to the
Catholic Church after years of exposure to my family, and a miracle kidney
transplant.
Please,
feel free to inquire about any point of Catholic theology you would wish to
explore. Anytime. God Bless!
Thank you for your reply.
After my last missive, I came to think you had simply moved on. Hardly uncommon
with most online exchanges. I assure you, I take no offense with the delay.
One thing I have learned as
a writer is that humor does not always turn out apparent when reduced to cold
hard print. In my own bitter experience, often times in my letters, when I
thought I had written some hilariously funny couple of lines to my own brother
and sister, they thought I was dead serious. More than once, to my chagrin,
they felt insulted.
Luther’s scrupulousity is
an essential feature to the “Luther story” among us. It is said that he lived
his early years frightened that he might have left some sin or another
unconfessed and would face damnation from an angry God. He drove his own
confessor in the monastery nuts. I am sure most Catholics (and most other folk)
should find this behavior rather strange. But this formed the basis for
Luther’s question of how can we know that we are fully forgiven and saved. That
is, how can one know one has DONE ENOUGH to be truly saved? After his “tower
experience”, Luther referred to such spiritual anxiety as the “terror of the
conscience” that can only be “cured” by Christ’s sacrifice and forgiveness. In
Christ we are to find our assurance. He warned the Christian to trust Christ
rather than listen to Satan’s sharp reminders all of the things he had done
wrong. Luther latter joked that, when the devil prodded one with doubts about
one’s forgiveness, one should blow the foam off the top of his beer tankard in
his face and point to the Cross.
Luther's Marian theology,
from what we know from the historical record, seemed to change as he
aged—although not nearly as much as our contemporary Protestants would expect.
The temptation is to take one odd quote from his expansive body of writings and
herald it as the definitive answer to what he actually believed. But Luther’s
beliefs changed through his years. As we are want to caution, “what did he say
and when he say it?” Luther’s writings began when he was a young Catholic
professor of the Bible at Wittenberg and ended some thirty five years later with
his death. Luther was not a systematic theologian and didn’t pretend to be.
Several times during his later years he lamented that “they try to make me a
fixed constellation when I am really just a brief shooting star in the skies.
Be that as it may be, throughout
his life, Luther held fast to the decrees of the ecumenical councils and dogmas
of the church. He believed in and taught the Perpetual virginity of Mary, the
Theotokos (Mary’s reality as the Mother of God), and the Immaculate Conception.
His devotion to Mary was quite real along with the imperative caveat that all
doctrine and piety should exalt and not diminish the person and work of Jesus
Christ. This was fairly uncontroversial at the time in that Protestant and
Catholics teachings about Mary didn’t differ all that much in the sixteenth
century. Luther himself vehemently preached against the removal and smashing of
pictures and statues of Mary from church sanctuaries as radicals like Andreas
Carlstadt had done.
Classic systematic Lutheran
theology did not solidify until a century or two after Luther’s death. This
came after the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and it was in large part as a
reaction to Trent that Catholic and Lutheran theologies began to diverge to an
even greater extent. (As necessary as Rome felt it was to counter the
Protestant Reformation, for Lutherans, Trent was a disaster for
Lutheran/Catholic rapprochement.) Thus Lutheran teachings about Mary took the
form which has existed to this day.
No Lutheran synod retains
the devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Holy Rosary. The root reasoning
for this is the absence of any command or encouragement to do so in the
Scriptures. In contrast to many of the old Lutheran churches in Germany, the
interiors of Lutheran sanctuaries are starkly ascetic with very few exceptions.
One will not find any pictures or statues of any saint let alone Mary. Aside
from the creeds, public readings of the Biblical birth narratives, and the
teaching of the birth of Christ in Sunday school, Mary is hardly mentioned at
all. There has been much encouragement in recent years to preach about Mary as
an exceptional model of trusting faith; but that has yet to filter down to
actual parish practice—at least in my experience.
Lutherans still teach the
virgin birth and Theotokos; but the Perpetual virginity of Mary and the
Immaculate conception are not. Again, this is due to the lack of a scriptural
basis. The Immaculate Conception is for all practical purposes unacceptable.
Whether Mary remained virgin for the rest of her life is regarded as an
uninteresting issue. It isn’t that Mary couldn’t have refrained from sexual
congress; it is simply that, compared to the centrality of Christ, it doesn’t
matter.
Likewise, because of a lack
of Scriptural authority, the relatively modern Catholic doctrine of the
Assumption of Mary, is largely discounted. As a matter of the practical daily
life of the individual Christian, one is free to believe in the Immaculate
Conception (or the Assumption of Mary for that matter)—they just aren’t “saving
doctrines”.
In my life (I am 66 years
old), I have met several Catholics who had converted to Lutheranism. They seem
to come in three varieties. The first are what I call genuine seekers who found
a home in the Lutheran Church. Their personal reasons all differ from one
another. In the end, however, their conversions all came with the embrace of
the “By Grace Alone” doctrine. (These tend to be “revelatory” experiences.)
The second group came into
it by marriage. That is a Catholic (or Methodist, Anglican, Baptist, etc.)
individual had married a Lutheran spouse and came into the Church to share the
same faith. In general, what began as a matter of convenience in time became an
occasion of truly embracing the faith.
The third group is the most
perplexing to me. It is usually a case of a Catholic marrying…say…a Methodist.
They decide to compromise and become Lutherans. To me, this is like one
preferring bananas and the other preferring grapefruit, so they choose an
apple. Makes no sense to me. In practice, however, against any reasonable
expectation, it works. The Catholic likes it that Lutherans keep the creeds and
the order of the mass—although the absence of Mary and the saints (among other
things) makes it all seem a little anemic. The Methodist likes it because at
first glance Lutheran theology seems to be like Methodist theology—although
liturgical worship bothers them somewhat. In time, even these come to the
faith.
In all these cases, they
explain that Lutheranism is exceptionally different from what they believed
before. I say this not in a triumphalistic way. In fact, I am uncomfortable
with it in that it saddens me that, even if one removed the “Lutheran” label
from it, the Theology of the Cross had been so foreign to them in their
original Churches. Perhaps, I tell myself, it was there all along—they just
didn’t hear it. As you yourself may have observed, a lot of people come away
from their original Churches with some goofy ideas of what those Churches were
all about.
For what it’s worth, as a personal
note, my wife and I have been married for 45 years. We both grew up as
Lutherans. We were baptized, catechized, confirmed, and married together all in
the same parish. We are sometimes asked how we’ve been able to stay married so
long. It is in no small part because we share the same faith and attend the
same worship service each week. I’m sure this is true for other couples of
other communions. Sadly, in a world of widespread divorce, sharing the same
faith is not necessarily a guarantee that one’s marriage will not crash and
burn. But, perhaps you’ll agree, it’s not a bad place to start.
I fear that I may have written more than you wanted for your question. If that’s the case, I apologize. In my defense, these are more complicated matters to unpack than we’d want them to be.
I fear that I may have written more than you wanted for your question. If that’s the case, I apologize. In my defense, these are more complicated matters to unpack than we’d want them to be.
May
the Lord bless you and your house.
Another very informative
reply, Mr. Dooley. Thanks. Don't worry about the length, you packed a lot in
there.
I agree, my humor gets lost
on people, even my sisters, in my texts. Seems that if we do not include some
sort of humor emoji when we're joking, people cannot see the punchline.
And, no, many Catholics
also suffer from scrupulousity, today. I, myself, would succumb to it when I
returned to the confessional after a ten year absence, two decades ago. It has
different levels of severity. I've read that some experts have conjectured that
Luther was bi-polar, which could explain his torments and extreme
mortifications after being absolved by his confessor.
The other day, I happened
to catch part of PBS documentary on Luther. It was also informative. It stated
that people started calling themselves "Lutheran" during his
lifetime, and that it appalled him..."at first." They never said when
it stopped bothering him, however. Do you have a source for your claim that it
was Catholics who first called them Lutherans as a pejorative?
It's a shame that the other
Protestants didn't keep devotion to Our Lady, as the Anglicans have. As Queen
Mother, she only wants to point all of us toward her Son the Savior.
By the way, the Assumption
of the Blessed Virgin Mary is not a modern doctrine. It is an ancient tradition
that has two different versions. It was not made a dogma of the Church until
quite recently (1950). Pope Pius XII did this, after the horrors of WWII, to
give hope to the world that God's mercy is still present. Not as a means to
salvation.
I'm not married, so I'm no
expert. But I believe our modern/post-modern age is at war with the family.
From abortion to divorce, contraception, pornography, child abuse, same-sex
"marriage," sex-ed in elementary schools, perversion, etc.; it's
faith in Christ that helps to combat Satan in this spiritual warfare. And the
Sacraments are the armor Christ left us as the surest way to defeat the
Accuser.
Speaking of which, last
week I watched a video that delved into the forerunners of the Reformation. I
learned that I've been under the mistaken notion that the Modern Era began
towards the end of the 15th Century, A.D. In actuality, it started during 14th
with the rejection of God's Fatherhood in favor of the view of His power detached
from His just will and intelligence. I.e., completely arbitrary power, not God
the FATHER Almighty.
If
you have an hour+ to spare, you might find it interesting.
Merry Christmas to you and your family. God Bless!
Merry Christmas to you and your family. God Bless!
That Luther may have
been bi-polar seems to be an entirely reasonable possibility to me. On the other hand, others have supposed
schizophrenia, a latent death wish, persistent debilitating delusions,
idiopathic depression, or some other analysis out of the APA Handbook of
Clinical Psychology. Who knows? We should be cautious, however. Even with Luther’s extensively recorded
long-windedness, at this remove of 500 years, our capability to make a
diagnosis is very limited. Even with our
own contemporaries, it would be wrong to unearth any such estimation without a
face to face consultation.
“Do you have a source for
your claim that it was Catholics who first called them Lutherans as a
pejorative?”
Though the years, I have read this assertion several
times—albeit mentioned each time only in passing. I perused some my old books; but I couldn’t
find the relevant passages easily and didn’t have the spare time to go through
them page by page. It is mentioned
briefly in Joseph Stump’s 1910 preface
to Luther’s Small Catechism—but you might
consider the source suspect. The most
direct I’ve found comes from Wikipedia’s general article on Lutheransim:
“The name ‘Lutheran’
originated as a derogatory term used against Luther by [the] German Scholastic
theologian Dr. Johann Maier von Eck
during the Leipzig Debate in July 1519.[10] Eck and other Catholics followed the
traditional practice of naming a heresy
after its leader, thus labeling all who identified with the theology
of Martin Luther as Lutherans.”
The footnote says
this comes out of Fahlbusch, Erwin, and Bromiley, and William’s, The
Encyclopedia of Christianity. I am not familiar with this compendium; so I
cannot vouch for its reliability. I
can’t vouch for the accuracy the Wikipedia article for that matter. (Although it’s discussion of Lutheranism as a
whole is very good—far from complete and unnuanced; but respectable given it is
only a few pages long.) Be that as it
may, its account of the practice of “naming a heresy after its leader”
seems reasonable to me. (i.e. Apollinarism after Apollinaris of Laodicea, Arianism after Arius of Alexandria, Nestorianism after Nestorius of Constantinople, Pelagianism after
Pelagius of Britain, and so on.)
You are quite right,
the doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was
made as Catholic dogma in 1950—but its seeds or threads go back much
further. Many if not most believe goes
back at least from the early centuries of Christianity in both the Western and
Eastern Churches. This would be
entirely consistent with John
Henry Newman’s “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine”.
In the end, even after centuries Catholic appeals to enlighten
Lutherans as to the benefits of the devotion to Mary, it all comes the
naught. At its root, it comes down to
the mutual disagreement over the place of Scripture and Tradition. The Lutheran doctrine of Sola Scriptura
precludes any concept of devotion to Mary.
In a nutshell, “Where in Scripture is the command, encouragement and
promise?”
I should think Catholics would be dismayed with the absence of devotion
to Mary in Lutheran piety. Perhaps both the Catholics and the Eastern
are bewildered (and maybe a bit offended) by the Lutheran rejection of Marian
devotion. John Michael Talbot, once a
fundamentalist, converted to Catholicism.
When asked about why Protestants baulked at praying to Mary, he said it
was just a “hang up”.
For our part, Lutherans feel no poverty in the matter and don’t believe
they are missing anything in their spiritual lives.
Perhaps you might think this is due to a kind of blindness; but it is
what it is. Together with the emphasis on Scripture as the fundamental standard
of faith, Lutheran belief is that Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God
the Father and humanity. Our prayers are
only to be made to Him. I am sure
Catholics believe prayers to Mary and prayers to Jesus are not mutually
exclusive; but we Lutherans cannot pray to Mary in good conscience and remain
true to ourselves.
Catholic–Lutheran
dialogue has endeavored to make rapprochement on the issue; producing the “The
One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary” joint declaration in 1990. (VIII Round of Discussion) Like the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine
of Justification” in 1999, however, the agreement was more apparent than
real. Dig into each document, one will
find each party essentially reiterated their differing, historic positions.
So we are left,
however unsatisfactory, with a critical disagreement between us. Perhaps the best we can do is “agree to
disagree”—although such an arrangement may be unacceptable to many if not most
Catholics and Lutherans. Each wants to
get in the last word—as if that would settle the matter.
[I should note, going
back to my original response, as contemptuous and dismissive I have found the
many Catholics to be in my encounters, by no means does fault rest with
Catholics alone. To my embarrassment,
many of my fellow Lutherans can get quite cranky.]
All that being said,
both Catholics and Lutherans (the Orthodox and all other Protestants for that
matter) now live in a world in which there are armies mobilized against
us. They make no distinction. They are working to undermine Christianity if
not crush it altogether. We are told
that the only place to practice the faith is within the walls of our places of
worship. In all other areas, it’s hands
off. (“You go and bake that cake. You got problems with it? Shut up.
We don’t want to hear about it.”)
We should not be
fooled. Our antagonists have no
intention of binding themselves to this one-sided “compromise”. In time, they will reach into our sanctuaries
and pulpits to enforce contemporary social norms as they choose to define them. (Many feminists advocate taking away the
Catholic Church’s tax exemptions unless it installs women into the
priesthood. The demand for the
installation of openly practicing gays would soon follow.) We will find the subjects our sermons and
classes being monitored for “hateful” content.
Traditional Christian teachings will become suspect-- subject to
correction to reflect the prescriptions of the sexual revolution in all its
evolutions. “Intolerance cannot hide
behind religious freedom”, they are want to say. “Religious freedom cannot stand in the way of
justice”.
John Paul II
correctly believed that we are finding ourselves surrounded by the culture of
death. Just speaking of the issue of
abortion, just a few years ago they described it as a “tragic choice” and the
aim was to allow to destruction of the most voiceless and powerless among us
but also make abortion “safe (i.e. no “coat hanger”, back alley terminations),
legal and rare”. Now it is championed as
a positive good. By extension, even now,
euthanizing the old and sick has gained significant traction. Stretching the meaning of family into social
constellations in which the only distinguishing characteristic is “love”. Reducing marriage to an artless, economic
contract.
I fear this will be
just the beginning. We have on our side
the Gospels, the sacraments, and our prayers, but the array of worldly
antagonists can be dispiriting.
Our historic
doctrinal differences are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon and Christian
unity will continue to elude us; but we must find a way to bind ourselves
together. All Christians find ourselves
in world in which I’m afraid we will be hanged together or strung will
separately.
I have yet to watch
the video you recommended. As you might
imagine, the season has been quite busy.
I promise I will watch it soon and then convey any thoughts I might
have.
In spite of the
infirmities of old age, I am quite well.
I wish the best for you.
May our Lord bless
you. Merry Christmas!
I hope that you, and your
family, had a very blessed and Merry Christmas, Mr. Dooley. May you also have a
Happy New Year!
Did you get a chance to
watch that video? If so, I hope that you enjoyed it.
I just watched another that
explains how the Early Church Fathers used Platonic philosophy to comprehend
the Semitic mind of the Sacred Scriptures to Westerners. And how the
Rationalists distorted Aristotle to separate the transcendent from the natural,
which turned the reality of symbol into a mere sign.
It
was very fascinating. It's about 45 minutes long. God Bless!
https://youtu.be/filV-JMFc98
https://youtu.be/filV-JMFc98
I finally watched
with keen interest the first video you recommended. Of course, given he could only provide a
truncated retelling, Professor H couldn’t go into much detail in the time
allotted. Indeed, his presented account
is a much simplified history for the viewer—not something he would teach in a
semester(s) of classes. As you might
expect, I demure from some of his assertions.
The first note I
would make is that via antiqua and via moderna shared some overlap between them
in Late Medieval theology. In other
words, while we can see a sharp distinction between them at this remove,
neither completely rejected the other at the time. I am thinking particularly the notion of
“going back to the source” in reading the Gospels in the original Greek. Undeniably, what each did with that “original
reading” made all the difference.
Luther himself we are
told was educated at Erfurt in the via moderna in the nominalist
tradition. Early Luther was a
norminalist. However, as time went on,
he was sharply critical of nominalism—particularly in its theology of
justification. In a nutshell, the
nominalists taught that God extended his grace to one who prepared or brought
himself to receive it. Luther rejected
this teaching saying that there isn’t anything one can do to “prepare” himself
for then God to extend His grace. There
is no “neutral ground” on which one can stand between the Kingdom of God and
the Kingdom of Satan. One cannot respond
to the Gospel on one’s own. We are all
born as slaves to sin and cannot free ourselves. Instead, God in Christ breaks into our lives
by the Cross to “capture” us.
I fear I haven’t done
the subject justice. One can go much
deeper and fill pages and pages fleshing all this out—finding better ways to
express it all to be sure. As far as it
goes, treating God as an absolute power rather than a loving Father was quite
foreign to him. Perhaps the charge could
be made against John Calvin, although even there it gets problematic.
I had a wonderful
Christmas. The height was at the
midnight Christmas Eve worship where an unusually large congregation gave full
throated singing of the hymns and liturgy culminating in Holy Communion. OK, I liked the opening of presents under the
Christmas tree, too.
May the Lord bless
you.
Hello, Mr. Dooley. Sorry, I missed your last reply. But I'm not seeing
several, for some reason. Only two in the past few weeks.
I've been celebrating the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, today, by
listening to several programs on Our Lady and her teachings. I always like to
learn something new.
I hope that you get a chance to watch the other video on the Jewish
understanding of symbol, too.
Were you able to find
a reference to that claim that Catholics starting using "Lutheran" as
an epithet? Also, do you know if Luther supported the peasants in the Peasants
War? Or, did he support the nobels' suppression of those mobs? I've heard it
both ways, so, I don't know who to believe?
Happy New Year, and God bless.
Happy New Year, and God bless.
In a nutshell, Luther
was sympatric with many of its grievances; but he strongly objected to the
violence of the Peasant’s war and backed its suppression.
Ahhhh, that makes sense.
Thank you, for answering. You are definitely the most knowledgeable Lutheran
I've come across on the interwebs. I have a couple of more inquiries, if you do
not mind?
At my great uncle's
funeral, years ago, the family's Lutheran pastor wore a collar and they called
him "father." Is that the personal preference of the pastor, or does
it depend on which synod one belongs?
How
do today's Lutheran theologians explain Luther's attempt to insert
"allein" into Romans 3:28, and remove James & the Apocalypse from
the canon, along with the Deuterocanonical books?
I
have only heard of a Lutheran pastor being referred to as “father” a few
times. I have never met one myself; but,
according to my own pastor, those who are are few and far between. I can only speculate why those few are
addressed as “father” and I doubt guesswork on my part would be of any tangible
use.
Luther
didn’t just try to insert “allein”, he did.
I looked it up in five current German Bible translations and it remains
in two of them. As far as it goes,
Lutherans tend look upon the issue as a controversy which isn’t a controversy.
The
sense of Romans 3:28 seems to be consistent across English language Bibles:
For we account a man
to be justified by faith, without the works of the law. Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition
For we hold that one
is justified by faith apart from works of the law. English Standard Version
For our argument is
that a man is justified by faith quite apart from success in keeping the
law. The New English Bible.
For we hold that a
person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. New Revised Standard Version Catholic
Edition
On the contrary, it
is the law of faith, since, as we see it, a man is justified by faith and not
by doing something the Law tells him to do.--The Jerusalem Bible.
Translation from one
language to another involves not just a literal word for word rendition. The interpreter must frequently “flesh out” a
passage to convey the idea it is putting forth.
Luther’s use of “alone” was a matter of emphasis rather than injecting a
meaning that wasn’t there. He stated
that the adverb "alone" was required by idiomatic German.
Lutherans see the
whole “alone” controversy (such as it is) as actually a kind of proxy war over
the doctrine of “sola fide”. Our
differences get played out in how we read the passage. Catholics see the exclusion of "works of
the law" in Romans 3:28 as only referring to works done for salvation under
the Mosaic Law, versus works of faith which are held as meritorious for
salvation. For their part, Lutherans see
the exclusion of "works of the law" (as the means of obtaining
justification) as referring to any works of the Mosaic law, and by implication,
any "works of righteousness which we have done" (Titus 3:5).
To say that Luther
wanted to exclude James & the Apocalypse of John from the canon
is a little misleading. What Luther
proposed was to relegate them to an appendix.
He simply didn’t believe they were of equal value to the rest of the New
Testament. His main criticism of James
& the Apocalypse of John was that, while they spoke of Christ and be
profitably read, they did not proclaim the Gospel.
There are two main
reasons Lutherans and most Protestants don’t include the Deuterocanonical
books in the canon. 1.) They were not included in the Hebrew
Bible. 2.) They were written in Greek—not
Hebrew—indicating Hellenistic rather than purely Hebrew origins. Again, Luther thought they could be
beneficially read; but they do not reach the level of Holy Scripture.
