9 Things You Should Know About the Council of Trent by Joe
Carter
Yesterday marked the 450th anniversary of the closing of the
Council of Trent, one of the most significant series of meetings in Christian
history. Here are nine things evangelicals should know about the Council and
the decrees that it issued:
1. The Council of
Trent was the most important movement of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the
Catholic Church's first significant reply to the growing Protestants
Reformation. The primary purpose of the council was to condemn
and refute the beliefs of the Protestants, such as Martin Luther and
John Calvin, and also to make the set of beliefs in Catholicism even clearer. Approximately
forty clergymen, mainly Catholic bishops, were in attendance during
the twenty-five times over the next eighteen years that the Council convened.
2. Protestants endorse justification by faith alone (sola
fide) apart from anything (including good works), a position the Catholic
Church condemned
as heresy. During the sixth session, the Council issued a decree
saying that, "If any one saith, that the justice received is not preserved
and also increased before God through good works; but that the said works are
merely the fruits and signs of Justification obtained, but not a cause of the
increase thereof; let him be anathema."
3. The Protestant Reformers rejected the Apocrypha as part of
the biblical canon. (The term Apocrypha (Gr.,
hidden) is a collection of ancient Jewish writings and is the title given to
these books, which were written between 300 and 30 B.C., in the era between the
Old and New Testaments.) During the the fourth session, the Council issued a
decree damning anyone
who rejected these books:
. . . if anyone receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said
books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the
Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition;
and knowingly and deliberately contemn the traditions aforesaid; let him be
anathema.
Many doctrines unique to Catholicism, such as the teachings of
purgatory, prayers for the dead, and salvation by works, are found in these
books.
4. During the Protestant Reformation, the doctrine of
transubstantiation was heavily criticized as an Aristotelian
"pseudophilosophy." The 13th session reaffirmed and defined
transubstantiation as "that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole
substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine
into the Blood - the species only of the bread and wine remaining - which
conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls
Transubstantiation."
5. Protestants claimed that the only source and norm for the
Christian faith was Holy Scripture (the canonical Bible without the Apocrypha).
The doctrine
of Sola Scriptura was rejected at Trent. The Council
affirmed two sources of special revelation: Holy Scripture (e.g., all the books
included in the Latin Vulgate version) and traditions of the church (including
the "unwritten traditions").
6. In Catholic theology, an indulgence is
a remission of temporal punishment due to sin, the guilt of which has been
forgiven. Under Catholic teaching, every
sin must be purified either here on earth or after death in a state
called purgatory. The selling of indulgences was not part of official Catholic
teaching, though in Martin Luther's era, the practice had become common.
(Luther was appalled
by the sermon of an indulgence vendor named John Tetzel who
said, "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory
springs.") The Council called for the reform of the practice, yet damned
those who "say that indulgences are useless or that the Church does not
have the power to grant them."
7. In Catholic theology, purgatory is a place or condition of
temporal punishment for those who denied yet were not free from
"venial" sins (a lesser sin that does not result in a complete
separation from God and eternal damnation in hell). The council affirmed the
doctrine of purgatory and damned anyone who claimed "that after the grace
of justification has been received the guilt is so remitted and the debt of
eternal punishment so blotted out for any repentant sinner, that no debt of
temporal punishment remains to be paid."
8. In the 24 session, the council issued decrees
on marriage which affirmed the excellence of celibacy,
condemned concubinage, and made the validity of marriage dependent upon the
wedding taking place before a priest and two witnesses. In the case of a
divorce, the right of the innocent party to marry again was denied so long as
the other party was alive, even if the other party had committed adultery.
9. At the request of Pope Gregory XIII, the Council approved a
plan to correct the errors to the Julian calendar that would allow for a more consistent
and accurate scheduling of the feast of Easter. The reform included reducing
the number of leap years in four centuries from 100 to 97. Although Protestant
countries in Europe initially refused to adopt the "Gregorian
calendar" (also known as the Western or Christian calendar), it
eventually became the most widely accepted and used civil calendar in the
world.
(Note: The declarations and anathemas of the Council of Trent
have never been revoked. The decrees of the Council of Trent are confirmed by
both the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the official "Catechism of
the Catholic Church" (1992).)
From: The Gospel
Coalition at http://ow.ly/wlcgc
