The watcher has, once again, taken leave of comprehension and logic in his analysis of a recent response of mine to him.

In response to my post regarding the interpretation of Scripture, a Roman Catholic poster made the statement in quoted and colorized below. This is truly sad and is just further conformation, as if any is needed that the Roman Catholic doctrine is unbiblical. I will give his a pass however, since Roman Catholics trust in the Church for their doctrine and path to salvation rather than the revealed Word of God for doctrine, sola Scripture, and faith in Christ alone, sole fide, for salvation as the Bible reveals.

This would be the same person, mind, who once accused me of being a Jesuit.

What is amusing about the watcher is how -- not unlike an idol of his, a certain Mr. Jack Chick -- the author attempts to emotionally maniuplate his readers. It's not unlike some Islamic correspondents that occasionally write in to me via my main blog and the way that they seem bent on theorizing that behind all their follies and pitfalls there is, at work, a vast Jewish conspiracy. By playing up my Catholicism, the watcher is essentially attempting to emotionally maniuplate his readers by playing on their doubts and fears, rather than risk his being shown up in a straightforward exchange of ideas.

Perhaps even more amusingly is the way he rails against Catholicism for how it apparently encourages people to trust in the Church (e.g. the insitution that is the Catholic Church*) rather than in Christ, and then ends his opening statement with an affirmation of some of the doctrines of one Martin Luther. Who, indeed, is following man-made doctrines here?

I've addressed this point in the past, and will only briefly mention it again here: yes, Catholicism rejects sola scriptura, but not because we reject the teaching authority of Scripture. We simply reject the assertion that the Bible is the only means by which God makes His truths known to mankind. We do accept that the Bible is the primary vector by which revelation arrives, and we further accept that nothing which is true can be in contradiction to the truth revealed in Scripture.

I suppose one could say we're not "Bible Christians" and be telling the truth, but only if one were willing to state that we were "Bible plus more Christians". Anyone asserting that we are somehow "less than Biblical" is, frankly, selling snake oil. And the best advice I can give there is: don't buy. Hold out for the offer on the bridge.

The interesting yet sad point is that Roman Catholics fail to understand that God's Word is forever settled and unchanging.

Actually, we understand that just fine. Unlike the watcher, though, Catholics don't usually believe that God has stopped speaking to us simply because the last page of the Bible has been written.

The Holy Spirit that indwells born again, saved Christians, does not change the Word of God, He guides us in our understanding and interpretation of it.

This is the Catholic belief also. It's refreshing to agree with the watcher for once.

Once again though, I will give the poster a pass since his institution, the Roman Catholic Church, believes that the Pope can change, overide the Word of God and that the Roman Catholic Church must interpret Scripture for its members.

Yet more emotional manipulation playing on the fears and misunderstandings of the Reader. I've discussed the issue of papal infallibility before, and at length.

This is why Tyndale and thousands of others such as the Waldesians and Lollards were burned at the stake, disemboweled, and slaughtered by the thousands under the order and directives of the Roman Catholic Church, for possession of Bibles and for their efforts to bring the Bible to the common man in their native language. When they had temporal power over governments, they kept people in bondage through mass atrocities, now the keep them in bondage through their unbiblical teachings.

The level of emotional manipulation and distortion of truth is quite profound, and I'm of two minds as to how to respond.

I can't deny that some terrible stuff has been perpetrated, throughout history, by Catholics, but neither will I deny that Protestants and others gave as good as they got (so to speak). The Westminster Confession, Elizabeth 1's persecution and execution of Jesuits at Tyburn, the torture and execution of Catholics in Calvinist Scotland, the intense animosity of American anti-Catholicisim that even led, for a time, to anti-Catholic mob violence (and found a welcome home in, amother other places, the KKK), and various other persecutions of Catholics all across Europe during and after the Reformation cry out to heaven for justice as loudly as any Catholic action.

Of course, more ludicrous still is the charge -- a common canard, really -- that Tyndale was executed for his efforts to bring the Bible to the people in common languages. One can't expect much in the way of truth from anti-Catholic bigots on this point, but the truth is indeed far less dramatic than the watcher would have us all believe. Sadly, I fear that more than a few may well be duped by his blatant attempt at maniuplation.

On the face of it, the charge that the Church would execute people for translating or preserving the Word of God is rather spurious and somewhat ridiculous, given the Church's own involvement in a) translating and b) preserving Scripture for over a thousand years by the time of the Reformation. Also, it was not illegal that Tyndale (or others) translated the Bible into other languages, English or something else. Let's repeat that, for reference: the actual act of translating the Bible into a common tongue was not illegal.

One law in the 1400s was passed, but this was in response to the Wycliff translation, which was full of errors and used to justify many heresies; both secular and religious authorities condemned the work. The law given in 1408 prohibited "unauthorized" translations of Scripture, in part because there was an earnest desire on both the part of the Church, and also on the part of the secular authorities of the day, to ensure that any translation of Scripture remained faithful to the original texts and the message therein; it was deemed far too risky to allow spurious translations that might contribute to theological errors and lead people astray from the truth.

Which is, if you think about it, both a reasonable fear and a reasonable response.

What is amusing, if tragically so, is that English translations of the Bible existed prior to Wycliff's version -- these were, and remained, legal. ("Where we Got the Bible", Henry Graham, Chapter 11). And future authorized translations into English (and other common tongues) were likewise legal. The only issue was that the translation be "authorized" -- that is to say, then, that private individuals could not, outside the auspices of the Church, promulgate their own alternative translations. The desire was to reduce or prevent error from being introduced into Scripture.

Tyndale, basically, spurned this law, and set out (without authorization) to promulgate a new translation. The Church in England objected to his initial petitions for authorization for a few reasons, not the least of which was that extant English translations were sufficient. Actually, booksellers were having a hard time selling the existing English editions as it was, so low was demand for them, that a law had to be passed to compel people into buying English-language Bibles. Moreover, Tyndale himself was not exactly a reputable scholar and was a bit of a renegade priest in his day -- a sort of 1500s version of the liberal pastor who goes off the doctrinal rails.

Tyndale left England and found support for his efforts in Martin Luther, and his end product was a horror for the numbers of mistranslations and outright errors it contained. Indeed, Tyndale's preface to his work was basically an anti-Catholic polemic, which should have been a major indication for any of his would-be defenders that his interest was agenda-driven, rather than being driven by a desire for truth and good scholarship. Even if one is not Catholic, one can hopefully see that a polemicist is not the sort of person one should entrust with the responsibility of publishing a definitive translation of the Bible.

And yet this is what Tyndale did.

Of course, Tyndale's translation was condemned in the harshest terms. But the Church itself didn't send Tyndale to his end. King Henry VIII -- the founder of Anglicanism, mind -- decreed that Tyndale's Bible should be "utterly expelled" from England and its people. Henry later decreed, still enraged over the scale of Tyndale's error, that all English translations were to be banned...and this, notably, was after he had broken the English church away from Rome.

Tyndale was arrested, tried, and sentenced to die for heresy on account of the fact that his Bible contained numerous heretical concepts. While we can make a case that execution for hersey is, in and of itself, wrong, it should be noted that Tyndale's crime was not that he provided the words of Scripture to the common people in their own language. That had already been done, and laws had even been passed mandating that the common people should go out and buy a Bible. And a few years after Tyndale's death, the Church produced the Douay-Reims English translation of Scripture.

Again, I don't deny the charge that the Church executed heretics. I can't and I won't.

Equally, I think it's important that the truth behind such actions be known. While I personally don't think it was morally justified to execute people for heresy (we should always desire the reformation and reconciliation of such a one), I find it just as odious that the true history of Tyndale et. al. has been twisted and warped as much as it has. The issue was never that common people could read or own a Bible -- the Church encouraged and endorsed both realities, and even (in England) had to mandate it by law that people should own a Bible translated into English. The issue was one of authorization and preventing error...error which Tyndale promulgated in spades.

And as to the issue of my work: I've got scripts compiling, DVD images rendering, and test processes ticking away as a part of my job today. Gotta do something to kill the time!

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* When Protestants speak of the Catholic Church, they tend to speak of the institution. When the Church refers to herself by use of the term, she does not mean the institution, but in fact refers to the Body that is Bride, to whom Christ is Bridegrooom.

This produces no small amount of confusion, to be sure, as the watcher clearly evidences.