You'll Never See the Protestant Reformation the Same

[00:00:00]Okay, this is Fran Turner 6308 says, I get confused about the Reformation because there's conflicting stories and sources. I'd love to know exactly what happened and why it happened. I've been told that Catholics were burning people for wanting to make the Bible accessible to all, translating it into other languages. So, I would love to talk to a theological theologian about this in depth. I wouldn't even call myself a Protestant or Catholic because I don't know enough. All I know is that Christ saved me and he is real.

[00:00:31]>> That's pretty good. Glory to Jesus Christ.

[00:00:33]>> Again, your melody being demonstrated on the internet is a very rare thing. So, thank you for your beautiful question.

[00:00:39]>> I I agree. That That's a beautiful soul seeking for the truth and in honesty and humility. And I just want to respect that.

[00:00:46]Um yeah, so the Reformation is was a very confusing time. And uh religious interests got tied up with political instrument interests and there were a lot of atrocities on both sides.

[00:01:00]And uh typically what happens, Matt, is we only hear about the atrocities that the other side had commit. So, I grew up with uh like Foxe's Book of Martyrs, you know, hearing about these terrible things that Catholics did. Um never heard about, you know, atrocities that Protestants committed, you know, monks and nuns being slaughtered and things like this.

[00:01:20]So, there's there was a lot of bad behavior to go around on both sides. I would I would say that in brief. Now, I am not a church historian, so I can't go blow by blow through the Reformation and explain how, you know, it all unfolded.

[00:01:36]I can address, though, uh her question about folks being burned for translating the Bible.

[00:01:44]And I I can affirm uh uh completely that nobody was ever burned just for translating the Bible.

[00:01:53]There were some individuals who were executed uh for heresy.

[00:01:59]And some of those individuals um uh did uh make or promote Bible translations.

[00:02:08]And typically the translations that they produced uh were um strategically uh twisted uh to conflict with Catholic teaching or traditional Christian teaching.

[00:02:21]And so they had heretical translations of scripture. But it was never the act of translation that was the issue. It was the other things that they were caught up in. Um rejecting the authority of the Pope, um rejecting traditional Christian teaching, other forms of heresy.

[00:02:39]Um it wasn't the act of translation because there were translations in the vernacular that had been made and that were circulating before the Reformation.

[00:02:48]Luther was not the first one to uh translate the Bible into German, for example. One was made, I think it was in 1466.

[00:02:57]>> Mhm.

[00:02:57]>> I want to say a a a Catholic German translation was made uh by a figure whose name starts with M.

[00:03:05]Metayine or something like this. I'm slaughtering it, I'm sure. But folks can quickly find that out. Uh there were Italian translations made prior to the to the Reformation.

[00:03:16]Um there were partial English translations. But you got to remember too, Matt, and and all of us need to remember um the the printing press was new.

[00:03:25]And uh prior to Gutenberg and the printing press, um everything had to be copied out by hand.

[00:03:33]And most people were illiterate. Like we didn't have you didn't have universal education.

[00:03:39]So anybody anybody who went into some kind of profession and needed to learn to read would need to would learn to read Latin.

[00:03:49]>> [snorts] >> Because you know, every little principality or duchy all over Europe had their own dialect. And it was very difficult to understand each other across even, you know, small borders.

[00:04:01]So, the the only the only language in which there was a a substantial body of literature to read was Latin. You know, if you learn to read your little dialect of German in the in the duchy where you're at, that's great, but there's hardly anything written in that.

[00:04:18]>> Got you.

[00:04:19]>> So, so there was a a limited uh uh limited use um for vernacular translations cuz the idea was, well, if you can read, you're going to learn Latin. And if you if you can read Latin, then you can just use the Vulgate.

[00:04:35]So, that was the feeling. And uh and if you wanted to communicate with with the illiterate, then just have some educated person translate for them the Vulgate cuz they're going to hear it orally anyway.

[00:04:48]But uh but again, yeah, no nobody was burned just for the act of of translation and um you know, both before and after the Reformation um vernacular or we might say common language translations of the Bible were made by the church. And we should emphasize, too, that the reason why the Vulgate is called the Vulgate was that when when St. Jerome translated it at the end of the 300s and the beginning of the 400s it was in the vulgar tongue of the people. Vulgar then didn't mean profane like it does nowadays, but just common.

[00:05:21]Like this was street Latin. This was Latin as it was spoke on the street.

[00:05:26]And um and Jerome did this as a as a popular translation of scriptures so that the common people could read it in a language that they understood.

[00:05:35]And uh and most of the, you know, traditional translations actually started out that way. You know, the the Septuagint as well, the ancient Greek translation started out as a translation in the language of the day and then centuries rolled by and it became kind of an antiquated form of Greek.

[00:05:53]But um so that just shows that the church uh can and did try to make um you know, translations that folks understood.

[00:06:01]>> Thank you very much for watching. If you enjoyed that clip, you are going to love the full interview. Please click it and watch it or else I will tell on you.