@stetson While you're being parodic, I realise, there's a troll on Quora, "Annie Hag", who contends that Finns are actually Russians who refuse to acknowledge the fact, that Hebrew and Russian are closely related languages, and that the Swedes have always actively pursued the destruction of Russia to this day.
The malevolent power of Lutheranism knows no bounds.
I want this on a T-shirt. It would go nicely with my coffee mug--the one with a quote from a furious ex-reader of mine, "Damned heretic that Martin Luther himself would be ashamed of."
@Pangolin Guerre, I hadn't run across the pietism in Orthodoxy thing but I don't doubt you. The books I read might not have even cared to talk about it. I read a bit about the survival of pre-Christian religions right up to the revolution and beyond, which was fascinating.
@Forthview in @Martin54 's view, undoubtedly it was the work of Russian Lutherans, nasty settlers in Ukraine, those very violent Mennonites, though I can't figure the German etymological root for громят.
What an interesting nerve point.
One of the most irritating (and, God knows, there's quite a selection) aspects of your discourse is your deliberate obscurity. If you fancy yourself a latter day Heraclitus, you're well off the mark. If you've got a point to make, would you make it, please? PLEASE? Or just get back on your meds.
What point don't you get? From the top down of this thread? What isn't clear? And I should have said sorry, regardless. I should have apologized first, taken full adult responsibility, not stooped here. But I'm weak and in what the Hell.
Luther is indefensible. His evil, so called, theology and his demonstrable, murderous evil. They're perichoretic, inextricably, synergistically linked in his helpless, innocent, feckless medieval mind. The third rate theology did come first and the hate reinforced it in a feedback loop. Lutherans have sanitized the hate, but it's in the theology. Luther's God hates us, despises us. It's time for anyone with pretensions to Christ to lose that identity and I know from bitter experience how much that hurts regardless.
Faith in Christ is a meaningless boundary marker, a pious pretension.
The faithfulness of Christ is what gets us all home.
It's a rhetorical device as you know Dafyd. What you need to know is that I seethe with utter self loathing orders of magnitude more than anything I can evoke here. Diddums. But I put up to be shot down. And take to the skies again. To be shot down better. This site has refined me with fire and I'm extremely grateful to all. And sorry to all. Concerning the present distress, what is there to choose between the objective and subjective genitive interpretation of Pistis Christou? Dead faith in Christ or living faithfulness by Christ? What is there to choose, to doubt, between light and dark? 50 shades? Please? Anyone. You especially as you have a honed orthodox mind.
The school library did have one of the first English translations because - the history teacher argued - you couldn't fully understand Luther and his theology without knowing he was extremely anti-Semitic, even by the standards of the time. And because he believed you couldn't just pretend these writings didn't exist when they're a matter of historical record.
I have no clue how you'd address that in order to make things right or unpick things theologically. At this point, I shall mumble something about it not being my place as an ally to decide that sort of stuff.
That's the problem, isn't it? To construct a version of Christianity that's compatible with violent and oppressive anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism requires a whole lot of underlying assumptions, not all of which will be immediately obvious. It's also not something followers of Luther can really leave unaddressed, since a lot of those underlying assumptions might lead them to similarly horrific conclusions (though not necessarily the same ones as Luther).
The problem is that many of the constructions outside Germany were done without any knowledge of the anti-Semitism as those writings weren’t translated into other languages / aren’t widely available.
The Lutherans have addressed them. Maybe not to Martin’s satisfaction, but it’s not like they haven’t tried.
I know they have @Tubbs. But that flag must come down. It's an obscenity. But maybe it should be kept, because it easily enables the targeting of the heresy behind it.
Luther isn't the only church leader who lost sight of Christianity's Jewish roots. St. John Chrysostom was anti-Semitic. Pope Paul IV issued a bull removing the rights of the Jews in 1555. Luther didn't turn his writings into a church policy - others did the job for him and used his legacy to justify themselves.
The problem with trying to unpick it all is that you have the condemnation of the Luther's writings from the current church plus the strong push back against the Nazi's by Niemoller, Gruber and Bonhoeffer. Then there's the writings themselves and people like Martin Sasse, the Bishop of the Evangelical Church of Thuringia who was delighted by Kristallnacht and said Luther would have been totally supportive. (I'd like to thank Rev T for use of his theological library at this point).
I think it should be kept as it reminds us of who we were, where we've got too and how far we've got to go. But, ultimately, it's not for me to decide. Are there any Jewish voices in the wider world demanding a Lutheran church rebrand?
The school library did have one of the first English translations because - the history teacher argued - you couldn't fully understand Luther and his theology without knowing he was extremely anti-Semitic, even by the standards of the time. And because he believed you couldn't just pretend these writings didn't exist when they're a matter of historical record.
I have no clue how you'd address that in order to make things right or unpick things theologically. At this point, I shall mumble something about it not being my place as an ally to decide that sort of stuff.
That's the problem, isn't it? To construct a version of Christianity that's compatible with violent and oppressive anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism requires a whole lot of underlying assumptions, not all of which will be immediately obvious. It's also not something followers of Luther can really leave unaddressed, since a lot of those underlying assumptions might lead them to similarly horrific conclusions (though not necessarily the same ones as Luther).
The problem is that many of the constructions outside Germany were done without any knowledge of the anti-Semitism as those writings weren’t translated into other languages / aren’t widely available.
The Lutherans have addressed them. Maybe not to Martin’s satisfaction, but it’s not like they haven’t tried.
I know they have @Tubbs. But that flag must come down. It's an obscenity. But maybe it should be kept, because it easily enables the targeting of the heresy behind it.
Luther isn't the only church leader who lost sight of Christianity's Jewish roots. St. John Chrysostom was anti-Semitic. Pope Paul IV issued a bull removing the rights of the Jews in 1555. Luther didn't turn his writings into a church policy - others did the job for him and used his legacy to justify themselves.
The problem with trying to unpick it all is that you have the condemnation of the Luther's writings from the current church plus the strong push back against the Nazi's by Niemoller, Gruber and Bonhoeffer. Then there's the writings themselves and people like Martin Sasse, the Bishop of the Evangelical Church of Thuringia who was delighted by Kristallnacht and said Luther would have been totally supportive. (I'd like to thank Rev T for use of his theological library at this point).
I think it should be kept as it reminds us of who we were, where we've got too and how far we've got to go. But, ultimately, it's not for me to decide. Are there any Jewish voices in the wider world demanding a Lutheran church rebrand?
Most measured, but why wait? Christianity cannot apologize enough to Jews and Muslims for a long start.
The school library did have one of the first English translations because - the history teacher argued - you couldn't fully understand Luther and his theology without knowing he was extremely anti-Semitic, even by the standards of the time. And because he believed you couldn't just pretend these writings didn't exist when they're a matter of historical record.
I have no clue how you'd address that in order to make things right or unpick things theologically. At this point, I shall mumble something about it not being my place as an ally to decide that sort of stuff.
That's the problem, isn't it? To construct a version of Christianity that's compatible with violent and oppressive anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism requires a whole lot of underlying assumptions, not all of which will be immediately obvious. It's also not something followers of Luther can really leave unaddressed, since a lot of those underlying assumptions might lead them to similarly horrific conclusions (though not necessarily the same ones as Luther).
The problem is that many of the constructions outside Germany were done without any knowledge of the anti-Semitism as those writings weren’t translated into other languages / aren’t widely available.
The Lutherans have addressed them. Maybe not to Martin’s satisfaction, but it’s not like they haven’t tried.
I know they have @Tubbs. But that flag must come down. It's an obscenity. But maybe it should be kept, because it easily enables the targeting of the heresy behind it.
Luther isn't the only church leader who lost sight of Christianity's Jewish roots. St. John Chrysostom was anti-Semitic. Pope Paul IV issued a bull removing the rights of the Jews in 1555. Luther didn't turn his writings into a church policy - others did the job for him and used his legacy to justify themselves.
The problem with trying to unpick it all is that you have the condemnation of the Luther's writings from the current church plus the strong push back against the Nazi's by Niemoller, Gruber and Bonhoeffer. Then there's the writings themselves and people like Martin Sasse, the Bishop of the Evangelical Church of Thuringia who was delighted by Kristallnacht and said Luther would have been totally supportive. (I'd like to thank Rev T for use of his theological library at this point).
I think it should be kept as it reminds us of who we were, where we've got too and how far we've got to go. But, ultimately, it's not for me to decide. Are there any Jewish voices in the wider world demanding a Lutheran church rebrand?
Most measured, but why wait? Christianity cannot apologize enough to Jews and Muslims for a long start.
Because my solution might not be their solution. Christianity apologising without listening too or engaging with Muslims and Jews just seems yet more of "Let me fix that for you". Allies can't speak on behalf of the community they're an ally of. It's not how being an ally works.
This thread is little more than a demand for people to publicly denounce wife beating and confirm that they have continued to stop beating their wives.
The word 'Pogrom' makes me ask how it was that Martin Luther's antisemitism affected in such a way the Russian Czarist Empire ?
Probably in the same way that Lutherans were able to convince right-wing French Catholics to persecute Captain Dreyfus, and ship Jews off to the camps under Vichy.
The malevolent power of Lutheranism knows no bounds. Even today, vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and synagogues is incited by subliminal messages sent out via re-runs of Davey And Goliath.
If they would rip-of Gumby, they would stoop to anything
Actually, it was the same animator for both cartoons, so it looks like Gumby was quite likely a test-run for Davey, with the loothruns inculcating an unnatural affection for orange donkeys among the helpless public.
The school library did have one of the first English translations because - the history teacher argued - you couldn't fully understand Luther and his theology without knowing he was extremely anti-Semitic, even by the standards of the time. And because he believed you couldn't just pretend these writings didn't exist when they're a matter of historical record.
I have no clue how you'd address that in order to make things right or unpick things theologically. At this point, I shall mumble something about it not being my place as an ally to decide that sort of stuff.
That's the problem, isn't it? To construct a version of Christianity that's compatible with violent and oppressive anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism requires a whole lot of underlying assumptions, not all of which will be immediately obvious. It's also not something followers of Luther can really leave unaddressed, since a lot of those underlying assumptions might lead them to similarly horrific conclusions (though not necessarily the same ones as Luther).
The problem is that many of the constructions outside Germany were done without any knowledge of the anti-Semitism as those writings weren’t translated into other languages / aren’t widely available.
The Lutherans have addressed them. Maybe not to Martin’s satisfaction, but it’s not like they haven’t tried.
I know they have @Tubbs. But that flag must come down. It's an obscenity. But maybe it should be kept, because it easily enables the targeting of the heresy behind it.
Luther isn't the only church leader who lost sight of Christianity's Jewish roots. St. John Chrysostom was anti-Semitic. Pope Paul IV issued a bull removing the rights of the Jews in 1555. Luther didn't turn his writings into a church policy - others did the job for him and used his legacy to justify themselves.
The problem with trying to unpick it all is that you have the condemnation of the Luther's writings from the current church plus the strong push back against the Nazi's by Niemoller, Gruber and Bonhoeffer. Then there's the writings themselves and people like Martin Sasse, the Bishop of the Evangelical Church of Thuringia who was delighted by Kristallnacht and said Luther would have been totally supportive. (I'd like to thank Rev T for use of his theological library at this point).
I think it should be kept as it reminds us of who we were, where we've got too and how far we've got to go. But, ultimately, it's not for me to decide. Are there any Jewish voices in the wider world demanding a Lutheran church rebrand?
Most measured, but why wait? Christianity cannot apologize enough to Jews and Muslims for a long start.
Because my solution might not be their solution. Christianity apologising without listening too or engaging with Muslims and Jews just seems yet more of "Let me fix that for you". Allies can't speak on behalf of the community they're an ally of. It's not how being an ally works.
OK. We still need to lower that flag, not just for the murderous anti-Semitism used in the Holocaust... but for the school boy error theology which Calvin ran with.
So Lutherans don’t just have to apologise for Luther, but for Calvin as well?
Honestly, this is feeling uncomfortably like the conversations where Muslims are told they have to renounce terrorism. As if they all had something to do with it in the first place.
What one appreciates about Martin54 is his complete imperviousness to such wishy-washy ideas as nuance and self-doubt.
Nuance is not something familiar to more than one of his detractors on this issue.
I am light years away from being a Martin54 apologist, however, the base of his contention is valid.
Luther is problematic. Venerating him is not a great look in 2020.
Nuance. "Hey Jews, Luther wasn't all bad and most of us don't still hate you" Nuance.
Again, I ma not making a statement on whether I think Lutherans should dump the name, but the whingers who attack Martin rather than actually discuss the issue are not exhibiting nuance either.
Faith in Christ is a meaningless boundary marker, a pious pretension.
The faithfulness of Christ is what gets us all home.
Some of us have been under the impression that it's at least partly our attempt at maintaining faith in Christ that has made it possible to get out of bed in recent months; based on the premise that having faith in the faithfulness of Christ has been helping us to keep going. However, I'm so grateful to learn that I've been deluding myself with a pious pretension, and will stop being so naively ignorant. Now that I know it's only the 'faithfulness of Christ' that matters and that my response to him is a waste of time, I'm free to re-home the dog and turn my face to the wall.
So Lutherans don’t just have to apologise for Luther, but for Calvin as well?
Honestly, this is feeling uncomfortably like the conversations where Muslims are told they have to renounce terrorism. As if they all had something to do with it in the first place.
I shall, yet again talk about being an ally. Acknowledging that being a Christian comes with some unwanted baggage - historical leaders who were hideously ~ist, a track record in many areas is less than stellar - and willing to do your bit to tackle that. Including challenging fellow Christians who come out with icky comments.
I'm not sure there is anything else unless the Jewish or Muslim community specifically ask for it. It's not my place to do stuff "on their behalf". Because I wouldn't really be doing it for them. I'm doing it to deal with all my bad feelings. Which is pretty rubbish.
That's the problem, isn't it? To construct a version of Christianity that's compatible with violent and oppressive anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism requires a whole lot of underlying assumptions, not all of which will be immediately obvious. It's also not something followers of Luther can really leave unaddressed, since a lot of those underlying assumptions might lead them to similarly horrific conclusions (though not necessarily the same ones as Luther).
The problem is that many of the constructions outside Germany were done without any knowledge of the anti-Semitism as those writings weren’t translated into other languages / aren’t widely available.
The Lutherans have addressed them. Maybe not to Martin’s satisfaction, but it’s not like they haven’t tried.
I'm not sure that matters if the same intellectual premises that led Luther down an anti-Semitic/anti-Judaic path are present in his other works. For example, did Luther's sola fide beliefs lead him to conclude that, as non-Christians, Jews were all damned and damnable? Or maybe the reasoning went the other way, that Luther's belief in Jewish evil led him to construct a theology that deliberately excluded Jews from salvation?
It's not easy to unpick things like this. It's almost impossible to draw a bright line between someone's ideas and say this had no influence over that, and that also had no influence over this. Human minds aren't that easily compartmentalized.
Are there other church denominations named after a person?
Well, off the top of my head, Calvinists(*), Hutterites, Mennonites, and Swedenborgians are the only ones coming to mind.
And, of course, if you are a member of the Anglican Communion, you are pretty much required to believe that Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were right about a lot of stuff, even if the denomination is not actually named after them. Ditto, I would assume, for Methodists and Wesley.
(*)Not a denomination per se, but I do recall at least one "Calvinist Conference" or some such being held in my hometown.
Are there other church denominations named after a person?
Well, off the top of my head, Calvinists(*), Hutterites, Mennonites, and Swedenborgians are the only ones coming to mind.
There is at least one denomination that uses “Wesleyan” as part of its name, and “Wesleyan” or “Wesley” shows up in some Methodist contexts. For example, the college student ministry of the United Methodist Church is the Wesley Foundation.
Faith in Christ is a meaningless boundary marker, a pious pretension.
The faithfulness of Christ is what gets us all home.
Some of us have been under the impression that it's at least partly our attempt at maintaining faith in Christ that has made it possible to get out of bed in recent months; based on the premise that having faith in the faithfulness of Christ has been helping us to keep going. However, I'm so grateful to learn that I've been deluding myself with a pious pretension, and will stop being so naively ignorant. Now that I know it's only the 'faithfulness of Christ' that matters and that my response to him is a waste of time, I'm free to re-home the dog and turn my face to the wall.
Me too @Anselmina. That's a superb way of putting it. But that's not what Luther and Calvin meant is it? That's not what every Anglican, every Evangelical, I have ever heard or read on the issue mean. Apparently Tom Wright doesn't. Good man. John Stott? I'd never heard of Pistis Christou until this week, just the pleb on the bus me. I'm sure you all had. But you never said.
Faith in Christ is a meaningless boundary marker, a pious pretension.
The faithfulness of Christ is what gets us all home.
Some of us have been under the impression that it's at least partly our attempt at maintaining faith in Christ that has made it possible to get out of bed in recent months; based on the premise that having faith in the faithfulness of Christ has been helping us to keep going. However, I'm so grateful to learn that I've been deluding myself with a pious pretension, and will stop being so naively ignorant. Now that I know it's only the 'faithfulness of Christ' that matters and that my response to him is a waste of time, I'm free to re-home the dog and turn my face to the wall.
Me too @Anselmina. That's a superb way of putting it. But that's not what Luther and Calvin meant is it? That's not what every Anglican, every Evangelical, I have ever heard or read on the issue mean. Apparently Tom Wright doesn't. Good man. John Stott? I'd never heard of Pistis Christou until this week, just the pleb on the bus me. I'm sure you all had. But you never said.
Personally, I try not to have fruitless conniptions over theologians who don't resonate that much with how I understand my faith or live it out, so I don't much know or care specifically what Luther and Calvin meant. Luther is just one of all the other Church Fathers who threw his doctrinal hat into the ring; no better, no worse probably.
Faith in Christ is a meaningless boundary marker, a pious pretension.
The faithfulness of Christ is what gets us all home.
Some of us have been under the impression that it's at least partly our attempt at maintaining faith in Christ that has made it possible to get out of bed in recent months; based on the premise that having faith in the faithfulness of Christ has been helping us to keep going. However, I'm so grateful to learn that I've been deluding myself with a pious pretension, and will stop being so naively ignorant. Now that I know it's only the 'faithfulness of Christ' that matters and that my response to him is a waste of time, I'm free to re-home the dog and turn my face to the wall.
Me too @Anselmina. That's a superb way of putting it. But that's not what Luther and Calvin meant is it? That's not what every Anglican, every Evangelical, I have ever heard or read on the issue mean. Apparently Tom Wright doesn't. Good man. John Stott? I'd never heard of Pistis Christou until this week, just the pleb on the bus me. I'm sure you all had. But you never said.
Personally, I try not to have fruitless conniptions over theologians who don't resonate that much with how I understand my faith or live it out, so I don't much know or care specifically what Luther and Calvin meant. Luther is just one of all the other Church Fathers who threw his doctrinal hat into the ring; no better, no worse probably.
I think he was an absolute, but inevitable, terribly influential disaster, the worst in 2000 years by a country mile. Augustine isn't even a close second. He identified the western Church's loss of grace in peddling indulgence and then immediately lost it by requiring saving faith of us. Calvin compounded the error.
Furthermore, in our ignorance of basic etymology, the history of translation (and the ignorance obviously includes that of the clergy) we assume that they felt justified, because "it's in the Bible" and hey presto, it is. So those of us who are liberal have no option but to reject the Bible, particularly Paul and even Jesus Himself. I've spent the past couple or three years deconstructing Jesus in particular, because Paul is beyond the Pale and cannot be redeemed. Not round here. All because we use crap translation and then judge that of Paul down the wrong end of the telescope.
I've spent the past couple or three years deconstructing Jesus in particular ...
Oh, fantastic -- good to know you're on the case. The rest of us couldn't possible think for ourselves. Where's the eye-rolling smiley when we need it?!?
I don't have a lot of time for Luther myself, but none of us needs you to lecture us on whose books we shouldn't read or what we shouldn't think or believe. You blather on about humility from time to time, but we all sense your feelings of self-importance.
I've spent the past couple or three years deconstructing Jesus in particular ...
Oh, fantastic -- good to know you're on the case. The rest of us couldn't possible think for ourselves. Where's the eye-rolling smiley when we need it?!?
People actually do this far less than we think we do. And some of the reactions to Martin's anti-Luther tirade do not demonstrate actual thought, but pure reaction.
I am not saying that one must agree to be considered thoughtful, mind.
I don't have a lot of time for Luther myself, but none of us needs you to lecture us on whose books we shouldn't read or what we shouldn't think or believe.
I don't know that anyone needs Martin to do this, but IMO everyone needs their beliefs challenged from time to time.
I've spent the past couple or three years deconstructing Jesus in particular ...
Oh, fantastic -- good to know you're on the case. The rest of us couldn't possible think for ourselves. Where's the eye-rolling smiley when we need it?!?
I don't have a lot of time for Luther myself, but none of us needs you to lecture us on whose books we shouldn't read or what we shouldn't think or believe. You blather on about humility from time to time, but we all sense your feelings of self-importance.
Sorry? I've had to deconstruct Jesus for myself. What books? What's humility got to do with anything? Disappointingly irrelevant, erroneous ad hominem rhetoric.
Whatever Ruth. Luther derailed Christianity in half of Europe for a start and it just kept on going. Some train wreck. It's been grinding to a halt for a century. I wonder why.
One of the things I remember from A-level history was that although many of Luther's writings were translated into English from German, the anti-Semitic stuff wasn't. When it finally was, people were really shocked about how bad it was. But it was well known in Germany and helped made the Nazi's teaching about Jews more acceptable.
My distinct recollection is that Lutheran theologians tended to discreetly overlook the great man's anti-Jewish diatribes on the "no discreet friend to his memory" principle. People tend to assume that because Luther was German and anti-semitic and because Germany embraced the most noxious version of anti-semitism there was some kind of causal link. But, of course, Germany was never wholly Lutheran - it took Charles V's struggle against the German Princes and the Thirty Years War to establish the principle that he who rules chooses the religion in the patchwork of principalities that later became Germany. So, where else embraced Lutheranism? Principally Scandinavia. And, does Scandinavia have a history of murderous anti-semitism? The answer is: "not really'. The Danes smuggled their Jews out to Sweden who took them in (this was by no means a universal practice in the 30s and 40s), I think - if memory serves - precisely one Finnish Jew perished in the Holocaust. Two thirds of Norways Jews got out to Sweden or the UK, often with the assistance of the Norwegian resistance.
The reason that Germany went off it's collective head, I think, was a political culture which wanted a scapegoat for defeat in the Great War and the Depression and which keenly embraced irrationalism and pseudo-science and there was a further radicalisation of the Nazi High Command over the period of Nazi rule. In this context Luther's anti-Jewish writings were dusted off and keenly and opportunistically promoted by the Nazis. But prior to that there wasn't a kind of apostolic succession of Lutheran anti-Semitism handed down from Luther to the rise of the Third Reich. I think there has been a tendency for German protestant theology to present a distorted version of Judaism, as a kind of Catholicism avant la lettre but most of us have caricatured views of beliefs about which we are ignorant. and we don't, thereby, think that this obliges us to engage in mass murder on an industrial scale.
Anti-Semitism has been huge in Europe for centuries. Nazism took advantage of it, magnified it, but they did not reinvent it. That is revisionist rubbish to wash the blood of the hands of the many onto the hands of the few.
@Callan, a nuanced contribution, thank you, particularly about the different directions that Lutheranism ultimately took in different NW European cultures (including England) with regard to its anti-Semitic roots. But didn't they all take the same path? Including Germany? Until the Dolchstoss? I don't see you engaging in revisionism just because Europe from Madrid to Moscow has been anti-Semitic - the spellchecker is obsolete: antisemitic, ADL standard - since it became 'Christian'. Since Constantine. Not Luther who just took a step forward and then two back in the process 'James Carroll asserted: "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors such as pogroms and conversions had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."' ibid.
Just as we should dump Lutheran, we should dump the pseudo-scientific euphemism antisemitism for what it is and what is Jew-hatred.
And then there's the bigger issue, if that were possible, that Luther's antisemitism is symptomatic of his deranged, inverted thinking in sola fide, his mistranslation of Pistis Christou, the curse that is the core, the dark heart, of Protestantism - another useless term - and it's litotic euphemism Evangelicalism - like Eumenides for Erinyes.
Why? It robs us of universal salvation, which the Jews knew that they had as God's chosen and that Paul, thanks be to Christ's faithfulness - Pistis Christou, knew that all had.
I think he was an absolute, but inevitable, terribly influential disaster, the worst in 2000 years by a country mile. Augustine isn't even a close second. He identified the western Church's loss of grace in peddling indulgence and then immediately lost it by requiring saving faith of us. Calvin compounded the error.
@Martin54 Augustine's not so great if you're a woman:
Woman was merely man's helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God.
Woman does not possess the image of God in herself but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, then she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one.
Although it's probably an improvement on the one who compared us to an open sewer ...
Most of the Church Fathers were very much men of their time - which showed in their attitudes and writings. Which means cherry picking the sensible stuff, acknowledging the rubbish stuff and self policing so those attitudes aren't paid forward. Just pretending they never existed changes nothing.
One of the things I remember from A-level history was that although many of Luther's writings were translated into English from German, the anti-Semitic stuff wasn't. When it finally was, people were really shocked about how bad it was. But it was well known in Germany and helped made the Nazi's teaching about Jews more acceptable.
My distinct recollection is that Lutheran theologians tended to discreetly overlook the great man's anti-Jewish diatribes on the "no discreet friend to his memory" principle. People tend to assume that because Luther was German and anti-semitic and because Germany embraced the most noxious version of anti-Semitism there was some kind of causal link. But, of course, Germany was never wholly Lutheran - it took Charles V's struggle against the German Princes and the Thirty Years War to establish the principle that he who rules chooses the religion in the patchwork of principalities that later became Germany. So, where else embraced Lutheranism? Principally Scandinavia. And, does Scandinavia have a history of murderous anti-semitism? The answer is: "not really'. The Danes smuggled their Jews out to Sweden who took them in (this was by no means a universal practice in the 30s and 40s), I think - if memory serves - precisely one Finnish Jew perished in the Holocaust. Two thirds of Norways Jews got out to Sweden or the UK, often with the assistance of the Norwegian resistance.
The reason that Germany went off it's collective head, I think, was a political culture which wanted a scapegoat for defeat in the Great War and the Depression and which keenly embraced irrationalism and pseudo-science and there was a further radicalisation of the Nazi High Command over the period of Nazi rule. In this context Luther's anti-Jewish writings were dusted off and keenly and opportunistically promoted by the Nazis. But prior to that there wasn't a kind of apostolic succession of Lutheran anti-Semitism handed down from Luther to the rise of the Third Reich. I think there has been a tendency for German protestant theology to present a distorted version of Judaism, as a kind of Catholicism avant la lettre but most of us have caricatured views of beliefs about which we are ignorant. and we don't, thereby, think that this obliges us to engage in mass murder on an industrial scale.
The most you can argue is that the existence of Luther's writings made the Nazi's job in Germany easier. It gave them a cloak of respectability.
IIRC, there was a tendency to see Luther's anti-semitism as an aberration of his age and health - ignoring the fact he'd been actively involved in driving them out of Saxony and other stuff - and downplay it. The full English translation really did for that.
I'd forgotten the influence of Lutheranism in Scandinavia though. The Danes not only smuggled out their Jews, they took care of their businesses and homes and handed everything back when they returned. That suggests it is possible to take "the good stuff" and ignore the rest.
Good to see you btw @Callan. Hope you and yours are doing okay.
I think he was an absolute, but inevitable, terribly influential disaster, the worst in 2000 years by a country mile. Augustine isn't even a close second. He identified the western Church's loss of grace in peddling indulgence and then immediately lost it by requiring saving faith of us. Calvin compounded the error.
@Martin54 Augustine's not so great if you're a woman:
Woman was merely man's helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God.
Woman does not possess the image of God in herself but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, then she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one.
Although it's probably an improvement on the one who compared us to an open sewer ...
Most of the Church Fathers were very much men of their time - which showed in their attitudes and writings. Which means cherry picking the sensible stuff, acknowledging the rubbish stuff and self policing so those attitudes aren't paid forward. Just pretending they never existed changes nothing.
Indeed @Tubbs. Augustine is the giant whose shoulders Luther stands on to give Calvin a leg up.
What a bunch uh bastards. I'd have been worse (there, the obligatory self deprecating humility).
I'm astounded at how dim we are. We have to go down every social evolutionary cul-de-sac it seems, no wonder the arc of the moral universe is long. 'Evangelicals' in the very main are still digging at the bottom of the bag. Hopefully they'll emerge through it.
I see he was a world class Jew-hater, up there with Luther, and murderously homophobic, but can't yet find any misogyny. Unless you count the legend (she forgave him post-mortem for murdering her and their baby, so that's all right). So only 2/3rds Christian (he was creedal I'm sure, so no parenthesis is justified) scumbag.
I see I was wrong about St. John Chrysostom. My apologies to his memory.
The phrase is most often attributed to Tertullian in his De cultu feminarum, although it is not to be found there. This discussion suggests it might be spurious altogether.
There is a work (Contra Marcion III) in which Tertullian uses the phrase "call the womb a sewer", but he is evidently there quoting Marcion in order to contradict him, not stating his own view.
There is his "Devil's gateway" reference to women (or woman), although in her thesis, this writer argues that it is used with specific rhetorical purpose in one particular treatise (De cultu feminarum), and is not representative of his view on women.
I see I was wrong about St. John Chrysostom. My apologies to his memory.
The phrase is most often attributed to Tertullian in his De cultu feminarum, although it is not to be found there. This discussion suggests it might be spurious altogether.
There is a work (Contra Marcion III) in which Tertullian uses the phrase "call the womb a sewer", but he is evidently there quoting Marcion in order to contradict him, not stating his own view.
There is his "Devil's gateway" reference to women (or woman), although in her thesis, this writer argues that it is used with specific rhetorical purpose in one particular treatise (De cultu feminarum), and is not representative of his view on women.
The Tertullian quote I know is a "Woman is a temple built over a sewer". It might have lost something in translation, but it's interesting you think it's a misquote.
While Luther came up with this little gem: "The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.. Which suggests a reading of the Bible that is limited at best.
Searching the www.tertullian.org website produces some entries for ‘sewer’ but not the notorious quotation, I went through several pages of entries for ‘temple’, but again didn’t find the quotation.
I've spent the past couple or three years deconstructing Jesus in particular ...
Oh, fantastic -- good to know you're on the case. The rest of us couldn't possible think for ourselves. Where's the eye-rolling smiley when we need it?!?
I don't have a lot of time for Luther myself, but none of us needs you to lecture us on whose books we shouldn't read or what we shouldn't think or believe. You blather on about humility from time to time, but we all sense your feelings of self-importance.
Sorry? I've had to deconstruct Jesus for myself. What books?
Luther's books, you num num.
What's humility got to do with anything?
In your case, clearly nothing.
Disappointingly irrelevant, erroneous ad hominem rhetoric.
Yes, I'm criticizing you personally. You deserve it.
Whatever Ruth. Luther derailed Christianity in half of Europe for a start and it just kept on going. Some train wreck. It's been grinding to a halt for a century. I wonder why.
Christianity prior to Luther was plenty shitty, and there are loads of reasons outside of Luther's writings for Christianity's slow demise. Internecine battles, like the one you're fighting for no apparent reason, would be one of them.
I've spent the past couple or three years deconstructing Jesus in particular ...
Oh, fantastic -- good to know you're on the case. The rest of us couldn't possible think for ourselves. Where's the eye-rolling smiley when we need it?!?
I don't have a lot of time for Luther myself, but none of us needs you to lecture us on whose books we shouldn't read or what we shouldn't think or believe. You blather on about humility from time to time, but we all sense your feelings of self-importance.
Sorry? I've had to deconstruct Jesus for myself. What books?
Luther's books, you num num.
What's humility got to do with anything?
In your case, clearly nothing.
Disappointingly irrelevant, erroneous ad hominem rhetoric.
Yes, I'm criticizing you personally. You deserve it.
Whatever Ruth. Luther derailed Christianity in half of Europe for a start and it just kept on going. Some train wreck. It's been grinding to a halt for a century. I wonder why.
Christianity prior to Luther was plenty shitty, and there are loads of reasons outside of Luther's writings for Christianity's slow demise. Internecine battles, like the one you're fighting for no apparent reason, would be one of them.
OK Ruth. Where did I say not to read Luther? That there is no apparent reason for repenting of, utterly repudiating Lutheranism to you is very sad. The man was monster and his 'theology' monstrous. His God a megalomaniac that hundreds of millions happily worship as such.
I never said there was nothing to repudiate in Luther. There's plenty. I just don't see the point of singling out Luther when there are so many problematic and outright horrific characters in the history of Christianity.
Comments
I want this on a T-shirt. It would go nicely with my coffee mug--the one with a quote from a furious ex-reader of mine, "Damned heretic that Martin Luther himself would be ashamed of."
Best fan mail I ever got.
What point don't you get? From the top down of this thread? What isn't clear? And I should have said sorry, regardless. I should have apologized first, taken full adult responsibility, not stooped here. But I'm weak and in what the Hell.
Luther is indefensible. His evil, so called, theology and his demonstrable, murderous evil. They're perichoretic, inextricably, synergistically linked in his helpless, innocent, feckless medieval mind. The third rate theology did come first and the hate reinforced it in a feedback loop. Lutherans have sanitized the hate, but it's in the theology. Luther's God hates us, despises us. It's time for anyone with pretensions to Christ to lose that identity and I know from bitter experience how much that hurts regardless.
Faith in Christ is a meaningless boundary marker, a pious pretension.
The faithfulness of Christ is what gets us all home.
Luther isn't the only church leader who lost sight of Christianity's Jewish roots. St. John Chrysostom was anti-Semitic. Pope Paul IV issued a bull removing the rights of the Jews in 1555. Luther didn't turn his writings into a church policy - others did the job for him and used his legacy to justify themselves.
The problem with trying to unpick it all is that you have the condemnation of the Luther's writings from the current church plus the strong push back against the Nazi's by Niemoller, Gruber and Bonhoeffer. Then there's the writings themselves and people like Martin Sasse, the Bishop of the Evangelical Church of Thuringia who was delighted by Kristallnacht and said Luther would have been totally supportive. (I'd like to thank Rev T for use of his theological library at this point).
I think it should be kept as it reminds us of who we were, where we've got too and how far we've got to go. But, ultimately, it's not for me to decide. Are there any Jewish voices in the wider world demanding a Lutheran church rebrand?
Most measured, but why wait? Christianity cannot apologize enough to Jews and Muslims for a long start.
Because my solution might not be their solution. Christianity apologising without listening too or engaging with Muslims and Jews just seems yet more of "Let me fix that for you". Allies can't speak on behalf of the community they're an ally of. It's not how being an ally works.
Personally, I admire the hubris. It’s downright Trumpian.
Actually, it was the same animator for both cartoons, so it looks like Gumby was quite likely a test-run for Davey, with the loothruns inculcating an unnatural affection for orange donkeys among the helpless public.
OK. We still need to lower that flag, not just for the murderous anti-Semitism used in the Holocaust... but for the school boy error theology which Calvin ran with.
Honestly, this is feeling uncomfortably like the conversations where Muslims are told they have to renounce terrorism. As if they all had something to do with it in the first place.
And what's to doubt? Really? That God is love? What?
I am light years away from being a Martin54 apologist, however, the base of his contention is valid.
Luther is problematic. Venerating him is not a great look in 2020.
Nuance. "Hey Jews, Luther wasn't all bad and most of us don't still hate you" Nuance.
Again, I ma not making a statement on whether I think Lutherans should dump the name, but the whingers who attack Martin rather than actually discuss the issue are not exhibiting nuance either.
Some of us have been under the impression that it's at least partly our attempt at maintaining faith in Christ that has made it possible to get out of bed in recent months; based on the premise that having faith in the faithfulness of Christ has been helping us to keep going. However, I'm so grateful to learn that I've been deluding myself with a pious pretension, and will stop being so naively ignorant. Now that I know it's only the 'faithfulness of Christ' that matters and that my response to him is a waste of time, I'm free to re-home the dog and turn my face to the wall.
I shall, yet again talk about being an ally. Acknowledging that being a Christian comes with some unwanted baggage - historical leaders who were hideously ~ist, a track record in many areas is less than stellar - and willing to do your bit to tackle that. Including challenging fellow Christians who come out with icky comments.
I'm not sure there is anything else unless the Jewish or Muslim community specifically ask for it. It's not my place to do stuff "on their behalf". Because I wouldn't really be doing it for them. I'm doing it to deal with all my bad feelings. Which is pretty rubbish.
I'm not sure that matters if the same intellectual premises that led Luther down an anti-Semitic/anti-Judaic path are present in his other works. For example, did Luther's sola fide beliefs lead him to conclude that, as non-Christians, Jews were all damned and damnable? Or maybe the reasoning went the other way, that Luther's belief in Jewish evil led him to construct a theology that deliberately excluded Jews from salvation?
It's not easy to unpick things like this. It's almost impossible to draw a bright line between someone's ideas and say this had no influence over that, and that also had no influence over this. Human minds aren't that easily compartmentalized.
Well, off the top of my head, Calvinists(*), Hutterites, Mennonites, and Swedenborgians are the only ones coming to mind.
And, of course, if you are a member of the Anglican Communion, you are pretty much required to believe that Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were right about a lot of stuff, even if the denomination is not actually named after them. Ditto, I would assume, for Methodists and Wesley.
(*)Not a denomination per se, but I do recall at least one "Calvinist Conference" or some such being held in my hometown.
Me too @Anselmina. That's a superb way of putting it. But that's not what Luther and Calvin meant is it? That's not what every Anglican, every Evangelical, I have ever heard or read on the issue mean. Apparently Tom Wright doesn't. Good man. John Stott? I'd never heard of Pistis Christou until this week, just the pleb on the bus me. I'm sure you all had. But you never said.
Personally, I try not to have fruitless conniptions over theologians who don't resonate that much with how I understand my faith or live it out, so I don't much know or care specifically what Luther and Calvin meant. Luther is just one of all the other Church Fathers who threw his doctrinal hat into the ring; no better, no worse probably.
I think he was an absolute, but inevitable, terribly influential disaster, the worst in 2000 years by a country mile. Augustine isn't even a close second. He identified the western Church's loss of grace in peddling indulgence and then immediately lost it by requiring saving faith of us. Calvin compounded the error.
Oh, fantastic -- good to know you're on the case. The rest of us couldn't possible think for ourselves. Where's the eye-rolling smiley when we need it?!?
I don't have a lot of time for Luther myself, but none of us needs you to lecture us on whose books we shouldn't read or what we shouldn't think or believe. You blather on about humility from time to time, but we all sense your feelings of self-importance.
I am not saying that one must agree to be considered thoughtful, mind. I don't know that anyone needs Martin to do this, but IMO everyone needs their beliefs challenged from time to time. Not gonna disagree with this. At. All.
Sorry? I've had to deconstruct Jesus for myself. What books? What's humility got to do with anything? Disappointingly irrelevant, erroneous ad hominem rhetoric.
Whatever Ruth. Luther derailed Christianity in half of Europe for a start and it just kept on going. Some train wreck. It's been grinding to a halt for a century. I wonder why.
My distinct recollection is that Lutheran theologians tended to discreetly overlook the great man's anti-Jewish diatribes on the "no discreet friend to his memory" principle. People tend to assume that because Luther was German and anti-semitic and because Germany embraced the most noxious version of anti-semitism there was some kind of causal link. But, of course, Germany was never wholly Lutheran - it took Charles V's struggle against the German Princes and the Thirty Years War to establish the principle that he who rules chooses the religion in the patchwork of principalities that later became Germany. So, where else embraced Lutheranism? Principally Scandinavia. And, does Scandinavia have a history of murderous anti-semitism? The answer is: "not really'. The Danes smuggled their Jews out to Sweden who took them in (this was by no means a universal practice in the 30s and 40s), I think - if memory serves - precisely one Finnish Jew perished in the Holocaust. Two thirds of Norways Jews got out to Sweden or the UK, often with the assistance of the Norwegian resistance.
The reason that Germany went off it's collective head, I think, was a political culture which wanted a scapegoat for defeat in the Great War and the Depression and which keenly embraced irrationalism and pseudo-science and there was a further radicalisation of the Nazi High Command over the period of Nazi rule. In this context Luther's anti-Jewish writings were dusted off and keenly and opportunistically promoted by the Nazis. But prior to that there wasn't a kind of apostolic succession of Lutheran anti-Semitism handed down from Luther to the rise of the Third Reich. I think there has been a tendency for German protestant theology to present a distorted version of Judaism, as a kind of Catholicism avant la lettre but most of us have caricatured views of beliefs about which we are ignorant. and we don't, thereby, think that this obliges us to engage in mass murder on an industrial scale.
Just as we should dump Lutheran, we should dump the pseudo-scientific euphemism antisemitism for what it is and what is Jew-hatred.
And then there's the bigger issue, if that were possible, that Luther's antisemitism is symptomatic of his deranged, inverted thinking in sola fide, his mistranslation of Pistis Christou, the curse that is the core, the dark heart, of Protestantism - another useless term - and it's litotic euphemism Evangelicalism - like Eumenides for Erinyes.
Why? It robs us of universal salvation, which the Jews knew that they had as God's chosen and that Paul, thanks be to Christ's faithfulness - Pistis Christou, knew that all had.
Me neither. Just another bird on a wire.
@Martin54 Augustine's not so great if you're a woman:
Although it's probably an improvement on the one who compared us to an open sewer ...
Most of the Church Fathers were very much men of their time - which showed in their attitudes and writings. Which means cherry picking the sensible stuff, acknowledging the rubbish stuff and self policing so those attitudes aren't paid forward. Just pretending they never existed changes nothing.
The most you can argue is that the existence of Luther's writings made the Nazi's job in Germany easier. It gave them a cloak of respectability.
IIRC, there was a tendency to see Luther's anti-semitism as an aberration of his age and health - ignoring the fact he'd been actively involved in driving them out of Saxony and other stuff - and downplay it. The full English translation really did for that.
I'd forgotten the influence of Lutheranism in Scandinavia though. The Danes not only smuggled out their Jews, they took care of their businesses and homes and handed everything back when they returned. That suggests it is possible to take "the good stuff" and ignore the rest.
Good to see you btw @Callan. Hope you and yours are doing okay.
Indeed @Tubbs. Augustine is the giant whose shoulders Luther stands on to give Calvin a leg up.
What a bunch uh bastards. I'd have been worse (there, the obligatory self deprecating humility).
I'm astounded at how dim we are. We have to go down every social evolutionary cul-de-sac it seems, no wonder the arc of the moral universe is long. 'Evangelicals' in the very main are still digging at the bottom of the bag. Hopefully they'll emerge through it.
Which scumbag 'Christian' was that?!
The phrase is most often attributed to Tertullian in his De cultu feminarum, although it is not to be found there. This discussion suggests it might be spurious altogether.
There is a work (Contra Marcion III) in which Tertullian uses the phrase "call the womb a sewer", but he is evidently there quoting Marcion in order to contradict him, not stating his own view.
There is his "Devil's gateway" reference to women (or woman), although in her thesis, this writer argues that it is used with specific rhetorical purpose in one particular treatise (De cultu feminarum), and is not representative of his view on women.
The Tertullian quote I know is a "Woman is a temple built over a sewer". It might have lost something in translation, but it's interesting you think it's a misquote.
While Luther came up with this little gem: "The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.. Which suggests a reading of the Bible that is limited at best.
Luther's books, you num num.
In your case, clearly nothing.
Yes, I'm criticizing you personally. You deserve it.
Christianity prior to Luther was plenty shitty, and there are loads of reasons outside of Luther's writings for Christianity's slow demise. Internecine battles, like the one you're fighting for no apparent reason, would be one of them.
OK Ruth. Where did I say not to read Luther? That there is no apparent reason for repenting of, utterly repudiating Lutheranism to you is very sad. The man was monster and his 'theology' monstrous. His God a megalomaniac that hundreds of millions happily worship as such.
I wasn't and the bastard's memory doesn't get any from me.