Five Roman Catholic Myths About Lutheranism
Dr. Jordan B Cooper | 3 Apr. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ATQA_3BaA
The first four are not. OK, the first one is partly so, but not totally, I didn't go into it. The fifth was not shared by Chesterton.
4:34 No, since the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice, and you refuse to believe that, the accusation is not a myth. Here I cite your source:
"Moreover, the proximate species of sacrifice are two, and there are no more. One is the propitiatory sacrifice, i.e., a work which makes satisfaction for guilt and punishment, i.e., one that reconciles God, or appeases God’s wrath, or which merits the remission of sins for others. The other species is the eucharistic sacrifice, which does not merit the remission of sins or reconciliation, but is rendered by those who have been reconciled, in order that we may give thanks or return gratitude for the remission of sins that has been received, or for other benefits received."
Sed contra est:
John 19:36. As the disciple John identifies Christ on the Cross (Who died for our sins) with the Paschal Lamb (Which is eaten), he showed that the Eucharist is the same sacrifice as the Crucifixion, from the point of view of essence, as God sees it.
This means both sacrifices (different to our eyes) are at the same time both propitiatory and what the book of concord calls eucharistic.
That the sacrifice of Calvary was Eucharistic is clear from the final words. Of the seven words, the three that are given as final or quasi-final by diverse Gospellers are all eucharistic.
1) Into thy hands = confidence in providence, citation of a psalm.
Into thy hands I commend my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, the God of truth.
[Psalms 30:6]
Our Lord is celebrating and giving thanks for having won Resurrection for Himself, for His physical body, and deliverance from sin for His mystical body, the Church.
2) Eloi is also citing a psalm, where a subsequent verse actually mentions the Eucharist.
3) Consummatum est means He is thanking the Father for having fulfilled all necessary for our salvation.
If the sacrifice of Calvary can be eucharistic, so also can the sacrifice of the Mass be propitiatory.
As for the objections against "ex opere operato" from that text of yours, the writers are forgetting that the MAIN celebrant of the Mass is Jesus. Precisely as in Baptism, where you rightly DO acknowledge it leads to forgiveness of sins ex opere operato (or without much difference, even if you would reject the phrase).
6:03 I BESEECH you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service
[Romans 12:1]
In fact, this is rather the consequence of the Mass, than the Mass itself, however, it is prepared in the Mass, as we unite ourselves with the sacrifice of Jesus to the Father, which is why this sacrifice is re-presented, so that we can unite ourselves to it, while not standing below the Cross physically then and there.
So, no, Romans 12 is far from giving an alternative meaning to the Mass, as compared to the Roman Catholic one.
6:50 He did reject tradition as we understand it, that is as normative:
"Behold what great darkness is in the books of the Fathers concerning faith; yet if the article of justification be darkened, it is impossible to smother the grossest errors of mankind. St Jerome, indeed, wrote upon Matthew, upon the Epistles to Galatians and Titus; but, alas! very coldly. Ambrose wrote six books upon the first book of Moses, but they are very poor. Augustine wrote nothing to the purpose concerning faith; for he was first roused up and made a man by the Pelagians, in striving against them. I can find no exposition upon the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, wherein anything is taught pure and aright. O what a happy time have we now in regard to the purity of the doctrine; but alas! we little esteem it. After the Fathers came the pope, and with his mischievous traditions and human ordinances, like a breaking water-cloud and deluge, overflowed the church, snared consciences, touching eating of meat, friars hoods, masses, etc., so that daily he brought abominable errors into the church of Christ; and to serve his own turn, took hold on St Augustine’s sentence, where he says, Evangelio non crederem, etc. The asses could not see what occasioned Augustine to utter that sentence, whereas he spoke it against the Manicheans, as much as to say: I believe you not, for ye are damned heretics, but I believe and hold with the church, the spouse of Christ, which cannot err."
Table Talks, DXXXVI.
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/tabletalk.v.xxi.html
7:51 If the tradition of the Church were capable of error, either one of two.
a) the error is purely adiaphoron (I know you use that word), like if all of the Church had agreed on the shape of the Tower of Babel and today nearly everyone thinks a larger version of a Medieval Donjon or an Ancient Roman Lighthouse is false, most think it was a ziggurat, I think Nimrod planned a rocket project that (thank God) never took off;
b) or the error is essential, and that would mean the gates of Hell had prevailed.
Let's recall. Matthew 28:16—20, Jesus tells His apostles to preach all truth He has revealed, and promises His presence for all days.
This doesn't mean no one in the Church can err, it doesn't even mean most Church men cannot be temporarily lax about a truth (how many have been Old Earth Creationists the last 100 years?), but it does mean that error will not prevail over truth inside all of the Church for even 24 consecutive hours.
In the former case, a Reformation is less needed than a gloss. In the latter case, one has affirmed a proposal that makes Jesus untrue to His promise.
8:13 There is a big difference between an individual pastor, shepherding part of the Church, and anything that claims to have authority over all of the Church.
If my immediate curate were an Old Earth Creationist, God could clearly keep His promise by having elsewhere another pastor who is Young Earth Creationist.
This is by the way a reason why CCC is at least presumable argument against "John Paul II" being pastor of all the Church, since it was issued under him and basically ties its readers down to Old Earth, or even Theistic Evolution.
Fortunately, by 1992, other people than he were claimed to be Pope, both the Palmarian and the first Conclavist one were already in place. And both of these were Young Earth Creationist and fairly explicit about it. "Gregorio XVII" was just Young Earth Creationist, but Pope Michael I was also Geocentric.
9:23 Tradition is not so much comparable to a pastor as to a Bible translation.
Saying the Church could for centuries be wrong about Hebrews 13:10 proving the Mass to be a Sacrifice, and this before we partake of it, so not simply by the sacrifice of our gratitude, is equivalent to saying the whole Church could be using the JW translation New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures and deny the Divinity of Christ or that the Good Thief was with Jesus in Paradise on Good Friday when both had died on their crosses.
The Bible can only be useful if understood correctly, so, pretending a wrong understanding (on an essential) of some word was harming the Church for centuries is like saying the Bible was absent or wrongly translated for centuries (also on essentials, obviously).
9:50 "If tradition is capable of being wrong, what then do we use to correct that tradition"
Two tools. The Bible. But as the wrong tradition probably also claims a prooftext, even more, the correct tradition, which has always, always, always been preserved parallel to the wrong one.
To say it hadn't so been preserved, would involve Jesus not keeping His promise or relating it to the task in Matthew 28:16—20.
So, if Luther thought he had detected a conflict between a RC tradition and the Bible, he should have checked whether Eastern Orthodox or Monophysites or Nestorians had preserved another tradition, and taken that as the preservation of truth.
Instead he opted for his studies being a Restoration of truth, which is impossible, since Loss of truth is on the scale of the Church universal impossible.
10:42 The last Supper was not just the first Eucharist, it also was the first sacerdotal ordination.
Jesus was making His twelve disciples priests, potential celebrants, meaning that all who celebrate Mass need to drink the Holy Blood.
Making each faithful communicant receive it, even if he was not a celebrant, is to our understanding an adiaphoron.
Even Orthodox will on occasions, when the Eucharist is given from their equivalent to the Tabernacle, give only the Body of Christ, only the element of bread as it previously was.
11:35 "very clearly opposed to the entire tenour of Scripture"
Oh, not very clearly opposed to a specific proof text, but to your understanding on a more holistic level?
11:55 Three things are God-breathed.
1) The Apostles.
2) Their tradition.
3) The Holy Scriptures.
For item 3, we already agree that 2 Timothy 3:16 is a valid proof text.
For item 1, I offer John 20:22.
For item 2, I offer John 14:26.
So, saying "only Scripture is God-breathed" is anti-Scriptural.
12:41 A problem with this so-called Reform Movement.
A) It supposes an error had already crept in, long ago, leaving no certain trace of the corresponding truth apart from the Bible text itself, which is contrary to the Bible.
B) It was excommunicated by Bishops while having no bishops and while preserving no bishops as the Catholic Church understands these (according to the traditional and therefore also better Biblical understanding).
14:00 What we would say is, all of the Church Fathers on some points disagreed with what Martin Luther said.
"if you're talking 14:17 about the treasury of Merit or 14:18 indulgences or communing only in one 14:21 kind 14:23 um the authority of the papacy 14:25 especially in the early centuries of the 14:27 church it's certainly in the way that 14:28 the late medieval Church formulated it 14:29 if you look at many of these doctrines 14:32 and many of these practices it becomes 14:34 very clear that on on some of these 14:36 points the early church very clearly 14:39 agreed with where the Lutheran 14:41 Reformation"
I'd grant you one point of practise : Communion under one kind.
Indulgences, the early fathers certainly thought certain prayers and alms indulgenced, as the Orthodox do.
Authority of the papacy, see II Clement.
Treasury of merit, well, even supposing you could not find it in the early Church, you have it in Scripture.
Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church:
[Colossians 1:24]
15:26 "It's not that we left Rome, but that Rome left us."
For Archbishop Lefebvre or Pope Michael I, you can realistically make that kind of claim.
You point to the century preceding the acts which on some one or perhaps both sides were schismatic (Pope Michael I would say that both Archbishop Lefenvre consecrating bishops and Antipope Wojyla forbidding them in 1988 were people in objective schism or soon entering into it, even if the consecrations are valid).
For Luther, it is impossible to point to the previous century, unless you do so to Hussites, already in schism, and for them it was impossible to point to the previous century without pointing to Waldensians which are now Calvinists or Albigensians which were identified as Manichaeans. So, definitely not in the Church.
16:39 If you speak of Vatican II-ism, especially for the last three of its Popes, it is clear that if I don't want a Church founded in 1522, I also don't want a Church founded in 1962—65 by Aggiornamento, or a Church founded in the early 1990's by the Anti-Fundamentalist positions of CCC and "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church"
16:59 Would you mind showing a doctrinal tradition of post-Trent Rome, which did not exist in pre-Trent Rome?
Centralism is obviously a disciplinary trait, like Usuardus in 1490's was not in as wide or universal a use as Martyrologium Romanum in 1584.
17:26 I already commented on Kant.*
Perhaps he was after all of Lutheran heritage, since his family was from Curonia.
But for the rest, I pretty much accept your position, also that of Chesterton, that Luther's Anti-Aristotelianism was less Nominalist than Hyper-Platonic.
Chesterton when it came to Baptism of Aristotle actually examplified what you would mean by a development getting more and more skewed and then getting corrected. But of course, philosophy is not theology itself, one could obviously find theologians ignoring philosophy and so even in the wake of St. Thomas having no harm from hyperplatonism.
Meanwhile, I find Bishop Tempier's philosophy from 1277 very attractive. He pretty much avoided entering into frontal conflict with St. Thomas.
The closest they came was St. Thomas saying in fact angels are individuated by different species, since they have no matter, and Bishop Tempier condemning the proposition God could not in principle have made it otherwise.
And Nominalism was more active in forming Humanism, than in forming either Luther or St. Ignatius directly. Of Loyola, I mean. And yes, both were more Humanist than Thomist in their overall cultural outlook, and yes, the Humanist "satius est bene velle quam verum nosse" as per Petrarch does owe sth to Nominalism.
*22:11 Was Immanuel Kant a Lutheran?
Wasn't he Calvinist?
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