This conversation was slightly edited (formatting, not Luther-related content). The original can be found beginning here.
When I look at Martin Luther or any religion in comparison, Lets look at that whole package.
On the Jews and Their Lies -- By Martin Luther
In the treatise, he argues that Jewish synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes burned, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness,[2] afforded no legal protection,[3] and "these poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.[4] He also seems to advocate their murder, writing "[W]e are at fault in not slaying them".[5]
1500 years not a peep, this guy invents Faith Alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the...and_Their_Lies
Jesus Christ gave clear indication of Justification.
Matthew 12
37“For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Why wasn't the Jesus word on the matter good enough on justification and salvation?
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
I'm not going to follow that Nazi, Martin Luther.
Originally posted by utilyan
On all these we decree the sentences of excommunication, of anathema, of our perpetual condemnation and interdict; of privation of dignities, honours and property on them and their descendants, and of declared unfitness for such possessions; of the confiscation of their goods and of the crime of treason; and these and the other sentences, censures and punishments which are inflicted by canon law on heretics and are set out in our aforesaid missive, we decree to have fallen on all these men to their damnation.
We add to our present declaration, by our Apostolic authority, that states, territories, camps, towns and places in which these men have temporarily lived or chanced to visit, along with their possessions—cities which house cathedrals and metropolitans, monasteries and other religious and sacred places, privileged or unprivileged—one and all are placed under our ecclesiastical interdict, while this interdict lasts, no pretext of Apostolic Indulgence (except in cases the law allows, and even there, as it were, with the doors shut and those under excommunication and interdict excluded) shall avail to allow the celebration of mass and the other divine offices. We prescribe and enjoin that the men in question are everywhere to be denounced publicly as excommunicated, accursed, condemned, interdicted, deprived of possessions and incapable of owning them. They are to be strictly shunned by all faithful Christians.
Originally posted by James Swan
In short two wrongs don't make a right. A Nazi pushing his theory of "FAITH ALONE" simply not going to fly with me.
Originally posted by utilyan
Here's how I like to present my worldview. If an argument I'm making also works against my own position, it's not a valid argument. Similarly, go ahead and make arguments for Rome, defend your worldview. But always ask yourself: does the argument or point i'm making apply to my own position? If it does, you've refuted yourself.
Originally posted by James Swan
First it absolutely is Invalid because he calls it his theology. Hate the Jews as he does, embrace the entire theology of faith alone.
Let me give you some ground as there is "Luther's theology" vs "Lutheran theology".
"The point of what I posted was to demonstrate that if Luther's harsh attitude towards the Jews is a proof that Luther's theology is invalid, then similarly, Rome's theology is invalid in their hatred of Lutherans as presented in Decet Romanum."
I agree if ROME is putting out NEW theology. And in a case they TRIED it would be a internal war. I don't cease to be catholic. I don't give up and abandon the family.
"If an argument I'm making also works against my own position, it's not a valid argument."
I totally agree. Which is why this works just fine. Nothing new is being claimed.
The entire Church can decide to murder all they can tomorrow. And you can have a papal bull 50 feet long saying they are going to do it. I can be labelled heretic.
None of those things change church teaching. The clergy are not gods over laity. And the smallest unit of christian will always be the Saint himself.
When you know the truth and the guy in front of you is a flat out liar, how may opinions need to be made to convince you that the TRUTH is not so? He can have all the opinions, you already know the truth.
Originally posted by utilyan
You can argue Luther was negatively this or that, and you can claim the Roman church is positively this or that. However, if the negative thing you're arguing against Luther also applies to your own position, it's not a valid argument. It's the same sort of thing going on now in the United States. The Democrats are saying this or that person is a "racist," yet it's a double standard because the Democratic party is also making racist statements.
The Roman church made similar awful statements against a group of people (The "Lutherans"). Therefore: Luther and the Roman church are BOTH guilty of racist hate filled statements against people they did not like and wanted to suppress. Should we take this further and bringiup Rome's history against the Jews at this point?
"The early Roman pontiffs of the sixteenth century had Jewish physicians and were favorable to the Jews and the Maranos of their states. Time soon came, however, when the Sephardic Jews of Italy fared differently. As early as 1532, the accusation of child murder nearly entailed the extermination of the Jews of Rome. In 1555, Paul IV revived the ancient canons against the Jews which forbade them the practice of medicine, the pursuit of high commerce, and the ownership of real estate. He also consigned them to a Ghetto, and compelled them to wear a Jew badge. In 1569, Pius IV expelled all the Jews from the Pontifical States, except Rome and Ancona. Sixtus V (1585-1590) recalled them; but, soon after him, Clement VIII (1592-1605) banished them again partially, at the very moment when the Maranos of Italy lost their last place of refuge in Ferrara. Similar misfortunes befell the Jewish race in other states of Italy as the Spanish domination extended there: Naples banished the Jews in 1541; Genoa, in 1550; Milan, in 1597. Hence-forward, most Sephardic fugitives simply passed through Italy when on their way to the Turkish Empire." [source]
It's offensive for you to refer to Luther as Nazi, particularly from a Roman perspective. Physician, heal thyself.
IN TEACHING Luther says kill Jews. He wrote an entire book on it. He determines his own theology.
The Lutherans know. ---> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin...d_antisemitism
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in an essay on Lutheran-Jewish relations, observed that "Over the years, Luther's anti-Jewish writings have continued to be reproduced in pamphlets and other works by neo-Nazi and antisemitic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan."[95]
Nothing in Catholic church teaching says hate anyone. Evil Catholics exist. The teaching however does not teach to hate Jews.
Luther however is writing a book teaching to HATE JEWS -->The Nazis used Martin Luther's book, On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), to claim a moral righteousness for their ideology. Luther even went so far as to advocate the murder of those Jews who refused to convert to Christianity, writing that "we are at fault in not slaying them".[55]
If a catholic wrote a book it only is what it is that does not determine church teaching. Thats why we are not caught by inventions of false teaching as Luther caught plenty with his theology of Faith Alone.
Originally posted by utilyan
Originally posted by utilyan
Originally posted by utilyan
True, Luther wrote against the Jews, but do you want to know Luther's opinion of his books? "I would have been quite content to see my books, one and all, remain in obscurity and go by the board.... My consolation is that, in time, my books will lie forgotten in the dust anyhow, especially if I (by God’s grace) have written anything good." (LW 34:283-284). If you want to know what the essence of Luther's "teaching" is, simply go get a copy of the Book of Concord. This is the confessional standard that embraced Luther's teaching, and carried it on to subsequent generations.
Originally posted by utilyan
Originally posted by utilyan
Originally posted by utilyan
Originally posted by utilyan
Originally posted by utilyan
Originally posted by utilyan
Originally posted by utilyan
.
Furthermore, if they are pious Jews and not the whoring people, as the prophets call them, how does it happen that their piety is so concealed that God himself is not aware of it, and they are not aware of it either? For they have, as we said, prayed, cried, and suffered almost fifteen hundred years already, and yet God refuses to listen to them. We know from Scripture that God will hear the prayers or sighing of the righteous, as the Psalter says [Ps. 145:19]: "He fulfills the desire of all who fear him, he also hears their cry." And Psalm 34:17: "When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears." As he promised in Psalm 50:15: "Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you." The same is found in many more verses of the Scripture. If it were not for these, who would or could pray? In brief, he says in the first commandment that he will be their God. Then, how do you explain that he will not listen to these Jews? They must assuredly be the base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth. If there were a single pious Jew among them who observed these, he would have to be heard; for God cannot let his saints pray in vain, as Scripture demonstrates by many examples. This is conclusive evidence that they cannot be pious Jews, but must be the multitude of the whoring and murderous people. --- Martin Luther ON JEWS and THEIR LIES.
Pope Bacon can declare we should hate and kill everyone in the world. That does not equate to Catholic Theology. That is HIS theology.
We can read Decet Romanum Pontificem
Papal Bull of Excommunication of Martin Luther and his followers
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo10/l10decet.htm
QUOTE IT. There is nothing in an excommunication that teaches brand new theology. Quote where it says Catholic teaching is now hate Lutherans.
Its amazing how out of the way folks will go to defend a Nazi teaching.
Originally posted by utilyan
Luther goes on to say a few pages later... not to "harm their persons":
And you, my dear gentlemen and friends who are pastors and preachers, I wish to remind very faithfully of your official duty, so that you too may warn your parishioners concerning their eternal harm, as you know how to do—namely, that they be on their guard against the Jews and avoid them so far as possible. They should not curse them or harm their persons, however. For the Jews have cursed and harmed themselves more than enough by cursing the Man Jesus of Nazareth, Mary’s son, which they unfortunately have been doing for over fourteen hundred years. Let the government deal with them in this respect, as I have suggested. But whether the government acts or not, let everyone at least be guided by his own conscience and form for himself a definition or image of a Jew. (LW 47:274)
Originally posted by utilyan
Originally posted by utilyan
Originally posted by utilyan
Certainly Luther's comments about the Jews were terrible, but they are not the deciding factor in his theology. Good Roman Catholic scholarship typically interacts with Luther's theology rather than attacking Luther the person, because the story of Luther's negativity towards the Jews is really to tell the story of medieval Christianity and medieval society's negativity towards the Jews.
Previous to Luther there were atrocities like The Strasbourg massacre (1349). Those Jews agreeing to be baptized were spared being burned alive. Even after Luther, Pope Paul IV (1555-1559) was involved in some fairly serious Jewish persecution:
"In 1553 all copies of the Talmud found in Rome were burned in public. Pope Paul IV (1555-1559) ordered measures to be taken against the Jews, and twenty-four men and one woman were burned at the stake. On July 12, 1555, he issued a bull that renewed all the oppressive medieval legislation against the Jews, excluding them from professions, limiting their financial and commercial activities, forbidding them to own real estate, and humiliating them by obliging them to wear yellow hats" [Lewis W. Spitz, The Protestant Reformation (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1985), 357].
Owen Chadwick likewise documents this: "He forced every Jew to wear a yellow hat and live in a ghetto with only one exit... He caused to be published the first Index of prohibited books... Sixtus of Siena was sent to Cremona, where there was a great Hebrew school (for the destruction of the Talmud was ordered), and reported that he had burnt a store of 12,000 volumes... Under an Inquisition with extended powers, and a pope ready to suspect everyone, there was almost a reign of terror in the city. 'Even if my own father were a heretic,' said the Pope, 'I would gather the wood to burn him'" [Owen Chadwick, The Reformation (New York: Penguin Books, 1964), 271].
A cyber-acquaintance of mine stated something in passing on Luther's attitude toward the Jews that I find meaningful, not only to the Luther & the Jews dispute, but to many aspects of church history:
"Let's think about this: 500 years ago, someone demonstrates that his view of people different than himself sociologically or politically is pretty provincial and, if we can say it plainly, insulting. In every generation after him, because of his influence in general, every biographer of him points out the fault, decries it, and indicates we shouldn't be like him. All the people who follow this guy theologically and denominationally all repudiate his faulty views, and they confessionally reject these views. His 500 years of influence are thereafter gleaned for the best of his ideas and the worst are literally called out and rejected, and reasonably-healthy churches are thereafter grown."
Simply James you are absolutely correct in how you have misunderstood it. Neo-Donatism doesn't work and hypocrites are wrong. I 100% agree.
If you could split the hairs between Lutheran and Luther's theology, you could better understand my POV.
LUTHER's theology is flat out wrong.
Originally posted by utilyan