Monday, October 27, 2014

... against Two Protestants on Protestantism, Specifically Baptism and Waldensians, and on Inquisition

1) ... against Two Protestants on Protestantism, Specifically Baptism and Waldensians, and on Inquisition, 2) ... continued against Protestant/Waldensian "Apostolic Succession"

Fr. Robert Barron on Protestantism and Authority
Fr. Robert Barron
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWYwBDqFsuE


Hans-Georg Lundahl
Biblical History was already in everyone's hands. Historia Scholastica was translted into vernacs

As said, Historia Scholastica by Petrus Comestor was translated into several vernaculars and this with the full blessing of the Church.

No Flemish Inquisition was burning the Rijmbijbel, which was a Flemish translation of Historia Scholastica. And obviously Petrus Comestor with his Flemish translator (and his colleagues for other vernaculars) took Genesis 1-11 as very literal history.

So, on Genesis 1-11 (except perhaps the question of freewill in ch 4 and precise nature of fall ch 3) Catholics and Luther were totally agreed. Not Petrus Canisius, not Pius V, not Cajetan, not Francis of Sales, nor any other Catholic found any fault with Luther for taking these chapters literally.

Number of Protestantisms ... if Catholic Church and Orthodox Curch together are so close to each other and so far from the Protestantisms properly so called, that would make about 5th or 6th major kind of Protestantism. Or perhaps 7th.

Lutherans and Anglicans are an Episcopalian one with Methodists.

Then there is the Presbyterian one, Calvinists and Arminians.

Then there is the Baptist or Congregationalist Protestantism (with free will baptists and calvinist baptists and pentecostals).

Then there is Restored Magisterium Protestantism (Watchtower Society and Mormons, also Apostolic Church).

Then there is Anabaptist type - Amish, Mennonites, Quakers and Shakers.

Then there are Apostates totally, like Unitarians, Transcendentals, Atheists.

Tommy.
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Wrong on this one Hans, Then there is the Baptist or Congregationalist Protestantism (with free will baptists and calvinist baptists and Pentecostals. Baptist have NOTHING to do with the others.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Sorry, but there do exist Calvinist Baptists in Wales and Pentecostals are a branchoff of Baptism. Actually up to 19th C. there were two rival Baptist Sects, the Particular Baptists (or Calvinist Baptists) and the General Baptists (or Arminian ones). Each was founded by coupling one branch of Presbyterian's doctrine on Grace and Freewill with the Baptismal practise of Anabaptist sect.

Not my fault if you are unfamiliar with the history of Baptism.

Tommy.
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Wrong again, You can sit thee all day long saying things you know nothing about but the fact remains Baptist NEVER were nor are part of any Pentecostals churches or doctrine.That goes for Calvinist as well. They have entirely two different doctrines. The pages you googled haven't a clue. To say Presbyterian is part of Baptist, more trash. Baptist have ALWAYS been separate of any religion. The pages you used to support your claim are just plain bogus. It is not you I am attacking,it's the pages you use to support your claim.Oh they must be true, I found it on the inter net.

[I missed the idiocy of his claiming to attack internet pages I was using, when I wasn't using any. If I had written a blog post giving the details of my knowledge of the Baptist Diverse Sects' history, I might have linked to it and he would still be claiming to attack the pages I was using and "not me" - in reality I have the knowledge from printed encyclopedias I was reading years before I even knew there was such a thing as internet.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl
  • 1) I did not say Baptists were part of Pentecostals. I am classifying Pentecostals as a kind of Baptists.

  • 2) Freewill Baptists are obviously not Calvinists Baptists and Calvinist Baptists are not Freewill Baptists.

  • 3) I never said Baptists were Presbyterians. I said that the two branches of Presbyterians were mirrored in the two Baptists Sects as to Q of Grace and Freewill - AND that their take on Baptism was taken from Anabaptists.


In other words, the Baptists start out twice as a crossover between Anabaptist and Presbyterian types of Protestantism.

[This also I have from those printed encyclopedias. Not from an internet page, supposing that were somehow suspect.]

Bibleindepth
+Hans-Georg Lundahl
Not accurate on baptist. The actual baptist started with John the baptist. Then your description of sects is not how they are defined. There are some splits also. Its a long, long history. You cant form a denomination off of baptist. You may start a denomination but it will have nothing to do with baptist. And yes a church can have the name baptist and not be baptist. And while we are discussing it...baptist is not a name...its a belief. We have been called by many names.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
St John the Baptist did not baptise "in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost" yet. He died while the OT was still ongoing.

Now, up to YOU to trace, century by century each population of Christians, great or small, from St John the Baptist to those sects of Baptists that we also historically acknowledge and which we believe started off, one ("particular Baptists") as a mixture of Mennonite and Calvinist beliefs, and one ("general Baptists") as a mixture of Mennonite and Arminian beliefs.

Bibleindepth
+Hans-Georg Lundahl I didnt say he did. I said the baptist church started with John. Which is not a name. I could just as easily say Jesus's church started with John.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Except the Christian Church is supposed to start with Jesus Christ - who took over some of his disciples.

John is a name, he is called "the Baptist" because there was another St John, namely "the Evangelist", and that is not a name either.

So, you have still given no credible tracing of survival of Baptists beside Catholics over the centuries. I do not recommend your trying to pull in Albigensians.

Bibleindepth
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Thats what you think. And there is nothing wrong with the albegenses or vaudois. 

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nothing wrong with Albigenses?

Of the beginning of the Bible they believed perhaps as much as "in the beginning God created Heaven" and there it stops, because they believed Satan had created Earth.

As to Vaudois, there is something wrong about popping out of the earth like a mushroom, when Christ had promised to be with His Church every day unto the end of all time.

Besides, their take on vows and military service was not Christian, at least not if Christ meant his words in telling Apostles to convert all nations. Note : not make disciples out of some select few men from every nation, as Watchtower Society Bibles mistranslate, but of all nations. Kingdoms were meant to convert and did that. And as they had armies and as their soldiers took vows, Christendom had armies and knights taking feudal vows.

You are still behind in presenting a case there were Baptist believers from the days of St John the Baptist to now.

Here is the Catholic comment on the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ which the Valdenses abused:

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition.
ST. MATTHEW - Chapter 5
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id19.html


Bibleindepth
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Ther is nothing on the early waldenses except what there enemies wrote. We dont even know there real name. Because they followed Jesus they didnt have one. Just like us.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
There is nothing on them except what their opponents wrote, i e us Catholics?

OK, you can pretend Inquisitors were liars and invented heresies for their victims.

But that does not equal your having a historic trace of Waldenses reaching back in unbroken line to St John the Baptist or to Jesus Christ - and that is what I was challenging you about.

Btw, I do not believe the Inquisitors were liars, I do believe if they said /wrote so and so had confessed to beliving Satan or An Imperfect Principle or whatever creating material things, I am quite willing to believe Albigenses thought that. And when they say the accused believed Christ had forbid us even to take oaths in court, when testifying, I am quite willing to believe that is what the Waldenses had been believing.

Btw, so and so is an ex-Waldensian or an ex-Albigensian who has been reconciled with the Catholic Church through the Inquisition (lots more of those than of the burned ones). He hears the Inquisition accuses his former sect of believing what he had never believed while being a member of it. Wouldn't you in such a position have stepped out and said "that is not what we believed"?

Even assuming someone doing that might have risked being burnt as a relapsed heretic, wouldn't someone even so have risked it, and wouldn't we have heard of it because he got burnt?

For the Knights Templar there is a dispute. I do not believe they were innocent. But there were people who stepped up and said they had never committed sodomy and there were people who stpped up and said they had never trod on the Cross. For St Joan of Arc, she repudiated her own former false confession, and she got rehabilitated in a second trial - after her death. For Savonarola also there was himself contesting his innocence and one St Philippo Neri beliving he was innocent. Our present form of Hail Mary actually dates from Savonarola. In the time of St Thomas Aquinas, the last word of the prayer was "Jesus". Savonarola attached the remaining words, which among Orthodox count as another and separate prayer as compared to the Angelioc Greeting. But for Waldenses the only claims of innocence have come from people professing similar doctrines to those they were accused of. For Albigenses I think the claims come from people basically taking Albigenses for just a variation on Waldenses.

I am not quite correct in saying only claims of Waldensians being innocent come from people who are Protestants. For one thing, Louis XI of France (not Saint Louis but one Valois, I think) considered Waldensians "orthodox" and refused to persecute them. Was he a Protestant? No. But he seems to have been a bit more thickskinned about orthodoxy than Inquisitors. He seems to have thought differences the Inquisitors thought of as difference between faith and heresy as differences of opinion. Plus Wladyslaw Jagiello, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, seems to have called in Jerome of Prague, or someone, a disciple of John Hus, to order Academic life in Poland or Lithuania. But then he was a recent convert. He was baptised just before marrying Queen Hedwig of Poland.

Bibleindepth
+Hans-Georg Lundahl
We have a 1600 book from them about the wars with the catholics and the attrocities the catholics committed. No one knows exactly how far back they go. Some early writers say to the days of constantine or earlier. Others say they were established by the apostles.

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
And the catholics say they flew around on broomsticks.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
"We have a 1600 book from them about the wars with the catholics and the attrocities the catholics committed."

A book from 1600 - sure.

In it they gave their version of the wars, and some Catholics had committed atrocities in them - sure.

They may get back to Constantine or even the Apostles? How do you document that from a book from 1600? That is just plain idiocy, as far as historiography is concerned.

It is not like taking Genesis as history despite Moses living millennia after Adam, because in the case of an AD 1600 book about Waldensians we do have very credible Christian historiography for the centuries past Peter Waldo back and they conflict with the Waldensian account. For which we have no historiography going back beyond Peter Waldo, or not much, if you count La Noble Leçon as older than him, and if you count it as Waldensian.

"And the catholics say they flew around on broomsticks."

What Catholics said that about whom?

The Catholics in the 1600 book about the Waldensian martyrs in the 1600 book?

How do I know for certain no Waldensian had for real been found guilty of witchcraft?

Bibleindepth
+Hans-Georg Lundahl You might want to skip that history lesson. It really portrays your church in a bad light. And the history is from historians not the christians. I didnt look at who did the painting of them on broomsticks.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
No, I do not want to skip history lessons.

A man who gets his basic information on where the Church of Christ was in AD 600, perferring a book from 1600 to either books from 600, portraying the Christianity of 600 (that would be a bit after Boethius, but we might be talking of Gregory Bishop of Tours or Fredegar Bishop of Tours, and a bit beyond that we have material from St Bede and from King Alfred, just to mention things relevant for England and France, or material from St John of Damascus), or books taking into account those written in or around 600, that is a man like you, is someone with whom I prefer to leave the privilege of skipping history lessons.

As I had said, when as you said Catholics considered Waldensians guilty of witchcraft and then burnt them, was that by any chance in the book from 1600?

And might this book from 1600 by any chance be the infamous Book of Martyrs by Foxe?

Because, if Foxe may be relatively good on Lollard "martyrs" in England the century before and up to the Coventry "martyrs", as historical facts go, I consider he is totally useless for facts about any persecuted non-Catholics on the Continent and two centuries or more before his book. Or pretty nearly so.

Bibleindepth
+Hans-Georg Lundahl No its for sale right now on ebay.

+Hans-Georg Lundahl 1621 Waldensian Chronicle. There is an english translation in pdf ...google it. with a little searching.

+Hans-Georg Lundahl And you can discount what you want but Foxe's book is quite good. It includes bibliography. So you must know it goes way earlier than his book. And the witchcraft thing with catholics is recorded numerous times in history in many places.

[Actually three comments, I only saw the last one at first.]
Hans-Georg Lundahl
OK, Foxe's book includes a bibliography.

Fine.

The books that Foxe mentioned as earlier ones, have they survived independently from Foxe, and if so where are they?

Or shall I trust the good judgement of Foxe when it comes to deciding if they were genuine?

Witches were burnt. That much is true and certain.

The point I was challenging you on was, can you prove that Waldensians who were innocent of witchcraft were nevertheless accused of witchcraft and burnt of witches because they were Waldensians?

While burning Waldensians was a bit huge - because they were in the bad company of the much worse Albigensians, i e it calmed down once Albigensian heresy was gone - being Waldensian as such plus refusing pertinaciously to become a Catholic as per one's baptism again could land one on the stake without any accusation of witchcraft added.

Perhaps Foxe confused matters, since the much earlier Priscillians in Spain were accused of witchcraft. They were also not executed by the Church as such, but by the state. St Martin of Tours regretted having sat beside a bishop who approved of executing Priscillians, but some churchmen approving it does not make the Church the active part in their execution.

The Priscillians were neither Albigensians nor Waldensians.

What Priscillianists belived is apparent from how I Council of Toledo condemned them:

Trento - Philaret (Catechisms) : Filioque far older than III Council of Toledo
http://trentophilaret.blogspot.com/p/filioque-far-older-than-iii-council-of.html


The Spanish and Latin texts are copied from a source I link to, the English translation is my own.

Bibleindepth
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Like I said before ...I dont have to prove anything. And I dont argue with internet/wiki scholars. Scholars know the difinitive sources. We dont need your help.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Oh ... you don't?

Why have you been arguing with me for 26 comments then?

[actually Tommy. had been arguing earlier on]

Could it possibly be your scholarship just came off as VERY shoddy - over the internet?

Could it be you despise (or pretend to despise, but some of you pretend so well you succeed in actually despising too) internet scholars and wiki scholars just because internet and wiki gives air to people knowing history better than you do and expose you too much to that air?

And as to you not having to prove anything, as a Catholic I am proud of not taking that aloof attitude!

"Scholars know the difinitive sources."

By scholars, I hope you do not mean Craig A. Lampe?

Btw, due to how comments show, I missed your reference to Waldensian Chronicle from 1621.

By then they had already joined the Calvinists, so it is hardly even a very good reference for earliest stages of historically known Waldensianism - let alone for older supposed parts of supposed para-Catholic Christianity reaching all the way from Our Lord or St John the Baptist to Baptists of our times.

Does the Waldensian Chronicle modify your earlier statement that there is nothing on the early Waldensians except what their enemies wrote?
Bibleindepth
+Hans-Georg Lundahl No...The waldenses are thought to go back to the apostles. They are alluded to in some very early writings 300'sAD. And presumed could go back farther. One writer called them ancient. If you mean before 1200Ad which there is documentation on then no there is nothing from them only other writers.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
"The waldenses are thought to go back to the apostles."

Thought to - certainly. By Waldenses. By Protestants. But DO they in fact?

"They are alluded to in some very early writings 300's AD."

I have already taken out Vigilantius as a possible Waldensian. He was not. Btw, he was around 400.

So, who exactly do you mean and what exact writings do you mean in 300's AD?

"And presumed could go back farther."

For the Catholic Church we do not rely on presumed to but on did, as documented. No generation from the Apostles on is missing.

"One writer called them ancient."

Maybe they were by the time he wrote.

Maybe he wrote around their beginning and was mistaken.

"If you mean before 1200 AD which there is documentation on then no there is nothing from them only other writers."

According to some, you underestimate your case. Nobla leçon is diversely attributed to 1100 and to 1400. Now, 1100 is before 1200.

Also, some count Petrobrussians around Peter de Bruys and Henricians around one Henry of Lausanne as Waldensians before Peter Waldo. I agree they had similar doctrines, but to me they are three starting points for the sect, not three members of an already existing community.

As to Paulicians and Cathari, and Bogumils, clearly existing before 1100, these are not early Waldensians or Protestants, but early Albigensians. St Thomas counted them as Manichaeans, because of identity of doctrine, but I am not certain they had a continuity between their false prophet Manes and the time they appeared as Bogumils, Paulicians, Cathari, etc. And if I were a Protestant, I would definitely not hanker back to them. In fact I was once kind of a Protestant - a Lutheran - read about them and then decided my prejudices against the Inquisition were wrong, the Catholics had a right to wipe them out. Vile doctrines, vile practical consequences. Read - if you like - a book called The Night's Dark Shade by the Catholic author Elena Maria Vidal (it's her pen name).

[in new comment:] Continued from previous comment: I said I had taken out Vigilantius, but I forgot to link, here is my take on Richard Bennet's evaluation of Vigilantius as an early Waldensian:

Great Bishop of Geneva! : Between Vigilantius and the Waldensians
http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2014/09/between-vigilantius-and-waldensians.html


Here is a link to The Night's Dark Shade too. Note, the subject is not Waldensians, but Albigensians.

Amazon : The Night's Dark Shade: A Novel of the Cathars – May 14, 2010
by Elena Maria Vidal (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Nights-Dark-Shade-Cathars/dp/055745302X