Clouseau

LOL! Nice one, Ray.

Ray Moscow

To take a particularly nasty example, Calvin had Michael Servetus killed over theological issues.

It's easy to find more recent examples, but just look at our own history in predominantly Protestant countries. It's basically one war after another.

Clouseau

Calvin was not an evangelical.

If you don't know what an evangelical is, I suppose it might be. Take John Wesley as a clue.

Ray Moscow

Ha! We were talking about "reformers", and you tried to switch to "evangelicals".

Well, Calvin is generally considered a "reformer", don't you think? And he did violence in the cause of religion, did he not?

Yes, Wesley was apparently a more moral man than Calvin, but I don't think he would fit into modern "evangelical" circles, either.

How about George W. Bush? There's a good, nonviolent, "evangelical" for you.

Clouseau

You responded to the choice of Catholicism or evangelicalism.

Yes, but you had the choice of Catholicism or evangelicalism. And Calvin was certainly not an evangelical.

And followers of Wesley to this day are characterised by their law-abiding, peaceful character, as are Baptists, Brethren, evangelical Anglicans and many evangelical independents influenced by Wesley and others like him.

Catholicism imposed morality, via religion, on the feudal workforce, as did Anglicanism on the Victorian proletariat. One reason for this was to extract more labour value- a sober worker produces more than one 'worse for wear'. But another was to give an appearance of national virtue, to bolster the idea of a Christian nation obedient to God, the rich man by divine providence in his castle, the poor man, equally by providence, at his gate. By this means the gospel was made to seem unnecessary. And that caricature of Christianity is what people prefer who like to say that the Prot NT is really the work of the RCC, the authentic authority, as they would like the RCC to be thought. The lovable RCC, who brought you the police state of the middle ages, the inquisitions, the book burning, the heretic hunts and the rest. They really ought to check out their liberal, humanitarian principles, because what they are really doing, if they think about it, is throwing out common decency, an end to democracy and their own liberty, for the sake of repressing the gospel.

Toto

Without researching this, I thought that the "reformers" all assumed that there had been a good Catholic Church at some point in history, but that the RCC in front of them had gone bad. If they were going to throw out everything from the RCC, they would have become a different religion - maybe Buddhist.

But instead they assumed that Scripture was inspired, independently of the corrupt church that preserved it and passed it on to them. There are Christians who think that the translators of the King James Bible were divinely inspired. I think this has been described as Bibliolatry, a form of idolatry.

I gather that Clouseau wants to claim that, because these rebels still accepted Scripture from the RCC, in spite of their wars to the death, that there must be something special about the Scripture. I would say there was something deficient about the Protestant reformers' reasoning.

Edited to add: I cross posted the above with Clouseau, and, now that I have read the last paragraph in the post above, I don't know what his point it.

Clouseau

Please don't 'gather'. Quote.

Toto

Who says this? Martin Luther rejected RC authority, did he not?

The RC are not fundamentalists with regard to the Scriptures. God only wrote the Ten Commandments - the rest was written by men.

Well, they did select a different canon. And they provided their own translation. The differences may seem minimal to some of us, but not to them.

No one seems to do WHAT? Draw the same twisted conclusion that you have?

Toto

What are you talking about? Catholicism did not forbid alcohol, and drunken medieval peasants probably were as efficient as sober ones, given the technology of the time.

Where do you get this?

Please untangle this sentence. Who thinks that the Protestant NT is really the work of the RCC? Surely not all those protesters in American who had riots over the version of the Bible used in public schools. And who is repressing the gospel? Who are you arguing with here?

Sauron

As opposed to Protestantism, which is marked by....oppression, censorship and murder?

Cromwell was one of your compatriots - by both religion and nationality, Clouseau.