What Was the Reformation? Hear a (So Far) Protestant:

The Forgotten Idea that Divided the Church
Gospel Simplicity | 16 Oct. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZDB_jMqn4s

Why I Disagree With CSL's Stated Case on the Subject of Becoming Catholic (I was aware of the quotes in the video before converting)

Why C. S. Lewis didn't become Catholic (even if everyone thought he would become one)
Gospel Simplicity | 2 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXsyqFRVIh4

2:44 "Orangeman" ... Tolkien's "Ulsterior motives"

ev9pfqwerty

@ev9pfqwerty

Underrated comment

jzvwkqvisl

@jzvwkqvisl

mere wordplay, equalling 'not RC'

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@jzvwkqvisl No, the woman of his life confirmed what the friend said.

6:34 He was somewhat prophetic about "John Paul II" in 1990, who changed the profession of faith after I had already converted.

I just said:

"whatever the Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims as being revealed by God, that I believe and confess" ...

The Catholic Church obviously believes that all of the faith was given before the death of the last Apostle.

This means, in order to reach as high a bar as "proclaim to be revealed by God" it obviously has to be at least one side in a longstanding quarrel, it cannot be an obviously new invention.

Back in 1944 it was:

Besides I accept, without hesitation, and profess all that has been handed down, defined, and declared by the Sacred Canons and by the general Councils, especially by the Sacred Council of Trent and by the Vatican General Council, and in a special manner concerning the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. At the same time I condemn and reprove all that the Church has condemned and reproved. This same Catholic Faith, outside of which nobody can be saved, I now freely profess and to which I truly adhere, the same I promise and swear to maintain and profess with the help of God, entire, inviolate and with firm constancy until the last breath of life; and I shall strive, as far as possible, that this same Faith shall be held, taught, and publicly professed by all who depend on me and by those of whom I shall have charge.

However, "John Paul II" in 1990, well after 1963, changed the profession of faith, adding to a basic repeat of above also:

Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definitive act.

In other words, what CSL was afraid of ...

Seriously, adherring to Jesus meant for the Apostles to adher not just to what He had already said, but what He was going to say. If one believes a man is the vicar of Christ and enjoys His assistance, that should, per se, be no problem, especially with above mentioned safeguards (one reason I do not believe "John Paul II" was Pope).

Kevin Clement

@kevinclement1533

There's a fine line between unconditional acceptance of what Jesus will teach VS what a follower of Jesus will teach. Jesus is infallible, but a follower of Jesus isn't.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@kevinclement1533 If he represents all of the Church, he is, because all of Jesus' Church is infallible.

The task was teaching all Jesus taught and commanded. The help was Jesus as God Almighty. The time for that help was every day or all days and the limit for that time is Doomsday.

7:52 Jesus was telling the woman to give His Mother the compliment She preferred.

Bad exegesis, CSL ...

7:59 St. Paul on exactly one occasion in the epistles showed an attitude which many (not least in the West) have stated as being an "attitude to St. Peter" (others further east say that the Cephas in Galatians 2 was called Cephas, because he was different from the Peter in Galatians 1, that being St. Peter).

8:05 There seem to be semantic reasons in Matthew 26:26 against Consubstantiation.

There is no case at all for Symbolism-Only or for Spiritual Presence of an actual Body.

9:21 I'll take that as a less than endorsement of Vatican II, and as a compliment to Mgr Williamson, who died earlier this year.

I think he was buried in Canterbury.

Answering Two Protestants

Three Things Catholics need to stop saying
Gospel Simplicity | 11 juin 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kexgWz7UgyI

3:18 Yes and the Anglo-Catholics of the Oxford movement were in fact denying themselves the descriptor Protestants.

An Evangelical "Protestant" cannot take credit for the honesty of an Anglo-Catholic "Protestant" ... it's like if a Commie took credit for the work of Jimmy Carter, because Jimmy Carter, as a Democrat, could also be labelled a "Leftist"

I happen to know the Oxford Movement because John Henry Newman described it with affection after leaving it for Catholicism. Apologia pro vita sua.

3:41 Not really, if what those "Protestants" who originally translated were finding Apostolic Succession, priests submitting to their bishop, Real Presence in the Eucharist in the Fathers.

Which the Oxford movement certainly did find in them.

Not exactly what Lizzy Reezay would have considered as Protestant back at Pepperdine!

9:14 I basically never say "that's your interpretation" without following up by giving a better one.

I think some Protestants have given me less courtesy, for instance when I state that

Genesis 3:15, Judges 5 (forgot the verse), Luke 1:28, 1:31, 1:42 between them prove Our Lady defeated Satan and prior to becoming Mother of God, while a verse in 1 John seems to prove She could not possibly have done so other than by being sinless.

11:28 I usually don't argue from infallibility for a Catholic claim against a Protestant.

I argue for infallibility a lot, but either the general thing, or that the Bible interpretation leaves a reasonable spectrum, and infallibility settles the exact point.

However, that there is an infallible Church is not disputable in reasonable Bible interpretation. Interpreting certain passages as not meaning that is about as candid as chosing the solution of an equation with imaginary numbers instead of a very simple one in natural integers.

12:48 "we cannot really know what it means this side of eternity"

Like God put it into the Bible so that no one could really understand it?

@AllieBethStuckey
Why am I not Catholic?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4lOCGSStgk4

"by grace alone, through faith alone"

Do you find that in the Bible?

Catholics Do Not Base "Infallible Magisterium" on "Opacity of Scripture"

@GospelSimplicity
You don’t need a magisterium to interpret a text
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/g4O28Qr2mEY

1) Now, this is a pretty good example of a text being very clear.

Next question: did Jesus Christ believe He gave His Church an infallible magisterium?

2) On a more pragmatic level.

I'd agree with Scholastic Answers aka Militant Thomist aka as Christian Wagner.

For each specific necessary doctrine, you probably on average would interpret the Bible right even without the infallible magisterium and your adherence to it.

The more doctrines you compound, the closer you come to having a zero chance of getting all of them right.

So, in a sense, the question has a flip question: how many doctrines are essential doctrines?

Quadriga Cassiani, Please!

I Thought I Understood Doctrinal Development... I Didn't
Gospel Simplicity | 23 Sept. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48IuL9i3KlM

12:54 Prooftext for Newman's principle:

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him
[Luke 24:27]
Example of this principle applied:
For these things were done, that the scripture might be fulfilled: You shall not break a bone of him
[John 19:36]
Which is mystical exegesis of:
In one house shall it be eaten, neither shall you carry forth of the flesh thereof out of the house, neither shall you break a bone thereof.
[Exodus 12:46]
And of:
They shall not leave any thing thereof until morning, a nor break a bone thereof, they shall observe all the ceremonies of the phase.
[Numbers 9:12]

"Thereof" and "of him" differ in English, because English masculines are automatically males, usually human, and a lamb would be "it" in English. Not so in Hebrew.

13:43 The Reformers did not invent literal reading.

What was the hallmark of the Church was not an exclusively mystical reading, it was a mystical also reading.

I'm all for "ark of the covenant" having in each OT occurrence a mystical reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I'm not for, and Newman wasn't for denying that the genealogy of Genesis 11 adds up to Abraham born in 292 after the Flood in Masoretic and Vulgate, 1070 in a correct LXX, 1170 in an edition of the LXX, 942 in some manuscripts of the LXX, arguably bases for Julius Africanus' manuscript of Vetus Latina. Oh, Julius Africanus and St. Augustine didn't get their love for literal exegesis on this point from the Reformers.

Multiple meanings doesn't mean "spiritual meaning only" ... if anything it means the opposite.

"without 13:53 spiritual ex exegesis we can kiss the 13:57 Trinity and other dogmas of the faith 14:00 goodbye now this is a bold claim but it 14:03 has been somewhat vindicated by more 14:05 recent scholarship at least with the 14:06 Trinity specifically Rowan Williams the 14:09 former Archbishop of Canterbury has a 14:11 groundbreaking work on Arius and in it he 14:13 argues that Arius was in fact kind of the 14:15 more literal reader of scripture whereas 14:17 people like athanasius and Arius' other 14:19 opponents were a bit more imaginative in 14:22 their interpretations"

In fact, this is taken pretty straight from Newman's own History of the Arians of the IVth Century.

Now, that work was re-edited with a variation after Newman converted.

The work you read is actually not a peace of authorised Catholic theology as such, it was published before Newman converted, and it was written and published from the standpoint of the Anglican converting to Catholicism, not from the standpoint of the Catholic.

That these are different can be seen from my own case. The Lutheran who converted to Catholicism decided the case of Caerularius very quickly, like Caerularius was basically a vassal rebelling against his liegelord the Pope. Not much better than the Bohemian King rebelling against the Holy Roman Emperor. That's why, in 2006, and after dissatisfaction with antipopes Wojtyla and Ratzinger I was ready to ask "what if local bishop is the Petrine office, like Palamas thought?" In 2009, I returned to Roman Catholicism, having found Orthodoxy a dead end, and even then at first to the FSSPX on the theory that they have (and I think they do have) an ecclesiology not very different from the Orthodox.

Now (as of lately) I am pretty much somewhat more able to trace the papacy through centuries like IV and V, as opposed to "primus inter pares" views of those Popes.

So, my view of the matter when I was a Lutheran ready to convert, and my view now as a Catholic, are not the same.

This book by John Henry Newman was not by "John Henry Newman the Catholic" (received and instructed by the Church), it was by "John Henry Newman the Anglican who was ready to convert to Catholic" ....

This is often forgotten equally by people who want to use "development of doctrine" as a cop-out for Old Earth Creationism and people who want to totally ditch Newman altogether because of this.

I'm not totally trusting either the judgement of Rowan Williams nor the initial one of John Henry Newman on Trinity being strictly dependent on going beyond the literal reading.

16:30 I would say that Papal or at least Roman infallibility has a very literal early exponent. I think it's St. Irenaeus.

20:57 I did for my part not ignore another book by Newman, or two.

History of the Arians of the IVth Century
Apologia pro Vita Sua

Indefectibility and institutional visibility are literal hallmarks of the Church Jesus founded as per a literal interpretation of the NT text. These would be mystical interpretations of the OT texts, in the sense that the Catholic Church physically speaking doesn't seem to be identical to Israel, but see this one:

And I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth: and I will establish with thee an everlasting covenant.
[Ezechiel (Ezekiel) 16:60]

Fulfilled in Matthew 28:16—20. Jews might find it hard to pretend God already established an everlasting covenant on Sinai, since that is at odds with Ezechiel saying He will do so in what was in Ezechiel's day still upcoming future.

Also Just Sharing, with One Initial Comment

Some are into imagining that being a Catholic must be a high strain on the ex-Protestant in me. They think in terms of the Protestants they are, but have little idea of what kind of Protestant I was.

Take a look at young Austin, 21, currently a student at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, IL. He is doing an interview and first a Church tour in St. John Cantius Church with a Catholic (OK, neo-Catholic, but still) priest (supposing his orders are valid).

Now Moody has perhaps some history of Anti-Catholicism. In Munken, Sigtuna, where we met for Church coffee after "high mass" such a history was far less recent. Lutherans are also ritually lots closer to Catholics. There was an icon there with the women of Sigtuna who wanted to keep the Catholic Churches, and (after image) were just buffed aside bc Reformation.

Protestant Tours STUNNING Catholic Church (Cantius Part 1)
Gospel Simplicity | 21.X.2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic6damkPw88