My Beastly Article

Consider this a trackback to my own opinion: What’s the point?

Having read the post under attack, I didn’t get the sense that you were distancing yourself from the teaching that the RCC is the Beast, antichrist, whore of Babylon, or whatever. Rightly or wrongly, the rule of the cyberchurch seems to be that of lawyers: “he who is silent is presumed to agree.” We are all held accountable (online) as much for what we don’t say as we are for what we do say. I’m not saying that’s right, but only that it is.

Personally, I could care less who has believed what historically: the value of a knowledge of church history and historical theology is to avoid the mistakes of the past and to realize that your “new idea” is not new at all and has probably been deemed heretical by a council long ago.

BTW, if we were to give weight to the preponderance of church teachings in the past, then by rights we should all be members of the RCC: they have always greatly outnumbered us and can claim far more “authoritative” writers and theologians from their past than we Protestants could ever hope to adduce.

But, as I say in my own post, I think the whole thing is a waste of time. You would have to read my post to understand why, but suffice it to say that there’s virtually no benefit to the argument at all.

Tim,

I thought it was very clear in your original post that you were not advocating a certain position about the papacy but simply pointing out that many men in the past have held a certain position. As one who has only written a few opinion pieces to a local newspaper, I can attest that whatever you say or write, somebody will always take it the wrong way (or in some cases simply not read the whole thing before jumping to conclusions).

Everyone brings their own worldviews and understandings to everything they read. For example, when I’ve written about philisophical presuppositions that undergird science, evolutionists say I’m misinformed and un-educated and that such things do not really exist because clearly evolution is based on operational science. Sadly, it seems that most people today are unable to emotionally detach themselves to a certain extent when discussing things. It’s hard to get anywhere in an argument if people always take things personally. I sometimes wonder how people would react if Luther were writing today. Some of his statements in Bondage of the Will are pretty harsh. Maybe people just had thicker skin back then.

Well, I have to say, that when I read the critical posts you mentioned this morning, I wondered if they’d read the same piece of yours that I did.

And let me say that I don’t think that the Roman Catholic Church is the antichrist. I think that all those historical protestants you mention were probably wrong.

But when so many of the “dead guys”, who were right about so many things, and who were, generally speaking, quite careful in what they wrote, line up behind an idea, we can’t really dismiss it out of hand as “ridiculous”. We can certainly believe it is wrong, but if we’re wise, we’ll have taken the time to understand what exactly it is that they argued, and why they argued like they did, rather than making facile statements of condemnation and horror at what they said.

Wow! Are these the same reformed people who quote the dead old theologians when it is expedient?

This sounds rather hypocritical to dismiss altogether the deductions of dissenting men from past centuries who pronounced judgement upon the apostasy of Rome.

I think they would roll over in their graves could they see the eucumenical atmosphere existing today, perhaps even pervading the stalwart calvinists of the faith?

Yep… me too. I thought your first post was perfectly clear.

Hey Tim,

I appreciate your clarification and think I should add one of my own. I hope I didn’t imply that I think you equated Rome with either the antichrist or the “beast of Revelation.” My point was that by equating the “antichrist” with “the Beast of Revelation” you proffered a premise that could not support the conclusion of your argument, which, as I understand it, is that many great Christian thinkers considered the papacy or the RCC to be the “beast of Revelation.”

I’m not saying that such an argument cannot be made, only that you cant use the terms “antichrist” and “beast of Revelation” interchangeably to support your position.

“Oh, and calling it a “beastly argument” was merely meant as a bad pun, not as a criticism of your post.”

I realize. I liked the pun enough to recycle it. :)

Dude, I thought you were very clear, and you are right that we need to not be ignorant of the great men from whom we have inherited so much of our current theology - thank God for the reformers, who have saved us from the labarynth of the RCC that obscures the wonderful gospel.

Can I just adjust something,

And yet this was exactly the point of the article. These old, dead polemicists, despite being both old and dead, deserve to be heard.

That’s better.

Tim, while you technically didn’t say what you’ve been accused of saying, it’s hard to say that you didn’t at least imply it. The negative reaction of dozens of otherwise intelligent, well-learned, fair-minded and sympathetic readers provides ample evidence of that. Did they all just happen to misread it, or was the implication clear enough to lead the reader to certain conclusions? Just something to consider.

On the topic itself: to me, as we listen to the voices of the past—and I think we should—we also have to keep in mind the context in which they were writing and how that context has changed. The Roman Catholic Church that Luther, Calvin, and the others were criticizing is markedly different in theology and practice than the Roman Catholic Church as it exists today (compare Trent and Vatican II, for example). As a result, while there may be a consensus among various theologians and thinkers through the ages, we have to weight what they were criticizing and whether or not it is the same thing that we encounter today.

In other words, pointing to the consensus of the Fathers of the past to prove the potential legitimacy of an argument today doesn’t make a lot of sense to me unless we justify that the aspects of the RCC that they were criticizing still exist today.

Tim - I thought it was a good post and clear. I agree we cannot dismiss out of hand the thinkers of the past. If anyone out there has the infallible interpretation of the book of Revelation - I wish they would give me a call! I still think the futurist view of Revelation makes the most sense. Christ didn’t return in 70 A.D.- If He did nobody - nobody saw Him - or wrote about seeing Him - contra preterism. Nero may have been an antichrist but he wasn’t the antichrist. When the beast and false prophet are tossed into the lake of fire after Christ’s return [Rev. 19:20] - it sure sounds like they are individuals and not systems or representations of evil. Could be the pope - or the ruler of Iran or someone yet to be born. Personally I don’t think the pope will ever again possess the military power to fit the descriptions given - but he did have that kind of power in the 16th century. I appreciate your blog, Tim

May His kingdom Come

Carla… HILARIOUS!!!! I fell out of my chair with that one.

Tim,

It’s no fun being jumped on. I hope I can put across my disagreement with you without being disagreeable.

I don’t think I misunderstood the thrust of your original piece. It’s true you didn’t say you believed the Catholic Church to be the beast. You specifically left yourself out of that accusation. However you did devote your entire post to the thesis that we shouldn’t dismiss such an idea as absurd, since men like Luther and Calvin said as much in the past.

But if you say that we shouldn’t dismiss the idea as absurd, clearly the reason is because you think the idea may have some validity. So while not stating as much yourself, you are in effect helping to keep the door open for others (Slice of L) to say it.

I think what I (and some others who’ve written about your original piece) see, is that you’ve used a bunch of quotes from a certain historical context and lifted them out of time into a current debate about the Catholic Church, as if there is no difference between the church today and the church of 1500. Honestly, it would be like taking a bunch of quotes from the Salem witchcraft trials and applying them to the Southern Baptist Convention. There is some connnection there (i.e. both are protestant groups), but there is a great deal more difference than similarity.

Would you at least agree that Slice of L’s comparison of mainstream evangelicals (Rick Warren is one of their favorite targets) to “the beast” was absurd? They posted that the day after their Catholic church post.

Lance wrote: “I think most people in modern society ignore the ancients because of their personal ego, and the philisophy pervading our culture of social evolution, where man is progressively becoming more enlightened. Of course, this is the religion of Darwin, not Christianity. The great Reformed thinkers had the same scriptures, and probably less cultural contamination than us.”

I’m assuming by “the ancients” he meant the reformers. But this got me thinking. If the writings of today’s Bible teachers like Stott, Kennedy, or your favorite, could be transported back in time to be put in the hands of the reformers, would any of them spend a minute reading today’s opinions? Should they?

A couple of the reformers were rather egotistical in their own right, so might have no respect for today’s work.

Now, the reformers had an excuse not to read anything but the Bible, their own work, or possibly that of their contemporaries, since they were rejecting Sacred Tradition (which would include the Patristic writings) and relying on Sola Scriptura. However, now that we are hundreds of years removed from the reformers, why read them? Why not follow their lead and only read scripture? If on the other hand, there is wisdom to be gained from what the “church” has believed over the long term, then why stop in the 1500’s? Why not read people who were contempories of the NT authors, like Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp all who lived within the lifetime of some of the apostles. They had access to the authors of the NT, or to some of their disciples, in order to clarify “well, what did Paul really mean when he wrote in 1 Corinthians …..?”

One reason the early Church fathers were not read as much up until now is that their writings weren’t as accessible. Recently, they’ve been more widely translated into today’s languages.

If you truly believe in Sola Scriptura, then why read the reformers OR the fathers at all? But if you find value in the writings or quotes of the reformers, how much more valuable the opinions of the Church fathers. I don’t know many Protestants who believe the church was corrupted already by 1 or 2 generations after Christ ascended to heaven, so their words are valuable if anything outside Scripture is valuable in any way.

I’m playing off of Lance’s words “social evolution, where man is progressively becoming more enlightened. ” In light of that, why would Luther and Calvin be any more enlightened than the Church Fathers? And if the answer is that neither is anymore enlightened than the other, then let’s just read Scripture and leave all the Reformers and Fathers words out of it.

I admit that it’s a little bit of a strawman, because most people would say I’m creating a false dichotomy. Certainly, you can read both the Reformers and the Fathers as long as you hold to the supremacy of Scripture. But I’m just picking at the scab of how the reformers are probably more widely quoted within Protestantism than the fathers, and certainly more revered than anything written today. What’s so special about the 1500’s? Christianity didn’t start then. Don’t be frozen in time.

Robert Reymond’s book ’ The Reformation’s Conflict With Rome - Why it Must Continue’ addresses the issue as to how, when, and why errors began to develop in the early church. Very edifying!

Good that you brought this up, Tim, and good that you distance yourself from it. I would too.

Reading it I am reminded that the reformation was simply a reaction, and that much of what came from it is tainted by that reaction. The reformation was the big daddy of all church splits, forming the pattern and tradition of church splits that we’ve embraced here in America. We’ve raised it to an art form, ditching those we disagree with, maligning them, and finally effectively marginalizing them.

You point out some of the most revered theologians in the act of committing one of their greatest sins. Even in their sinning, they’re creative! Whore of Babylon… you gotta admit, that had to have taken more than one night at the pub to come up with.

I thank God that this cancerous idea pretty much stayed with dead reformed theologians.

Lance said..”I think most people in modern society ignore the ancients because of their personal ego, and the philosophy pervading our culture of social evolution, where man is progressively becoming more enlightened. Of course, this is the religion of Darwin, not Christianity.”

Lance, while it may be Darwinian to believe that HUMANS are becoming more enlightened, it is also true that as time goes on, we have more and more context with which to understand scripture, more knowledge and more ability to focus knowledge than those who translated the Bible 500 years ago. Our ability to apply textual criticism, based on knowledge, science and archeology, is far better today than ever.

No, we ignore some of the ancients because of some of the asinine ideas they had, this being one of them.

-vern-