Sunday, March 20, 2011

Tidbits

1. Internet Explorer 9 and Being Assimilated by Quick Time
I upgraded all my computers to IE 9 a few days ago. I figured something wouldn't work correctly. I've got a few different audio / video programs, but I've set all the defaults to Windows Media Player. With IE 9, all audio began opening in a separate window with a small Quick Time bar with no controls. So I looked over all the Internet options stuff which was all still set to WMP. I tried a variety of things, but Quick Time decided it was not going to leave, so I completely removed the program. The ironic thing is about a month ago I explained to a friend with the same problem he didn't know how to work his Internet options. Kudos to Quick Time for hijacking my computers.

2. How's Family Radio Doing?
I've been meaning to check in with Family Radio now that doomsday is even closer. I'd be curious if Mr. Camping has been answering any questions about the recent earthquakes. Patrick Madrid actually posted an interesting X-File on the recent earthquakes here. Here's a great overview of Harold Camping from a URC minister (part two here). Also, here's a recent mp3 of testimonies of ex-Camping followers.

Camping Countdown clock:



3.  House Church Revisited
A while back I put together a brief article on the house church movement for James White's website: Tradition and the House Church Movement. After I wrote this article, the main leaders of this movement contacted me, and we went back and forth a bit. Recently the pastor of my church touched on this subject, and the audio link can be found here


4. Catholic Answers Grows Up in Regard to Luther
I never thought I'd see the day when Roman Catholics would be correcting Roman Catholics about Luther. They're now saying some of the stuff I've said for years. This post, Catholic Church and Luther asks "What is the Catholic Churches views toward Martin Luther today?" The normal response is heretic or madman. This time someone actually said, "The Catholic Church has no infallible official view, with respect to Martin Luther." That is indeed true. Hubert Jedin was a German  Roman Catholic historian from the Universities of Breslau and Bonn. He was a specialist in the history of the Council of Trent. He pointed out that Catholicism never condemned Luther by name at Trent, and that no official judgment on Luther exists by which a loyal Catholic is bound. There are many Roman Catholic scholars that are quite benevolent toward Luther, a partial list of these can be found here.

Also interesting was someone quoting Patrick O'Hare's The Facts About Luther and then having another participant state:

Ohare's book should not be used as a citation in this day and age. His book was a popular polemic intended to arm catholics to fire back at the vitriolic anti-catholic culture of America in that day (1900ish). But Ohare wasn't very good about carefully citing his sources by modern standards. It's really hard to substantiate some of his claims when you're challenged. Read the book if you like, but get corroborating evidence before citing him. In some cases he doesn't name sources, for other claims he names sources that have been since lost and there does appear to be some distortions, maybe even falsehoods in there.

That's amazing, I never thought anyone besides me would post something like this on Catholic Answers. The actual O'Hare section was as follows:

Martin Luther looked around and saw the damage that Sola Scriptura and 'private interpretation' of Holy Scripture was doing to his 'reformation', and made the following remarks...



"This one will not hear of Baptism, and that one denies the sacrament, another puts a world between this and the last day: some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that: there are as many sects and creeds as there are heads. No yokel is so rude but when he has dreams and fancies, he thinks himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and must be a prophet" De Wette III, 61. quoted in O'Hare, THE FACTS ABOUT LUTHER, 208.

I've covered this quote before. Luther isn’t talking about the devastating effect of sola scriptura. He’s talking about the devastating effect of the devil, who, Luther says, was at peace in his papal fortress, but now with the gospel being loudly proclaimed, must find a different way to keep men enslaved to sin and darkness. One of the Roman Catholic participants corrected the person posting this by stating,

His last years and months were more anti-papal and pro-evangelical Christianity more than he ever was. Luther didn't make this statement as a "what have I done!!?" type of sentiment Catholics would like it to say but rather he was disappointed that so many Christians who had started off by making the right decision (in his mind) to leave Catholicism made poor choices in going in Zwinglian directions or Reformed type theology (even though Calvin wasn't a contemporary there were Calvinist type overtones already) and Anabaptist thinking, etc. He felt Lutheranism was reformed Christianity and lamented that so many made the poor choice, in his opinion, of not following his lead. He was sad that there was chaos, but he wasn't regretful.

5. The King's Speech
I went to see this yesterday (finally) and thought it was very well done. Yes, it indeed deserved to win awards over Inception.

17 comments:

Viisaus said...

"Luther isn’t talking about the devastating effect of sola scriptura. He’s talking about the devastating effect of the devil, who, Luther says, was at peace in his papal fortress, but now with the gospel being loudly proclaimed, must find a different way to keep men enslaved to sin and darkness."


Luther could have employed this historical comparison: before the advent of Christianity, the world had not yet really heard about Gnosticism, but after the Church had gotten started, Devil raised of hordes of various Gnostic heretics to PARODY Christian doctrines, mislead people and also to make Christians look bad in the eyes of pagans (the wild rumors that the Romans heard about Christian practices, like orgies during communion, may have had some real-life basis in the behavior of Gnosics, whom pagans could not yet tell apart from orthodox Christians).

Viisaus said...

The Reformers had to wage a sort of "two-front warfare" - both against the idolatrous Romanism, and the wild antics of "Schwarmers" like Thomas Müntzer and the revolutionary Anabaptists of Münster.

(Who, btw, did not even believe in "Sola Scriptura" - the Schwarmers believed that their own mystical "inner light" had an authority even superior to that of the written word of the Bible.)

Just likewise, the early orthodox Christians had to struggle both against the "outward" threat of pagan idolatry and simultaneously, against the "inward" spiritual threat of Gnostic infiltration that some apostolic letters so vividly warn against.

Steve "scotju" Dalton said...

Your comments about Catholics correcting Catholics on Luther don't mean anything. These misguilded individuals don't represent the offical judgement of the Church. It is only their private opinions. Luther refused to obey his superiors and taught heresy. The Pope (and the rest of the magisterium) judged him correctly as a heretic and a schismatic. The people who are "correcting" other Catholics on Luther are ignorant, misguilded, or rebellious, no matter how high or low they are in the Church. Only the offical condemnation matters, and, as bob Sungensis explains, ol' Marty sealed his fate by refusing to repent.

zipper778 said...

scotju, are you saying that Rome did indeed pronounce an infallible judgement against Luther? Or is this simply your interpretation of a statement made by Rome? I ask this because you are making a statement without backing it up. You're only giving your opinion.

Steve "scotju" Dalton said...

Zippy, Luther's actions, his refusal to recant and repent, and the Church's response to his schism and heresy are pretty clear cut. Even without infalliability, the Pope judged correctly. However, he was exercising his office in the capacity of binding and loosing, so the decision is infalliable. JPII was merely giving his private opinion on Luther, not a offical proclamation, so it doesn't count.

PeaceByJesus said...

On Luther, and the unchanging Church:

LUMEN GENTIUM: "For there are many who honor Sacred Scripture, taking it as a norm of belief and a pattern of life, and who show a sincere zeal. They lovingly believe in God the Father Almighty and in Christ, the Son of God and Saviour. (Cf. Jn. 16:13) They are consecrated by baptism, in which they are united with Christ. They also recognize and accept other sacraments within their own Churches or ecclesiastical [Protestant] communities...

They also share with us in prayer and other spiritual benefits. Likewise we can say that in some real way they are joined with us in the Holy Spirit, for to them too He gives His gifts and graces whereby He is operative among them with His sanctifying power. Some indeed He has strengthened to the extent of the shedding of their blood.." .

..even if it was shed by Rome i might add. Of course the above is contradicted by the plain reading of such presumptuous Popes as Eugene IV in Cantate Domino: "no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church."

In reality, we can better expect Luther to sit in judgment on those who live and died "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord" (Acts 9:1) such as Luther.

The feeling that comes across from some RCAs today is that they would love to dispense with V2 (which truly is a problem, both with the Bible and historic R. Catholicism) , and long for the carnal means of the Inquisition, which was a substitute for N.T. spiritual means, in which "binding" did not mean with chains, or of the Bible.

PeaceByJesus said...

As for Camping, perfect timing. I just looked this AM to see if you had anything related to King Harold, as by God's grace i just made a tract/brochure on him, The CONCLUSION on CAMPING... as i heard Camping's crusaders were coming to town. I had just added some info from the source you provided.

A Christian brother recently had asked me to examine many of his teachings, and more could be added, but what is clear is that he does not really operate out of SS, but like cults and you-know-who, he relies upon much faith in him and Family Radio as exclusive, esoteric extrapolaters of eschatological esigesis, a rebel against authority misusing the authority of the Scriptures to make disciples after himself.

In all his highly allegorical (making Origen quite modest i suppose) applications, Camping somehow missed how this one applies to him: "Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. " (Acts 20:30)

James Swan said...

Luther could have employed this historical comparison: before the advent of Christianity

That's a good analogy. I recently posted similarly on church splits, comparing the rise of the New Testament Church with Judaism to the Reformation.

James Swan said...

Even without infalliability, the Pope judged correctly. However, he was exercising his office in the capacity of binding and loosing, so the decision is infalliable.

Better check in with Jimmy Akin:

http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2009/11/exercise-in-ambiguity-from-jimmy-akin.html

PeaceByJesus said...

As for IE9, while i must remember your liberty in Christ, my own opinion is that the IE browser is far behind the competition - thank God for that - and in a way represents a more restrictive philosophy.

I use Firefox, two or 3 instances of which sometimes, and right now have over 100 tabs open, as there are many irons in the fire, which i can fit into 5 rows across with a good amount of screen real estate left (w/ Pitch Dark theme).

The TabMixPlus extension enables, among other things like choosing how many closed tabs it can undo, choosing the tab height and width, and the Colorful Tabs ext, enables different colors, the Session Manager allows saving many sessions. Other exts. let you do things like save the url with a page, or count how many words are in a page or text box like this one (word count plus), or autocopy any selected text, etc.

Some of these will work with the Lunascape browser (if you choose the Gecko engine) or Sea Monkey, but all of which are missing from IE8 (i cannot get 9 as i am under XP), except you can undo the last closed session.

And it has many many themes to offer.

I am know Opera is faster and customizable, but i find not as much, among other issues, while Chrome has even less options.

IE has a even fewer options, and is far behind FF, and it often hangs or has to be restarted, which rarely happens with FF, and if it does then all can be recovered, usually even texts boxes i was typing in.

And very importantly for me with my stiff fingers, the IE8 i have does not automatically mark typos and offer correction.

So with IE it is more like, "take what we give you, be docile sheep, and don't think of enhancing individuality, or inferring we have some inferiority."

With FF, there is far more opportunity to contribute, as long as one is faithful to the code.

PeaceByJesus said...

Sorry to get carried away about browsers, and not commenting on QuickTime, but i found that to be very intrusive. I use the popular free no-strings VLC player, which plays about everything.

PeaceByJesus said...

The comforting news to some RCAs is that it condemns as error, "That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit." (33.)

And expresses hope that "perhaps the terror of the pain of punishment [by Rome] may move him."

Requiring, "Martin is to recant perpetually such errors and views." - Exsurge Domine -Bull of Pope Leo X issued June 15, 1520 http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo10/l10exdom.htm

But Rome could not bind him as it was from the Lord that He speak.

zipper778 said...

scotju said: Luther's actions, his refusal to recant and repent, and the Church's response to his schism and heresy are pretty clear cut.

But that's not what happened. Luther had some grievences with the sale of indulgences, which ended up making many priests and bishops upset because they were losing sales. The pope wouldn't even give Luther a chance. He just quickly excommunicated Luther (if I'm not mistaken) in 1521. So Luther wasn't schismatic. I've talked to a Roman Catholic priest before who said that Luther would have rolled over in his grave had he knew how many denominations would have come out of the Reformation. In my opinion, Luther wasn't a schismatic, but just like in 1054, it was the papacy that was schismatic and not the other way around.

John Bugay said...

just like in 1054, it was the papacy that was schismatic and not the other way around.

Zipper, it's always been this way. The papacy is like the person in Lewis's purgatory/hell -- there is always some place to go to set up your own kingdom. And Rome has gone there.

Pilgrimsarbour said...

On another tidbit, I listened to the link James posted on testimonies of ex-Camping followers. I have had a brief interchange with the Pastor of the Free Presbyterian Church of Malvern. They are tolerant of every eschatological view except anything that smacks of preterism or partial preterism. I recognise that full preterism is serious error, but I have leanings toward partial preterism, so I am to be considered outside of the body of Christ. I would not be welcome at his church, at least as a member. Neither would Kenneth L. Gentry or R.C. Sproul, for that matter.

It's disappointing, but as Dr. White says, our traditions can really overtake us in these matters. I'm hoping that someday Dr. White will shake off his reluctance to get into the eschatology question.

James Swan said...

They are tolerant of every eschatological view except anything that smacks of preterism or partial preterism.

Sorry to hear that. I can only account for my United Reformed Church, and to a degree, the URCNA denomination in general. The URC doesn't have a defined eschatogical view, so we wouldn't break fellowship over something within the realm of eschatological orthodoxy.

Since R.C. Sproul has reached Protestant Pope status, a lot of folks now claim partial preterism.
I'm very familiar with his view, as well as Gentry & DeMar, etc., but I'm not fully convinced of their views.

As to the mp3 link I posted, I'm not familar with the church that hosted it. I do recall Chris Arnzen having their minister on ISI, but I don't recall the topic.

PeaceByJesus said...

Quite a few links exposing Camping here