Transcript

Have you ever heard people say the Catholic Church burnt people at the stake for translating the Bible into English?

I have, and in today's episode, I'm going to discuss this myth and how the controversy over punishing heretics and translating scripture is not a Protestant slam dunk against Catholicism.

First, let's talk about the claim that the Catholic Church prohibited vernacular Bible translations, and even executed people simply for the crime of possessing one of these translations.

To do that, though, here's a quick history lesson.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Bible was translated into various languages, such as Wulfila's Gothic Bible and the Syriac Peshitta in the fourth century.

Later, into the Middle Ages, we would get the Bible translated into Old Church Slavonic, Coptic, Armenian, and other Eastern languages.

In the West, Saint Jerome's Latin translation became the standard Bible, and it was called the Vulgate because it could be read by common people, the vulgatio, from which we get the English word vulgar.

However, by the ninth century, Latin was no longer a common language, and it was being replaced by newer romance languages like French.

However, these languages were still in their primitive forms, and so they often lacked the vocabulary that was necessary to translate more abstract concepts from scripture.

And it was expensive to copy the Bible in general.

The archaeologist Rupert Bryce Milford said it would have taken the skin of nearly 1,600 calves to produce the three Bibles requested by Ceolfrith, the teacher of the eighth-century author Venerable Bede.

Coupled with the low rates of literacy in medieval Europe, Bible production wasn't very feasible.

But in some cases, it was done, and as Frans van Liere notes in his Introduction to the Medieval Bible, published by Cambridge University Press, there is no evidence of any prohibition in the early Middle Ages against Bible translation in the vernacular.

As we get into the high Middle Ages, increasing urbanization led to more wealth and higher literacy rates.

This gave rise to things like a complete French Bible in the 13th century, but there was also a dramatic rise in heresies, a phenomenon that hadn't been seen for centuries in the Church.

One of the biggest offenders were the Cathars, also called the Albigensians.

They were Gnostics who believed in two gods, denied Christ's incarnation, denied the Trinity, believed animals were reincarnated souls, and even believed that sex was evil because of their Gnostic roots.

They even had a sacrament called the consolamentum, which would completely take away sin, similar to baptism, but it was given when a person was near death.

However, if the person recovered, they would sometimes be killed in order to ensure that that person didn't lose his salvation.

And one thing the Cathars liked to do was justify their beliefs using the now more available vernacular Bible translations.

The instances where authorities prohibited vernacular Bibles tended to be in these areas.

But even in these cases, it was heresy, not the Bible, that was the problem.

In 1199, the Bishop of Metz in France asked Pope Innocent III what to do about people engaging in secret Bible studies, and these same people were telling the priest that they knew more than them.

Pope Innocent responded, and it's interesting to compare how 19th century anti-Catholic authors describe the pope versus how modern scholars describe him.

For example, Philip Schaff said, The medieval Church gave no official encouragement to the circulation of the Bible among the laity.

On the contrary, it uniformly set itself against it.

In 1199, Innocent III, writing to the Diocese of Metz, where the scriptures were being used by heretics, declared that as by the old law, the beast touching the Holy Mount was to be stoned to death, so simple and uneducated men were not to touch the Bible or venture to preach its doctrines.

Other people quote J.P. Callender's 1838 book, Illustrations of Popery, as claiming Innocent said, They shall be seized for trial and penalties who engage in the translation of the sacred volumes, or who hold secret meetings, or who assume the office of preaching without the authority of their superiors.

This makes it sound like the pope was uniformly against vernacular translations, but I've only found this particular citation in anti-Catholic sources.

I haven't located the original text, but scholars who have analyzed it do not reach these conclusions.

According to them, the pope said, The desire to understand sacred scripture and the zeal to exhort according to them was not to be rebuked, but rather commended.

He also instructed the Bishop of Metz to inquire and find out the truth.

Who was the translator of that translation?

What was the intention of the translator?

What do its users believe?

Why do they teach, and do they uphold the Apostolic See and the Catholic faith?

We will better be able to understand what must be done to track down the truth about these and others after we are instructed by your letters.

Now, this doesn't sound like someone who would arrest anybody for simply translating the Bible.

The pope also told the bishop, We have shown you a way of recalling them and convincing them out of the scriptures with respect to those things which we have noted to be reprehensible.

Leonard Boyle, in his article Innocent III and Vernacular Versions of Scripture, writes, I am convinced that Innocent's only interest in the Metz translations was that they provided a spur for preaching by people who, by definition, were not qualified for the office of preaching.

Thomas Fudge, in his book on the proto-Protestant Jan Hus, writes, Pope Innocent III made clear that the faith, i.e.

Holy Scripture, ought not to be explained by those who are unqualified.

The guardian of biblical interpretation was the traditional role of the Church.

Nowhere in this context does Innocent forbid, absolutely, translations of the Bible.

A few decades later, a local French king and a regional council in Toulouse issued a more severe rule prohibiting vernacular Bibles.

Toulouse was also a Cathar stronghold, and it was a place where a papal legate had been assassinated.

So what we generally see is that some rulers tolerated heresy in order to allow for more access to the Bible .

whereas others would tolerate what Van Leer calls sporadic prohibitions of the Bible in order to fight heresy.

The sporadic nature of these prohibitions is evidenced in the fair amount of access heretical groups had to vernacular translations.

Charles Robson notes that, In the north of France and in the French-speaking circles in England, the translation of scripture was neither licensed nor prohibited by diocesan authority.

It encountered no official opposition or criticism.

In the second half of the 14th century, Europe was absolutely devastated by the bubonic plague, killing 30 to 50% of the population.

This social disruption gave rise to new heresies that relied on vernacular translations, like the Beguines, who believed, among other things, that, quote, To kiss a woman is a mortal sin since nature does not incline one to it.

But the act of intercourse is not a sin, especially in time of temptation since it is an inclination of nature.

This led Charles IV, the king of Bohemia, to forbid vernacular translations in 1369, though scholars agree it was targeted at these specific groups since vernacular Bibles continued to be produced in the region.

According to Wim Françoise's article, Vernacular Bible Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, quote, The situations in Germany, the Low Countries, Bohemia, Poland, and Italy were very different since in these regions vernacular Bible translations circulated and were widely read in the late Middle Ages.

The spread of vernacular editions in the wake of the Reformation was not met with a general prohibition on all vernacular Bibles, but by a selective prohibition of Reformation-minded editions while at the same time being countered by the production of good Catholic editions.

In contrast to continental Europe, England did have a harder time getting a vernacular Bible.

In the 10th century, Ælfric of Eynsham, an English abbot, was creating Old English translations of homilies and lives of the saints.

He translated part of the Book of Genesis, but not the rest of the Bible because he feared common people would read about polygamy or even incest among the patriarchs and think that God still allowed this kind of behavior.

Any hope of getting an Old English Bible would be hindered for the next few centuries after William the Conqueror, well, conquered England in 1066.

The primary language spoken after this was a dialect of French called Anglo-Norman.

Fun fact: This is why English often has duplicate words that mean the same thing, such as eat and dine.

Eat is Germanic in origin while dine is French.

And similar to the romance languages in the early Middle Ages, English had to develop in order to be a suitable language for Bible translation.

In the 1370s, a dissenting Catholic priest named John Wycliffe became involved in a translation of the Bible into Middle English that was completed in 1382.

He died of a stroke in 1384, so he wasn't a martyr for the Bible.

In fact, Wycliffe's translation came under fire because of his heresies, such as denying Christ's real presence in the Eucharist and his association with the proto-Protestant Lollard movement.

The movement sought to undermine the church and even the state, as evident in the Lollard uprising of 1414 that tried to overthrow the English crown.

In response to the Lollards' and Wycliffe's errors, Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote the following: It is a dangerous matter, as Jerome says, to translate the text of sacred scripture from one language into another because in these translations, the same meaning is not always easily retained in all matters, as Jerome, even though he was inspired, confesses that he often erred in this.

We therefore state and ordain that from henceforth, no one by his own authority shall translate the text of sacred scripture in the English language unless this translation be approved by the diocesan council or, as the case might require, by a provincial council.

What we see during this period is not a church that burns people at the stake merely for having vernacular scriptures.

Instead, there are a few regions where vernacular translations are restricted or subject to review because of an acute heretical movement that relied on them.

Arundel himself even praised the queen for owning personal copies of the Gospel.

According to Van Leer, It was not the possession of a vernacular Bible as such, but who owned it and whether they were associated with heretical movements that irked the church authorities.

A number of provincial councils issued edicts and injunctions against vernacular translations.

They seem to have been more concerned with the spread of heresy than with the vernacular Bible as such.

Now, it is fair to point out that some church leaders may have overreacted with their rules withholding scripture in order to prevent heresy while other church leaders underacted when it came to providing their own vernacular translations to help the faithful, but that's a far cry from the common view among some Protestants that the church chained up Bibles to keep people from reading them and executed those who published them in the vernacular.

Bibles were chained in churches so that everyone could read them.

It was so they wouldn't be stolen.

Protestants also like to cite Jan Hus as a Bible martyr, and he was executed for heresy in 1415, but in his article Why Was Jan Hus Burned at the Stake During the Council of Constance?

Thomas Fudge never mentions Bible translation as one of Hus' crimes.

The Dresden Bible, written in Czech, had already been published in the 1370s.

Instead, Hus was executed for his theological heresies, which included many of Wycliffe's errors and a form of Donatism that claimed sacraments administered by sinful clerics were invalid.

Finally, there's William Tyndale, who's known for his English Bible translation, which included several anti-Catholic notes in the later editions.

The Protestant authors David Price and Charles Ryrie say of Tyndale's translation, Unquestionably, anti-Catholic outbursts are sufficiently numerous to make a strong impression on any reader.

Among the most notorious are some 20 attacks on the papacy.

Tyndale's 1534 translation of the New Testament also included prefaces based on the work of Martin Luther.

But scholars agree that Tyndale was not executed in 1536 for merely translating the Bible into English.

Tyndale was even allowed to continue translating the Bible while he was held in custody in the Netherlands.

Juhasz and Arblaster note in their article Can Translating the Bible Be Bad For Your Health?

William Tyndale and the Falsification of Memory that, quote, It is particularly surprising that Tyndale is so often portrayed as a martyr for the English Bible because all the available evidence speaks to the contrary.He was detained in Vilvorde for his Lutheran heresy.

During his detention, Tyndale engaged in a written back and forth with a Catholic scholar, Jacobus Latimerus, who pointed out that Tyndale erred in doctrines like justification by faith alone, because Tyndale cited Romans 1 and Romans 3 for his argument, but skipped the role of works in Romans Chapter 2. Even many Protestants would consider Tyndale theologically in error because he believed in soul sleep.

Tyndale denied the saints in heaven could intercede for us, not because they're isolated from us for some reason, but because the saints aren't even in heaven.

Tyndale accepted a form of the doctrine of soul sleep, which says that after we die, our souls are unconscious or even dead, and that they do not experience anything until the final resurrection.

Tyndale denied that the souls of departed Christians, quote, Be already in the full glory that Christ is in, or the elect angels of God are in.

For if it so were, then the preachings of the resurrection of the flesh were a thing in vain.

So even though Wycliffe, Hus, and Tyndale were not executed for making vernacular Bible translations, and medieval condemnation of vernacular Bibles was sporadic in nature, these episodes do raise two issues that are sure to be troubling for Protestants: how the church disciplines heretics, and how the church regulates Bible translations.

Let's start with the latter.

The Catholic Code of Canon Law still prohibits creating Bible translations without ecclesial approval.

It says, Books of the sacred scriptures cannot be published unless the Apostolic See or the Conference of Bishops has approved them.

For the publication of their translations into the vernacular, it is also required that they be approved by the same authority and provided with necessary and sufficient annotations.

Protestants already believe the church should regulate Bible use in some capacity, because they would never allow the Jehovah's Witness New World Translation to be used for their Sunday services or church Bible studies.

That's because it's a mistranslation, designed to support their heresies, which can be seen in passages like John 1:1 that calls Jesus, the Word, a god, and not just God.

Some people praise Tyndale for his more literal translation, but being overly literal can still mislead people.

For example, David Bentley Hart defends errors like universalism, and this comes out in his translation of the New Testament.

For example, the RSV translates Matthew 25:41 and 46 this way: Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,' and they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

However, Hart renders it this way: Then he will say to those to the left, 'Go from me, you execrable ones, into the fire of the age prepared for the slanderer and his angels,' and these will go to the chastening of that age, but the just to the life of that age.

Gary Willis's review of Hart's New Testament admits that Hart, quote, Labors to oust hell from the text of the Bible.

Or consider paraphrases of the Bible, like The Message or Rob Lacey's Word on the Street Bible.

Galatians 5:6 says the following in the RSV translation: For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love.

And here is how the Word on the Street renders it as a paraphrase: This is the time of Jesus the liberator, and religious rules aren't what counts.

Not now, no.

All that stuff is old currency.

The only things that register on God's scoreboard are taking God at his word and loving people.

Not quite the same meaning, is it?

I do not think it means what you think it means.

This is why the Second Vatican Council said, This teaching office of the church is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously, and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission.

Part of guarding scripture scrupulously includes protecting the faithful from erroneous translations, or even just the work of heretical persons.

Now, that doesn't mean the church will always do a good job at this.

Sometimes cringey Bibles get approved, as I note in my episode on the notes in the Catholic New American Bible.

And sometimes good Bibles get held up.

As I said before, a fair criticism of some medieval local churches and bishops was their failure to provide an adequate alternative to vernacular translations composed by heretics.

Monsignor Ronald Knox, author of the famous mid-20th century Knox Bible, even expressed his frustration with the English bishops for their slowness in approving his Bible.

He famously said, He who travels in the bark of St. Peter had better not look too closely into the engine room.

Protestants should at least not automatically recoil at the thought of the church suppressing Bible translations.

They should instead ask the questions, when should translations be suppressed?

And who has the authority to decide which translations are suitable or unsuitable, not just for a local denomination or a local church, but for regional bodies, or even the universal church?

But what about the former point of punishing heresy?

Like the need for regulating Bible translations, I think most conservative Protestants would agree the church should regulate doctrine and combat heresy.

For example, if a member of your congregation starts leading other people to believe Jesus is not fully God, and that person won't recant his beliefs, then you'd ask him to leave your church, to be disfellowshipped, which Catholics call excommunication, until the person repents of his heresy.

Now, a Protestant might agree, but say they reject executing heretics, which is what the Catholic Church did in the Middle Ages.

But that wasn't unique to Catholicism.

John Calvin had Michael Servetus burned at the stake for his Trinitarian heresies.

The Lutheran theologian Philipp Melanchthon published a pamphlet signed by Martin Luther which concluded of the Anabaptists that in some cases, quote, The stubborn sectaries must be put to death.

Catholicism should not be rejected because the church was involved in the execution of heretics.

By that logic, many Protestant denominations would have to be rejected, as well as the Bible itself, because it authorizes executing heretics.

Deuteronomy 18:20 says, Any prophet who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.

Of course, not all Old Testament laws are permanent, and the church now considers the death penalty inadmissible.

But we can agree with Protestants that the church can develop in understanding more prudent and just ways to discipline heretics without obviating the church's responsibility to do this, both for the heretic's good and the good of the congregations he might harm.

Even extremely liberal pastors might kick someone out of their church for not being LGBT-friendly enough, as can be seen in some YouTube videos.Now, some Protestants may say they're all in favor of the church disciplining heretics.

They just don't want the state to do that, especially by executing them.

Baptists, for example, like to say the separation of church and state is a unique virtue of their denomination.

In fact, the phrase separation of church and state does not, as many people think, come from the US Constitution.

It comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists where he quoted the First Amendment and said it is, quote, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

And I agree, the church in America is thriving while the church in Europe is dying, partially because the church here in America is not propped up by the state like it is in many European countries.

For example, in Germany, it is funded through church taxes that have allowed the church's revenue to increase even though mass attendance has been decreasing, though we are now starting to see that bubble begin to burst.

But there's also a danger in overvaluing the separation of church and state.

In a previous episode, I covered how Protestants were late arrivals into the American pro-life movement because the Bible doesn't explicitly condemn abortion.

Some Baptists even argued in the 1970s for legal abortion on the grounds of separation of church and state.

I discussed W.A. Criswell, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who argued for legal abortion, as did the whole SBC. Andrew Lewis notes in his article, Abortion Politics and the Decline of the Separation of Church and State: The Southern Baptist Case, that it was in fact legal abortion that moved Baptists away from a strict view of separation of church and state.

Now, a Baptist may say that the government should protect human life, but it shouldn't be involved in policing theology.

But would that be so bad?

To give an example, wouldn't it be nice to live in a country where at least Satanism is not allowed to be celebrated in the public square or have altars placed in state capitals because the state recognizes it is a counterfeit religion that celebrates evil?

Now, I'm not saying Christians should try to outlaw Satanism tomorrow, but I am saying that before you condemn the actions of Catholic kingdoms in the Middle Ages, or Protestant ones for that matter, some of which should indeed be condemned, take a minute to see if you are working from a very American assumption of how the church should relate to society.

In fact, Catholics call this the Heresy of Americanism, which goes beyond merely prudential benefits of America's social structure in recognizing them, but treating that arrangement as a kind of God-given foundation.

I remember Allie Beth Stuckey even saying that she thought the diversity among denominations in Protestantism is a strength of Protestantism because it's similar to how freedom of speech gives us diversity of ideas.

There are denominations though, and there are disagreements within these denominations, but what I would say is that disagreement is always the result of freedom.

I mean, that is true in the United States as well.

In the United States, we don't live under a tyrant, or we're not supposed to.

We have freedom of speech.

We have freedom of religion.

That means that there is speech out there that we don't like and that we don't agree with.

That means that there are religions being practiced that we don't agree with.

just as the founders of this country knew disagreement and freedom is better than unity and tyranny, and at the time of the Reformation, the Catholic leadership had in fact become tyrannical.

I agree that when it comes to fallible institutions, we need freedom to discover truth, and we should be wary of tyrants.

But what if Jesus Christ didn't only give us a book whose meaning we all need to look into and try to discover?

What if Christ gave us a church, one church that is not just an invisible collection of believers, but a visible, authoritative, pastoral, not tyrannical, but pastoral reality that guides believers?

Diversity of ideas doesn't always give us the best ideas.

Second Timothy 4:3 says, For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings.

If you were to follow the free market's judgment on what is the most successful form of Christianity, prosperity gospel televangelists might win, but that's not success from God's perspective.

That can only be found in a church that has safeguarded the apostles' teaching through a visible enduring teaching office which can authoritatively determine what is revelation and what is rank heresy.

I hope today's episode was helpful for you, and if you'd like to learn more about Bible history, check out my colleague Jimmy Akin's book, The Bible Is a Catholic Book.

Thank you all so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.