Was The Reformation Sent By God?

I would say that

English translations of scripture were first made in the 7th century. History is history and cannot be changed because you wish it weren’t so.

I find it interesting that the Church is criticized for not using the local language when it, in fact, translated the Bible into the MOST COMMON language in the world at the time. As late as the 17th century Latin was still a commonly used language throughout the areas that spawned the reformation.
“During the Early Modern Age, Latin still was the most important language of culture in Europe. Therefore, until the end of the 17th century the majority of books and almost all diplomatic documents were written in Latin.”Latin - Wikipedia


A medieval preacher addressing lay people would speak in the vernacular
The Language of Sermons: Latin and Vernacular - A History of Medieval Christian Preaching as Seen in the Manuscripts of Houghton Library - Collections - Houghton Library - Harvard College Library

 

Thanks for the clarification - I'm not suggesting that the various named "heresies" were all good baptistic Chrstians - the main feature would have been not accepting the authority of the RCC. I am not trying to be controversial here, just historical.

As you say, we can't prove or disprove the extent to which primitive, baptistic Gospel Christianity spread before the spread of the Orthodox & RCC authorities displaced them. It is recorded that Christianity came to Britain in the first century, that after the fall of Rome the Saxon invaders drove the British Christians west into Wales, & Cornwall. And that Augustine tried to persuade the British Christians to submit to Rome. What followed was the slaughter of 1,000 British Christians on the border of England & Wales around the year 600. The Welsh-British Christians continued to exist, & from there from about 1,300 the RCC was challenged by Wickliffe & the Lollards.

Reading the Epistles, we can see an assortment of errors needed correction, & a number of men set themselves up as authorities against the Apostolic teaching. See Acts 15, 2 Peter 2, Jude, 3 John, Rev. 2 & 3. We can also see the intention that letters should be shared with neighbouring churches. The Revelation letters were intended for all to read & obey.

The EFCs had a lot of discussions & arguments before they settled on the canonical Scriptures.

I now live in a village on the English-Welsh border, in the Golden Valley. We worship at a church in Hay-on-Wye mentioned in this link -

I hope you will find this local history, from a tourist site, of interest. I quote the last paragraph. Our home is in a valley 10 miles from Olchon.

 

A book you may be familiar with was published back in 1953 by John Moorman entitled: 'History Of The Church In England'. I appreciate the historical information you provided.

 

I don’t believe it was. The positive side, what is the great contribution of Luther and reformers? I would say the renewed emphasis on the principle of the primacy of grace. God chooses, God gives. God grace's and everything else flows from them. When we forget this principle, we get into serious spiritual trouble. To give it a technical name it becomes Pelagianism. So in the measure that Luther and his colleagues re-emphasized brought right to the fore this issue of the primacy of Grace I say good. I say yes, the Church must always hear that message. If Luther had stopped and said Gratia Prima, I'd be okay, grace first. The trouble was he pushed it and said Gratia sola, by Grace Alone. Luther and company were largely formed philosophically in a nominalist tradition. One of the basic principles of the nominalist is that God and the world can be categorized according to a univocal conception of being. That means that they can both be fit under the same general heading of the category of being. What that means in turn is that God no matter how great, how infinite God is, God is still one being among many, He's one being alongside the nexus of finite things.

I believe the analogical conception of being, whereby God, is what it means to be in the full sense then all other things, all created things aren't so much competitors alongside God's being but rather are participants in the very act of to be, which God is. That implies that God and the world are not in a competitive relationship. They're not competing for space on a shared ontological grid if that makes sense. As a result, we don't have to say the more glory God gets, the less I get or if I get glory I'm taking it away from God. That's true of you and me, if I say, well I get everything on this grid then you've got to get nothing saying, But if God in the world are not on the same ontological grid they don't exist competitively.

I believe the Glory of God is a human being fully alive. Scotus and Ockham depart from this idea and this was the school that trained Luther and reformers. So the reformers inherited the view that for God to get all the glory (which is the great thing) I think he should get all the glory too. But that shouldn't imply that now I get none of the glory or that my cooperation with Grace is somehow an affront to Grace. There is no auto salvation. We can't initiate the process of salvation we don't act and achieve our way to salvation at the same time cooperation with Grace is ingredient in the process of salvation.

 

Latin was the most common language in the world. The Church gave us the Latin translation of the Bible. How is that striving to keep the scriptures out of the common language?

From dictionary.com
Vul·gate
ˈvəlˌɡāt,ˈvəlɡət/
noun

1. 1.
   the principal Latin version of the Bible, prepared mainly by St. Jerome in the late 4th century, and (as revised in 1592) adopted as the official text for the Roman Catholic Church.
2. 2.
   common or colloquial speech.
   "I required a new, formal language in which to address him, not the vulgate"

 

Indeed, and I will remind you of Rome's persecution of John Wycliffe and Lollards.

 

English of the 600's is nothing like the English of the 1300's. Because of the Norman conquest English became something altogether different. One knowing modern English might muddle through the Canterbury Tales, but he would look in vain at the pages of Beowulf.

So Vincent's citation of English translations of the 7th century, when English was an altogether different language, and Rome was an altogether different church, is disingenuous.

That was exactly it.

 

In the first century, Greek was the "lingua franca" before the dominance of Latin. That clearly did not prevent the usage of local languages, but God was concerned that they should understand the Gospel preached in their own language. Acts 2:5-12

What local languages did the RCC translate the Bible into? And what did it do to those who did translate it & preach in a local language and to their translations? And when were people encouraged to read the Bible in their own language & the vernacular authorised for the mass?

To what extent was Latin as the "lingua franca" understood & used by common people across Europe & the Middle East? And with the Norman conquest, to what extent did Norman French become the "lingua franca?" Our language has some interesting examples where it didn't - farm animals were known by local names, but their meat by French names for the animal - cows/beef; sheep/mutton; hens/poultry, etc.

At a previous church in Southall, a town with a very high immigrant population, I was involved in the production of a hymnbook of Indian hymns printed in Hindi & Punjabi transliterated into singable English script, together with translation, so we could all sing with understanding.

 

I think we should all be glad that that there has never been a time "abot when Ebglsih became the common tongue."

I suspect also that many of the priests did not understand the Latin they were reciting as they performed the mass. They didn't need to.

And one of my fondly remembered quotes from the CofE Prayer book liturgy is "Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings."

 

IMO, it might be more precise to say that Latin was the most widespread language. It was indeed the language of the educated and the elite, but in 1500 AD might have been well understood by less than 10% of Europe's population.

 

Many problems with this statement,

-Most people were, at best, only functionally literate back in Luther’s time. Also at this time there was absolutely no public schools and literacy was not that common, especially among peasants. That’s why stained glass window were used also to help educate.

-Wanting to read or translate (even if they were literate) the bible for themselves wasn’t an option before 1436. That is because Gutenberg invented the printing press.

-Luther wasn’t the first to translate the Bible to German. After the printing press invention and before Luther translated a bible, 20 versions of the Bible had been translated in different German dialects by Catholics. In 1611, Luther published the KJV, in 1610 the Catholic Bible was published in English and before and after the reformers there were numerous vernacular versions. The NT was available in English in the year 1582.

Latin back in the time of Luther was the language of science and theology. Isaac Newton’s work on physics was done in Latin so all of Europe could read this work. This is true with all scientific and scholarly innovations during that time.

 

The version of history that you put forward is disingenuous. Likely far less than 10% of England was even literate from Christianization through the Middle Ages. Literacy

They could have given every peraon in England a copy of the Bible and very few would even know what to do with it. Also factoring in that a high percentage of any literate person of the time was likely literate in Latin and your assertions are weak. Resources • Medieval Colloquium • Ask a Medievalist • AAM columns • The University of the South
This is a highly complex issue and to try to boil it down to a straw man argument, as if the Church had the .wrd file on the desktop but wouldn’t release it to the thoroughly literate masses to read on their iPads reeks of intellectual dishonesty.

 

Was the Reformation sent by God? I suppose it depends on how you use the word 'sent'. There is no question that the Reformation was used by God.