Codex Vaticanus
I’ve been doing a lot of research on the reformation lately. I’m trying to figure out whether it had more to do with religion or politics. I come from a German family so although I was raised Catholic, I heard about Luther from my dad and his side of the family growing up.
A story that we often heard is that in the Catholic Church, the Greek language and Greek manuscripts had been all but lost in the medieval period. After Constantinople falls to the Turks in 1453, many fled from Anatolia and came to Western Europe bringing Greek manuscripts. In the early 16th century, a Catholic Priest and humanist scholar named Erasmus produces a Greek NT which falls into the possession of an Augustinian monk in Wittenberg named Martin Luther. He looks at the text in contrast to the Latin Vulgate, sees a bunch of errors then translates directly from the Greek into German. Luther uncovers several doctrines such as Sola Fide and learns that there is no free will.
That’s the story in a nutshell. I know that I’m leaving large portions out but I’m trying to be brief here. Basically the Greek text had liberated the West from the Latin Vulgate. Although vernacular translations existed in the West, they now started to be made from the original Greek manuscripts.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the access to Greek in the 16th century played little or no role in the reformation. Allow me to explain. About 150 years before Luther, there was a man named John Wycliffe. He came to most of the same conclusions that Luther did and never had access to a Greek text. In fact, when he made his translation of the Bible into English, he did it from the Latin Vulgate. To my knowledge he never knew Greek or had access to any manuscripts. Luther and Calvin also drew on the writings of St. Augustine quite heavily. St. Augustine never knew Greek yet he’s supposedly a proto-Protestant according to Luther, Calvin, and many others to this day.
The second point is that the Greek Church of Constantinople of where most of the manuscripts came never believed in reformation doctrine. They never believed in perseverance of the saints, justification by faith alone, no free will, or any of the myriad of reformation views of the Eucharist. One can say that the Greek church was wrong but you can’t say it was because they didn’t have access to Greek manuscripts. Greek manuscripts never helped the Greek Orthodox church discover these doctrines of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and others. It should also be pointed out that many of the humanists who knew Greek such as Erasmus never came up with the doctrines of Luther. In fact, he had a back and forth debate on free will.
My third point is that Greek wasn’t as lost in the West as some think. Pope Gregory the Great was the papal envoy to Constantinople before he became Pope. Obviously he’d have had to know Greek for that position. The papal representative who had the feud with Patriarch Cerularius of Constantinople, causing the schism of 1054 AD was Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida. Humbert was an excellent Greek scholar. As for manuscripts, there was always Codex Vaticanus which is right at the Vatican.
One more point and it’s mainly anecdotal. I’ll admit it’s modern as well and not from the 16th century but it draws on the same theme. We all know of Catholics who have converted to Protestantism. Usually it goes something like this: “I was raised a devout Catholic. A Protestant friend challenged me to read the Bible. I read the Bible and saw that Catholic doctrines weren’t supported by Scripture so I had no choice but to leave Catholicism for Protestantism.” We’ve all heard stories like that many times. However, these people never read the text in Greek. They read English translations whether Catholic or Protestant.
My theory is that the Greek NT played little or no role in the development of reformation doctrine. Not everyone who read the Greek NT came to believe in Protestant doctrines and not every Protestant has read the Greek NT. However, feel free to disagree.
This post is pretty much on point. Protestant claims that the Greek manuscripts were “the wind that fanned the flame of the Reformation” are utterly baseless not only because of the reasons you adduced, but also because the early Church fathers (most of whom did speak Greek and used Greek manuscripts) somehow “failed” to recognize the five Solas and the “T.U.L.I.P.” while reading the New Testament.
1. “Greek manuscripts never helped the Greek Orthodox church discover these doctrines of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and others.”- Lutheran preachers offered their “help” in the 1570s in Constantinople, but it was a failure- nobody understood the theological categories that they promoted.
2. “Pope Gregory the Great was the papal envoy to Constantinople before he became Pope. Obviously he’d have had to know Greek for that position.”- not necessarily. Latin was still the official language of the Byzantine empire at that time.
One last point- the fathers of Reformation were relying on Textus Receptus as their primary text of the NT. A text compiled by Catholic scholars, using manuscripts, produced by Orthodox scribes. Oh, snap! Worse still, contemporary Protestants en masse view TR as a defective product, missing/adding several readings that allegedly were not in the “authographs”. They prefer the Critical text of Nestle-Aland 27th/28th ed., which is based to a large extent on papyri, discovered in Egypt during the last 130 years. It seems that Luther and Calvin had no access to an inerrant Scripture, because it was under the North African sands during the Reformation. So much for Sola Scriptura.
“Lutheran preachers offered their “help” in the 1570s in Constantinople, but it was a failure- nobody understood the theological categories that they promoted.”
This is true. It’s a forgotten episode in history that few know about. It’s been a while since I’ve studied the correspondence, but if I remember correctly, Constantinople was especially offended because of the abolition of monasticism.
“Pope Gregory the Great was the papal envoy to Constantinople before he became Pope. Obviously he’d have had to know Greek for that position.”- not necessarily. Latin was still the official language of the Byzantine empire at that time.
Interesting. Didn’t know this.
“the fathers of Reformation were relying on Textus Receptus as their primary text of the NT. A text compiled by Catholic scholars, using manuscripts, produced by Orthodox scribes.”
Very true. This is why I’d like to see some knowledgeable Protestants comment on this. Hopefully Ken Temple will give his opinion here.
God bless,
Allan
Overall, you make some good points that touch on issues that make me think; but I have been thinking of them before your article here. (like the Greek east did not believe in justification by faith alone nor the bondage of the unregenerate will, etc.) Overall, the Reformation was more spiritual than political, but it certainly affected politics, society, and culture in a big way that was difficult to untangle.
But, nevertheless, the Latin did make 2 big mistakes that relate to the Protestant Reformation:
1. Repentance – “repent” was translated as “do penance” and the emphasis was on the last step that a priest told a person who came to confession to do, along with a contrite heart, the inner disposition, and verbal confession of the sin – many times the priest gave as the “satisfaction” step external things like crawling up steps and saying Hail Mary’s or giving to the poor, or praying to statues or going on pilgrimage, etc. – that is a problem. I can see the “satisfaction” step as legitimate, for example, if you stole something, you have to pay it back and confess it to the person you stole from, but the other stuff of external rituals, I cannot see as Biblical at all. The 400s up until the Reformation was an emphasis on external rituals or deeds.
2. Justify – dikaiow / δικαιοω – to justify, and justification/ righteousness / δικαιοσυκνη – The insights of the Protestants were right that it pointed to a legal declaration of being right / forgiven, rather than an internal making right, just, even though sanctification includes that aspect of being formed by love.
The confusion of not distinguishing between justification by faith alone (at the moment of conversion/ forgiveness – a point action – as in Romans 5:1 and Acts 13:38-39) vs. the sanctification (the process of growing that takes place until we die) was in the east also, because of the human tendency to view things externally and to do rituals to try and make oneself acceptable to God; along with the unity of the state and church. (as seen in the Byzantine Emperors and enforcing of rules and harshness against heretics, etc.)
Thanks Ken,
Do you know if Wycliffe knew Greek and/or had access to it? This is the one point I wasn’t 100% sure about.
God bless,
Allan
I don’t think he did; all they had was Latin up there in England.
But there are a lot of finer details that I don’t know about.
But, from what I understand about Wycliff, he recognized the problems of the developments that had happened over the centuries of the whole penitential system – the external rituals as satisfaction and regular people not finding forgiveness/ justification at the point of conversion and living in constant bondage to those external rituals afterward. He recognized the problems of the priesthood + Papacy + ex opere operato stuff that was a problem.
So this essentially proves my point then. Greek didn’t play a role as Wycliffe didn’t have the Greek but came up with almost identical complaints as Luther.