Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI190423B
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00:04 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider
00:06 after a short break, 00:07 now we get down to the nitty-gritty again. 00:09 And, you know, it all comes back to, 00:12 I think how does the individual 00:14 relates to this and really as I said earlier 00:16 to the Reformation. 00:18 The Reformation was like 00:20 a bad opening for Christians 00:23 who were seeking truth, 00:24 the Word of God, it's like the truth 00:27 now is available to anyone, 00:28 not what someone else tells you. 00:30 You know, it's interesting because Luther, 00:32 when he was pushing into the reform 00:35 was very keen on getting rid of anything 00:38 that he could not demonstrate from scripture. 00:41 But he started backpedaling after the peasants' revolution, 00:47 and the slaughter of all these peasants, 00:48 and he started backpedaling and saying, 00:52 "Well, maybe we should only get rid of those things 00:55 that are directly against Scripture 00:56 rather than getting rid of everything 00:58 if it's not found in Scripture. 01:01 And in most groups hit that, I mean, 01:04 in the Adventist setting James White hit that as well. 01:07 At first, get rid of everything 01:08 except for what we can prove from Scripture, 01:10 and then it's like, 01:11 "Well, maybe we can't get rid of everything 01:12 because of the fact that those things 01:16 that are demonstrable in Scripture 01:20 don't cover all the categories 01:21 that we need to be addressing today." 01:24 Well, I think from what the way you're describing, 01:26 he had the problem 01:28 that some of our own members have now. 01:31 They're sort of on a quest to reinvent everything 01:34 and to define the whole thing as Christian, 01:37 where it seems to me the baseline thing 01:40 of being a Christian should be there, 01:42 and Adventist have a particular viewpoint for our times, 01:45 and a particular interpretation of one element. 01:49 But in the main, all of the assumptions 01:52 and advantages of people studying through the ages 01:55 should be appropriated by us. 01:57 We're not reinventing the whole thing. 01:59 And it's interesting that you put it 02:02 in terms of studying through history. 02:04 We're talking about Bible study through history, 02:07 we're talking about people picking up the Bible 02:08 and reading it through history, 02:10 which is very different than sitting and listening 02:11 to somebody tell you what to believe 02:14 because a lot of that happened through history too. 02:17 The church fathers, the church directors, 02:20 that the priests, and the bishops, 02:22 and even in the Reformation it becomes, the new clergy 02:26 starts telling everybody what to believe. 02:28 And that's not so unusual when you think about it 02:31 while they had this illumination 02:35 on the need for average person to study the Bible, 02:38 their whole structure, their mindset, their habits 02:41 were exactly as it had been with the Roman Catholic Church 02:43 for all that time, 02:45 so it's no mystery to me why Calvin and others 02:49 tended to behave rather similarly 02:51 when they had the chance. 02:53 That's all they knew. Yeah. 02:56 But the reality is they had broken officially 03:00 from accepting what the church taught as true 03:03 to needing to find out truth from Scripture, 03:06 and that's a big shift. 03:08 Now, how do we get to that spot of 03:12 the church is the one who teaches this, 03:16 and that is what is right and nothing else can happen. 03:18 And what does that mean for individual rights? 03:20 Now I'll go back to the original statement I made. 03:22 I know that it's the crown jewels for Rome, 03:28 particularly, this statement of Jesus to Peter 03:31 that, you know, whatever you seal here 03:33 or whatever you damn here, that'll be done also in heaven. 03:37 And I'm not sure anyone, 03:40 I've never heard anyone 03:43 totally transparently explain that. 03:45 But I'm quite certain that it was over applied. 03:49 I mean, it would be foolish on its face, 03:52 except that it's being done by the Jesuits and others 03:54 to say that, that something antithetical 03:57 to God's principles could be enunciated 03:59 by a church leader here 04:00 and God would honor such a thing? 04:02 Can't be. 04:03 Now, interestingly enough 04:04 in the understanding of what is truth 04:08 and the church is the ones who are the arbiter of it. 04:12 During Cyprian's time, 04:13 in the middle of the third century, 04:17 he comes up with three statements 04:19 that are attempting to try to help to unify the church 04:22 and clarify things. 04:24 And he does not honor it by himself, 04:27 he does it in conversation with other bishops and such, 04:30 but he asserts rather strongly, 04:33 there is no salvation outside the church. 04:36 He says... 04:38 The way he puts it is, 04:39 "You cannot have God as your Father 04:41 unless you have the church as your mother." 04:44 And this only flows if the actions of the church 04:50 are actually bringing salvation. 04:52 Doesn't that ignore of Jesus' statement, 04:53 "Other sheep have I not of this," pastor. 04:55 It does, it completely flies in the face of many things, 04:59 Jesus says, "Come to Me," 05:02 Jesus says, "Not come to the church." 05:04 And in reality, you have it that 05:08 the church ends up saying, 05:10 "What we do causes salvation." 05:13 Now interestingly enough, the other two things 05:14 that are said by Cyprian there is that the next one 05:17 is the church equals the bishops, 05:19 "Where you find the bishop, there you find the church." 05:22 It makes it, so that it's not all the people 05:25 that are the church per se, 05:26 so much as it is the bishop that defines the church. 05:29 And then the third thing, 05:31 therefore only the bishop can forgive sins 05:33 or only the bishop is the one who knows adequately enough 05:37 to declare when someone is forgiven or not. 05:39 And so this is the idea behind coming to your bishop 05:44 and demonstrating that you know of your sins, 05:48 and then getting absolution. 05:49 I often ask questions 05:51 where I think I know the answer, 05:52 but no one put this, but it just hit me, you know, 05:56 more and more in the Middle Ages. 05:59 Bishoprics and other church appointments 06:01 were as much political, as religious, 06:06 and so many secular people were put in these positions. 06:10 So how would they think 06:11 that the secular person would have any judgment 06:14 or an ability to specify spiritual things? 06:18 Well, the official argument kind of goes, 06:21 they don't need to 06:23 because if they defy the church, 06:26 then they need to be reprimanded by the church. 06:29 The church is the authority, 06:30 the church is the one that is hold in line, 06:32 and if one individual is jumping out of line 06:35 that they will be brought back. 06:39 But, according to Augustine's argument, 06:43 it is not the right action or the right thinking 06:46 of the individual that causes the efficacy 06:49 of the actions of salvation, 06:51 it is the Ordo, 06:53 it is the fact that they have the Holy Spirit 06:56 through the ordination of the church, 06:58 therefore what they do is right, 07:01 even if they themselves are not good people. 07:04 And I can actually think of one example that... 07:07 Before I ask my question, I didn't think of this, 07:09 but Thomas Becket seems to me, feels that absolutely wasn't. 07:12 He wasn't a priest, he had no religious background. 07:15 Well, he had been... 07:17 I thought he trained briefly, but the deacon, yeah. 07:19 He trained as an archdeacon, 07:20 and had gone as far as an archdeacon. 07:22 But he certainly wasn't in the church stream of things, 07:25 he was a very secular type. 07:27 And he go straight to the top, 07:29 and he's the only saint of both the Church of England 07:32 and the Catholic Church. 07:36 And I think what he did was admirable, I mean, 07:38 in fighting back against the king 07:40 trying to control the church. 07:44 But it brings the pendulum too far, 07:46 if he gets what he actually says, 07:48 'cause Becket was arguing the church line 07:51 against the king. 07:52 And what we view him as today 07:55 as balancing an out of control king. 08:00 Well, that's true if he'd be left 08:01 to his own debacle. 08:03 Because according to him, the church says no wrong, 08:05 and therefore it has to be, 08:07 everything has to be judged for by the old priest, 08:11 no matter if they're doing right or wrong, 08:12 need to be judged only by the church. 08:13 Yeah, and you're right, 08:15 I was about to bring up that point. 08:16 A big part of the English reformation 08:18 of Henry VIII 08:20 wasn't just justifying his marriage 08:22 or even bringing himself into line 08:24 with some of the theological developments 08:28 that were part of the Reformation. 08:30 There was this antipathy 08:31 to the independence of the church 08:33 that had its own church courts in opposition to civil courts, 08:36 and in particular with the priest, 08:38 although anybody could go to a church court, 08:40 but the priests, you know... 08:42 Could only go to church courts. Right. 08:44 And they would do egregious things 08:46 and the church would rap them on the knuckles, 08:48 you know, if you Hail Marys, 08:49 and you're okay and here, you know. 08:51 And then, of course, the other thing 08:53 that is big part of it in England, 08:55 the state wanted the properties the church had 08:59 because they would become a competing entity. 09:01 Well, not just competing, by the time 09:03 you get to Henry's reign, 09:05 approximately 60% of the land mass 09:07 belonged to the church 09:09 because every generation would donate 09:11 more to the church, and the church 09:12 would just keep it and keep. 09:14 So that was the first act 09:15 to appropriate all of that property 09:16 for the state. 09:18 And you know, 09:19 that's not in itself a good thing 09:21 but it was setting things straight 09:24 from an overbalance of the church 09:25 taking all of this property prerogatives, 09:30 and even on civil law. 09:32 But there you have two competing ideas 09:35 of who's in charge. 09:36 And neither one of those is in balance. 09:37 You're right, good point. 09:39 And if you get one of them too strong, 09:40 they imbalance it their direction, 09:41 if the other one gets too strong, 09:43 they imbalance it their direction 09:44 But going back to Cyprian for a minute, 09:45 Cyprian actually had a caveat that he gave. 09:49 "Only the bishops can forgive sins," he said, 09:52 "and there's no salvation outside the church." 09:54 But he said in a caveat, 09:56 "If the church makes a mistake, God will overrule." 10:01 And the caveat is not quoted very often 10:03 by those who are applying Cyprian's laws. 10:05 But we say that today, you know, 10:07 God will set them straight. 10:08 I don't think He does 10:10 against human nature and human error you know, 10:13 if we want to sell the church to the devil himself, 10:17 unfortunately that will happen. 10:19 Right, but we're talking about the salvation. 10:20 God moves upon hearts, 10:22 not upon actions against the heart. 10:24 Right, but in the context to Cyprian's 10:26 talking about salvation itself. 10:28 And in the area of salvation, 10:31 Cyprian argues that the church has the right 10:35 to forgive or not to forgive, 10:37 to withhold forgiveness or to give forgiveness. 10:40 But if the church makes a mistake, 10:42 God will intervene. 10:44 That part was forgotten for most of the Middle Ages. 10:51 A few years ago, 10:52 the Roman Catholic Church came out 10:53 with a very interesting document 10:55 called Memory and Reconciliation. 10:58 And I give them credit 10:59 for wanting to divest themselves 11:02 of some of the more embarrassing 11:05 past episodes of church history, 11:07 things like the persecution of the Jews, 11:09 the crusades, and so on. 11:13 But in reality, it's not that easily done, 11:15 especially as that document was a bit disingenuous 11:18 and reserve the magisterium to be sort of beyond fault. 11:25 But when we come to the end of our days, 11:27 and when human beings come to the end of days, 11:31 and face the judgment power of God, 11:34 we can't escape our actions. 11:37 We can only ask for forgiveness for them. 11:39 And the Reformation, 11:41 I think, brought us quite a way toward that realization 11:44 that we stand as individual beings 11:47 before God, 11:48 and we are responsible for our actions, 11:50 but ultimately, God forgives 11:52 and that's the hope that I think stands before us. 11:55 That's the goal that we're striving to 11:57 for emphasizing individual conscience, 12:00 religious liberty and freedom for all. 12:04 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2019-03-14