On the Journey with Matt and Ken, Ep. 64: What Was the Reformation, And Why Did It Happen? Part III

or or you know take any kind of hot button issue in our day there are people who are uh involved in that issue because they have deeply held moral convictions and religious beliefs connected to that issue there are other people who are like all right we got the religious people let's see who else we can get in this coalition to accomplish this political goal it's this happens all the time uh this is a this is a pattern throughout history so what do you got yeah we want to go we've been wanting to get away from italy for a long long time what do you got what do you got we love you martin luther [Applause] [Music] well hello and welcome to another hearty and wholesome episode of on the journey with matt swaim and ken hensley i'm matt swaim he's ken hensley i used to work at family christian store and play in christian bands and i went to bible college and did a few other things kim though ken was a baptist pastor either way we both ended up in the catholic church that's part of what the series is about if you want to meet us and more people who have similar stories to ours if such a thing were possible come visit us at chnetwork.org that's the website for the coming home network and especially come visit our online community which is community.chnetwork.org ken how are you good job thank you yeah i'm i'm doing good thank you i got a new computer here and and i think that the notifications are on so if we have a few bells ringing during the show i apologize i don't know how to turn them off quickly uh that'll probably be seth in his editing as a matter of fact i can hear the bells ringing now they're singing what no don't worry about it ken only the listeners and me can hear the bells as see now we've gone insane already and seth's gonna have to screw around hold on let's stop hold on um you ready to talk more about the reformation yes yes all right so i think i think you can see i'm [Music] you you're i think you see i'm eager you're eager yeah you're eager to talk about the reformation well i'm a little less eager to talk about what we're talking about this week because this is where we get into just the mess the absolute mess we've talked about some other aspects of the cultural movements that were in play that you know kind of gave rise to the reformation now we get to talk about the just the absolute hot mess that the catholic church was when the reformation happened the series that we're doing we're doing a short series that have titled what was the reformation and why did it happen and we're asking two essential questions here matt first what was the reformation and what i mean by that is at its heart what was it what was it in essence and then the second question why did it happen and why did it happen when it happened now as to the first question you and i have seen that the reformation was not about the creation of a new religion first of all luther calvin zwingli and the other reformers they never saw themselves as teaching anything other than the christianity of the apostles and of the early church it wasn't about introducing a new religion that is the reformation coming to pass nor was the reformation we've seen nor was it at its heart a doctrinal dispute although it entailed a number of doctrinal disputes and more as time passed no essentially in answering the question what was the reformation we saw that the reformation was a reaction against and in the end a revolt a full-on revolt against the idea that christ had established on earth a united spiritual authority an authoritative church and that the catholic church was that authority that the catholic church represented that authority okay that's what the reformation was at its heart why did it happen well this is where we began last week and i'm just recapping quickly we began last week by looking at the answer to that question why did it happen and why did it happen when it happened and we described three explosions that really rocked christendom in the decades leading up to the reformation of the early 16th century there was the creation or there was the invention of the printing press which led to the first explosion that is an explosion in literacy throughout catholic europe as the printing press i mean hot off the press came pamphlets written materials of all kinds and at prices that at least some people could begin to afford literacy increased dramatically the second explosion resulted from that it was an explosion of new ideas and especially new theological ideas filling europe new colleges new universities were popping up everywhere and there were new theological faculties at these schools and they were all discussing the new ideas that resulted from the new printing the new books the new pamphlets all of it okay and then the third uh explosion that we looked at last week was the rise of a a an educational philosophy at the time that we referred to as humanism um it arose from the renaissance from the renaissance of the 14th century really in italy and what it was was a a a philosophy of education that basically was saying the f the official doctors of the catholic church the scholastic theologians are dry abstract boring we don't want to hear from them anymore instead their battle cry was add fontes back to the fountains back to the sources we want to learn by going back to the early sources which meant for them the classics of greek roman culture the early church fathers and the scriptures the greek new testament the hebrew old testament that's where we that's where we left off and and just to uh to contextualize it in the long view of christian history there have been conflicts there have been new ideas there have been even new technologies one might say like roads or trade routes um there are things like this that have happened throughout the course of the history of christianity uh but you've got those three factors we're going to talk about some more factors that actually compound all of those because they're happening around the same time again the church has gone through a thousand reformations but this one in 1517 had a whole bunch of other things in play that kind of make it sort of explode in the way that it does yeah in fact last week i used an analogy i said that martin luther that's the 15 17 you're referring to martin luther caused the reformation like a man who strikes a match in a room filled with gas you could say causes a fire and what i meant by that is what we're describing here and that is that the atmosphere was already present in the room of late um medieval catholicism this is what i meant when i said at the time that there were historical forces cultural forces and today we're going to look at moral forces spiritual forces that were at at play at the time that that i would say were actually driving the world in the direction that it was to go um today we want to look as you mentioned we want to look at more of these forces one of them theological today another one historical we could say and the third moral spiritual okay so first of all the theological one first of all there was the rise of an emphasis during the same time the rise of an emphasis on personal religion on religion as being something personal and individual in 1503 not surprisingly it came from the humanist priest erasmus erasmus published a little book its title was the incaridian or handbook of the christian soldier and what this book emphasized matt was the need for christians to have a personal faith in christ and the need for christians to nourish that faith by the personal reading of scripture now that there was a printing press now that printing was available now that you could buy books now that now that it didn't take two years to hand copy a bible now that people could have the word of god faith should be personal and christians should nourish that faith by the personal reading of scripture and he also focused on the fact that the church ought to be nourishing itself by the reading of scripture as well well here's the thing this book was an absolute instantaneous hit it would in today's you know language it would have been on the new york times bestseller list it would have been there a long time erasmus book went through 23 editions in the first six years alone it was literally being devoured throughout catholic europe and of course i'm sure you would want to say erasmus was right in insisting that our relationship with christ ought to be intimate and personal it ought to be in fact in the catechism i looked this up because i wanted to get an actual source in the catechism of the catholic church faith is defined as i'm quoting now the commitment of the entire person to god so when we talk about faith in christ or when we talk about putting our faith in god putting our trust in god we're talking about a commitment of the entire person mind emotions and will to god in other words faith must be internal it must be inward it must be personal erasmus was not wrong at all in what he said here nor was he saying anything new in the history of christianity uh right this is you got saint after saint who writes and talks like this uh benedict of nursia talks and writes like this saint augustine's confessions are all about this sort of thing when st patrick in the 5th century says christ with me christ before me christ behind me christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me christ in every eye that sees me christ in every ear that hears me if that's not a description of a personal relationship with jesus christ then i don't know what is this is not new in the history of christianity it's a reclamation and revival is one of the words that we would have used to describe it in my tradition a revival among sort of the stale you know kind of academic arms length christianity that was going on at that time yeah and this gets back to a point that you made uh last week and in a few minutes ago that there were plenty of reformations through the history of the church as there were plenty of saints who appeared plenty of times to address a dryness that had come about within within the church so yeah this is happening again and erasmus book is really scratching people where they're itching at the time in fact in his biography of john calvin uh the oxford theologian alistair mcgrath who we've been quoting and we're going to continue to quote some he tells us that the ideas expressed by erasmus in this book were spreading everywhere at the time and they weren't in any sense considered heretical here's what mcgrath says in italy the movement often known as catholic evangelicalism with its stress on the question of personal salvation became firmly established within the church even penetrating deeply within the hierarchy without being regarded as in any way heretical so this may have felt like a new idea at the time it may have been his book may have been selling like hotcakes because it was addressing a real need at the time but you're entirely right this is not something new this is something that was in the gospel it's something that our lord taught that the apostles taught and that the church has taught again and again and again and been taught again and again and again and what i want to say here is this the new appreciation for the individual then rising out of the italian renaissance it had a positive side to it okay i mean in art we think of the masterpieces of renaissance art you know we think of the focus on the individual on the human person in sculpture in painting in art of all kinds the statues of michelangelo paintings of rafael caravaggio and others and then i would say read the old and new testaments and we find the same focus on the individual god deals with his people personally he deals with him corporately his people israel in the old testament the church and the new but he deals with his purse his people personally and it's clear and i just want to hammer that for those evangelical friends who may be watching this or listening to this it's clear that our religion must be personal it must be individual it must be to the heart it must be something that is ours and at the same time i think that we could see how combined with some of the other elements that we've looked at already the printing press the rise of literacy explosion of new theological ideas the colleges the universities the theological faculties the new theological concepts being thrown all over the place boredom with the official doctors of the church at the time thomas aquinas done scotus the other scholastics the schoolmen i think that we can see how combined with this this focus on the individual even in religion could feed into a movement of reaction against the church right and uh you know it's just there are two couple quick points one is that it just is an emphasis on personal responsibility uh you know in a society can either build up that society or cause further splintering and individualism within the society and a form of libertinism rather than you know everybody working together and pulling their load but just back to that question of art and a personal relationship with jesus christ outside of the trinity who is the most painted figure in western history it's the virgin mary why because she models more than any person in the history of christianity what it means to have a close intimate personal relationship with jesus christ so this is not like some new idea it's a recovery and revival and you know a reanimation of what christianity is in saint paul says i want to know christ i want to know the power of his resurrection to become like him in his death and share in his resurrection this is what christianity is it's a reclamation of that and that's a good thing yeah and i yeah and i think we'll see in a few minutes here why that might have fed into an anti-uh clericalism and uh fed into a movement of revolt against the church too even though this is something that the church has taught again and again and again and should have taught always okay at the same time here's number two here's the historical force that we want to add today europe was witnessing the rise of nationalism okay now think of that word individualism again this trend toward individualism in the decades leading up to the reformation and arising out of the renaissance it didn't express itself merely in the individualism of persons but also in the individualism of peoples of nations the fact is at the time throughout catholic europe there was an increasingly strong spirit of resentment felt toward centralized authority of all kinds the authority of the church and the authority of the empire as well now with respect to the church this uh this manifests itself as anti-clericalism and this was rampant at the time and with respect to the empire it manifests itself as the rise of nationalism that is the idea of a holy roman empire is beginning to fracture at this time on a political level nations are on the rise and i want to quote again from aleister mcgrath on this for instance he says in germany intense resentment was felt against the pope in part this reflected incipient german nationalism marked by a resentment of all things italian it also reflected popular irritation at the fact that ecclesiastical revenues including proceeds of indulgence sales were destined for rome and the maintenance of the somewhat extravagant lifestyles building programs and political adventures of the renaissance popes in other words you know the germans are simply resenting the fact that revenues are being taken from them and shipped over the alps to italy and to the pope in many ways continuing with mcgrath here in many ways luther's reforming program made an appeal to perhaps even to the point of accrued exploitation of german nationalism and anti-papalism allowing the reformation to ride on the crest of a wave of popular anti-papal resentment okay i won't read it again but but i mean take in what he says here at the end and this mcgrath this is a world-class protestant theologian and protestant historian of doctrine and he's suggesting here that luther's program of reform he's saying it in many ways it may have exploited an atmosphere of nationalism and anti-papalism already existed at the time in fact he concludes by saying the reformation was able to and now i am quoting ride on the crest of a wave of popular anti-papal sentiment and this happens all the time throughout history uh that you know it's it's easy to say well this is a war about religion when in fact it's a war about land and a lot of religious people are involved right or this is a war about um resources and religious people happen to be involved you know there's there's it or or you know take any kind of hot button issue in our day there are people who are involved in that issue because they have deeply held moral convictions and religious beliefs connected to that issue there are other people who are like all right we got the religious people let's see who else we can get in this coalition to accomplish this political goal it's this happens all the time this is a this is a pattern throughout history so it wouldn't surprise me that there are a lot of people who are like yes martin luther we agree with your frustration over the selling of indulgences and we have a moral imperative to join you in this religious you know idea that you're trying to put forth on the world but there's also probably some german princes who are like yeah we never like those italians anyway what do you got yeah we want to go we've been wanting to get away from italy for a long long time what do you got what do you got we love you martin luther yeah yeah yeah those are good points okay so what we're saying here is that along with the other factors that we've discussed so far we have this factor at play at the time the very idea of centralized authority is being rejected individualism and religion is on the rise individualism of nations is also on the rise christendom is beginning to fracture and to break apart and now we're going to move on to the third point that we're going to spend the majority of our time on this is really key and i want to state this just as clearly as i can it wasn't simply because of all the new ideas that were in the wind it wasn't simply that the resentment that was felt toward the catholic church the hierarchy at the time was to a significant degree the fault of the catholic hierarchy i don't know whether to put a 49 on it 50 70. i don't i'm not going to try and give it a number but i'm just saying the resentment that was felt toward italy toward the church was to a significant degree the fault of the church and this is the third force that we're going to look at today the one that i mentioned earlier as being the moral or spiritual one and that is we were dealing with a church a catholic hierarchy at the time in desperate need of spiritual reform and this is one i really want to sit on a little bit matt because you and i are catholic now and many of those watching this show are listening are catholic but many are not and um i just want to make this clear i want the force of this to really be felt that we understand this that we see it okay so i'm going to give a number of illustrations as we walk along we can talk about this first of all martin luther in 1510 the young augustinian monk martin luther he was sent to rome on an errand for his order which was the strictest augustinian order in germany at the time now the young monk again luther he had dreamed all his life of being able one day to visit the eternal city the city where peter and paul had come had preached where they had been martyred paul beheaded peter crucified upside down luther was excited he was thrilled at the idea of visiting the great churches of rome and and celebrating mass in those churches instead as luther scholar heiko obermann tells us quoting obermann here later he remembered clearly the shock and horror he had felt in rome upon hearing for the first time in his life flagrant blasphemies uttered in public he was deeply shocked by the casual mockery of saints and everything he held sacred he could not laugh when he heard priests joking about the sacrament of the eucharist now maybe at least some listening have heard this story of how this experience shattered martin luther and and there's truth to that he came back from his trip to rome a changed man and and if you're a catholic and you're listening to this maybe you've been tempted to to dismiss the whole thing as just anti-catholic propaganda um the only problem with doing that is that credible catholics of the time admit the church's hierarchy was in moral shambles incredible authors of the time in fact it was a common saying at the time matt that went like this if there is a hell then rome is built upon it this is a common saying that was floating around at the time again looking at erasmus the humanist priest who wrote that book the incaridia in the handbook of the christian soldier erasmus spoke of his own experience in rome in these words with my own ears i heard the most loathsome blasphemies against christ and his apostles many acquaintances of mine have heard priests of the curia that is of the roman of the of the leadership in rome priests of the vatican many acquaintances of mine erasmus says have heard priests of the curia uttering disgusting words so loudly even during mass that all around them could hear it and so there's there's truth here okay there's truth and it wasn't only the priests in the late middle ages in the middle ages in the high middle ages bishops were mainly drawn from the nobility to something we all know and often enough it was not because they possessed some great spiritual qualities because they were walking saints it was because they had the money to purchase their positions and this happened there are all sorts of examples of wealthy families catholic families gaining control of the ecclesiastical affairs in some particular area and ruling there that is a family ruling for years and years and years and just putting their brothers and you know their sons and and cousins and all on the on the throne again and again and again they viewed their realm i mean often they didn't even live in the diocese that they re that that they led they viewed their diocese as as a realm from which they could draw revenues uh which they could spend on their own political ambitions or on their entertainments of one kind or another certainly there were some shining lights we know that there were saints there always saint here and there but many were not i'll give you an example unless you have one you want to throw in oh i've got one i've got one of actually uh one who who turned around and came back uh so my favorite example of this is saint peter gonzalez who is a 13th century dominican educated by his uncle who was a bishop and got uh through the ranks of nepotism to where he was uh an advisor a chaplain to king ferdinand of castile castile you know he's i can't my castilian accent is never very good but this is a young man who cares nothing for the priesthood he cares only for his own ability to be seen in the royal courts and so uh as it happens there was a procession where he was going to be riding a horse into a town on some high holy day and i can't remember which one it might have even been christmas but st peter gonzalez is walking in you know ego on full display all the pageantry and he's essentially paid the peasants to cheer him as he comes in in procession to the town the problem is is that as the peasants cheer they spook his horse and this is why i like to call saint peter gonzalez the uh biff tannen of uh the dominican uh hate geography because if you've ever seen back to the future because the horse throws him onto a pile of manure and uh he expects the peasants to just be all shocked and horrified at their noble priest who has been you know fallen on such shame instead they just think it's like the most hilarious thing they've ever seen right that and he is essentially you know realizes that he's climbed in the ranks of clericalism basically for the course to satisfy his own ego he has cared nothing about christ he's cared nothing about any of this and he has an actual conversion of heart and then goes and works on the docks in anonymity for the rest of his ministry but there are plenty of people like saint peter gonzalez who never had that change of heart and just continued on rising up the ranks of the clerical state well i'll give you one right here his name was alberto brandenburg okay listen to this by the time he was 23 years old at the time he already held the seas of magdeburg in germany and halberstadt and he wanted the arch bishopric of mainz as well he wanted a third okay okay problem he needed money he needed money to pay the installation fees and also he needed money because he would have to pay he understood he would have to pay pope leo the 10th at the time for the irregularity of holding three c's simultaneously you're already making me mad ken you're already making me mad just even explaining the setup of this okay well now i'm going to quote from former yale historian roland bainton he's a famous luther biographer as he describes the situation okay so albert needs money the negotiations of albert with the pope's were conducted through the german banking house of fugure which had a monopoly on papal finances in germany when the church needed funds in advance of her revenue she borrowed at usurious rates from the 16th century rothschilds or morgans indulgences were then issued in order to repay the debts and the fugures supervised the collection they were the collection agency knowing the role that they would ultimately play albert turned to them for the initial negotiations he was informed that the pope demanded twelve thousand ducats for the twelve apostles come on now albert offered seven albert offered seven thousand for the seven deadly sins that sounds about right they compromised on ten thousand presumably not for the ten commandments okay this is true this is leo the tenth he was not exactly a saint and i i stop and i think about this i mean think matt about the first occupant of what we refer to as the chair of saint peter in rome it was peter it was a man who when he first understood who jesus was just fell on his face saying lord depart from me i am a sinful man this is someone who went on to be crucified upside down because he refused to be crucified in the same direction as his lord had been crucified and now we have leo the tenth occupying the chair of saint peter at the time when the protestant revolt really is beginning against the church and historian j d kelly in his oxford dictionary of popes this is how he describes pope leo the tenth he describes him as quote a devious and double-tongued politician and inveterate nepotist well that's crisp and clear and that's on a good day it appears because roland bainton describes leo the tenth in this way leo the tenth was as elegant and as indolent as a persian cat his chief preeminence lay in his ability to squander the resources of the holy see on carnivals war gambling and the chase as hunting i i give all these illustrations and i give these quotes because i think there's no way to get around it it's it's clear that the church's hierarchy at the time of the reformation was sick and sick from top to bottom so sick in fact that that one of our saints saint ignatius of loyola who lived during that time his his years are 1491-1556 he advised good catholics against going to rome lest they be corrupted and it makes me think you know immediately imagine that now imagine pope john paul ii or benedict xvi or pope francis imagine them warning catholics of the world whatever you do unless you want to lose your faith do not go on pilgrimage to rome can you imagine that and and if you think that we're exaggerating the situation i mean you never know when you're looking back at history it's hard to know exactly how accurate accurate your perceptions are but but if someone thinks that we're exaggerating this situation then he would need to explain the confession of pope hadrian vi pope hadrian vi immediately followed leah the tenth as bishop of rome and he served during the early years of the protestant reformation this is what pope hadrian vi had to say we know that for years there have been many abominable offenses and spiritual matters and violations of the commandments committed at this holy see yes that everything has in fact been perverted the first thing that must be done is to reform the curia the vatican leadership the origin he says of all the evil and so i mean just take these words to heart notice he doesn't say there have been a few minor missteps you know yeah we need to correct a thing or two mistakes were made right yeah yeah yeah he doesn't say mistakes were made instead he talks about abominable offenses and spiritual matters he talks about violations of the commandments and he says everything has been perverted and then notice lastly he doesn't locate the problem somewhere else you know like adam it's that woman you gave me it's her fault he doesn't say oh it's uh it's this priest over there or it's even this bishop over there he says instead the curia he says is the origin of all the evil and just one last quote quickly catholic historian hillary bellock agrees and he put it like this no one can deny that the evils provoking reform in the church were deep seated and widespread they threatened the very life of christendom itself all who thought it all about what was going on around them realized how perilous things were and how great was the need of reform every kind of man would violently attack such monstrous abuses it was from all this that the turmoil sprang and as it increased in violence threatened to destroy the christian church itself that's from his book the great heresies we've been listening here some of the historical some of the cultural spiritual moral forces that at the time as i've said where were literally whipping like a horse driving christendom in the direction that it was to go in the 16th century and there are more that could be listed that that i just chose not to go into for instance the rise of the european middle class this helped to fuel the growing sense of of independence obviously and individualism we could talk about well you kind of mentioned it a little while back we could talk about the greed of the german princess you know these guys who maybe didn't know anything about theology and didn't care anything about the theological issues but they were thrilled at the prospect of being able to loot the catholic church of her wealth her buildings her lands and so far so and so forth so you know the idea that germany is going to become protestant and instantly everything that the catholic church owned within germany or the parts of germany that become protestant could be scarfed up so there are other factors as well but if we just do the math you know there's so much here we've got the invention of the printing press leading to a rapid increase in literacy throughout christendom we have with that an explosion of printed literature an explosion of theological ideas new colleges new universities new theological faculties throwing these ideas back and forth debating them beginning to teach them are these just uh personal opinions or is this church teaching becoming confused in this whole thing a growing emphasis on religion as something personal the rise of an educational philosophy that it's taking deep root in the universities of the time which said the scholastics are boring let's get rid of them let's go back to the original sources let's read the original sources and let's decide for ourselves what we think they are saying anti-papal sentiment throughout catholic europe and that fueled in great part by a church hierarchy in desperate need of reform corruption to the highest levels i can say for myself i'm sure you've got some things you want to say but you know even though looking back now as a catholic matt i view the reformation as one of the saddest cases of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in in the end um the church needed to be reformed desperately needed to be reformed but the reformation ended up just rejecting it and starting something else you know brand new so even though i view it in that way it doesn't surprise me at all that it happened in fact i think it would have taken a miracle at the time god would have had to step in and perform a miracle which god didn't choose to to do to keep the reformation from happening the atmosphere was exactly right martin luther an augustinian monk who had become professor of scripture at the university of wittenberg in germany struck a match first by his attacks on the corruption of the church in indulgence sales and then escalating to his attacks on catholic teaching in certain ways and then finally his just complete revolt against the authority of the church entirely you know calling the pope then the antichrist and and the priest his henchmen and the explosion occurred the reformers rejected the idea that an authoritative church existed on earth at all they decided to stand on the authority or the final authority at least of scripture alone and uh the church was shattered and the visible unity of the church has been shattered ever since yeah it's it's a heartbreaking reality and uh one would think and i did think you know because i learned everything i first learned about the reformation because in my christian tradition we didn't talk much about the reformation we talked about you know maybe a little bit of the great awakening right we talked about revivalism and we talked about you know the great hymns singing tent revivals and things like that we talked about i mean if anything uh the renewal of god's spirit you know in the united states uh more than we did the rejection of the church hierarchy in europe in the 1600s or 16th century um i learned most of what i learned about the reformation initially through public school history classes right and so growing up in the south i didn't think that the catholic church was like a thing at all anymore i thought maybe is something that a few irish and italian people still clung to in new york and boston maybe chicago so um part of the shock for me when i you know started to kind of revisit these questions was that they are still for some inexplicable reason a billion catholics walking around on planet earth today to me i thought that's insane how is this possible um you know this is kind of one of the realizations that i have because you know you referenced hillary bella caleb locke who also said referring to the catholic church that it's an institution that he is bound to hold divine because uh the proof for divinity might be found in the fact that no human institution conducted with such navish imbecility could have ever lasted a fortnight right the idea that you know look at the morons in charge um and one might say that over the course of the centuries that have passed between the reformation and now we haven't done all that much better you know depending on where you are and who's in charge of what it is that you're a part of you know it's it's a wild thing to to think about um yeah but also i think that's one yeah go ahead i also think back on your your remarks about saint ignatius of loyola uh because there are incredible reform movements going on within the church at the same time the carmelite reforms going on with saint teresa of avila with john of the cross you've got the again the founding of the jesuits which some people might say is a mixed bag depending on you know how you feel about that whole operation but saint ignatius saying don't go to rome because i don't want you to lose your faith sounds of a similar flavor of what jesus says in in matthew chapter three or just chapter 23 uh verses one through three when he speaks to the crowds and his disciples and says the scribes and pharisees sit in moses's seat so practice and observe what they tell you but don't do what they do for they do not practice what they preach um yeah it's just a heartbreaking thing to look back on because you know think of how many people's faith was destroyed not just in the catholic church but in god period because of the turmoil of that era to me i mean there are people who like to score points over reformation history and i'm not one of those people because to me it's just a deeply saddening event in the history well it broke i mean it broke out it it resulted in a hundred years of religious wars you were talking earlier about a lot of wars that aren't religious it just happened to be religious people involved there were real religious wars 100 years of them that took place after the reformation where protestant countries were slaughtering catholics and catholic countries were slaughtering protestants um and so much much evil took place yeah you're exactly right so you were raised in what steve taylor referred to as the buckle of the bible belt you were right there steve taylor so so to you catholicism was not a thing as you said but anyway you know steve if you're watching i love you i love you steve taylor squint is my favorite album it's at least top ten all time thank you steve taylor that's all yeah okay we're gonna move forward you're beginning to hit these things here at the end but we're going to be asking the question next week how applicable is all this to our lives as catholics orthodox and protestant living in the 21st century and we're going to see next week that it's much more applicable applicable in all ways really than we might imagine until we begin to actually walk through it but um but yeah you're raising some really good points i mean obviously we're sitting here now and we're catholic so we must have made some distinction between christ's ability to lead his church in the truth and to preserve his church in the apostolic faith even if at times um many catholics and even many of the those who belong to catholic hierarchy were corrupt even if that was the case you know god has still preserved the truth through the catholic faith the same people who decided on you know the trinity at the early councils of nicaea and constantinople and the council of ephesus council of cal stone the same people who decided on the books that are in the bible um you know are the same kind of people that walk the earth now and in some places and sometimes you have you have a church on fire and you have many many saints and other times in other places you don't you know i i've i've read from cardinal serra for instance in africa who talks about talks about the amazing growth of the catholic church in africa over the last hundred years i don't remember the numbers now but he basically says the 20th century began with like two million catholics and it ended with like 200 million catholics so extreme growth and many places where the church is on fire and then then other places where you just find spiritual deadness and people need to pick up erasmus book of the incaridian and read it you know with new eyes need to go back and read the sources so anyway we'll get to that next week though talking about the application to now if you have any final words uh yeah my my final words are just that not only have great saints helped carry us through sometimes the greatest saints in the history of christianity have come out of dumpster fires like this uh it's actually quite extraordinary when you go back and look at while the hierarchy in rome is just royally falling down on the job and worse um god is raising up people throughout the body of christ um and it's it's it's happened throughout the centuries it's happened ever since you know ever since the ascension this has been going on but man what a mess what a mess this is a tough episode to do ken a tough episode to do because you have to look hard and fairly into the mess that it really was and in some ways continues and and we'll bring this up to the 20th century and apply it to ourselves next week all right sounds good i'm not looking forward to it but i'm looking forward to it in the meantime ken thank you so much thank you for watching and listening uh please do visit us at chnetwork.org uh head over to community.chnetwork.org if you want to participate in our online community i'm matt swaim ken hensley my co-host thank you for being with us talk to you next week we'll see you next week [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Coming Home Network International

Views: 986

Rating: 4.8873239 out of 5

Keywords: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Faith, Religion, Spirituality, prayer, Catholic, Protestant, Martin Luther, Reformation, Indulgences, Corruption, Clergy abuse, Church scandal, hypocrisy, greed, bishops, Rome, Pope, Medieval, Middle Ages, John Calvin, Zwingli, Purgatory, Church History, Christianity, Lutheran, EWTN, Marcus Grodi, The Journey Home, Baptist, Nazarene, Methodist, Evangelical, Church Heirarchy

Id: oGbgMU0XOng

Length: 43min 35sec (2615 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021