02 January 2010
Old Lutheran Quote of the Day
Not everything we learn from Rome is Romish. Not only so, but, as Evangelical Protestants [i.e., Lutherans], we may admit, that deep and vital as are the points in which we differ from the Romanists, they are not so vital as those in which we agree with them, and that Evangelical Protestants are not so remote from the Romanists as they are from false and heretical Protestants. -- C. P. Krauth, *The Conservative Reformation* pp. 341, 342
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6 comments:
He was right, but we must remember, he was writing decades before Catholicism as it is now, and speaking of a Catholicism no longer upheld by the RCC.
Ot to put it another way, that the Catholicism of which he speaks is no longer Catholicism is why many Catholics have left the RCC or are in groups the RCC now considers schismatic.
All of which shows the RCC is in fact in worse shape and farther from the Gospel of Christ than in the days of Luther. Completely without integrity, interested in nothing but itself.
o
These "schismatic" groups teach and practice nothing but what the RCC itself once taught and practiced and to step outside of which made one schismatic and even heretical.
Now the worm has turned, and no-one was more forceful in that turn, showing that it cares for nothing but its jurisdiction, than the current head of the RCC.
Modern Catholicism has nothing whatever to offer Catholics, let alone Lutherans. The words of a man who never saw these developments cannot be an excuse to fawn over the totally duplicitous current leadership of the RCC, who are to be rejected on either Catholic or Lutheran grounds.
The "false and heretical Protestants" have not improved with time either!
--helen
I heard someone say recently that it is very common in our Lutheran congregations to hear soemone say "that sounds/seems too catholic" but rarely do we hear someone say "that sounds/seems too baptist, etc." I thought that was insightful.
Pr Weedon,
I guess as a Reformed evangelical I would be numbered amongst the "false and heretical Protestants". But I admit it baffles me that Lutherans could see more in common with Rome than with non-Lutheran Protestants. Isn't justification by faith (alone) the central article?
Dear Stephen,
I think we can understand Krauth's point a bit better when we see where the Lord's Supper stands in the theological system of Lutheranism. Krauth writes elsewhere in the volume cited:
"The truth is, that this doctrine, clearly revealed in the New Testament, clearly confessed by the early Church, lies at the very heart of the evangelical system - Christ is the centre of the system, and in the Supper is the centre of Christ's revelation of Himself. The glory and mystery of the incarnation combine there as they combine nowhere else. Communion with Christ is that by which we live, and in the Supper is *the* Communion. Had Luther abandoned this vital doctrine, the Evangelical Protestant Church would have abandoned him. He did not make this doctrine - next in its immeasurable importance to that of justification by faith, with which it is indisputably coheres - the doctrine made him. The doctrine of the Lord's Supper is the most vital and practical in the whole range of the profoundest Christian life - the doctrine which, beyond all others, conditions and vitalizes that life, for in it the character of faith is determined, invigorated, purified as it is nowhere else. It is not only a fundamental doctrine, but it is among the most fundamental of the fundamentals." p. 655
Dear Pr Weedon,
That's useful, thanks. Actually, holding to a high Calvinist view of the Supper (which I view as pretty close to the Lutheran position, but that's a discussion for another day!) I would agree with Krauth on the vital importance of the Supper. I understand Lutheranism's desire to withstand the twin dangers of the Reformed chuches and Rome. But still my bafflement remains that a Rome which makes our justification conditional on our inherent sanctification might be considered closer than Calvinists who rejoice in justification. I guess such a view does explain though why some Lutherans have felt free to embrace Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy.
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