The Papal reaction — the "Counter Reformation." In an attempt to divert the undermining influence of the Protestant Reformation, a two-pronged counter attack was made.
Praeterist school of interpretation Futurist school of interpretation founded by Alcazar, a Spanish Jesuit in 1614. founded by Francisco Ribera and Robert Bellarmine The fulfillment of Revelation is in the past with the Fall of Jerusalem or the Fall of Pagan Rome, before the Popes ever ruled Rome. The fulfillment of Revelation is in the future with an individual man as the Antichrist, Man of Sin, and a literal rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.
Around 1590, Francisco Ribera published a 500-page book on Revelation. The first chapters of Revelation he applied to the time of the early church. From Revelation chapter 4 onward he applied literally, to a literal 3-1/2 year reign of an individual man, Antichrist. He taught that Antichrist would rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, deny Christ, pretend to be God, and conquer the world.
Robert Bellarmine, one of the most renowned Jesuit cardinals, taught that the Antichrist would be an individual Jew, who would reign a literal 3-1/2 years in Jerusalem, in whom would dwell all the power of the devil.
Paving the way for Papal-Protestant Union. The Evangelical Fundamentalist interpretation of Antichrist and Man of Sin as follows Ribera's and Bellarmine's Futuristic viewpoints. Not only has the Futuristic interpretation negated the powerful Reformation interpretation against Papacy, but it also allows room for ecumenism between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. If the Papacy is not the Antichrist, then there is no point to the Reformation separation from Papacy.
I agree heartily that there is no - godly** - point to the Reformation separation from Papacy.
It has indirectly served good, but not directly.
Kent Hovind and C. S. Lewis have done part of the work of the Lord, both separated from Rome, but neither of them has done it because he was separated from Rome. Gilbert Keith Chesterton started out that way too, but became a Roman or "swam the Tiber" as the modern phrase goes. When Kent Hovind does something good about defending Biblical inerrancy, he often does so (I have found from a limited experience of either) in agreement with one Calmet, who was a Catholic priest and a Frenchman. But nevertheless he also thinks it is his duty to take a distance from Rome. Not just or even primarily the present day Rome of Modernism, but the historical Rome.
That flaw I do put down to his having been influenced by the Reformation.
It is a baleful thing. It was a bloody atrocity.
One of the last Spanish Inquisitors estimated that from 1480 to 1808 the Inquisition had executed 31.912 people. He may have been right. Or he may have been wrong because misreading some of the evidence. Or, he may also have been misquoted. But those are 328 years and that adds up to 97 per year. Reformations all over Europe - or what is Protestant of it - would have been at work over a much shorter time before they cut off populations from Catholicism. But typical of those times, the very times when Protestant culture was being formed (except insofar as it consisted of heritage from Catholic periods of the same countries) were bloodbaths perpetrated on Catholics.
Sure, Catholics did some killing too.
But their doctrines were not made while killing. They had inherited a Truth and defended it - any honest historian who even may not be Catholic and even may not agree that they held THE Truth would agree to that. He would agree that they had inherited what they conceived as a truth and that the time of their defending it did not involve adding new things to it not there before the Reformers came along, or not as much as among Reformers, and not in the sense of adding completely new things, rather in the sense of uniformating things previously debated.
That is why it is difficult to be other than dedicated fanatic of this Protestant fad of identifying historic papacy with Antichrist - and still cling on to it. Reformers are more clearly anti-Christian than Catholics. Bellarmine is a better Christian than James I.
The anonymous compiler - no, actually not, he is John Class*** and not anonymous - cites James I (or VI and I) as one godly and learned man who considered the Papacy as Antichrist. But James I was culpable of violently settling Protestant invaders in Ireland, like later Cromwell. He was culpable of wanting it both ways as to Holy Eucharist (or what he could get of it, i e a sham resemblance), agreeing with Reformers to deny Transsubstantiation or at least not to allow any direct defense of it, agreeing with Catholics who bow and kneel down to the species and give divine honours to Our Saviour who is present under them. This shilly-shallying involved him in demanding that one should bow and kneel down for what one considered bread and just as symbol of Our Lord or His Crucifixion - and rightly so, since a priest, even if validly ordained, who heartily agreed with the Reformation on this point would certainly NOT consecrate validly. He was also culpable of continuing the Inquisition of the English type of 1401 up to 1612 - same year before which he had issued a new Bible translation. How culpable? Because, not having the truth itself, Anglicanism was in no position to impose its "truth" on anyone. Because, attacking Catholicism for the Inquisition since many decades back (Foxe had Book of Martyrs published in 1563, same year the Council of Trent ended) it was rank hypocrisy to continue executing people for heresy oneself. Which James I as well as John Calvin did. Perhaps it was in the end lucky, perhaps it slowed down the advent of the later confusions, but nevertheless they could not do so with as clean a conscience as the Spanish Inquisition could.
Together with his brother Thomas, he° was put in prison for heresy in 1611. Thomas died in Newgate Prison, London, but Bartholomew's imprisonment was not a rigorous one. James I argued with him, and on several occasions he was brought before the Consistory court of London, but without any definite result. Eventually, after having threatened to bring an action for wrongful imprisonment, Legate was tried before a full Consistory Court in February 1612, was found guilty of blasphemous heresy, and was delivered to the secular authorities for punishment. Refusing to retract his opinions, he was burnt at the stake at Smithfield on 18 March 1612. Legate was the last person burned in London for his religious opinions, and died just three weeks before Edward Wightman, who was burned at Lichfield in April 1612, the last to suffer in this way in England.
That was Bartholomew Legate. "Oh, sure, we are all sinners, the Reformation was done by sinful men" ... was not someone just recently accusing Papacy and specifically because of Inquisition precisely to be, not so much sinful men as man of sin?
No, it is true, Reformation was a bad fix, the separation of Reformers from Papal Rome was a crime, and this is because Papacy as historically known up to now or pretty recently is NOT the Antichrist.
I have a hunch that perhaps Bergoglio is. And I have an apprehension, because he is promoting, very actively, a Papal-Protestant union. You see, though I like Kent Hovind and Jonathan Sarfati and a few more, I would very certainly not change Catholicism as it has traditionally been one whit just to suit them. I would like their conversion to Catholicism. But Catholicism does not need to convert to Creationism, since it has never left it. One other bad thing with Bergoglio is he is not exactlty stopping Catholics and even parts of his hierarchy from treating Creationism as if Catholicism had apostasised from it and it needed to go to suit their apostasy, mislabelled as that of the Church. I could very certainly use some intellectual in part support and in part simply pleasant company for this. Bergoglio, on the other hand, is being "sensitive" to the criticisms of the Reformers.
As to my love for certain Protestants, it is not because of their loyalty to the Reformation I love them. The Bible - and what they ar defending about the Bible - did very well without the Protestant Reformation, thank you.
So did the Futurist (with Bergoglio perhaps no longer all that futurist) view of Apocalypse (or of the chapters referring to end times tribulations and persecutions). It was there in St Thomas Aquinas or St Augustine well before it was championed by St Robert.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Feast of Corpus Christi
19/VI/2014
* No offense meant on that account, compiling is a thing that sometimes needs to be done and which I have done myself. Some use the word as an insult, I do not. I am sometimes myself a compiler as much as or in some few blogposts much more than an author.
** Some ungodly points, on the contrary, as in overemphasising work and company, and as in disparaging begging and solitude (Chesterton considered that even a normal man - married and working - needed to be half a hermit and I am sure he was right), and as vulgarising not so much the Bible as certain verses with certain misconceived interpretations (including a gratuitous insult to the Papacy).
*** In certain chapter studies he identifies the "I" of the apocalypse (St John the Gospeller) with "John Class". This might then be a pseudonym.
° http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartholomew_Legate
Quoted item on which I commented:
Reformers' Interpretations
of Anti-Christ
http://www.revelation-today.com/a6reform.htm
It can be added that the list includes Isaac Newton, who was an Anti-Trinitarian (like Bartholomew Legate) and a Sorcerer or Soothsayer. It also includes Savonarola, but that may be an error. It is pretty certain that its including Dante is an error. At least to me, as long as that is not documented. From his writings rather than from assessments like the list here.
It can also be added, my mother did not share this prejudice, at least not as to saying Catholics would need to leave Catholicism, while I was a child. I was allergic to it when other Protestants more decdidedly such forwarded it. One reason why I came to detest the Reformation was knowing Luther and the rest had come to this conclusion which is as unhuman as it is unbiblical. It is unbiblical because 3 1/2 years are NOT 1200 plus years. It is unhuman because it involves Satan making all nations HIS disciples (not during a few years or during paganism past, but during the time of grace), and it is ungodly because in doing so it implies a failure of God's orders to the 11 Apostles./HGL
