Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider
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after a short break,
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now we get down to
the nitty-gritty again.
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And, you know, it
all comes back to,
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I think how does the individual
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relates to this and
really as I said earlier
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to the Reformation.
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The Reformation was like
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a bad opening for Christians
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who were seeking truth,
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the Word of God,
it's like the truth
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now is available to anyone,
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not what someone else tells you.
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You know, it's
interesting because Luther,
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when he was
pushing into the reform
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was very keen on
getting rid of anything
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that he could not
demonstrate from scripture.
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But he started backpedaling
after the peasants' revolution,
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and the slaughter
of all these peasants,
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and he started
backpedaling and saying,
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"Well, maybe we should
only get rid of those things
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that are
directly against Scripture
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rather than
getting rid of everything
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if it's not found in Scripture.
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And in most
groups hit that, I mean,
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in the Adventist setting
James White hit that as well.
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At first, get rid of everything
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except for what we
can prove from Scripture,
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and then it's like,
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"Well, maybe we
can't get rid of everything
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because of the
fact that those things
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that are
demonstrable in Scripture
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don't cover all the categories
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that we need to
be addressing today."
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Well, I think from what
the way you're describing,
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he had the problem
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that some of our
own members have now.
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They're sort of on a
quest to reinvent everything
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and to define the
whole thing as Christian,
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where it seems to
me the baseline thing
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of being a
Christian should be there,
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and Adventist have a particular
viewpoint for our times,
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and a particular
interpretation of one element.
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But in the main,
all of the assumptions
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and advantages of people
studying through the ages
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should be appropriated by us.
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We're not
reinventing the whole thing.
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And it's
interesting that you put it
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in terms of
studying through history.
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We're talking about
Bible study through history,
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we're talking about
people picking up the Bible
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and reading it through history,
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which is very different
than sitting and listening
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to somebody tell
you what to believe
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because a lot of that
happened through history too.
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The church fathers,
the church directors,
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that the
priests, and the bishops,
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and even in the Reformation
it becomes, the new clergy
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starts telling
everybody what to believe.
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And that's not so
unusual when you think about it
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while they had this illumination
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on the need for average
person to study the Bible,
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their whole structure,
their mindset, their habits
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were exactly as it had been
with the Roman Catholic Church
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for all that time,
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so it's no mystery to
me why Calvin and others
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tended to
behave rather similarly
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when they had the chance.
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That's all they knew. Yeah.
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But the reality is
they had broken officially
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from accepting what
the church taught as true
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to needing to find
out truth from Scripture,
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and that's a big shift.
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Now, how do we
get to that spot of
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the church is the
one who teaches this,
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and that is what is right
and nothing else can happen.
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And what does that
mean for individual rights?
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Now I'll go back to the
original statement I made.
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I know that it's the
crown jewels for Rome,
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particularly, this
statement of Jesus to Peter
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that, you know,
whatever you seal here
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or whatever you damn here,
that'll be done also in heaven.
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And I'm not sure anyone,
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I've never heard anyone
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totally
transparently explain that.
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But I'm quite certain
that it was over applied.
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I mean, it would be
foolish on its face,
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except that it's being
done by the Jesuits and others
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to say that, that
something antithetical
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to God's
principles could be enunciated
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by a church leader here
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and God would
honor such a thing?
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Can't be.
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Now, interestingly enough
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in the
understanding of what is truth
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and the church is the
ones who are the arbiter of it.
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During Cyprian's time,
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in the middle of
the third century,
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he comes up
with three statements
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that are attempting to try
to help to unify the church
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and clarify things.
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And he does not
honor it by himself,
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he does it in conversation
with other bishops and such,
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but he asserts rather strongly,
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there is no
salvation outside the church.
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He says...
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The way he puts it is,
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"You cannot have
God as your Father
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unless you have the
church as your mother."
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And this only flows if
the actions of the church
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are actually bringing salvation.
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Doesn't that ignore
of Jesus' statement,
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"Other sheep have I
not of this," pastor.
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It does, it completely flies
in the face of many things,
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Jesus says, "Come to Me,"
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Jesus says, "Not
come to the church."
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And in reality, you have it that
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the church ends up saying,
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"What we do causes salvation."
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Now interestingly
enough, the other two things
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that are said by Cyprian
there is that the next one
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is the church
equals the bishops,
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"Where you find the bishop,
there you find the church."
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It makes it, so that
it's not all the people
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that are the church per se,
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so much as it is the
bishop that defines the church.
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And then the third thing,
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therefore only the
bishop can forgive sins
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or only the bishop is the
one who knows adequately enough
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to declare when
someone is forgiven or not.
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And so this is the idea
behind coming to your bishop
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and demonstrating
that you know of your sins,
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and then getting absolution.
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I often ask questions
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where I think I know the answer,
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but no one put this, but
it just hit me, you know,
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more and more
in the Middle Ages.
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Bishoprics and
other church appointments
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were as much
political, as religious,
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and so many secular people
were put in these positions.
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So how would they think
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that the secular
person would have any judgment
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or an ability to
specify spiritual things?
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Well, the official
argument kind of goes,
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they don't need to
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because if they defy the church,
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then they need to be
reprimanded by the church.
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The church is the authority,
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the church is the
one that is hold in line,
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and if one individual
is jumping out of line
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that they will be brought back.
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But, according to
Augustine's argument,
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it is not the right
action or the right thinking
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of the individual
that causes the efficacy
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of the actions of salvation,
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it is the Ordo,
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it is the fact that
they have the Holy Spirit
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through the
ordination of the church,
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therefore what they do is right,
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even if they
themselves are not good people.
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And I can actually
think of one example that...
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Before I ask my question,
I didn't think of this,
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but Thomas Becket seems to me,
feels that absolutely wasn't.
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He wasn't a priest, he
had no religious background.
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Well, he had been...
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I thought he trained
briefly, but the deacon, yeah.
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He trained as an archdeacon,
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and had gone as
far as an archdeacon.
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But he certainly wasn't in
the church stream of things,
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he was a very secular type.
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And he go straight to the top,
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and he's the only saint
of both the Church of England
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and the Catholic Church.
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And I think what he
did was admirable, I mean,
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in fighting
back against the king
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trying to control the church.
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But it brings
the pendulum too far,
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if he gets what
he actually says,
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'cause Becket was
arguing the church line
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against the king.
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And what we view him as today
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as balancing an
out of control king.
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Well, that's
true if he'd be left
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to his own debacle.
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Because according to
him, the church says no wrong,
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and therefore it has to be,
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everything has to be
judged for by the old priest,
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no matter if they're
doing right or wrong,
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need to be judged
only by the church.
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Yeah, and you're right,
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I was about to
bring up that point.
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A big part of the
English reformation
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of Henry VIII
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wasn't just
justifying his marriage
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or even bringing
himself into line
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with some of the
theological developments
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that were part
of the Reformation.
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There was this antipathy
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to the
independence of the church
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that had its own church courts
in opposition to civil courts,
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and in
particular with the priest,
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although anybody
could go to a church court,
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but the priests, you know...
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Could only go to
church courts. Right.
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And they would
do egregious things
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and the church would
rap them on the knuckles,
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you know, if you Hail Marys,
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and you're okay
and here, you know.
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And then, of
course, the other thing
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that is big part
of it in England,
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the state wanted the
properties the church had
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because they would
become a competing entity.
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Well, not just
competing, by the time
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you get to Henry's reign,
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approximately
60% of the land mass
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belonged to the church
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because every
generation would donate
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more to the
church, and the church
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would just keep it and keep.
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So that was the first act
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to appropriate
all of that property
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for the state.
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And you know,
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that's not in
itself a good thing
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but it was
setting things straight
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from an
overbalance of the church
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taking all of this
property prerogatives,
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and even on civil law.
00:09:30.73\00:09:32.93
But there you have
two competing ideas
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of who's in charge.
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And neither one of
those is in balance.
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You're right, good point.
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And if you get one
of them too strong,
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they imbalance
it their direction,
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if the other
one gets too strong,
00:09:41.88\00:09:43.21
they imbalance
it their direction
00:09:43.24\00:09:44.58
But going back to
Cyprian for a minute,
00:09:44.61\00:09:45.95
Cyprian actually had
a caveat that he gave.
00:09:45.98\00:09:49.78
"Only the bishops can
forgive sins," he said,
00:09:49.82\00:09:52.22
"and there's no
salvation outside the church."
00:09:52.25\00:09:54.19
But he said in a caveat,
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"If the church makes a
mistake, God will overrule."
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And the caveat is
not quoted very often
00:10:01.00\00:10:03.53
by those who are
applying Cyprian's laws.
00:10:03.57\00:10:05.67
But we say that today, you know,
00:10:05.70\00:10:07.04
God will set them straight.
00:10:07.07\00:10:08.47
I don't think He does
00:10:08.50\00:10:10.24
against human nature
and human error you know,
00:10:10.27\00:10:13.68
if we want to sell the
church to the devil himself,
00:10:13.71\00:10:17.55
unfortunately that will happen.
00:10:17.58\00:10:19.55
Right, but we're
talking about the salvation.
00:10:19.58\00:10:20.92
God moves upon hearts,
00:10:20.95\00:10:22.28
not upon actions
against the heart.
00:10:22.32\00:10:24.42
Right, but in the
context to Cyprian's
00:10:24.45\00:10:26.86
talking about salvation itself.
00:10:26.89\00:10:28.72
And in the area of salvation,
00:10:28.76\00:10:31.13
Cyprian argues that
the church has the right
00:10:31.16\00:10:35.90
to forgive or not to forgive,
00:10:35.93\00:10:37.43
to withhold forgiveness
or to give forgiveness.
00:10:37.47\00:10:40.57
But if the
church makes a mistake,
00:10:40.60\00:10:42.50
God will intervene.
00:10:42.54\00:10:44.11
That part was forgotten
for most of the Middle Ages.
00:10:44.14\00:10:48.44
A few years ago,
00:10:51.08\00:10:52.41
the Roman
Catholic Church came out
00:10:52.45\00:10:53.78
with a very interesting document
00:10:53.82\00:10:55.15
called Memory
and Reconciliation.
00:10:55.18\00:10:58.52
And I give them credit
00:10:58.55\00:10:59.89
for wanting to divest themselves
00:10:59.92\00:11:02.66
of some of the more embarrassing
00:11:02.69\00:11:04.99
past episodes of church history,
00:11:05.03\00:11:07.60
things like the
persecution of the Jews,
00:11:07.63\00:11:09.53
the crusades, and so on.
00:11:09.56\00:11:13.03
But in reality, it's
not that easily done,
00:11:13.07\00:11:15.07
especially as that
document was a bit disingenuous
00:11:15.10\00:11:18.54
and reserve the magisterium
to be sort of beyond fault.
00:11:18.57\00:11:25.08
But when we come to
the end of our days,
00:11:25.11\00:11:27.32
and when human beings
come to the end of days,
00:11:27.35\00:11:31.22
and face the
judgment power of God,
00:11:31.25\00:11:34.32
we can't escape our actions.
00:11:34.36\00:11:37.33
We can only ask for
forgiveness for them.
00:11:37.36\00:11:39.76
And the Reformation,
00:11:39.79\00:11:41.16
I think, brought us quite
a way toward that realization
00:11:41.20\00:11:44.30
that we stand as
individual beings
00:11:44.33\00:11:47.40
before God,
00:11:47.44\00:11:48.77
and we are
responsible for our actions,
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but ultimately, God forgives
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and that's the hope that
I think stands before us.
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That's the goal
that we're striving to
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for emphasizing
individual conscience,
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religious liberty
and freedom for all.
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For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
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