Bible Question:
Why would a conservative, Bible believing, Born again Christian leader want to met with the Roman Catholic Pope? I recently watch a history of the Bible under Mid Evil times. Over and over the Pope and the Catholic leaders persecuted anyone involved in any attempt the have the people get a Bible to understand Gods Word. As The movie said the went on with extreme punishment to anyone involved with getting a Bible, except Roman Catholic church leaders. This continued into the seventeenth century. Most all of the widely known Bible translators were put to death in the most barbaric painful ways, in such a way everyone could witness their death. Yet today the Roman Catholic church still practices nearly all the same unbiblical things that the early Christians like Martin Luther stood against. Have Protestants just let the issues the early Church Bible translators died for just drop away? After seeing this movie I thought most of us have at least one Bible and perhaps more Bibles at our use. When so many died so I could have a Bible that was not made under the Roman Catholic supervision, I felt ashamed. I have more than 14 Bibles and I really do not appreciate it, especially considering the blood shed it took to get the Bibles we take for granted. Why are not more Pastors telling this history so we can better love the Word of God we have and most people don't even read it? |
Bible Answer: I will answer this knowing full well I will be accused of many things. There is another side to the issue and that side has many reasons for doing what they did. One most people that could read through formal training were trained to read in Latin. So having a Latin Bible meant it was going to a greater audience than one written in native tongue. Most Bibles written outside of the Catholic church were written by people that had issue with the Catholic church and their bias often showed up in their Bibles. Manufacturing costs of the Bible were extremely high, therefore the Bible was very precious. However the peasant of the day saw only the paper which they needed for whatever they used paper for. Therefore the Bible had to be protected or it would be stolen for its paper. When the Gutenberg printing press was invented Bibles in various languages were produced and most were different from the Latin Translation. This caused confusion that never existed before and continues even today. People are constantly asking why does this Bible translation say this and that Bible translation doesn't. One last thing to consider. If you give the same translation of the Bible to 100 people and have them read various passages you will probably come up with a 100 different interpretations of the scripture. As evidenced by the number of Protestant denominations we have today based on different interpretations of scripture. Things like baptism with all it questions, infant or adult, in the name of Jesus only or in the name of God, the Son and Holy Spirit. Whether it requires immersion or simple sprinkling and etc. Even Luther later admitted that teaching that each man could decide for himself what the Bible said was a bad idea. He said something to effect that any man that thinks he can saddle a donkey now thinks himself a Biblical scholar and has his own theology. |