Talk:Protestantism

Neutrality

This article needs more citations for many specific claims. Some of the statements reek of being copied wholesale from some book or article. Not only that, some statements are contentious or patently false. For instance, the comment that "The greatest man of the time beside Luther who renounced the ancient faith was Zwingli" is very tendentious. Luther must be rolling over in his grave for being accused of having "renounced the ancient faith" (and so must Zwingli). The whole point of their Reformation was that they accused the Roman Catholic Church of having abandoned the ancient faith. The Reformers claimed to be returning to classical Augustinian/Paulinian Christianity that Rome had diluted with what the Reformers considered heresies. Such sentences must be cleaned up (and cleaned out!). The comments about Calvin are also less than accurate. For instance, the notion that Calvin taught that God works both evil and good is a blasphemy that Calvin never taught. Whatever Roman Catholic book on the "Great Departure" this material has been taken from, it needs to be edited to cleanse this article of a great deal of nonsense. Michel van der Hoek 15:59, 12 May 2008 (CDT)

Michel assumes this is Catholic!--quite the contrary it mostly came straight from the main Protestant historical encyclopedia F. Kattenbusch and Arthur C. A. Hall, "Protestantism" in New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, (1911) Vol. IX. (Kattenbusch was a leading Protestant historian of 100 years ago--and professor of theology at Martin Luther University in Halle.) CZ is set up so that knowledgeable authors can add or substract material. For example, the entire complaint could be fixed by replacing "ancient" with "Catholic." Richard Jensen 16:25, 12 May 2008 (CDT)

The 1914 edition of Schaff-Herzog is public domain, but shouldn't we be more explicit in attributing it?-Derek Hodges 16:42, 12 May 2008 (CDT)

yes, I agree re attribution. (It is attributed in the bibliography). By the way Kattenbusch's approach still gets mentioned in Reformed circles--for example at Observations on the Current State of Reformed Theology fn 12Richard Jensen 17:04, 12 May 2008 (CDT)

Regardless of the actual source of the information, whether it is Catholic or Protestant, whether the author(s) is/are well regarded, this article certainly needs improvements. Attribution to Kattenbusch and Hall is needed. Clearer citation for specific claims is also not a luxury. Luther renouncing the "ancient faith" can be fixed by changing it to "Catholic faith". I guess common usage has changed since 1911 so that this phrase now sounds odd. Exactly why K & H characterize Calvin's views of God's control over good and evil in this way is not clear to me but it remains a misrepresentation of Calvinism. (My apologies to any who have been working hard on this article. It's a great step forward. I don't mean to nitpick, but one has to sometimes...)Michel van der Hoek 18:45, 12 May 2008 (CDT)