Part II Catholic and Protestant Differences Section II

PART II Section II
A More Detailed Background

For those who might desire more detail than the PART II Section I Overview:

Johann Eck (a Dominican friar) debated Martin Luther (and others) during the famous (and wide-ranging) Leipzig Debate in June and July of 1519. Luther had started the Reformation in 1517 (if we set aside the story of Jan Hus in Bohemia 100 years before 1517) by nailing his 95 Theses on a church door on 31 October 1517, in Wittenberg, Saxony. (Initially, of course, he had no idea how far it all would go;  but he was certainly a “man on a mission”.)

Most Protestants today probably never heard of Luther, though his name has been in the news because of the 500-year anniversary. But then, most "Protestants" wouldn't call themselves that, just "Christians". So in a sense, going into detail about Martin Luther is flogging a dead horse, one that isn't even there. But for the curious, I'll relate a few facts about him. He's sort of the King Lear of the Protestant Reformation, so important in its beginning, colorful, powerful, full of bombast, yet cast aside by smarter men (Zwingli first, then Calvin) and finally left behind by the tides.

In any event, during the course of this Leipzig debate, Luther admitted he would have to accept the Bible over a Church Council.

• At that moment I would think a number of gasps would have been heard from every corner of the room.
• Obviously, if you lay a Bible on the desk in front of you, it won’t open of itself and begin teaching you in a voice of its own. 
• Even if you open it and prod it a bit, it will just lie there. 
• Someone has to actually READ it and draw their own conclusions, or read it with associated learning materials containing his own denomination’s take on what the Bible would speak about if it could.

So by his assertion, did not Luther clearly set himself against a parliament of learned clergymen? (And one hopes an assembly of wise ones, but at least as a group having a collective understanding and insight, as any congress would).

• You see the hubris? 
• It’s actually staggering. 
• Martin Luther knew better than a Council with members from all sorts of backgrounds and indeed, from different nations, collectively possessing an extremely wide-ranging experience “skill set” regarding the Christian Faith. 
• Yet such a senate of elders could not collectively be smarter than he himself, Martin Luther, a 36-year-old academic who had been trained in a small, in-bred academic circle in two provincial universities in Thuringia and what is now Saxony-Anhalt.

It has to be one of the most hubristic statements ever made.

And as the apple never falls very far from the tree, so Protestantism asserts any individual can read the Bible for himself and chart his own Salvation course. Or at least Luther talked that up, but soon found it didn’t work very well. We’ll discuss that more in Part III, the section on the Bible. Here I’ll just point out the curious fact that Protestant Bible Societies have pushed Bibles on all sorts of folks, even leaving them in motel rooms (as do the Gideons, a group I myself am thankful for). Yet most folks getting these Bibles are not very educated in such a field as Biblical Studies. So it’s an odd thing to do when you consider that learned Protestants themselves have recourse to Protestant Bible commentaries, of which many have been published. They don’t push the commentaries, though, on the people who would need them most. Interesting.

• Compare that attitude to Romans 10:15 “How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher?” Or that great scene in Acts 8, (Acts 8:31 ‘"How can I," he said, "unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”)

Significance

Luther’s astoundingly arrogant claim is where things get complicated. The Holy Bible is a wide selection of books, a portable library, and this library's volumes were written over thousands of years by a people living quite differently than people do today.

• So, naturally enough, some of its books are easier to read and understand than others, and among the New Testament authors, you also have the same reality. 
• St. Paul is hard-to-read, often leaving one clueless, and often seemingly contradicting himself (much to the delight of atheists in debate). 
• St. James is easy to read; couldn’t be easier. Yet I’ve read exegesis (Biblical commentary and explanation) done by Lutherans that stand James on his head. (And quite plausibly, too; I mean, they seem to make a good case for themselves, until you go back and read James himself again. The effect is startling.)

Now, Luther was a 34 in 1517 (his birthday was November 10), having studied theology and advancing through the academic ranks in about 7 years (he had earlier briefly studied to be a lawyer, and all his early higher education was at Erfurt, a city worth visiting today, both for its Lutheran heritage and the fact it is one of the best preserved medieval towns in Germany). He had begun to teach theology in 1508 (age 25) and made chair of the theology department of the newly established Wittenberg University in 1512 (age 29). These ages and dates of Luther are important here because they show how young he was and how much of a total academic he was. In other words, as an Augustinian friar never removed from the Cloister, Luther had no pastoral experience, living in a parish and dealing with everyday people. Nor, beside a short trip to Rome, did he travel much. So, as they didn’t have the Internet in those days, Luther’s world was a bit small. (Today his area of Germany makes up the states of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt.)

Indeed, the medieval University of Erfurt (closed in 1816 by the Prussians and reopened in 1994 after German re-unification), was in Luther’s young days a center of Nominalism, a late medieval school of thought that stressed God as essentially unknowable, remote, and imperious. (Sort of like the Islamic conception of Allah, actually; the idea was to stress the Sovereignty of God, something Calvin would become famous for.)

• Luther embraced Nominalism (which rejected Aristotle – and thus Thomas Aquinas – and he, Luther, used to say that William of Occam, a major 14th century Nominalist, was his master teacher. 
• It’s more than fair to say Herr Doctor Martin’s education was very one-sided.

Biblical Background to the Church’s Authority

Ironically enough for “Bible-only Christians”, as noted in Section one of this Part II of the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, the Living Magisterium predates the actual New Testament. In Acts of the Apostles, chapter 15, St. Luke records the Council of Jerusalem. This council met around 50 A.D. and before the New Testament was written. (St. Matthew might well have written his earliest version of his Gospel by then, in either Aramaic or Hebrew, and St. Paul probably had begun writing, as well.)

• But before the Council of Jerusalem, while Jesus was still on Earth, He had clearly mandated a hierarchical system. He had chosen 12 Apostles, which not only mirrored the 12 tribes of Israel, but also the ancient Israelite kings, who often had 12 councilors (again representing the 12 tribes). 
• Christ also signaled out three men of the Apostles, Peter, James and his brother John. They were at the raising of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:37, etc.) and at Christ’s Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36) and the Second Epistle of Peter refer to the latter (2 Peter 1:16–18) as perhaps does the first chapter of the Gospel of John (John 1:14).
• Also, beyond the Twelve, there were a group of Seventy that St. Luke mentions; he might have been on of them (see Luke 10).

Now, the famous scene in Matthew, where in the region of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus gives Peter the Keys of the Kingdom in Matthew 16:17-19, every Jew present, and every Jew who heard of it later, would recognize Jesus as acting like an ancient Israelite king. Those kings had a special advisor who was given the keys of the palace and thus became a Grand Vizier or prime minister. Jesus actions could be taken – by the Jews who knew the old stories – that Peter was being given a very special place, indeed. A unique one.

• Read Isaiah 22, especially the verses 21-23, particularly verse 22, “And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut, and none shall open.”

Or simply read through St. Paul’s writings with an eye toward how often the Apostle himself asserts his own authority. It’s on every page, almost every sentence. Galatians 2:9 “And when they had known the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas (Peter) and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship: that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision…”.

• He, Paul, has AUTHORITY, and so do the others, Peter, James, John – they’re recognized as leaders of the Church, indeed, overseers, or episkopos – and their recognition of Paul reinforces him authority. They are the Church’s overseers, or (singular) episkopos. 
• Our English word for episkopos is “bishop”.

Or see St. John in his Gospel, in Chapter 20:21-23, where he writes, ‘…Again Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so also I am sending you.” When He had said this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.”’

• All these passages point to the Biblically-based fact that the early Church had a hierarchy, and was understood by everyone in the Church to have a hierarchy, one that had Authority. This is even proven by St. Paul’s boasting how he stood up to Peter and James.

Throughout the early Church, then, the episkopos of each city would refer back to the chain of bishops before him, going back to an Apostle. When the Gnostics disputed Church teaching, the Catholics, or those of the “Universal” Church (Catholic means universal) would say, “Our bishop is so-and-so, who succeeded Bishop Such-and-such, who followed Bishop X who was a student of the Apostle John (or Peter, or whomever). Where is your bishop list back to the Founder? By what right do YOU teach what the Faith is?”

• And of course they couldn’t argue that.

In the same way, one could argue with Protestants: “Where do YOU get your Authority from? What’s the line of YOUR bishops?”

But there of course the whole Protestant Project falls apart. It has no such history. It's all individuals, each believing what he will (sort of like Progressive Catholics, actually!). Against this ecclesial corporate history it does have arguments, ranging from “You’re wrong! Peter and James and the rest with just buddies or relatives of Jesus! He set up no organized body!” to the older, long-standing, “Well, Jesus set up the Church but then came the Great Apostasy, when everyone fell away from the Faith, except for a minority who are nameless but to God.”

In the end, in our current state of civilizational crisis, all this might seem too trivial to matter. But knowledge is a good in itself, true knowledge. And we're having a civilzation crisis precisely because people don't know this information.

An Préachán