The Infallible and Quotable Martin Luther

I have always thought Luther was, on the whole, a bit disturbed, as can be seen in some of the things he taught and said. But God can and does, from time to time, use even those we would call insane for His purposes. The level of corruption in the church in his day should have been obvious to anyone who honestly studied God's Word. Yet Luther was the one who had the courage (was insane enough?) to stand up to it. That does not make him perfect, it does not make him anything other than a sinner saved by grace, rather than the amount of indulgences his family could afford.

 

1) Luther was not infalliable

2) He is quotable, but I suggest you include more then selected one liners so we can see the point he is making in its context.

What you did can be done with anyone, including your holy papas.

Thanks in advance.

 

The key is that the RCC has horrible monsters in their list of Popes (they call them "wicked popes") - and for all the mistakes and misteps of Luther as he tries to shake off his Catholic roots - in the end -- no protestant has to claim "infallability" for him as the Catholics do for the Papacy.

Their legacy of inquisition, torture and horrendous actions in the papacy - COMBINED with their need to declare an "infallable church" - creates a "unique" problem for them - that publishing the "mistakes of Luther" does not solve.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Becasue God only had fallen humans to choose from. Anyone He would have picked would have been corrupt as we all are.

Bryan
SDG

 

Becasue God only had fallen humans to choose from. Anyone He would have picked would have been corrupt as we all are.

Bryan
SDG </font>[/QUOTE]Bugman,

Thanks for you comment. I actually agree with it. If God in fact had choose ML what you say is true. Too bad none of you guys recognize it when it comes to threads about Papal issues. But if God needed to somehow restore the truth and Luther was the guy for it, there is one thing missing. God would have announced it in his Holy Word! That is the only real way you would know if what Luther said was true or not. There would have had to be some sort of forshadowing of Luther himself and his mission. Since the canon is closed he could not have written it himself as the prophets of the OT did. For example of John the baptist he is spoken of as "a voice crying out in the desert" and the NT scriptures apply this verse to him also. Mary is the virgin who would concieve and bear a son of Isaiha 7. I have many more but they are very Catholic in nature and I am sure you would not agree with them (for example Is 22:22-23 in light of Matt 16:18 with Peter being the "steward" of the new Kingdom). God pre-anounces what he is going to do. So perhaps you could show us that verse that says Martin, he da man. I will even take an implicit verse if it is properly shown that that is the meaning of it.

Blessings

 

A little clarifiaction. My comment about the Popes was with regard to the issue that Bug supports that God uses sinners. He doesn't have anything but sinners to work with is the point. Secondly one might say that each Pope is not foranounced in the scriptures in response to my post. They are implicitly in the office that Peter was given by it's forshadowing in the OT office of the steward which was a successive office under the king and the implication of the keys given in that office and the keys given to Peter. Keys denote succession. I got a set of keys for my house from the previous owner. They give me access and authority over the house. If I sell it I will give these keys to another who will have the same.

Blessings

 

k

#1. Luther never said he was infallible - and that is what makes this so easy for non-Catholics. When we see mistakes we are free to admit them without lying to our own church scholars or keeping "secret files" from our own church scholars. (You know - the way the RCC does with its scholars).

#2. Luther was in fact "catholic" and a "Catholic reformer" at that. He "learned" about torture and death, the inquisition and intolerance of heretics from his mother church. JUST as he learned to apply the term "antichrist" to the Pope FROM the long established RC practice of Cardinals and Popes referring to their peers as AntiChrist.

#3. His intolerance for Jews - was simply a reflection of the teaching he received in seminary. One would have hoped that he could have stepped farther away from Catholicism in his reforms - but he did recover the Bible doctrine of righteousness by faith from the Catholic dumpster into which it had been tossed. So you have to give that Catholic reformer credit for breaking away as much as he did from the regime.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Pope Stephen VII. put the corpse of the previous Pope (Formosus) on trial after he had been dead for eight months. Formosus was dragged from the tomb, dressed again in sacerdotal robes, and given council. Stephen VII condemned him, and the three fingers of benediction on the right hand were hacked off Formosus. The late pope was then dragged through the palace, and hurled into the Tiber by a yelling mob.

Stephen VII. himself was later strangled. Following this, within 12 months four popes met their demise as political factions struggled to control the papacy.

The Popes from 926-1046 were from the House of Theophylact. Chamberlin documents the legend of Pope Joan, and discounts it as myth. But like some myths, elements of the fiction have been drawn from historical accounts. The women from the House of Theophylact had a grip on the papacy, as it placed there own nominees in papal power. One paved the way for her lover to take the papacy, Pope John X.

Pope John XII is referred to as a Christian Caligula, . with charges that he turned the Lateran into a brothel. He and “his gang violated female pilgrims in the very basilica of St. Peter; …offerings of the humble laid upon the alter were snatched up as casual booty”(p.43). Some bishops who dared to take part in a trial condemning John’s abuses came under the rage of this pope. “One had his tongue torn out, his nose and fingers cut off; another scourged; the hand of a third was hacked off”(p.60). John XII is rumored to have been killed by an angry husband who caught the Holy Father in the act, but Chamberlin is cautious to say that perhaps this was perhaps gossip of the day with no verification.

Pope Benedict IX sold the papacy for 1,500 pounds of gold. to Giovanni Gratiano. Rumor has it, he wished to cease being pope to marry. The reason he is said to have sold it, is because Benedict, while willing to cease being Pope, was not willing to give up a luxurious lifestyle.

Perhaps the saddest tale of all is the story of Peter of Morone, who became Pope Celestine. He was a “holy man who hung his cowl upon a sunbeam, whose hours of devotions were marked by the tolling of a supernatural bell”(p.79). He lived in a cave high up on Monte Morone. Chamberlin calls him a “simple good man”(83). Celestine, once Pope, longed to be a recluse monk again. He abdicated, and then Boniface VIII stepped in. Boniface feared the followers that Celestine had, . so he decided to have the ex-pope arrested and brought back to Rome. Bonfice eventually did capture him, condemned all that Celestine had done as Pope, and imprisoned him for the remainder of his life.

Bonifice VIII was known for simony and nepotism. . Bonfice though, countered these charges by holding that, “a pope could not, by definition, commit simony, for he was the church and the church was he and all that it possessed was at his ordering” (p.94). Also known for “witty” speech, . Boniface is recorded as saying something like, “Sexual immorality? Why- there is no more going to bed with women and boys than in rubbing one hand against the other” (p.111). . He is also to have said, “”A man has as much hope of survival after death as that roast fowl on the dining table there” (p.111), this remark made on a fast day. Chamberlin implies that perhaps Boniface was kidding, yet those writing his every word made sure to include these statements. Boniface is also known for the bull Unam Sanctum which “made explicit what had been implicit: It is necessary for salvation that all human creatures shall be subject to the Roman Pontiff”(p.119).

John XXII . was a banker. “He destroyed the little friars who had arisen with their terrible heresy that Christ and his disciples had been poor men, . that the amassing of wealth was contrary to his teaching” (p.131).

Clement VI . was “a happy, splendid priest with a vast taste for the table, considerable culture, and an indiscreet love of women” (p.132). He “made no secret of his liking for feminine company” (p.132). One contemporary said of him that, “…when he was an archbishop he did not keep away from women but lived in the manner of young nobles, nor did he as pope try to control himself. Noble ladies had the same access to his chambers as did prelates and among others, the Countess of Turenne was so intimate with him that, in large part, he distributed his favors through her” (p. 133).

Urban VI was known as a man with a bad temper.. The cardinals at the time thought of him as a madman. To an adviser who doubted his powers to excommunicate one for the mildest misdemeanor he yelled, “I can do anything, anything!” (p. 143). He was said to have physically attacked the cardinal of Limoges in consistory, whereupon many of the cardinals drifted away from Rome. Eventually, a few of the cardinals began devising a plan to remove him from the papacy. Urban was alerted, and had those cardinals “put to the question,” which involved old cardinal Sangro “hoisted to the ceiling three times by the strappado and each time was dropped heavily to the floor” (p.153). Urban, unable to hear Sangro’s screams, directed the examiners to improve their questioning by torturing the old man more severely.

Pope Alexander VI first mistress bore him four children, and he strove to have those children in power and to also become pope. He was fourty years senior his second mistress.

Pope Leo X offered a profound statement, “How very profitable this fable of Christ has been to us through the ages” (p.223) after an advisor quoted from the gospels.

These are but a few examples from the book “The Bad Popes,”. After reading “The Bad Popes,” it was no wonder that the Reformation occurred. One could spend the whole year reading books on Luther’s life or the sixteenth century, and miss the centuries of corruption that provoked the Reformation.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Justified Saint,

I think that reformers can want doctrines changed. Doctrines like papal infallibility. Like modern notions of Mary as Mediatrix of Graces.

Luther eliminated books from the OT which were rejected by the Jews, who are keepers of OT Scripture. Some of the early church fathers did not believe the Apocrypha were a valid part of the canon either. So Martin Luther was in good company.

Luther was a revolutionary as well as a reformer. I don't support everything he did, such as rewriting parts of the New Testament, but he had to be a revolutionary in his time. What did the Catholic denomination have done with "heretics" around that time? They never had anyone killed? For the Reform to survive, it may be that Luther had to adopt a proportionate response to the Bishops of Rome. That isn't to say it was right.

 

Even the Catholic church historians admit the "obvious" truth that Luther was a Catholic reformer. The counter reformation - initiated in the church to address some of the very blunders that Luther was trying to address - "came too late" as the Catholic historians admit to this very day.

Sadly - some catholics are still demonizing the victims of the RCC's dark ages - but not the informed historians.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Justified Saint,

In regard to the Apocrypha, my understanding is that these books were never fully recognized as canon by a clear majority of Jewish scholars/rabbis.

If they removed books which they had previously formally recognized or which Jesus ever quoted as authority, of course I would reject that.

It seems to me more a case of the Catholic denomination's accepting the Greek version of the OT, which had writings, the canonicity of which it was less qualified to judge than were the Jews (as these writings are Jewish Scripture), at a time when the Jews were of two minds about the canonicity of these writings.

The Jews made one decision regarding the canon. The Catholic denomination made another. I believe that the Jews are entitled to greater deference on this point than the Catholic denomination.

I understand that the Apostles sometimes quoted from the Septuagint for their Greek writings. That is understandable. No need to retranslate a work. But by using and quoting the authoritative books, they did not adopt by reference those which are not properly part of the Canon. I shall use as an analogy...my using a big book which contained the Bible and the writings of another religion or even some of the books rejected as part of the NT if it were not in my native language while writing letter on matters of faith to an obscure African tribe would not mean that I endorsed the canonicity of the rejected parts of the NT.

Some of us have found that discarding the Apocrypha helps our witness to the Jews.

Blessings,

CalvinG