Beggars All: Reformation And Apologetics

I've been preoccupied with other things lately, and haven't had a chance to update the blog as often.

I have though been working on the context of a Luther quote- you know, one of those tidbits quoted in the service of pop-Catholic apologetics- cited with a secondary source rather than the readily available context, a few lines from one page, separated with "..." and then one line from 2 pages later.

This morning I found this blog page, and I had a brief chuckle over this:

Possibly Polemical Patristics: This section has the caveat lector entries, where the posts are in some ways incendiary, polemical, or otherwise calculated to provoke, but may still contain material of interest for carnival readers.

Beggars All, possibly in preparation for Reformation Day, shows Luther's respect for the church fathers and his disrespect for the way he viewed his opponents' use of them in Opponents Using the Early Church Fathers.

You got me! I was caught with a devious citation from Luther in order to stir up trouble for Reformation day. The post was supposed to stir up the few of you reading this blog to run out and nail complaints to the door of your local Roman Catholic Church.

Actually, the truth is, anyone even remotely familiar with Luther's battles with Catholic apologists knows they threw citations from the "Fathers" at him, and he either threw them right back, or evaluated the form of argumentation being used. Hey, that seems a lot like....what has been going on for a long time. My intent was not to provoke, but to show that the same type of argumentation in these pop-Catholic apologists vs. the separated brethren has as much of a history as that being documented on the web site critiquing me. I also found it interesting as to Luther's assessment of the value of such endeavours.