How I would define the two differently in my best English is that religion is something one practices and spirituality is about a relationship with a power greater then onesself.This is a matter on word usage, or definition.
I remember that in the introduction of his work on English literature in the 16th century, C.S. Lewis explained the difference between the then notions of magic and sorcery (or did he use the word witchcraft? I can't remember …) in a similar way. Magic was about methods that work automatically (the natural magic is now called science or technology), sorcery had to do with relations to spirits that help the one who knows how to motivate them …
It's not that there is something wrong with equality per say, but it is not a moral imperative to equalize all things in the world. The world is an unequal place and that is because hierarchy exists and this is natural and good. The pursuit of equality will ultimately lead to the complete abolition of freedom. I don't take either equality or Liberty to be sacred necessarily, rather they are good with respect to the subject in question. The promise of liberalism to liberty and Equality is a contradiction for you cannot have both. We have forgotten that there inequalities worth preserving. Christians in particular seem to think their religion is equal to all other religions which goes against the very Idea of Christianity to begin with.What's wrong with equality? I do know it is common for Conservatives not to support that
How is violence inherently Anti-Christian when Christianity from the beginning has recognized the need of the state to use violence in order to secure order in society? Christianity is not an anarchic religion but has lent a legitimizing aspect to the violence wielded by society in the pursuit of order it's entire existence. I know what Satanists claim, I know they claim to not actually worship Satan. That however does not justify them borrowing the aesthetic to mock Christianity in particular. Christians prior to you, would not have tolerated them and the mocking of God. The secular laws you advocate for can only lead to the toleration of the blasphemous and Christians don't have to accept that arrangement.Do you know anything about Satanism? The Satanic Bible does not preach to do level but follow your own self-will. We have laws in place to punish those whose self-will demands violence or crime. Violence is not just anti-Christian but anti-human. Secular laws see to that.
You seem to not understand what I am saying. I am saying that a government which is focused on liberal principles will inherently be opposed to Christian principles and will advocate against Christianity in terms of the things it seeks to protect in law. Like abortion, like divorce, like pornography, like LGBT. There are strict protections for these things in law to counter any opposition to them, a Christian society would not tolerate these things. Liberals might like and die to defend these things but Christians historically have not. These things can only undermine the Idea of the Christian society and reinforce the liberal society and all of it's natural degeneracy.I didn't realize that the government was not allowing Christians to be Christians.
If no one is good, why would you outsource your government to a group of evil people rather than a singular ruler? You ask a good question why modern Christians don't vote according to their Christian principles. It's because, they subordinate their Christianity to the established political order. They view liberalism as the guiding ethos of their life and not their Christianity.People of course have sinful minds. That is why we have a non-dictatorial government so that the majority (who is not evil) can vote down laws that harm other people. Is anybody truly righteous or good? The Bible says no, not one. If Christians are the majority, why can't they vote based on their Christian values? Oh, that's right, they can.
I don't take either equality or Liberty to be sacred necessarily,
Christians HAVE done a lot of killing. Is that a Christian activity? I do acknowledge that there is more than on type of conservative thinking......The one says basically "love your neighbor and do not kill." for example, and one says "kill every threat to Christanity." I believe the "do no harm" people are closer to God's heart and mission on Earth.How is violence inherently Anti-Christian when Christianity from the beginning has recognized the need of the state to use violence in order to secure order in society? Christianity is not an anarchic religion but has lent a legitimizing aspect to the violence wielded by society in the pursuit of order it's entire existence.
I guess when it comes down to it, whose form or style of Christianity are our laws to be based on? Do we make this a Catholic country and force everyone to go to confession on Saturdays? Should we be forced into Jehova's Witnesses where you must deny the divinity of God? Should we be forced into Calvinism and to believe that we have no free will? It could go many different ways and I could see much violence being perpetrated by one or another manifestation of Christianity. Do we then imprison people for being homosexual or committing adultery? It can get very complicated to rule by religious laws. Do we allow for divorce like Protestants or do we make divorce illegal like the Catholics? If we can't agree on what version of Christianity is the most viable, how can we agree on what laws are valid? In a secular society, we are free to vote based on our Christian values or our humanist values. The majority rules and it would seem the majority supports Liberalism (not the political party but the conjugation of Liberty which means freedom). Progressives and Conservatives go by the notion that freedom is most important.You seem to not understand what I am saying. I am saying that a government which is focused on liberal principles will inherently be opposed to Christian principles and will advocate against Christianity in terms of the things it seeks to protect in law. Like abortion, like divorce, like inappropriate contentography, like LGBT. There are strict protections for these things in law to counter any opposition to them, a Christian society would not tolerate these things. Liberals might like and die to defend these things but Christians historically have not. These things can only undermine the Idea of the Christian society and reinforce the liberal society and all of it's natural degeneracy.
I would probably just look at the last 100 years of singular rulers......Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin, Castro, Chairman Mao, any of the Kim Jongs, Putin, and the list goes on and one. In the middle ages we had many Christian rulers. Then the church was divided and war after was waged against Protestants or Catholics depending on who their singular was. I love the thought of having a king, it's very romantic but people want to vote for their leaders, not just have their leader pass the crown to the next in line regardless of their opinions or qualifications.If no one is good, why would you outsource your government to a group of evil people rather than a singular ruler?
For centuries, the political order was rule by Christian law. The founding founders of an immigrant country knew that people from all over the world immigrating to the US would all have different ideas so they set up a system of secular rule so everybody (except people of color or the poor) would all have the same rights no matter their religion.. It's because, they subordinate their Christianity to the established political order. They view liberalism as the guiding ethos of their life and not their Christianity
Killing is an action, one which Christians can participate in for any given reasons. You say that our mission is to do no harm, but often harm has to be done in order to secure order. If you have an animal that is a threat to itself and others, you must put it down and the same logic applies to humans. You seem to support the current liberal order, a liberal order which has often killed in abundance in order to secure it's particular order. Do you accept that as just and right and allow a team you support to bomb civilians or is it only when your perceived enemies kill others that you object?Christians HAVE done a lot of killing. Is that a Christian activity? I do acknowledge that there is more than on type of conservative thinking......The one says basically "love your neighbor and do not kill." for example, and one says "kill every threat to Christanity." I believe the "do no harm" people are closer to God's heart and mission on Earth.
A Christian society may find any number of compromises with other sects in order to find an order we agree to. Commonality does exist. For instance, we might agree that the death penalty or exile is the just punishment to those who mock God publicly. Might there be problems? Sure, but I would say those problems would be minor next to the erasure of Christianity from public life in your preferred secular order.I guess when it comes down to it, whose form or style of Christianity are our laws to be based on? Do we make this a Catholic country and force everyone to go to confession on Saturdays? Should we be forced into Jehova's Witnesses where you must deny the divinity of God? Should we be forced into Calvinism and to believe that we have no free will? It could go many different ways and I could see much violence being perpetrated by one or another manifestation of Christianity. Do we then imprison people for being homosexual or committing adultery? It can get very complicated to rule by religious laws. Do we allow for divorce like Protestants or do we make divorce illegal like the Catholics? If we can't agree on what version of Christianity is the most viable, how can we agree on what laws are valid? In a secular society, we are free to vote based on our Christian values or our humanist values. The majority rules and it would seem the majority supports Liberalism (not the political party but the conjugation of Liberty which means freedom). Progressives and Conservatives go by the notion that freedom is most important.
We could also add onto that list the liberal rulers who have killed and slaughtered many. Those in charge of the French Revolution, Churchill, Roosevelt and others. It's not as if singular rulers are inherently bad and I would argue that it is the atheistic nature of many of those you listed that failed to inhibit them from their murderous actions. Christian Kings might have been guilty of many slaughters but none so great as those who came after them and operated on secular, liberal, fascist, communist and other non-Christian grounds. Monarchy isn't so much a romantic notion, as it is the natural state of man as we are inclined towards it. This makes sense given that heaven is a monarchy and not a liberal democracy.I would probably just look at the last 100 years of singular rulers......Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin, Castro, Chairman Mao, any of the Kim Jongs, Putin, and the list goes on and one. In the middle ages we had many Christian rulers. Then the church was divided and war after was waged against Protestants or Catholics depending on who their singular was. I love the thought of having a king, it's very romantic but people want to vote for their leaders, not just have their leader pass the crown to the next in line regardless of their opinions or qualifications.
And that order has been to the detriment of Christianity as it has equalized all religions and marginalized the influence of Christianity in public life. Perhaps that wasn't the intention of the founders but we as Christians are not committed to the American constitution (thank God). We have an entire political philosophy prior to the USA and we should be willing to learn from it. Much more so than relying on some dead enlightenment radicals who rebelled against the King and deserved death.For centuries, the political order was rule by Christian law. The founding founders of an immigrant country knew that people from all over the world immigrating to the US would all have different ideas so they set up a system of secular rule so everybody (except people of color or the poor) would all have the same rights no matter their religion.
Ignatius did not speak on equality of persons, but on equality of opinions, world-views, religion or so.What's wrong with equality? I do know it is common for Conservatives not to support that
Thew word has two meanings:Do you know anything about Satanism?
Yes: »Nothing is true and everything is allowed.«The Satanic Bible does not preach to do level but follow your own self-will.
»You can be Christian, but don't try to convert other people, and don't make the wrong political statement« goes into that direction. The government does not say this, but some political actors want just that.I didn't realize that the government was not allowing Christians to be Christians.
The majority can be evil. It can be seduced to follow an evil person - or follow a philosophy that results in evil rules. The laws that allowed slavery were supported by he majority for a rather long time … and I fear this is not the only example.That is why we have a non-dictatorial government so that the majority (who is not evil) can vote down laws that harm other people.
The Nazis were worse than the Muslims - though there were pogroms in he Muslim world, there was nothing like the holocaust there.Like it's okay to firebomb Germany and Japan to the ground in the name of liberal democracy, but it's immoral and the worst thing ever that the Spanish fought the Muslims in the Reconquista?
Death penalty - i.e. you rob the offender from the chance to repent?For instance, we might agree that the death penalty or exile is the just punishment to those who mock God publicly.
Are we speaking about the real world, or how the world should be?I also question the notion that power is derived from the people. I adhere to elite theory and don't see power as originating from the masses but operating more in a top down way, which explains most aspects of political life, much more so than liberal democracy does.
Do you mean donors? The power donors have depend on the rules how money can be given to politicians. Your sentence is especially true for the USA. In other countries, they often have less influence (though more than the average person).The doners have more power in democracies than the average person.
They were no democrats. The idea of Rousseau that there exists a will of the people lay the ground for dictatorship. Modern democracy recognizes that there will always be several wills and opinions, therefore minorities do have rights,m the president (or any person of comparable power in other countries) is bind to the law, and there are laws that cannot be changed (usually defined in the constitution).We could also add onto that list the liberal rulers who have killed and slaughtered many. Those in charge of the French Revolution,
But if they turn bad (or turn out to be bad), they cannot be stopped without violence (revolution or so).It's not as if singular rulers are inherently bad
They had not the technical means to do so.Christian Kings might have been guilty of many slaughters but none so great as those who came after them
I can't see any inclination to it.Monarchy isn't so much a romantic notion, as it is the natural state of man as we are inclined towards it.
For more than 100 years, this was not the case. There has even been a great awakening in the USA, which increased the influence of Christianity in public life.And that order has been to the detriment of Christianity as it has equalized all religions and marginalized the influence of Christianity in public life.
I'm sure I am. One of the basic realities of human nature is that it is impossible to escape bias. The closest we can come is to be aware of our biases and to try to remind ourselves of them.
The most biased people in the world, are those who think they are not biased.
This has actually become my biggest pet peeve when talking to many Protestants. The extremely common attitude that they just take their view of scripture as simply what scripture means. There is no question of bias or interpretation. They are just right and everything they believe comes right from the Bible.
The break down of late antiquity was real, caused by plague, endemic war, leading to mass migration and resulting collapse of Roman administrative and economic infrastructure. However the change in philosophy and worldview was nothing remotely like the change that happens going from Medieval to Modern.
It is true that many of the sources of classical knowledge were lost, particularly Aristotle, but not all. The Medieval mind was still extremely heavily based on the surviving Platonic documents, even though some of these were only fragments that were preserved in commentary from other authors etc.
If you want a good overview of this, I would recommend C.S. Lewis' book The Discarded Image. It is based off of the lectures that he gave to his Medieval Literature students preparing them to read medieval literature by giving them a crash course in Medieval thought, cosmology, and worldview.
I don't mean to say that the Medievals were exactly like the Ancients. There obviously was development and change. The Medieval Mind was not exactly the same as the Ancient Mind, but there was a basic continuity of thought and belief. They had the same fundamental beliefs about the world and the nature of reality, and those formed the basis of everything else.
The Aristotelian works were rediscovered in the 13th century through contact with the Islamic world, particularly Averroes in Spain. This produced an immediate reaction in the Scholastic community (the Christian universities of Europe). This reaction included not only those who wanted to redefine Christianity based on Aristotle, but also a strain of Islamic influence that creeps in as well.
Thomas Aquinas basically refuted those scholars who were too heavily influenced by Averroes and he reconciled Aristotle and Plato with Christian doctrine, producing what is, to this day, viewed by many as almost definitive Catholic thought. this isn't quite right because Catholic thought is much broader and multifaceted, but absolutely Thomas was and is a central figure in Catholic thought.
The destruction of medieval thought began within a generation of Thomas Aquinas' death. By the mid to late 1300's William of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, and their fellows introduced the ideas that would pave the way of Modernism, and destroy medieval and ancient thought.
One of the changes that usually goes unnoticed in this process was the change in how language was taught at the universities. Prior to this time Metaphysics had been the dominant branch of philosophy and language was taught based on metaphysical thought. The idea being that words are properly related to things, that words are almost incarnational. The thing is present in the word. This relates to Platonic/Aristotelian/Thomistic concepts of how the Forms are present in the intellect etc.
Around this time, Logic began to supplant Metaphysics as the dominant or foundational discipline in philosophy, especially at Oxford. This began to change how language was taught. Instead of thinking that words are directly tied to things, words began to be viewed as essentially logical tokens which were either validly used or invalidly used.
This, together with Nominalism, which lead to words being viewed as only labels that are applied to things only by human convention degraded our whole concept of language and though mostly overlooked, was absolutely foundational to the change of thought that happened.
The influence of Islam also showed up in the rise of Voluntarism. Basically resulting in the view that God's sovereignty means that his decisions, including what is good and what is evil, are totally arbitrary, simply resulting from whatever God happened to choose.
William of Ockham, for instance taught that God could have made murder good, and could have made martyrdom sinful. He could have made us hate a virtue instead of love, and could have ordered us to hate him. This idea, in particular radically changed views on how salvation worked.
It would probably not be correct to say that most of these ideas had never existed before, but they had never been the mainstream before for certain. They radically changed how the world was viewed. Keep in mind that this was in the 1300's Before the Renaissance really got rolling and certainly before the switchover to modernity. But they laid the foundation. They essentially destroyed what went before.
For example, Luther considered himself to be a devoted student of William of Ockham and even referred to Ockham as his master.
Nominalism and Voluntarism alone were earth-shattering. But you also have the origin of the modern conflict between science and religion. Both William and Marsilius promoted the idea of duplex veritas "two truths". They argued that there could be religious truths of faith, which contradicted the truths of natural philosophy known by reason and observation, and that both could be believed simultaneously.
This was the beginning which would eventually lead to the secularist dismissal of the supernatural as "superstition".
The renaissance was a further nail in the coffin, because of its obsession with elegance and style over substance. As you mention the scholars of the renaissance, fell in love with the Latin style of Cicero and the other classical era writers. They loved the poetics, etc. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it lead them to mock and dismiss the intellectual work of the medieval scholars simply because the Latin was clunky and inelegant. In education they tended to replace philosophy with poetics and the like.
By the time you get to the 1500's you have large movements going on in the Universities of Europe that don't resemble orthodox Catholicism at all.
For example, most people don't realize that the doctrine of salvation that Luther reacted against, wasn't even what the Church taught. It was a new idea, born out of Voluntarism and the Via Moderna, which was being taught in the universities, and had particular control over the university where Luther was educated.
This view taught that it was impossible for man to bride the gap between God and man due to sin. So, because God could arbitrarily do whatever he wanted, they taught that God had put in place an economy of salvation that required man to "do his best" and then God would make up the difference, because man could never do enough.
This places all the emphasis on Man's action. It also puts you in an impossible quandary because any person really ever say "I did my best". Could you have prayed 1 minute more? Could you have given one more penny to charity? and so on. This is why Luther struggled so badly with scrupulosity and feared so much for his salvation.
His eventual break with this doctrine produced an overreaction that caused a break with the Church. Luther also, following his master Ockham also rejected Aristotle and Plato, which put him at odds with a variety of things, most importantly the Eucharist.
there would never have been a Luther, without Nominalism, Voluntarism, Duplex Veritas, Caesero-Papism, etc. These had nothing to do with the Bible, except in the sense that they influence how you understand it.
I would admit that I overstated the case deliberately for effect. I grew up Protestant, and my subsequent study showed me that I was basically lied to. Not literally, in that the people who taught me didn't realize that what they were teaching was unntrue. However, it is accurate to say that he Protestant version of these events is heavily augmented by myth. The way protestants tell it is not accurate.
In reality both sides were arguing from scripture. The point I am attempting to get across, admittedly using some exaggeration is that the common notion that the Protestants just returned to the Bible and the Catholic teachings were all just accretions that ignored and contradicted the Bible is false.
There were, of course, legitimate complaints against the Church at the time. Even the Catholics of the time admitted this.
One of the things that ultimately was most influential in my returning to the Catholic Church was that I saw how much sense Catholic Teaching made biblically. It fit so much better with and made so much more sense of the Bible. One of the reason I had begun to look towards leaving my church tradition that I grew up in was because I began to run into questions about things that I was reading in the bible that no one could answer and that just made no sense in the context of our doctrines. I began to see things that our doctrines just dismissed and ignored, that Catholic teaching made sense of.
As a result I am passionate about the fact that Catholic teaching IS biblical and is biblically accurate. Thus it has become a pet peeve that I constantly get the attitude from Protestants that Catholicism is just unbiblical and Catholics don't believe the bible and don't know the bible and if they did they'd just become Protestant.
I do tend to hold a similar view myself, originally stated by John Newman "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant". It is one thing to know historical facts and timelines. It is another to begin to put yourself into the thought and mind of historical cultures and try to see the world through their eyes. I am convinced that Protestantism can only exist because of our modern, and now post-modern worldview.
This is beside the point of the political conversation here, but one of the problems with Protestantism is that it makes ever person their own Pope. Catholics have one Pope. Protestants have a hundred million. My point being, why is Wycliffe or Hus right about what the Bible says? When I was a Protestant I literally spent years arguing with other Protestants and all of us were convinced that we had the correct understanding of scripture?
I have a high view of reason, but your own reason is not sufficient to understand scripture. Perhaps ironically the Bible itself showed me this. If you go through and look in the New Testament at all the cases where it says that OT prophecies were fulfilled and how they were fulfilled, I am 100% convinced that no human intellect would EVER have come up with those interpretations or properly understood those scriptures.
I was also raised Charismatic, so of course we believed that the Holy Spirit would give us understanding, and speak to us individually, etc. The problem there was that in my own church, which was tiny, we routinely had people conflicting, claiming that the Holy Spirit had told them completely opposite things... so who is the Spirit speaking to? any of them?
The Biblical answer to this conundrum is that the Church is imbued with authority to interpret, to teach, and to judge in such matters and the Holy Spirit leads the Church.
Regarding this history you point out and its bearing on my previous argument. I'm sure the Reformers were influenced by Hus and Wycliffe. But using Luther as an example... did he read Hus's letter before, or after he was taught at university? Was that letter formative on his entire worldview for years? or did it come after his worldview had already been formed?
I would submit that it is just as possible that he only agreed with Hus, because he had already had the foundation laid in his worldview.
But this, ultimately is exactly what I'm getting at. Protestants like to think that the Reformers were just drawing from forerunners like Wycliffe and Hus. In reality the ideas of William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua had greater influence and more far reaching effects.
This is they mythology of the Reformation.
Of course, it is foolish to think that anything in history has one and only one cause. People and ideas are complex, there almost always many factors involved.
I think I just showed that this notion is more true than you previously admitted.
CONTINIUED in another post, because I got too long winded...
It has been said that the devil sends errors into the world in pairs. Those who reject the error on one side may be caught by going to far to the error on the other side.
Late Modernity and the Post-Modern era have been hallmarked by the opposed errors of individualism and collectivism. Western Liberal Democracy errs by exalting individual choice to a virtually insane degree. Totalitarianism is a response to the sickness and destruction that the over exaltation of individual choice creates. Totalitarianism places every good, individual or otherwise, at the service of the good of the political community, and thus is the opposite error.
The Church is the original truth that those two errors depart from, and in a certain sense what they are trying to replace.
Since this thread is specifically on the topic of western liberal democracy, I would say that the individualism of western liberal democracy and its over-emphasis on personal choice is in some ways better than totalitarianism, but as we are going to found out shortly, baring a miracle, the end result is the same. The end result will be the same because the social destruction and disintegration that results from western individualism will lead to a descent into anarchy. That can't be tolerated, and will eventually lead to some form of totalitarian control.
One of the core ideas that has been built into western society since the enlightenment is the idea that people are basically good, and if simply left alone, left to themselves, they will be fine and generally find some goodness and happiness.
This is false. The reality is that people have to be taught and trained in goodness. People do not naturally become good. Human nature is degenerative. Left completely to themselves, without outside forces directing them, people degenerate into wickedness and self-destruction.
IF a society hopes to have any longevity, or be good in any meaningful way, or produce any significant degree of human flourishing, that society MUST have a way of instilling correct values into its people.
If you completely elevate individual choice, over the necessity of instilling correct values, the society will destroy itself, the people will degenerate into insanity, and they will lose the capacity to choose anyway, as they become enslaved to their own passions.
This is a very important point as well. To be free to choose, doesn't just mean that you are not compelled by external forces like the government. It also demands that you have self-control. Self-control is only learned, virtually no one has it by nature. Our nature tends to the opposite. Thus even freedom to choose requires proper training.
As the old quote goes, "men of intemperate minds cannot be free, their passions forge their fetters."
Here is the whole quote, it's worth reading...
Contrarily, if you over-balance from training and true education into indoctrination and coercion, it becomes impossible to teach true values, because true values are contradictory to the ideas of coercion etc. Balance is needed, but our society is not balanced. We are heavily tilted to one side.
It is true that no political system, nor even the Church is going to create utopia. Fallen human nature makes that an impossibility. The question is which system is best suited to the realities of human nature and the reality of the world God created. What system would work WITH the principles necessary to maintain a good society, and which systems work against those principles and undermines them. Our system, while it has a lot of good points, ultimately works against those principles and undermines them. Which is why our society has literally gone insane.
It is easy for us to sit here thinking that things aren't so bad, that this is "normal" because we are acclimatized to it. In reality, our society has gone totally insane, and has completely succumbed to moral idiocy.
The charge that the Bible brings against the days of Noah, when God was forced to kill all human life except Noah and his family, was that they were "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage" even though the world around them had become so bad, that it was impossible for goodness to survive. We are not far off from that. Our western society is the biggest shedder of innocent human blood in history, bar none. We have killed more innocents than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, any of them. Yet even most Christians (including me) in their daily lives don't bat an eye-lash at it. We hardly ever even think about it. We still consider ourselves the good guys. And that is just one of the many issues we have.
Arius didn't believe that Jesus equal with the Father, and he didn't see that in scripture.
Marcion didn't believe that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were the same God, he didn't see that in the Bible.
Korah and Dathan didn't believe that God had given Moses authority over Israel.
Absalom didn't believe that David was God's anointed King.
Pelagius didn't believe that we need Grace to be saved, he didn't see that in the Bible.
The list could go on, and it is ever growing.
Also, for the record, don't think that I just inherited a Catholic view and am sticking to what I was raised with.
I was a Protestant for more than 30 years. I'm the only Catholic in my family. I studied for 7 years before I finally was convinced that Catholic teaching was true. I have argued this stuff countless times.
I hold this view because I was convinced of it, largely because of the Bible, absolutely not in spite of the Bible.
It has been said that the devil sends errors into the world in pairs. Those who reject the error on one side may be caught by going to far to the error on the other side.
Late Modernity and the Post-Modern era have been hallmarked by the opposed errors of individualism and collectivism. Western Liberal Democracy errs by exalting individual choice to a virtually insane degree. Totalitarianism is a response to the sickness and destruction that the over exaltation of individual choice creates. Totalitarianism places every good, individual or otherwise, at the service of the good of the political community, and thus is the opposite error.
The Church is the original truth that those two errors depart from, and in a certain sense what they are trying to replace.
Since this thread is specifically on the topic of western liberal democracy, I would say that the individualism of western liberal democracy and its over-emphasis on personal choice is in some ways better than totalitarianism, but as we are going to found out shortly, baring a miracle, the end result is the same. The end result will be the same because the social destruction and disintegration that results from western individualism will lead to a descent into anarchy. That can't be tolerated, and will eventually lead to some form of totalitarian control.
One of the core ideas that has been built into western society since the enlightenment is the idea that people are basically good, and if simply left alone, left to themselves, they will be fine and generally find some goodness and happiness.
This is false. The reality is that people have to be taught and trained in goodness. People do not naturally become good. Human nature is degenerative. Left completely to themselves, without outside forces directing them, people degenerate into wickedness and self-destruction.
IF a society hopes to have any longevity, or be good in any meaningful way, or produce any significant degree of human flourishing, that society MUST have a way of instilling correct values into its people.
If you completely elevate individual choice, over the necessity of instilling correct values, the society will destroy itself, the people will degenerate into insanity, and they will lose the capacity to choose anyway, as they become enslaved to their own passions.
This is a very important point as well. To be free to choose, doesn't just mean that you are not compelled by external forces like the government. It also demands that you have self-control. Self-control is only learned, virtually no one has it by nature. Our nature tends to the opposite. Thus even freedom to choose requires proper training.
As the old quote goes, "men of intemperate minds cannot be free, their passions forge their fetters."
Here is the whole quote, it's worth reading...
Contrarily, if you over-balance from training and true education into indoctrination and coercion, it becomes impossible to teach true values, because true values are contradictory to the ideas of coercion etc. Balance is needed, but our society is not balanced. We are heavily tilted to one side.
It is true that no political system, nor even the Church is going to create utopia. Fallen human nature makes that an impossibility. The question is which system is best suited to the realities of human nature and the reality of the world God created. What system would work WITH the principles necessary to maintain a good society, and which systems work against those principles and undermines them. Our system, while it has a lot of good points, ultimately works against those principles and undermines them. Which is why our society has literally gone insane.
It is easy for us to sit here thinking that things aren't so bad, that this is "normal" because we are acclimatized to it. In reality, our society has gone totally insane, and has completely succumbed to moral idiocy.
The charge that the Bible brings against the days of Noah, when God was forced to kill all human life except Noah and his family, was that they were "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage" even though the world around them had become so bad, that it was impossible for goodness to survive. We are not far off from that. Our western society is the biggest shedder of innocent human blood in history, bar none. We have killed more innocents than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, any of them. Yet even most Christians (including me) in their daily lives don't bat an eye-lash at it. We hardly ever even think about it. We still consider ourselves the good guys. And that is just one of the many issues we have.
Arius didn't believe that Jesus equal with the Father, and he didn't see that in scripture.
Marcion didn't believe that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were the same God, he didn't see that in the Bible.
Korah and Dathan didn't believe that God had given Moses authority over Israel.
Absalom didn't believe that David was God's anointed King.
Pelagius didn't believe that we need Grace to be saved, he didn't see that in the Bible.
The list could go on, and it is ever growing.
Also, for the record, don't think that I just inherited a Catholic view and am sticking to what I was raised with.
I was a Protestant for more than 30 years. I'm the only Catholic in my family. I studied for 7 years before I finally was convinced that Catholic teaching was true. I have argued this stuff countless times.
I hold this view because I was convinced of it, largely because of the Bible, absolutely not in spite of the Bible.
Therefore warfare and complete destruction of even the civilians of Nazi Germany was justified? Whereas the Christians of Spain was not at all justified and they should have just accepted their submission to Islam? Why does Liberal democracy get carte blanche to destroy it's perceived enemies in your moral worldview?The Nazis were worse than the Muslims - though there were pogroms in he Muslim world, there was nothing like the holocaust there.
Hanging can concentrate the mind you know. Sometime crimes are so severe that they require death. You are willing to justify civilian bombing against Germany and Japan in WW2. What about those civilians chances to repent?Death penalty - i.e. you rob the offender from the chance to repent?
I am talking about the real world and how power actually operates. I do not see power as originating with the people or the masses but being in the hands of elites who generally govern society regardless of what the people want or feel. We see this repeated throughout history and we are not any different today.Are we speaking about the real world, or how the world should be?
I agree and liberal democracy as a theory is more prone to failure because it fails to understand human nature.No theory is so perfect that it will not fail to a certain degree when applied in reality.
No but they were liberals who sought to bring about liberty and equality. In order to achieve such a state they recognized the need to spill blood and overthrow the old order. If you want to disassociate liberalism from the French revolution, I don't blame you, but they are tied at the hip.They were no democrats. The idea of Rousseau that there exists a will of the people lay the ground for dictatorship. Modern democracy recognizes that there will always be several wills and opinions, therefore minorities do have rights,m the president (or any person of comparable power in other countries) is bind to the law, and there are laws that cannot be changed (usually defined in the constitution).
At least then they can be stopped. It almost seems as if modern Leviathans cannot be stopped because of how much power they wield. The entire USA and it's political system holds more power over the individual than any King ever had.But if they turn bad (or turn out to be bad), they cannot be stopped without violence (revolution or so).
Nor did they have the moral means to do so. Liberalism and democracy, the latter of which made civilians and citizens responsible for government contributed to more massive armies and political participation and thereby spread the destruction a state was capable of. Why distinguish between civilians and non-civilians? They are all guilty of participating in the state and if the state is an enemy they are a valid target. That was the logic used by the allies in WW2 against their enemies. Which you have justified mind you.They had not the technical means to do so.
Because you've been brought up in a system which has conditioned you against it? When I say monarchy is the natural state of mankind I base this on history and how much monarchy has prevailed in comparison to other forms of government, We even see today how people are drawn towards the leader, even if in a system such as the US they are almost powerless to make any effective change.I can't see any inclination to it.
And where's that great awakening now? There won't be another great awakening, rather like in the rest of the Western world Christianity can only decline as it is put below the ideological commitment to the US and Western system, which is not at all a Christian system. The USA is going in exactly the direction it's leaders want, less religious, more secular, more 'free' as it were.For more than 100 years, this was not the case. There has even been a great awakening in the USA, which increased the influence of Christianity in public life.
Yes they are, in particular they are more complicated than the simple civics class most Americans get in highschool.Things are ore complicated than you seem to perceive.
I agree w/ you that American Christianity is liberalized and therefore, not True Christianity (hope that doesn't put words in your mouth but that's what I'm hearing [half way through your post, but I had to stop here]).Privately, American Christians can say that they respect the Biblical hierarchy of man and woman, and yet they simultaneously promote a Liberal Democratic order which directly opposes such a hierarchy.
I was following what you say here until that last odd thing... The RCC devolved into predestination?Simon Templar: “Pelagius didn't believe that we need Grace to be saved, he didn't see that in the Bible.”
Catholic history isn’t always reliable. I read a Catholic historian who said that the Spanish Inquisition is a myth, for instance.
Pelagius was excommunicated because he didn’t believe in Original Sin. Now, Original Sin is not mentioned in the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, or any other creed from that era. It didn’t become an issue until Augustine argued with Pelagius about it. Nobody knew that you had to believe in Original Sin until Pelagius was excommunicated for not believing in it.
Pelagius is known to have put out writings that have been lost, they have not come down to us. The records of his trial are also fragmentary, so we don’t know everything that his accusers said either. Maybe we shouldn’t rush to condemn Pelagius.
What we do know is that Pelagius believed in free will. By excommunicating Pelagius, the RCC appeared to condemn free will and started the downhill slide to the abyss of predestination.
There is a lot of myth surrounding the inquisition in Spain. More myth than reality. But of course the history from Catholic historians (or those of other religions) is not always reliable. The fact that something is not in one of the very short creeds in no way means it is not part of Catholic teaching. The Church preaches, preserves, and defends the faith passed down from Jesus through the Apostles. If someone is preaching against the Catholic faith they are corrected. If eventually they continue on in defiance then an ex-communication would happen, letting them know they are going down the wrong path and if they want to remain Catholic they must repent and conform with Catholic teaching. The Church TEACHES free will. Pelagius apparently taught that Adam would have died even if he had not sinned and a person could be without sin without the grace of God--just by their own free will.Simon Templar: “Pelagius didn't believe that we need Grace to be saved, he didn't see that in the Bible.”
Catholic history isn’t always reliable. I read a Catholic historian who said that the Spanish Inquisition is a myth, for instance.
Pelagius was excommunicated because he didn’t believe in Original Sin. Now, Original Sin is not mentioned in the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, or any other creed from that era. It didn’t become an issue until Augustine argued with Pelagius about it. Nobody knew that you had to believe in Original Sin until Pelagius was excommunicated for not believing in it.
Pelagius is known to have put out writings that have been lost, they have not come down to us. The records of his trial are also fragmentary, so we don’t know everything that his accusers said either. Maybe we shouldn’t rush to condemn Pelagius.
What we do know is that Pelagius believed in free will. By excommunicating Pelagius, the RCC appeared to condemn free will and started the downhill slide to the abyss of predestination.
I don't say everything done by the allies in WWII was OK. I objected to your equalization to Spain.Therefore warfare and complete destruction of even the civilians of Nazi Germany was justified?
No, I don't know. A man hung will stop thinking within a minute, though he may be revitalized even after half an hour.Hanging can concentrate the mind you know.
There are penal codes that do not require death for any crime, e.g. those in most European countries.Sometime crimes are so severe that they require death.
I don't see that alternatives (monarchy, aristocracy, communist state etc.) have a better understanding of human nature.I agree and liberal democracy as a theory is more prone to failure because it fails to understand human nature.
The French revolution was a process, it started liberal, turned illiberal, and ended up in the Napoleonic monarchy.If you want to disassociate liberalism from the French revolution
So you speak of Xi?At least then they can be stopped. It almost seems as if modern Leviathans cannot be stopped
In can't follow you. The system is witch check-and-balance, there are different levels (e.g. no president can infringe the rights of an US state) …The entire USA and it's political system holds more power over the individual than any King ever had.
The emperor's troops destroyed the town of Magdeburg completely, so for some time there has been a word »Magdeburgize« (madgeburgisieren). Just because the emperor wanted to rule even over the religion of the people in his Reich. So you think a monarch who allows such an action had any moral doubts to use the modern means to control people, if he had them available?Nor did they have the moral means to do so.
I doubt. The Assyrians or Spartans also had a massive army to control the subjected people (in Sparta, the Helotes).Liberalism and democracy, the latter of which made civilians and citizens responsible for government contributed to more massive armies and political participation
No, the logic was somewhat different.Why distinguish between civilians and non-civilians? They are all guilty of participating in the state and if the state is an enemy they are a valid target. That was the logic used by the allies in WW2 against their enemies. Which you have justified mind you.
Yes. it is gone. But you cannot blame the political system for that.And where's that great awakening now?
The fact that there are schismatics and heretics don't invalidate the unity of the Church. People who reject authority, don't invalidate authority.
This was how parish priests were paid, and still are in poor areas of the world even today. It was, and is, subject to abuse. However, abuse is not the rule. The idea that millions of people went unbaptized because priests refused the sacrament to those who could not pay is absurd and unfounded.
Luther was right about the abuse of selling indulgences. That didn't make him right about everything else. Wycliffe may have been right about the abuses of greedy clergy, that doesn't make him right about everything else.
If you follow him in the things he is wrong about, because he was right about that one thing, you are still wrong.
The fact of the matter is, almost no protestants alive today would even agree with either Wycliffe's actual beliefs, or Jan Huss's actual beliefs. They just like to use them as symbols because they broke with the authority of the Church.
This is not accurate.
The first article, of the four articles of Prague is not about priests having the right to read the Bible. No one was forbidden from reading the Bible. Bibles were freely available in Churches and people could come to the Church and read it, if they were able. Bible's were chained up in Churches because they were incredibly expensive to make before the printing press. The point of having the Bible chained up was specifically to make it available to the public, and avoid having it stolen (which would then make it no longer available to the public).
Further, clergy were generally educated in schools where they studied the Bible. However, during the Black Death (right before the time of Jan Huss) the clergy suffered a higher death rate that the laity, because the clergy were caring for the sick. Note the contradiction that the clergy died from the plague because they were caring for the sick and administering sacraments when even the vitcims own family abandoned them, yet the clergy were all greedy, money grubbers who wouldn't life a finger without being paid, right? As a result, after the Black Death, the ranks of the clergy were severely depleted. As a result many of those who were ordained were either uneducated or badly educated.
What the first article actually demands is that priests be able to preach their own interpretation of the word of God without restriction by civil authorities. In other words, they were demanding that civil rulers, like the Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, and local Princes could not intervene to stop heretics from preaching (so long as the heretic in question was a priest).
In the summary you give here, the word examined means publicly examined as in being exposited and interpreted in a sermon. You can find the text for yourself if you doubt my word.
Jan Huss was not right.
Here is the thing, I don't know you or what you believe, but I'm willing to bet you don't even think Jan Hus was right. In other words, I'm willing to bet you don't believe what he believed.
The idea that this was all about people being able to read the bible is hogwash (as I established above). The #1 tenet of Jan Huss' beliefs and those of his followers was that salvation was conditional upon partaking in both the body and the blood of Christ during the eucharist. Thus people had to have both the Chalice and the Host, which he believed were the True Body and True Blood of Christ. They believed and taught that if you did not partake in both during Holy Communion, you could not be saved.
Both Huss and Wycliffe also reacted (overreacted) against Clerical wealth and greed, and basically demanded that Clergy not be allowed to own anything and be forced to engage in radical poverty.
Do you agree with that? Does the clergy of your church own their own homes? Or do they live on the streets and beg for food to survive?
I agree but who's God specifically? The Methodist God? The Baptist God, the Catholic God? Perhaps the Mormon God as it was created in the United States.
I believe in context, their reference to God is in that ALL humans a born with certain rights (not commandments), including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People from all religious walks agree that these are basic human rights and we don't need a specific God to worship as a nation but even someone you doesn't believe in God is still a beneficiary of these rights. So, I understand that at the time it was easier to say God gave us these rights but it's human beings regardless of religious belief are entitled to them. Religious and non-religious people simply call them "human rights" or "natural rights" but there is no religion tied to it.
Christianity in Spain was saved. Or would you have preferred Spain develop as a Muslim country and Christians their subject to Islamic overlords? You're saying you reject the equalization and if you think WW2 was justified, millions of deaths and strategems of war designed to kill masses of civilians, while the Reconquista is simply intolerable we have different worldviews.I don't say everything done by the allies in WWII was OK. I objected to your equalization to Spain.
The victory over Germany saved several million Jewish lives. Who was saved by the reconquista?
Therefore Saint Paul was wrong about the state wielding a sword? As Christians we know not everyone can be saved, most will not. If your actions are so heinous in life that you pose a threat to those around you or have violated what is good, so intently, the death penalty is entirely justified.No, I don't know. A man hung will stop thinking within a minute, though he may be revitalized even after half an hour.
Have you read any monarchists? Particularly Christian monarchists?I don't see that alternatives (monarchy, aristocracy, communist state etc.) have a better understanding of human nature.
Since when was it illiberal? It was at it's most liberal during the height of the revolution when the Church was marginalized and it went on a crusade to spread liberalism throughout Europe and overturn the old order. Or do you think that causing mass death is not within the realm of liberalism?The French revolution was a process, it started liberal, turned illiberal, and ended up in the Napoleonic monarchy.
I mean you can tie the Gospel to the burning of heretics. It is the direct result of Christianity being the primary value in society that allowed states to execute heretics who violated Christian normality.You cannot tie the Jacobins to Liberalism, that would be like tying the Gospel to burning of Heretics.
I am speaking of the USA primarily. I consider it far more dangerous and unstoppable because it is a system rather than a singular person that can be targeted.So you speak of Xi?
And when we compare that sack to the later actions of secular states, does it even compare to the bombing of Dresden of the nuking of Tokyo? Are those actions justified because they are in the name of liberal democracy (in whose name we may kill in abandon to secure it)? When it comes to monarchy I am not going to justify every action done by a monarch, but I will suggest that is rather a exception than the norm in medieval warfare especially as time went on.In can't follow you. The system is witch check-and-balance, there are different levels (e.g. no president can infringe the rights of an US state) …
The emperor's troops destroyed the town of Magdeburg completely, so for some time there has been a word »Magdeburgize« (madgeburgisieren). Just because the emperor wanted to rule even over the religion of the people in his Reich. So you think a monarch who allows such an action had any moral doubts to use the modern means to control people, if he had them available?
But I notice you try to justify latter secular wars, while thinking earlier Christian wars were entirely bad. It was not merely advances in communications technology that allowed for mass slaughter of the modern age, but the very spirit of liberal democracy itself which believes all citizens are collectively guilty for what their state does. Therefore they are a legitimate target.Differences are due to technical means (e.g. rapid communication).
Which was justified in your opinion? While all Christian wars prior were unjustified? Please explain to me why liberal democrats are allowed to kill with abandon to secure their ideology in the world.No, the logic was somewhat different.
The allies bombed industries, but saw no effect. What they did not know: More bombing would have brought Germany to a state like in became in 1944. But since bombing of industry seemed ineffective, they bombed houses in the hope that would turn the Germans against Hitler.
You are justifying it.And I did not justify it, I objected to a careless simile.
I don't blame the political system alone for it, but it has certainty contributed to the lack of any awakening and the weakening of Christianity. When you strip away and peel all aspects of religion in public life and replace it with consumerism which targets the passions, how can there any other result?Yes. it is gone. But you cannot blame the political system for that.
Christianity in the Middle East collapsed due to the advance of Islam. I am curious though, do you think the Byzantines were wrong to fight against the Muslims who were invading Asia Minor?In the middle east, Christianity (there were large Christian minorities or even majorities in most parts of the region) collapsed during the time of the crusades.
In France, the decline of Christianity started before the revolution, that there has been non comparable revolution in Great Britain is explained with the Wesleyan movement (Methodists and evangelical Anglicans) and their activities (Wilberforce, Shaftesbury etc.).
Democratic systems are only part of the reason why Christianity has declined, not the whole reason. I dare say that the reason why Christianity has declined is because most professed Christians don't really believe in it. The readily subordinate their Christianity to other ideologies, be it liberalism or some other thing and this is what has lead to the decline. Christianity had power when people actually believed and were willing to die for it in Rome and as result they hated (with some justification) the Paganism of the surrounding culture. Christians are not prepared to be as committed as the early Christians and so it continues to decline.Do you see a common cause for these three instances when the number of believers went down? I can't see a reason why I should link the spiritual decline in the last century to democratic systems.
There was no danger of Christianity to be extinguished.Christianity in Spain was saved.
The reconquista was an attack. In WW2, Hitler attacked. First Poland, then Denmark and Norway, then France and UK, then Soviet union, then declared war to the USA.You're saying you reject the equalization and if you think WW2 was justified, millions of deaths and strategems of war designed to kill masses of civilians, while the Reconquista is simply intolerable we have different worldviews.
Death penalty is an option (and Paul lived in a state that used it).Therefore Saint Paul was wrong about the state wielding a sword?
I read some old books and think I know something how monarchists thought (I can also recall my grandmother, either what I heard directly, or what my mother told). If you know any monarchistic insight to human nature, why don't you tell it?Have you read any monarchists? Particularly Christian monarchists?
Liberalism comes from libertas, freedom. A dictatorship with mass killing is by definition not liberal.It was at it's most liberal during the height of the revolution when the Church was marginalized and it went on a crusade to spread liberalism throughout Europe and overturn the old order. Or do you think that causing mass death is not within the realm of liberalism?
This is not what Jesus told us.I mean you can tie the Gospel to the burning of heretics. It is the direct result of Christianity being the primary value in society that allowed states to execute heretics who violated Christian normality.
Can you give an example, so I can see what you are speaking about?I am speaking of the USA primarily. I consider it far more dangerous and unstoppable because it is a system rather than a singular person that can be targeted.
Burning a whole city, according to reports with the same sort of a big flame as in the bombing of Hamburg (and AFAIK, in Dresden as well) - yes, this is comparable.And when we compare that sack to the later actions of secular states, does it even compare to the bombing of Dresden of the nuking of Tokyo?
No.Are those actions justified
But you assume that I do justify anything democracies do …When it comes to monarchy I am not going to justify every action done by a monarch
Oh, now you give excusions …but I will suggest that is rather a exception than the norm in medieval warfare especially as time went on.
Did I say all? You twist my words!Which was justified in your opinion? While all Christian wars prior were unjustified?
How did it contribute?I don't blame the political system alone for it, but it has certainty contributed to the lack of any awakening and the weakening of Christianity.
It was not the system that did it.When you strip away and peel all aspects of religion in public life and replace it with consumerism which targets the passions, how can there any other result?
No, it collapsed centuries later.Christianity in the Middle East collapsed due to the advance of Islam.
They had the right to defend themselves. And perhaps they would have resisted with more success, had not crusaders crushes Byzantium in the 5th crusade.I am curious though, do you think the Byzantines were wrong to fight against the Muslims who were invading Asia Minor?
I read it in a book about French protestantism from the beginnings top the 18th century. A hostoric perspective which helped the »confessing« Church in Germany (bekennende Kirche) in Nazi times.I would need to look into that claim as I have not heard of that.
I tend to agree, although the cardinal system worked for some time, up until maybe 1958. I am with the Sedevacantists who say (logically) that we haven't had a valid pope since then.What I know about the history of the Roman Catholic Church is that the RCC today is very different from the church of the past. In 1000 AD, the Bishop of Rome was elected by the priests of the Roman Diocese. Other Bishops were elected in the same way. The Pope did not appoint the Archbishops of Paris and London, for instance, they were selected locally. The system of having the Pope elected by Cardinals appointed by previous Popes is a self-perpetuating monstrosity.
I found the text:I read it in a book about French protestantism from the beginnings top the 18th century. A hostoric perspective which helped the »confessing« Church in Germany (bekennende Kirche) in Nazi times.
I will look for a quote from that …
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