What about the Council of Trent? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
So we’re returning to this look at KJV-onlyism. After all, we’ve come this far. Might as well go all the way to the end. Anyway, the source material can be found here.
The reformation is running wild across Europe. There is revival in the land. Major changes are occurring and the good news of the gospel of grace is spreading. Many people are being blessed and many are thankful.
However, not everyone likes the gospel of grace. There are enemies to this good news.
In this chapter, Satan is once again seeking to kill, steal, and destroy. And, he is seeking those he may ‘use’.
Gotta love how the devil is always the boogeyman. Personally, there was good and bad both in the Reformation and I’m sure the same can be said for the counter-Reformation.
“In 1545 the Roman Catholic Church formed the Council of Trent” [S1P87]. “The Council of Trent was dominated by the Jesuits” [S2P235]. The purpose was to: “… undermine the Bible, then destroy the Protestant teaching and doctrine” [S2P237].
The latter could be true if you meant undermining Protestantism. I think at that time the genie was out of the bottle and there was no eliminating it. However, I have no reason to think they were trying to undermine the Bible.
“The Council of Trent systematically denied the teachings of the Reformation. The Council decreed that ‘tradition’ was on equal authority with the Bible” [S1P87].
The Council of Trent also decreed that:
“… justification was not by faith alone in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. In fact it stated that anyone believing in this vital Bible doctrine was CURSED” [S1P87].
The council’s exact words were:
“If anyone saith that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake or that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified, let him be ANATHEMA” [S1P87].
While I think this is an accurate set of quotations, would it have killed Johnson to go straight to the source?
“Now we see that the Roman Catholic Church is guilty of officially cursing Jesus Christ! Would God use this ‘Church’ to preserve his Words?” [S1P87].
Apparently he had for 1,000 years.
So this was the ‘policy’ of the Council of Trent. But what about the results?
Specifically, history records that:
1) The Council of Trent condemned: “That Holy Scriptures contained all the things necessary for salvation …”
This could be since the RCC does put tradition up there with Scripture, but it needs to be shown, not asserted.
2) The Council of Trent condemned: “That the meaning of Scripture is plain, and that it can be understood without commentary with the help of Christ’s Spirit”.
Again, this needs to be shown. I think there are things that are plain that the RCC would agree we can all understand, but also that there are difficult things that Protestant scholars would say are not plain and we do need help to understand.
3) As to certain books in the Traditional Majority Text, the Council of Trent condemned them saying: “… they were apocryphal and not canonical”.
At this point, a writer could name those books, but I suppose Johnson doesn’t want to.
Either way, I have read the Apocrypha and I have no problem with Christians doing so.
4) The Council of Trent also said that: “… lay members of the church had NO RIGHT to interpret the Scriptures apart from the Clergy” [S2P237].
5) “The Council of Trent, after a prolonged and stormy session, also issued a decree that the entire Old Testament, including the Apocryphal books, were to be received and venerated with unwritten tradition as the Word of God” [S4P100].
6) On April 8th 1546, the Council of Trent declared that Jerome’s, corrupted, Latin Bible was: “… the authentic Bible of the Roman Church” [S4P99].
Again, would it have been too hard to quote Trent directly?
And lastly:
“The Papal machine officially closed all investigation into the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts in 1546, at the Council of Trent, by declaring -without a single German philologist, historian, or scholar present – that the corrupt manuscripts … are the inspired, canonical scriptures, and that anyone who does not go along with them is anathema – ACCURSED” [S11P61].
It’s hard to say what is going on here. The RCC did later on issue their own translation called the Rheims-Douay so it’s hard to imagine they closed all investigation.
So we see Satan using the Roman Catholic ‘Church’, the Jesuits, and the Council of Trent to resist the Reformation and to resist the spread of the true Word of God.
Actually, we just see assertions. There’s a lot of back and forth that went on and this is neither the time nor the place to deal with those issues. I’m just interested in textual issues and we have none of those really being dealt with here.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)