Protestantism before Reformation

Dont know how to ask but will try. But did protestantism exist before reformation? Did people believe in sola scriptura and that RCC wasnt the true church(i dont this so no accusation that im catholic)?

Other urls found in this thread:

newadvent.org/fathers/0103.htm
ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc3.iii.x.xi.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

I think there were always outliers to the RCC, and you can see that in the east through the Byzantine empire and Greece.

I'm sure there were plenty of people who believed and practiced along the lines of protestantism but just didn't broadcast it.

>did protestantism exist before reformation
No. Protestantism is new to the fact no other heresy has ever promoted things like Sola Scriptura and salvation by faith alone.
Sola Scriptura and salvation by faith alone idea is very strange even to early gnosticism, even though Luther and Calvin were influenced by it
Keep in mind that the major protestant organizations don't agree with each other but they all profess sola scriptura.
It's interesting Protestants quote Church Fathers and those Church Fathers believed in the Pope, in confession and the Bishops.

Sorry for bumping

There were a few theologians like John Wycliffe who expressed Ideas similar to Luther, but I dont know of anyone with those views before 1200AD.

Ive never seen any writing by Roman or Greek Christians, including those considered "heretical" advocating such view, at least in regards to the bible. Its pretty clear most of them did not consider the Roman church Supreme in the sense medieval Catholics did

Similar ideas probably existed, but we don't know about them due to catholic censorship

The Orthodox obviously didn't regard Rome. But as for sola scriptura, that was a pretty new development that sprang out of Rome being retarded and saying laity were forbidden from translating or reading the Bible (forgetting perhaps that the Bible was translated into Latin for the sake of the laity). This couldn't help but give the impression that Rome was betraying the Bible and wanted to hide that. As a consequence the Bible was seen as the real deal, the redpill, whereas the stuff Rome gave the laity (tradition) was seen as the blue pill given to the cattle. Rome caused the Reformation by her arrogance and flagrant perversion of doctrine (selling the good works of saints, for example)

>Did people believe in sola scriptura
no, the very earliest history of the Church (not even RC) was arguments over tradition and interpretations on theology.
>and that RCC wasnt the true church
anglicanism, episcopalianism, and Orthodoxy
>salvation by faith alone idea is very strange even to early gnosticism
gnostics are heretics and always have been. Christians didn't grow out of gnosticism

salvation by faith and the word of God being the sole authority for followers of Christ is the way that the Church began and grew until the time of the Ecumenical councils

Before Peter?

Yeah, they were called heretics, not everyone agreed with the whole Nicean thing

Here you go heretics, before the first council

newadvent.org/fathers/0103.htm

wouldn't his ideas on salvation be considered heresy if they were espoused today?

Not entirely, but Protestantism did have roots in the pre-Reformation. They weren't trying to rewrite theology and church practice out of whole cloth, but were working from nominalist, Thomist, and Augustinian backgrounds to which they applied the material and formal principles of the Reformation. And there was certainly a a deference to Scripture which had been lost throughout many parts of the Church by the time of the Reformation. The Reformers thought they were just restoring the Apostolic tradition, not departing from it or even trying to remake the Church.

>Keep in mind that the major protestant organizations don't agree with each other but they all profess sola scriptura.*
*For varying definitions of "sola scriptura."

>It's interesting Protestants quote Church Fathers and those Church Fathers believed in the Pope, in confession and the Bishops.
That's because consulting the Church Fathers is not inimical to sola scriptura. Sola scriptura presents the Bible as the sole FINAL authority. There are many proximate authorities, and even church traditions, which have been given much weight by classical Protestants (Reformed and Lutheran). Sola Scriptura never really meant that each individual is to come up with his own Christianity by reading his own Bible. Rather, the Bible was always intended to be read and interpreted by the Christian community as a whole, as the Church. They weren't gnostics. The idea was to peel back the unbiblical accretions and incorrect (in their view) understandings of what "bishops" and "confession" entailed -- Just as, by the way, both the Reformed and the Lutherans both had a very high view of confession, they simply didn't recognize it necessarily as a sacrament (although some Lutherans did). What they denied was a definition and system of grace and merit which they saw as entirely un-apostolic and unbiblical.

We do believe that, like all human beings, the human collective of the church slowly derailed: a compromise here; an institutionalisation there; a bad idea absorbed here; a poor practice adopted there; an improper fusing of state and church here; some imperial interference there; and before long the Pope is a temporal king managing lands and armies just like any other government, and the corruption that comes with that, especially in such a dangerous age, seeped deeper. But, the Church, that Holy, Catholic and Apostolic bride of Christ remained, hidden amongst the priests and bishops, metropolitans and popes, and amongst ordinary people and monks. Just because people hold bad ideas or practice poorly does not mean the Church was dead.

So, the Church was definitely NOT "dead". It just needed some correction. That things got so bad that Patriarchs of the five churches were excommunicating each other in the 11th century is a show not that God let the Church die, but that things were decidedly unhealthy. I, and my fellow protestants, will contend that it was this unhealthiness that lead to ructions in the mid-middle ages, the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth centuries, and eventually came to a head in England with the Wycliffe Bible, and then the English split. I would be the last to argue that this was a good thing, in terms of its reasons – Henry wasn't happy with the Pope refusing him his ninety-third divorce, so he gave the Pope the finger – but we will contend it was part of a larger movement to reform God's kingdom on Earth.

I will suggest the reformation, beginning (some might argue) with the Hussites, and culminating in Luther's dummy-spit, were also not necessarily "good" in terms of their immediate effects – think the wars, tortures, villages being wiped out, kingdoms being constantly in chaos, brother against brother-type genocidal rubbish, on both sides – but the burgeoning theological roots reclaiming going on, the "back to basics" Biblical focus, a blossoming in true worship, a renewed vigour in evangelism, in personal responsibility for salvation, on salvation by faith, etc … were the fruits of the Spirit's rending the Church. And I will contend this IS a work of the Spirit of God. I will not, however, pretend that I understand His master plan, because I cannot see it, but given against this Church hell will not prevail … leaves only the Spirit of God being at work.

Let's face it, Asia, South America, Africa have more Christians in them, I will suggest to you, than we would have ever had out of the comfy middle ages Church where the furthest we roamed was the edge of the muslim empires. "But, muh ships sailing and trading". Yes, I'm not disputing the role the burgeoning trade routes played in all this, but protestant zeal also provided incentive, I contend, for a measurably equal Catholic evangelistic zeal.

None of this is to suggest that I don't still believe catholics and orthodox have things wrong, but I will freely admit we protestants are nothing close to the perfection Christ desires in His Bride. What I will say is that the Church has always been there, sometimes in spite of "the church", in spite of the poor practices or theology. And, again, "poor practices or theology" on all sides. I just believe – just as orthbros will ins

ist about their ways – that insistence on the preeminence of the Bible, on personal responsibility and relationship with God, on reformed theology, on so many other things about protestantism, gives one a better "fighting chance" for Salvation and, moreso, strength in faith, than otherwise. I would point, for example, to weak belief structures amongst barely-practising apostolics, like the percentage of catholics who actually believe God is or that Jesus rose from the dead.

No it didn't. It was made up by Luther in 1521. Every Christian(non chalcedonians, nestorians, orthodox, catholic) up to that point believed in the sacraments/ordained presbyterate and episcopate/liturgy/salvation through sanctity. Nobody believed in predestination or salvation through belief alone or worshipping like Protestant congregations do today.

That being said there were gnostic sects which were like Protestants which came into being from people reading parts of the New Testament and individually interpreting it such as the paulicians/bogumilists/cathars. But they believed that the god of the Old Testament and New Testament were completely different entities.

The Waldenses were probably the closest thing to what you're looking for. There were also Gnostic groups like the Cathars who rejected the Catholic church but their Christianity was far from the mainstream.

>episcopate/liturgy/salvation through sanctity
Yeah, due to the rise of monasticism beginning at the 4th century. Prior to that? Not so much.
ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc3.iii.x.xi.html

>Catholicism
>getting you to heaven

It's a Church whose upper echleons perform Satanist ritual and blood magicks regularly. The only place that will send you is hell.

Book of Titus explains ordination of presbyters and bishops. Ignatius of Antioch explains the Eucharistic celebration in his writings. The laying of the hands of the presbyterate is the ordination rite

Waldensianism

I accidentally used the wrong meme.

>Book of Titus explains ordination of presbyters and bishops.
As lower or equal to the power of the elders. The former was most likely.

>Ignatius of Antioch explains the Eucharistic celebration in his writings
One was his opinion. The other was a reaction to the gnostics, a group who didn't believe that Christ had a body.

But rediscovering a tradition almost always by necessity involves innovation and invention of tradition.

The church was certainly corrupt, and the Catholic/Orthodox assertion that theirs is an unbroken or changed tradition going back to the apostles is unlikely at best,

But the protestant reformation itself had more in common with the writers you describe than anything in pre-Constantine Christianity, It was unequivocally something new, which rejected pretty much every sect that had popped up before it

>Nobody believed in predestination
Demonstrably untrue. Learn about medieval and patristic theology and try again.

>But the protestant reformation itself had more in common with the writers you describe than anything in pre-Constantine Christianity
Actually, the medieval (and modern) Catholic Church is at least as far from pre-Constantinian Christianity as 16th- and 17th-century Protestantism was. Arguably much more so. It's worth noting that one of the biggest disappointments of the magisterial Reformers was that there weren't more conversions of Jews to the reformed religion, as they spent great effort attempting to renew the early Christian patterns of worship (which would have been very Jewish in many respects) according to the earliest sources available. Indeed, when the Didache was rediscovered in the 19th century, it demonstrated the correctness of a fair amount of Protestant liturgy, at the same time differing from both Protestant AND Catholic practice. But if I had to say which which was closer to the ancient practice, it would be more (not entirely) Protestant than Catholic.