You've Seen the Movie: Now Buy the Theology

A Protestant friend invited me to a showing of the movie Luther, hosted by his bible study group. He meant it, I think, as a friendly gesture. Possibly he wanted to save my soul from Popery. He probably had no idea that the assertions in the “Study materials” he attached were contentious.

That being so, perhaps there is value in posting them here in order to enlighten others.

Quoted from the movie summary:

“ … he [Luther] discovers the true grace of God in Christ, but it is a truth that his church teaching contradicts. The church in Europe holds the faithful in a grip of fear and ignorance… the Holy Roman Church has exchanged the glory of Christ for relics and the free grace of God for the sale of indulgences….”

“When Luther meets Cardinal Cajetan, the Cardinal says, ‘The scriptures are much too complex for the average priest to understand, much less the common man.’”


The freight of it all, and the plain assertion in the movie, is that the Catholic Church was against allowing the Bible to be translated into the language of the common man, that it feared allowing people to read the Bible for themselves.

My great-grandfather went through this same drill a hundred years ago: the Protestant pastor in his small village preached one Sunday that Catholics were not allowed to read the Bible. This did not go unnoticed in a small town: he marched the pastor into his home and showed him the well-thumbed family Bible.

That the story has been preserved so long in family folklore shows just how offensive the accusation is to Catholics.

Of course we read the Bible. Heck, we wrote it.

Before the invention of the printing press, necessarily, there were few Bibles in circulation. Books were just too expensive for the common man, and most people could not read. But as soon as Gutenberg got the presses working, what did he publish?

A Bible.

Of course, it was in Latin. But this is no surprise; in Europe at the time, anyone who could read, could read Latin.

And there had already been many translations into the vernacular: the Bible had been translated into Old Germanic already in the fourth century AD (Ulfilas’s translation); and there were several more translations into German before Gutenberg, notably three, including one commissioned by Charlemagne, in the ninth century. After Gutenberg, there were no fewer than seventeen different editions of the Bible in German printed before Luther got around to composing his.

Similarly, from 1450 to 1550, all before Luther, there were forty editions of the Bible printed in Italian, and eighteen in French.

In English, we have translations from as early as the seventh century; four in the eighth; and so on. In the preface to the King James Bible, the (Protestant) translators wrote: “To have the scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up… but hath been … put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any nation.”

Exactly.


The notes from my friend go on to suggest discussion topics:

“Should the complexity of scripture keep us from reading or hearing it for ourselves?”

Certainly not. We are formally obliged, as Catholics, to read scripture regularly, as it is read at every mass. Reading scripture for at least a half hour a day earns a plenary indulgence.


“Tetzel preaches a way of salvation that is based on works rather than faith in Christ.”

This is quite false as a representation of Catholic teaching. The difference between Catholicism and Lutheranism is not faith versus works, but faith alone (Luther) versus faith and works (Catholicism).


“Why would the Roman Church not want people to read scripture in their own language?”

I can’t think of a reason, and the Church historically certainly never had a problem with this. Just the reverse.


“To him [Luther], is there any authority equal to or greater than scripture? … Is Luther right to think that way?”

I’m guessing the expected answer to the first is “no.”

But this, to a Catholic, is blasphemy. God is above scripture; Jesus is above scripture; and so is the Church he founded. To believe otherwise is to put the creation before the Creator, which is plain idolatry.

Luther’s position of “sola scriptura” is itself unscriptural. John ends his gospel by saying, “There were many other things that Jesus did; if all were written down, the world itself, I suppose, would not hold all the books that would have to be written.”

Should we then take no interest in these doings of Christ, simply because they are not in the Bible? Should we not seek, if we can, to know what they might be? Who’s more important here, God or the Bible?


“Should Christians depend at all on the church for interpretation of Scripture, … or should everyone read and interpret it for himself?”

The fallacy of the false alternative; we should of course do both.

As for the need of interpretation, if there is none, if scripture’s meaning is apparent to any reader, why can’t Protestants agree among themselves on what it is? Why do they keep splitting into smaller factions based on differing interpretations?

Of course, fully understanding a one-thousand-nine-hundred-year-old (or older) text, written in a foreign language, requires a certain amount of expertise. Why wouldn’t it? Do we all expect to be able to do our own brain surgery, or rocket science?


“What is your church’s treatment of Scripture? Does it teach the Word alone?”

I may be picking nits here; making too much out of a mere word. But when you capitalize the word “Word,” aren’t you yourself making it important?

Biblically speaking, “the Word,” capital “W,” refers to one thing, and one thing only: Jesus the Christ. As in, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…”

Here, however, the author is referring to the Bible itself as “the Word.” Besides being unbiblical, this is blasphemy. This is idolatry—bibliolatry.

Teaching “the word alone” –sola scriptura—is of course what Luther called for. But, unless you already embrace Luther, this is no kind of argument. It is not obvious why teaching “scripture alone” is in any way virtuous. Why reject Church tradition?

And Luther is open to a charge, literally, of cooking the books here. Because he did not rely on existing scripture so much as on his own translation, and threw out books he did not want. This hardly seems, objectively, to be respecting scripture.

In the end, I never saw the movie. The Protestant friend who invited me never showed up.

I think I might have scared him off.

Much more on this site, to which I am heavily indebted for the above:


http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ244.HTM