sotto voce

It's such a critical word, 'authority', isn't it. One can hardly read anything by Catholic propagandists without meeting that word. It's their great obsession. Never mind 'duty' and 'example'.

Luther of course was virtually criminal in his attitude to Jews, and Paul, whom he violently contradicted, would never have accepted his non-translational work for a moment. And yet, his praxis was as legalistic as any Pharisee could wish for, and certainly in the interests of the exploitative princes of Germany, whose own praxis would be highly illegal today. Luther wished to contain Christians and place them under a corrupt leadership, because their example, their honesty, their inability to be bribed or blackmailed, shamed those who had got rich only by virtue of trickery, by theft and thuggery. He had to make papism, that had been seen as fraudulent for well over a century, seem legitimate, despite its shortcomings, that were manifest and indeed infamous. So he never openly claimed that papacy lacked the authority to decide the Bible canon.

But even so, he de facto denied that authority, because, as well as making his own idiosyncratic comments on the status of some NT books, he excluded the 'deuterocanonical' books of papism from the canon. As indeed did almost all other non-Catholics in enlightened Europe, within a short time. Acceptance of authority of the Vatican in this or in any other matter was to become akin to veneration of the bones of saints.

And surely, nothing has changed since then.

Duvduv

Yes, I am aware of Luther's hostility towards Jews, but I was thinking about other reformers in addition to hom and how they addressed the contradictions in the texts which presumably were as noticeable to them as the contradictions they found in practices such as indulgences and other corruption which the church itself tried to address in its counter reformation.

Jaybees

Luther was very much opposed to anyone interpreting the bible differently from his own interpretation.

He resolved the contradictions the way literalist believers always do. "There are no contradictions." Using reason to untangle them is a no no. "Reason is the devil's harlot..." according to Luther. Don't question, just believe.

Duvduv

I am also aware that European Protestantism itself is often viewed simply as Catholicism without the Papacy.

Chili

Typically of a witch with his own salvation recipe. And of course the Jews are the bad ones who crucified 'his' Jesus, and are now the damned to be prosecuted . . . because he owes Jesus that favor for 'saving' him. So sick, so sick.

Chili

Yes, Pope of his own is what they want, now with 20.000 each as pope. And so, since when is protestantism a name that deserves a capital to show us any reverence?

Chili

I like the incorruptibles to justify 'the wake' wherein mourning friends wait, see and pray that foul odor will not come within a week (while the men drink beer outside). This practice goes back to the days when spontaneous combustions occured already at the foot of the cross, that so would be its opposite as accelerated oxidation.

Duvduv

An interesting question would be whether resistance to Catholicism have taken a different turn had the printing press been widely available and economic conditions in the century or two before Luther had existed. Plus the earlier reformers such as Wycliff, Huss, Savonarola, etc were rather different than Luther.

Chili

Not really, as the sacred moment that brought the extasy has 'a trigger' image that so becomes 'the key' for them.

I know a lady who had her experience in High Mass during Consecration when the little bells rang 'louder' this time, at least to her. So she went on a mission in the Diocese that they should make more noise with them so the people also in the back of the church will hear, . . . while the facts already are that she was there during High Mass that occupies the best part of the day, and she was in front, so she would hear, and did hear, because she was ready to receive, albeit not consciously to her why she was, where she was, when she heard.

I should maybe add, if for entertainment only, that she a German lady and very vocal about it too, and herself could spot a protestant already from a mile away.

sotto voce

Good. So it is agreed that:

'I have been reading about some precursors of Martin Luther such as Wycliff and Erasmus, not to mention Luther himself, and I haven't encountered anything suggesting that they had any problems with contradictions in the canon texts, which is surprising given the extent of their intellectual curiosity and resistance to the church that was the authority behind those texts to begin with.'

should be amended to read:

'I have been reading about some precursors of Martin Luther such as Wycliff and Erasmus, not to mention Luther himself, and I haven't encountered anything suggesting that they had any problems with contradictions in the canon texts, which is surprising given the extent of their intellectual curiosity and resistance to the church that claimed to be the authority behind those texts to begin with.'

So the OP would look a bit less like propaganda on the part of the Vatican to make its authority seem beyond discussion...

... except that this totally unsupported comment only serves to confirm that impression! Protestantism seems to be thought to be the truth, anyway.

'European Protestantism itself is often viewed simply as Catholicism without the Papacy.'

By American tourists who look round Oxford colleges and go home, very possibly!

Though it is not quite true that Renaissance scholarship found no objections to the texts, even though scholars had access to very few mss, and they had available mostly recent, 2nd millennium copies. But those objections had little resonance at the time, anyway. The problems that caused so much upheaval (not really to do with papalism per se) did not stem so much from Greek and Hebrew texts, but with Vatican interpretations that were found to be grossly at variance with the texts, in any language*. This was the very purpose of the Vatican, to enforce on its own authority what it could never get out of the Bible. The main bone of contention, for Wyclif and indeed for Luther, was transubstantiation, that had been declared dogma and enforced as late as 1215, and it took barely more than a century for objections to become significant, a short elapsed time in medieval terms. It's strangely true that real, fully expressed Catholicism as we know it has never had wide, catholic acceptance!

So the Vatican had ensured basically faithful translation in its Vulgate. There were no egregious alterations, because they would have looked egregious. The problem (or the cunning plan) was that few could read Latin, even priests, even in Italy, let alone in the farther reaches of Europe where papal influence tended to be weak. Then in the 14th century people began to read in the vernacular, the Wyclif Bible being translated from the Vulgate, and producing a sort of proto-Protestantism, long before Luther. So the massive, diametrically opposed theological differences between Dark Age and Renaissance, between Catholic and Protestant, were not due to source texts. They were due to literacy, and then the printing press, that caught the Vatican by surprise.

* As well as the appalling scandals and hubris of clergy that infuriated everyone else, from monarch to pauper, that had as much influence in motivating change as theology.