>met with Zwingli to discuss their theological differences
>ended up shouting THIS IS MY BODY THIS IS MY BODY
Why was he so autistic?
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>met with Zwingli to discuss their theological differences. >ended up shouting THIS IS MY BODY THIS IS MY BODY
Luther had a very sincere faith but the more I learn about him the more I suspect he probably had Asperger's or something.
All the great minds of Europe did
Cope aspy
>people still don't believe that woke is a branch of Protestantism
No, we don't, James Martin.
It's not, really. Because that would indict an entire ethnicity and condemn them to hell. One could say, "well what about the israelites" but that's a different species not ethnicity
Why?
>Because that would indict an entire ethnicity and condemn them to hell
I'm sorry but the German question needs to be spoken about, and I'm tired of pretending it's not. Also universalism is probably closer to the truth, so a lot of them will be fine ultimately
protestantism is satan worship
prots are worse than musulmans.
>says the papish idolater
Muslims are worse than Protestants as they aren't Christian.
You don't know what idolatry means
>You don't know what idolatry means
Go burn some incense to your idols of Mary, light your candles around your idols, kneel on those kneeling pads before your idols, bow to your idols, and pray to your idols.
You've proven my point
Woke is an invention of the Jesuits
You all make fun of Luther's reaction but if you all realized how evil Calvin and Zwingli were you'd realize Luther is a tragic figure who was doomed by who was on his """Side""""
This. So sad what a good man goes through when he just tries to preach what he indefatigably feels to be the truth.
He was right. Luther knew the mystical significance of the Eucharist. Zwingli essentially nullified the practice.
Luther is such a plainly reprehensible person that it’s beyond me how anyone could revere him. There’s almost nothing redeeming about him, no positive traits that people end up emulating or praising. Nothing. Yet a whole religion is based on him.
You subscribe to Catholic propaganda. If you don't know Luther's greatness, purity, sincerity, piety, courage, modesty and beauty, then you don't know Germany.
At least half of Germany is catholic in this day and age.
But spiritually Protestant. Luther is Germany, Germany is Luther.
>German essence
>brown eyed
Similarly Bach probably had brown eyes. Doesn't change anything.
Germany has more Catholics than Protestants because all the Protestants became atheists.
Switzerland has more Catholics than Protestants because all the Protestants became atheists.
Netherlands has more Catholics than Protestants because all the Protestants became atheists.
Noticing a pattern?
Scattered sheep
Tradcaths are so astoundingly pathetic. Most Catholics today are practically atheists. But they hold onto a spiritually eviscerated ritual a little longer, so totally based! They boast that their countries are slightly less accepting of gays, slightly less multicultural, progressive and postmodern, etc. In everything essential, all Christian countries, and all Christian groups, are in just as dire a state today. Yet you would degrade the meaning of your religion just so you can boast of how you are ahead of others. It is unutterably sad and vulgar, that this is the state of religion today.
Because German Protestants are all paragons of devout churchgoing am I right.
Religion is about positive participation in society, not just mindless conformity with abstract dogmas. Catholicism is better integrated into its societies than Protestantism is so even those who aren't practicing still identify with it to some extent. I can't imagine thinking that's worse than being an avowed atheist.
If you think my argument was that practicing Protestants are more virtuous than practicing Catholics than you lack basic reading comprehension. In Sweden it's perfectly common for the average atheist to still identify with the Protestant church. You're simply speaking out of your ass about Catholicism being more integrated into societies. Such insignificant points, and you think they're excuses for your pettiness.
And I'm pointing out an undeniable fact as well, you dolt. The relative lack of atheism in Catholic countries is utterly insignificant. To point it out, as if it were A WIN, that vulgarises religion. Everywhere you look the Christian faith is dying and being oppressed, virtually every mainstream church in the West is corrupted at the highest levels, and you claim your particular sect is superior. I tell you, your sect does not look superior today. In any significant evaluation of culture and history, it cannot be said that Catholics stand superior (no matter the long dead architectural traditions!), and even less so today.
More readily associated, by who? YOU. I don't care what pig brains like yourself associate with the beauty revealed to the world by Protestantism.
>To point it out, as if it were A WIN, that vulgarises religion.
Again, atheism is more readily associated with Protestantism given the fact that all former Protestant strongholds are now atheist (and were the first to turn atheist). Such a phenomenon is significant irrespective of your, quite frankly, desperate attempts to cover for it. Asking people to ignore it, or to simply regard the issue as being the same for Catholics, is obscene.
>pig brains
Your profoundly unchristian and unprovoked manner of discourse only reinforces the fact that you have no defence.
And, again, I should care what you think is associated with what? You think associations is a rock solid argument, despite the COLD, HARD FACTS of the matter? Look at modern religion on the whole, and tell me your wins are anything other than relative. If you want to speak of desperate arguments, only children resort to justifications like that.
Righteous anger is an entirely Christian trait, and if you insist on blaspheming religion then you tolerate being insulted. Your entire anti-Protestant discourse is already on the level of an insult. Derived from no true respect for culture or faith. Even if you would like to pretend it is any more intelligent than Tradcath LARPing. Have you even asked yourself if, perhaps, specific Christian sects are not the singular cause for the greater or lesser atheism of particular countries?
I'm not reading your Catholic propaganda, and I don't care for your prosaic explanations for religious growth. The continual decline of Christianity is a testament to the real sources of the religion, being as it is that real faith is declining, and which cannot be found in an Evangelical megachurch, and should not be sacrificed to the practices of the latter. Throughout history, the Protestant faith was no inhibitor to communal religion. If it was like that throughout most of its history, then it can just as easily be like that again: if the essential thing is got, that is, FAITH, and not a suburban American sense of community.
>Look at modern religion on the whole
Again, your attempts to generalise do nothing to change the fact that firmly Protestant nations were the first to turn atheist and now every one of them has. Every one. Your continual insistence that people somehow view this as a problem for all Christendom lacks any basis in reason. Yes. Religious values in general are under fire. No. This does not detract from the fact that there is something within Protestantism that predisposes Protestant nations in particular to atheism.
>if you insist on blaspheming religion
This is a neurotic assertion on your part. Demanding that people stop noticing blatant trends in data makes you synonymous with the wokeists you supposedly despise.
Then make your argument clear, since you cannot claim Catholicism stands any superior today, you NOW claim that Protestantism is responsible for atheism.
FIRSTLY, as I hinted at before, it is moronic to blame atheism simply on Protestantism, even if, yes, it is conceivable that atheism would never have existed at a societal level today if the Reformation never happened. But let's suppose that. The world would have had to put up with centuries of greater Romish oppression, the annihilating effect of which simply cannot be underrated, especially if the counter-reformation is anything to go by, and we would never have that eternally rich harvest of culture that Protestantism was for hundreds of years. Against which, we cannot so easily champion the art sanctioned by the Catholic church after the counter-reformation. I would take our current history over a history eternally run by cardinals lusting after power, no matter how superficially traditional! At any rate we cannot assume, without Protestantism, the Romish yoke would have lasted forever, since the direction of greater liberty had been set by the existence of the Renaissance, and inevitably an explosion, or a gradual disintegration, in Europe would have occurred. So it makes no sense to envisage a better world without Protestantism.
There are countless other historical and cultural forces at play in modern European history--as already hinted at in denying Protestantism to be solely blamable for modern atheism, as well as in the mention of the Renaissance--which sometimes have moved in conjunction with the Protestant religion. Protestantism is uniquely a product of Germanic countries, countries with quite a different character from the Latins, whatever the sect, and the countries with the greatest predisposition for escape from the under sway of Rome, long before Luther. And let's look at some of these countries in relatively modern times, preceding the fall into atheism. Wilhelmine Germany, as traditional as one could want, entirely content in its faith. Yet a world war occurred, and slammed the authority of tradition. Tradition was, to a significant degree, reinstated, at least if the veneration of Luther is anything to go by, but slammed again by a second world war. Look at what happened to any of these Protestant countries, entirely traditionally Christian until slammed twice with world wars. And then we see they are the same world wars that caused atheism (as a short term for the entire deviation from religion in the modern world) in every Western country. NOT SO EASY TO BLAME PROTESTANTISM NOW! At best, pitiful for your intellectual culture, you have a relatively larger degree of ritual-practitioners and church-members. Good for you, enjoy it! Throw faith to the sand and dance before this triumph of the great, ancient, traditional Catholic faith!
>you NOW claim that Protestantism is responsible for atheism.
No I don't. Stop trying to put words in my mouth. It's freakish. I am saying what I have said already: the fact that the most Protestant nations have all turned to atheism, and are historically the first to do so, is significant. Your continued refusal to recognise this simple point indicates you are in some sense deranged. That and the unsolicited wall of text.
Lol, I addressed all of these points. I don't think Protestant nations have turned to atheism any more than Catholic ones, not really, and I don't think they're historically the first to do so either, likewise if one looks at the firm reality of it. If you would like to actually show how my arguments are wrong please do so. Otherwise you look like an idiot, and on top of that, you look like someone who does not even value genuine faith; of anything that could possibly be definable as Religion in reality, and not play-acting as a religion. Because, you must realise, that if the value of genuine faith is so subordinated to a relative 'more' of official believers, of an extremely small amount (no fracture is too small for the pettiness of your mind!), then faith means nothing to you and you are nothing more than a materialist.
>I don't think Protestant nations have turned to atheism any more than Catholic ones... and I don't think they're historically the first to do so either
The plain statistics say otherwise.
>Otherwise you look like an idiot
You're welcome to argue with yourself if you feel it helps. I am not going to argue for points I never made in the first place.
>to a relative 'more' of official believers
Again, and do try to keep up, no-one is reducing the whole of faith to this. The fact that the most Protestant nations are now the most atheistic is clearly indicative of something peculiar to Protestantism, however.
>The plain statistics say otherwise.
And do you ask yourself what the greater qualifiers of these statistics are, and their significance? No, not at all. I'll tell you, if your society is just as decadent, corrupt and destructive as the Protestant ones, then you cannot claim moral supremacy on grounds of greater numbers. But that leads to the fact that the greater percentages of Christians is barely greater at all, and that follows onto all the rest of your lunatic arguments. Mind you, I will tease you with this information: Germany has more Christians, technically, than France!
Now we're at the end of the conversation. I have laid arguments bare, which you have refused to engage with. If you're too stupid to do so, or too afraid lest the virtue of Rome is dampened with a greater pallor than you think, you should have made it clear at the beginning, instead of wasting my time.
>And do you ask yourself what the greater qualifiers of these statistics are
That's a secondary issue, which we might have discussed had you actually been willing to meet the argument head on. Your insults and your incessant refusal to engage with the topic at hand are a wonder. I'm done with you. There's something indelibly wrong with you, and I don't have the energy or the attention available to fix it. May God have mercy.
>had you actually been willing to meet the argument head on
Lol, just blatant lies again.
>you're lying!
>you're lying!
>you're lying!
I repeat again, Germany has more Christians than France.
Seethe more.
Germany was never a Protestant stronghold, you dolt.
>From the reformation until the 1960s, the majority of the German population was Protestant (mainly Lutherans belonging to the Protestant Church in Germany) while approximatively one-third of the population was Catholic.
By "Protestant stronghold" we mean countries that were almost entirely Protestant, obviously. It's hardly a stronghold if a third of the residents aren't singing from the same hymn sheet.
Lol, a third of the population is responsible for an entirely different sect, which was by far the majority, remaining Christian? Great logic.
Germany is one of the most atheistic countries around, but it isn't as atheistic as traditionally Protestant countries like Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
Yet Germany is more Christian than a totally Catholic country like France. Woooow, almost like there are many contributing historical factors and Protestantism isn't to blame.
Also, if we're following statistics so closely, since it was claimed earlier that Catholicism is more rooted in community, Sweden is in fact technically more Christian today than Germany. With 60% identifying as Christian.
Don't you think an attitude of disobedience to the Church leads to atheism later on?
An attitude where tradition doesn't matter, so you can change it in order to please liberal atheists?
Don't you think centuries of obedience to a religion after a single reformation has nothing to do with an 'attitude of disobedience'?
Your only argument here is that, theologically, Protestantism allows for determining the nature of ones own faith. But that in no way extends liberty to the realm beyond Christian faith. Throughout 99% of Protestant history, just like Catholic, if you were an atheist you were punished or ostracised. There were theological disputes among Catholics, and there were theological disputes among Protestants, and they didn't allow any opinion which exceeded this realm of debate, until the larger march of history affected both types of societies.
Protestantism is defined by a progressive attitude in that its whole identity is caught up in progression beyond and outside of Rome. It isn't difficult to see how such a mode of progression, one that enabled a whole slew of factions to develop, in turn led to the development of non religion among those who thought it only right to think about everything for themselves after having thought about God for themselves for a series of generations.
If you can challenge a 15 centuries of Church tradition, what can't you challenge? If you can challenge the Apostles and their Church, why can't you challenge the one who challenged them first?
If you can challenge the Church, why can't you challenge what is a sin and what isn't? What if you like sinning? "Is it really a sin if it feels good?"
Not to mention it has led to uneducated people misunderstanding the very own Bible they wanted to follow. "Why is it a sin if I sleep with a girl I just met at a club? Love is love, right?"
Because Protestantism was never a challenge to Christianity itself. Protestantism went on its traditional Christian way for centuries, until it was affected by modernity just like Catholicism. The slippery slope argument, in this context, is bombastic and cartoonish in a way that, in its original intention, is propagandistic and factional, rather than a serious investigation and argument. Though I don't mean to say those are your intentions, it's just these sensationalist arguments spread as memes on the internet and places like /misc/.
>If you can challenge a 15 centuries of Church tradition, what can't you challenge?
>If you can challenge the Church, why can't you challenge what is a sin and what isn't?
You literally worship the Romanist church.
Classic hate-filled Papists. Full of hate from false doctrines, false gospel, and abominations.
This is a slippery slope fallacy. Not that anon.
Is it a fallacy if it actually happened?
It being a fallacy means it can't lend itself as evidence to the conclusion which you're arguing is the correct one, so yes.
Protestantism has led to Liberal Christianity which has led to Atheism.
That could be true but it doesn't necessarily mean that's due to something inherent in Protestantism or Liberal Christianity. The Orthodox could just as equally say "Catholicism led to Protestantism, which led to Liberal Christianity, which has led to Atheism" but from this, even if it were true, we couldn't conclude that Catholicism leads to atheism.
Are you really denying that Liberal Christianity doesn't lead to Atheism?
Here is what I mean by liberal Christianity, by the way.
https://www.gotquestions.blog/liberal-Christianity.html
Yea because this is a pretty obvious slippery slope fallacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
>This is a type of informal fallacy, and is a subset of continuum fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to category B.
Notice "ignoring the possibility of a middle ground." Now obviously a liberal Christian who denies the doctrine of inspiration could become atheist, yet also a fundamentalist who thinks the Bible dropped out of heaven could become atheist. You could argue both ways, in some ways a more rigid doctrine is more easily shattered, but in other ways a more elastic doctrine can become ineffectual. The point is saying X must lead to Y is a slippery slope fallacy, I'm sure there are ways to make your argument without it including this fallacy. Like by saying the church's disunity encourages group fracturing or some such thing.
You should read the article I posted, before trying to be cute and posting the wikipedia article.
Finally someone else being reasonable in this thread.
Sweden has more atheists per capita than Germany.
>Yet Germany is more Christian than a totally Catholic country like France
Where are you getting that? France's Christian population stands at something like 50% whereas Germany's is at 50.7% (but only because it counts "other Christian religions" for Germany and not for France for some reason). 47% of French Christians remain Catholic whereas only 22.6% of Germans have remained Protestant.
Should read: of France's religious, 47% are Catholic
...shit. Should read: of France's total population, 47% remain Catholic*
>Sweden has more atheists per capita than Germany.
Atheist, yes, but technically who belong to the church. The point of that was that it flies in the face of the idea of 'community' being the cause for (supposedly) higher Christian population in Catholic countries.
>Where are you getting that?
I'm not sure where you're getting your stats from, but everything I'm looking up says Germany has a few percentages over 50% Christian. Either way, the fact that a historically Protestant, and a now equally divided, nation has roughly the same amount of Christians or more than France shows how ridiculous all of these claims are. Also if Germany remained a staunch Protestant country up to the 60s, then that is not insignificant to the claim that it does not engender atheism.
>Protestantism is defined by a progressive attitude in that its whole identity is caught up in progression beyond and outside of Rome.
Not in the slightest. Protestants traditionally have been extremely steadfast in their ways. It's a Christian tradition just like Catholicism and it was all established very immediate to the Reformation. Vatican II has been enormously progressive. So, again, it shows the unity in the state of all types of Christianity throughout history.
>the point of that was that it flies in the face of the idea of 'community' being the cause for (supposedly) higher Christian population in Catholic countries.
I didn't make that point.
>shows how ridiculous all of these claims are
The claim I made was that the most Protestant countries historically are now the most atheistic. That has yet to be refuted. It's a trend that's strong enough it can't simply be dismissed out of hand.
>I didn't make that point.
Well, I still wanted to respond to it.
>The claim I made was that the most Protestant countries historically are now the most atheistic.
The more I've looked into this, I don't even think this is true. I just looked it up, and it seems like France has more atheists than Germany. Seems entirely logical, from everything we know about perverted France and its intellectual climate. But even if it was true, the qualification of WHY that would be the case is just as important as the claim, since it would not necessarily mean Protestant, black and white, leads to atheism. That's been a major part of this whole discussion.
>it can't simply be dismissed out of hand.
Which I didn't, I went over everything and partially conceded things here and there, while supplying other influences and theories. It's extremely complicated and cannot be treated simply black and white.
so qualify it
I wrote a giant post just doing that, in response to which I was called deranged.
You mean when you falsely assumed the poster was saying Protestantism was responsible for atheism and went on a turgid tangent? That's not a qualification. You made no real attempt to explain WHY the most Protestant countries (in particular) are now the most atheistic.
>you falsely assumed the poster was saying Protestantism was responsible for atheism
The argument is that it is responsible for its own decline into atheism, which is not far from claiming it is responsible for atheism in modern society, especially since anons have repeatedly claimed the latter ITT. The implicit argument is that Protestantism is inferior to Catholicism, so we should stop pretending the data has no ideological consequences.
>explain WHY the most Protestant countries (in particular) are now the most atheistic
If you read more than a tiny bit of it you would see most of the post was discussing that.
>Protestantism is German
>but the Renaissance
>there's loads of other factors
This barely qualifies as an explanation.
>which is not far from claiming it is responsible for atheism in modern society
Too much of a leap on your part. You had a preconceived notion of what your opponent was saying and was going to say, and you argued against that rather than against what he actually said.
>This barely qualifies as an explanation.
You're lying, I did not say those three things as reasons why Protestant countries would have higher amounts of atheists, if they do. Blatant misrepresentation, actually put in the effort to read the lengthy post if you're going to complain about not enough reasons and real discussion.
>you argued against that rather than against what he actually said.
Good thing I did, because plenty of others said those things. But it's not like it was ever shown that Protestant countries are more atheistic, except to superficial degree that becomes negligible. Once again returning to the rightness of my initial assumption.
>You're lying
The post is right there.
>But it's not like it was ever shown that Protestant countries are more atheistic
See
>except to superficial degree that becomes negligible
See
And I've seen statistics that say otherwise. Great post idiot. Barely even a response.
>no b-but the statistics aren't right
awesome thread
You say the same about mine, go frick yourself. I've explained why Protestant countries may have more atheism, why they may have less, and argued countlessly over the exact significance of either option. My arguments stand on their own, just like the Protestant faith.
>You say the same about mine
Where are yours?
They're easily findable, no more 'verified' if I take a screenshot. But I don't think you would be lying about statistics and there's no reason for you to think I am. We're looking at different sources.
>if your society is just as decadent, corrupt and destructive as the Protestant ones
Oh, frick off. If Protestant societies have a habit of turning explicitly atheist to a greater degree than Catholic ones, then, yes, that obviously says something about Protestantism. "But the reprobate are found everywhere" is such a blatant attempt at a coping mechanism on your part. Something different is plainly happening in distinctly Protestant nations to make them as openly atheistic as they are, and that bears investigation. Moaning about implicit atheism misses the point entirely - the fact that they are willing to be explicit in their atheism says something about these former Protestants' Protestantism seeing as they're all doing it.
Read what your told to read or you'll continue
to get boy whipped in the shed, that's this thread.
Based, sameposter
No, Catholics type out enough propaganda every year, I don't need to encourage any more of it. That they can be content in their prideful self-complacence, well good for them! If the world is evil, who cares now? Everyone knows it, so at least they can pretend at conservation, they've got something to do in life, that's their hobby horse.
>Based, sameposter
Two completely different people you obsessive.
Talk like a normal person
>t. Ortho, not part of this conversation
What even is normal, anyways?
>You're simply speaking out of your ass about Catholicism being more integrated into societies.
No it's pretty obviously correlated with the theological underpinnings of Protestantism or at the very least how those underpinnings played out in practice. Read pic related.
Evangelicalism is outpacing mainline Protestantism because it has more of this sense of community. In Brazil it's outpacing the Catholic majority by a considerable margin at the moment fwiw.
Evangelicalism is outpacing mainline Protestantism because it's lowbrow and outgoing. Darwin wins again.
How would Darwin explain how sexual selection favors tall, antisocial men? And how this will speed up the death of men as a whole?
Not touching that one. The impetus is on you to breed harder than what you despise.
Sure, I'll get to committing rape right about now
Great book.
You seem to be granting that Catholicism is, in fact, technically superior but only that's its a mean bad no no thought to have. This bizarrely sentimental thought-police type argument only further solidifies the other anon's point, which is that Prots are the worst of the big three. Your attitude isn't that much different from a woke liberal's.
The whole point was that you can't, factually, say it's superior. That if someone feels it's superior, as a practicing Catholic, that in no way allows them to boast of its superiority on the basis of modern day facts. Trying to do so only shows how they aren't different at all. You're literally moronic if you confuse this with 'a mean bad no no thought to have'.
>The relative lack of atheism in Catholic countries is utterly insignificant.
This is an interesting sentence because you're basically saying that Catholicism permeates a culture of monotheism and that is insignificant. I mean that's weird.
That's even worse than outright atheism. It's a lukewarm subsuming of faith into worldly tradition. This is why catholicism was broken from it's very founding in the 4th century. Jesus told us "Love not the world" and "I have called you out of the world" and the catholics decided to bring the world into the Church and leaven the whole institution. Being "culturally catholic" is absolutely meaningless in the eyes of God
>Religion is about positive participation in society
This is true for pagan religion, yes.
Mate he's pointing out an undeniable fact - traditionally Protestant countries have all turned to atheism. Your insults do nothing to change that.
Shh, it's better to get mad at "tradcaths"(tm) and imagine scenarios that make you feel better instead.
"Atheism" is an absurd position and absolutely contingent on Catholic Ontology. See:
>Protestant countries are now all atheist
>yeah, well, Catholic countries are close to atheism
>how dare you not focus on the bigger issue
This doesn't alter the fact that atheism is more readily associated with Protestantism. Your pearl clutching does nothing to undermine this association.
Atheism is a Vatican original. Even Historically (also a Vatican fabrication), Materialism, Capitalism/Communism, and Psychoanalysis (the "Atheist Trinity") are LITERALLY fabricated by Catholic priests or Pharisaic thinkers (Freud, etc.).
If catholics become Protestants and Protestants become atheists then it hold that catholics become atheists
Achterlijke hispanjolische makaak. De katholieken gaan nog minder naar de kerk dan de gereformeerden. De enige reden waarom dat de "katholieken" in de meerderheid zijn is omdat je dat invult met de bevolkingstelling.
So I'm not German actually because I come from a catholic family?
I'm saying you're, more likely than not, spiritually Protestant. Germany arrived at a perfect union with Catholicism, because the seeds of Protestantism coexisted with the Catholic church. But if it were not for Protestantism, when Rome inevitably became more and more oppressive, that union would have turned into a bridge for the total Latinisation of German culture, and that Bavarian culture which German Catholics love so much, would be lost forever. The damaging influence of Rome can already be seen in Austria.
Every German should thank Luther.
I would rather have God than culture.
What the Reformation utterly killed was the idea of metanoia in the life of a Christian. Belief became essential — blind faith unsupported by reason because Luther and Calvin saw post fall reason as too corrupted to be of any use. In an exchange with Erasmus Luther even says his predestinating God "seems evil," but God "seeming evil," is simply evidence of how corrupt human reason is.
This is the seeds of atheism. Now, reason will conflict with faith, whereas in the early Church the universalism of rational religion was what made it a religion without limits.
So theosis, illumination, asceticism, these get sidelined. They are optional, but belief is all that really matters. And so no wonder people don't develop, they do none of the things that lead to development.
This hit Catholicism almost as hard. It moved against reason in its own ways, sticking to dogmatism out of fear of innovation, and responding to the Reformation by making moralizing a top priority. But morality is nothing without understanding. Luther for one thing right, Christianity is about freedom. Saint Paul, a slave to sin at war with himself in Romans 7 is resurrected to personhood and autonomy by the Divine Logos, Christ.
Well, I to tona Protestant church out of inertia, and I do find much good there, but I also regularly visit a Cicstercian abby near my house and find much of merit in their practices.
Most of the Bible is history and I assume God did the Reformation for a reason. Perhaps the dialectical churn required to have man's faith survive scientism required it.
Here is the irony I see. Anyone honest with themselves can see the degradation of the Catholic church in light of the Reformation, yet it is often not thought that this was what Luther was reacting against. That the very possibility of the barbarity and stupidity of the Counter-Reformation requires a precedent decline. I sympathise with Luther's aim to preserve the purity of the faith against rationalisations, theological debates and dogmatic encroachments, and, perhaps, it is not the ideal Christianity, but it was a preferable alternative to what the church has become, and it has produced a truly beautiful Christian culture of its own.
I see God at work in these painful events. Did Providence not also decree that Judah and Israel be split? Lutheranism gave us Boehme and Hegel, two bright lights. Hegel gave us both a way to look at God's work in history with greater understanding and helped move Plato's Republic into the realm of social institutions, but also flattened out the faith in abstraction, letting the universal tyrannize the particular and personal. In response we get Urs von Balthasar's theodrama, personalism, and Thomistic phenomenology, a refinement that works to balance the grand plans and corporate scope of salvation seen in folks like Hegel and St. Maximus, with God's love of the individual, the telos of the individual human life, and the distinct personhood of the members of the Trinity.
Sadly though, it is hard to see a way forward for bringing the Church back to the pillar of social life and identity it once was. I fear crisis must come first. The reign of reductive smallism and scientism remains too strong, even as its inability to explain the world becomes increasingly manifest in trends like eliminitivism, the denial of our own consciousness in order to save the "sacred model," of a mechanistic, meaningless, purposeless world. This has become dogma because one can only be a Nietzschean overcome if the world is actually meaningless, and relativism and the triumph of identity over reason only makes sense if reason is not transcedent.
>but also flattened out the faith in abstraction, letting the universal tyrannize the particular and personal. In response we get Urs von Balthasar's theodrama, personalism, and Thomistic phenomenology, a refinement that works to balance the grand plans and corporate scope of salvation seen in folks like Hegel and St. Maximus, with God's love of the individual, the telos of the individual human life, and the distinct personhood of the members of the Trinity.
To add to this, I think in Germany's great musical tradition one can find the outlet for just such an equilibrating urge within the Protestant framework. From Bach to Wagner, it is religion, with the greatest power, expressed at a personal and consoling level.
For me, the greatest question, as far as the relationship between Catholicism and Protestantism is concerned, is whether their salvation shall come from a synthesis, as has often happened, or in the survival and blossoming of their their mutually great traditions.
>using "blind faith" and "dogmatic" as insults
Subtly Satanic post.
How is that Satanic?
Man is created in the image of God. Does this mean God has two arms and two legs? That God is also an animal or a primate?
No, it is man's mind that is in the image of God. God is not a corporeal being, but as St. Augustine says "within everything but contained in nothing," a truly transcedent and infinite being, not just "some very powerful man who sits alongside the world."
Christ is the Divine Logos (John 1), the reason behind the universe in whom all things hang together (Colossians 1). If God is reason, how can reason be satanic? Is there some place where the Logos is not? Where it cannot penetrate? No, this leads to the crucifixion and torture of the Logos.
There is a difference between recognizing the limits of purely mortal reason and eschewing reason. When man abandons reason he forgets that God is truly transcendent, without limit. He forgets the apophatic way and begins to worship his finite idea of God as an idol, trading the truly infinite for what is made in man's own image. This is how you get fundementalism and the corruption of reason. This is what Erasmus was warning about, though neither side would listen to him. "The Spirit gives life, the flesh profits nothing." The israelites searched the scriptures but missed Christ because they focused on the fleshly, prioritizing the literal over the anagogic. If we take John 6 literally we are like those who left Jesus because they thought he was advocating cannibalism when he said they must eat of his flesh and drink of his blood.
Right at Genesis 1-2, when the ordering of creation seems different in the two stories, we are shown that a simplistic fleshly reading will not do. In the end, it is the Spirit we must rely on, but this does not mean that Logos is abandoned.
We need metanoia that we might begin to turn. Asceticism that we might train ourselves in virtue and in the denial of the body. We must become poor in spirit, losing all worldly conceptions, the apophatic way. We need illumination because mortal reason is weak. The world is a ladder of grace back to divine union (St. Bonaventure, St. Maximus). Theosis demands much of us and we shall be tempted (James 1).
Are you dumb? Literally for over 1000 years people have been working as logically as they could with Biblical things and have kept belief and saw no problem in doing so.
>in the early Church the universalism of rational religion was what made it a religion without limits
wtf are you on about?
The early Church was able to consume and adapt parts of Stoicism, Platonism, Aristotleanism, and eastern mysticism and non-dualism because all valid reasoning was seen as the work of the divine Logos. Where Plato or Aristotle made good points, these could be taken. As Paul says in Romans 1, the signs of the Creator are everywhere, and man can learn something of God from these.
So, when Christianity ran into other faiths it was not reduced to blindly asserting its bald truths in the face of the other. Christianity was universal, for all contexts. It could acknowledge the usefulness of other ideas while still espousing its core beliefs. The Patristics think of themselves as spreading a great truth, not in terms of being one identity in a world of many that must defend itself against encroachment, but as the announcers of the "good news." Every good thing was a sign of God at work in the world.
It was the conflict with Islam and the East-West schism that hardened these lines of thinking. Then the Reformation turbo-charged it. Thinking changed so that, rather than the Christian truth being this widely evident, special thing, it was now something that had to be defended, one conception among a sea of competing conceptions, even if people accepted that this own conception was "the right one."
>real Christianity is pagan philosophy
Bavaria is Catholic, and the decline in membership is primarily a result of the Church tax
there are significantly more Catholics than there are official members
Perhaps this is why Germans love scat porn so much.
>no true Scotsman but for half the country
Literally anyone who knows anything about Germany knows that Luther is treated like a national deity, just like Barbarossa before him and many after him. Germans have subterranean elements of their culture that are extremely insulated, like Japan, which is what allows them to detect what are 'true products of German culture' and when they're activated they sperg out to an unbelievable degree.
this is true tbh.
Also there are mutiple lutheran churches in germany.
one which is government owned and the other is a free church
Laying it on a little thick
But enough about Calvin
What’s the context. Sounds like he Swingli was groping him.
He was right about the israelites, I give him that much.
He was right about everything. He even acknowledged the value of Mary, Queen of Heaven. Catholics are just assmad that he questioned them and butthurt that they pushed him away.
>He was right about everything.
>Martin Luther: I’m like a ripe stool and the world is like a gigantic anus
Yes, exactly.
Luther's excessive focus on his own shit is a telltale symptom of a neurotic mind.
I like the funny pudgy German. He was funny and called out peasants and sheisterss.
German culture emphasized examining ones own stool. It's not his fault that he was obsessed.
There's examination and then there's examination.
Insufferable
Same poster
Get on with life already.
What was his position on the israelites anon?
Can you lay it out for me
He's the embodiment of /misc/ ,he wrote a book called "the israelites and their lies"
Drunk with pride
many such cases
>What’s the context. Sounds like he Swingli was groping him.
About the real presence of Jesus in the bread and wine. Zwingli's arguments were based on how Jesus' human body is finite and had ascended to heaven, so it couldn't endlessly appear on Earth in the consecrated bread and wine. Luther kept taking it back to scripture because Jesus said "this is my body" about the bread and wine. Luther apparently got fed up of Zwingli's arguments and ended up just angrily repeating that line.
Luther was not wrong in this case. I imagine he would also not be happy with what happened to the Lutheran Church, to be honest.
If only the modern church had a Bible thumping rhetorician with the strength of a Luther!
Catholic revisionism is insane. I can't believe there are so many people who have just totally overlooked the blatant abuse and corruption of the medieval Catholic Church
Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette.
The Catholic Church did nothing wrong.
Proverbs 14:4
Hey you've read the Bible. You can thank Luther for that.
There were many translations of the Bible into other languages prior to Luther. In fact, it was the most widely translated work from antiquity.
Catholic revisionism at it again. The common people were neither allowed to read the Bible nor preach the gospel. Many who did were burned at the stake.
Luke 8:16
Now no one who has lit a lamp covers it with a vessel or puts it underneath a bed, but he puts it on a lampstand in order that those who come in may see the light.
>the common people
What was the literacy rate in the middle ages?
How much did bibles cost in the middle ages?
Who could afford a personal bible
NON ISSUE
again exaggerating
8:18 Luke
Careful how you listen , not read
Romans 10:17 faith through hearing
Not reading
Haha yeah burning people at the stake for making the bible available is a non issue
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale
You should just get rid of all bibles in your house if it's so unimportant
Let's look at your link:
>Latomus makes no mention of Bible translation; indeed, it seems that in prison, Tyndale was allowed to continue making translations from the Hebrew
>The charges did not mention Bible translation, which was not illegal in the Netherlands
Let's look at history:
>The Synod of Toulouse in 1229 forbade the laity to have in their possession any copy of the books of the Old and the New Testament except the Psalter
>The Synod of Tarragona (1234) ordered all vernacular versions to be brought to the bishop to be burned. James I renewed thin decision of the Tarragona synod in 1276. The synod held there in 1317 under Archbishop Ximenes prohibited to Beghards, Beguines, and tertiaries of the Franciscans the possession of theological books in the vernacular
>the third Synod of Oxford (1408): "No one shall henceforth of his own authority translate any text of Scripture into English; and no part of any such book or treatise composed in the time of John Wycliffe or later shall be read in public or private, under pain of excommunication"
>In 1485 and 1486, Berthold, archbishop of Mainz, issued an edict against the printing of religious books in German
Banning the Bible and persecuting people for wanting to read and distribute it is a key part of medieval church history. This is not okay in any way. The fact that you have a Bible is a gift to yuo from the Reformation, and the fact that you cite the Bible in discussions about the faith with non-clergy puts you firmly in the tradition of the Reformation. If you disagree, then feel free to discard all your Bibles and never read Scripture for yourself.
Part of Tyndale's persecution was the fact that he translated the Bible into English, which was illegal at the time. While it wasn't listed directly as a reason for his execution, it clearly was one of the factors that led up to it.
It seems to me that you're tacitly saying that the reasons he was executed for are just. The reasons being that he taught the most basic aspects of Reformed theology, whcih he learned from reading the Bible. Do you mean to tell me that I should be strangled and burned because I say we are justified by faith here on IQfy?
>a useful expedient when your goal is temporal power.
I totally agree with you on this point. So many of the abuses of the Catholic Church come from its mixing with temporal power. Small time nobles trying to be theocrats in their little kingdoms really is no different from the Pope trying to be a theocrat over all Christendom. With this in mind it surprises me that you don't lean towards low church, horizontal, congregationalist Protestantism. Worldly authority always leads to corruption and is precisely why satan tempted Jesus with it.
As far as I can tell this is entirely consistent with predestination and is actually damning of Scholasticism.
Based.
Synods kept the word of God from being misused by prideful, rebels. Many were excommunicated before the 1200s, for twisting the Word to fit their nonsense. Sabellius, for example. Tyndale should've quit while he was ahead and maybe he would've not been burned ( the law of the land at the time) justice served. Proverbs 14:4 things can get messy
NOT A BIG DEAL stop exaggerating. Read the Old Testament, you'll find violence of Biblical proportions, literally.
literacy rates in the middle ages was negligible and someone else would've translated the Bible into English soon enough; besides, Romans 10:17. hearing the word not reading,
"Sola Scriptura".
Only those who make reading an idolatrous, religious, exercise make such a fuss over the issue. I hate to imagine the bastardized, monstrosity of a heathen you would be championing if the Catholic Church didn't crush the whimsies of the countless rebels who in their satanic pride chose to read and interpret the bible outside of the Church, through out her history. Think of the sects and cults they would've come up with and you'd be right here believing the rubbish.
In this day and age that would be your right and you would not be harmed of course.
Okay go throw out your Bibles and never read Scripture again. Depend on your priest to tell you everything and I guess hope for the best that some corrupt charlatan doesn't lie about the Word of God to take your money
Exaggerating again.
The printing press and the literacy rates on the rise would have eventually put bibles in the hands of all who could afford one.
>depending on your priest
Based, Magisterium, keeping us away from denominations and cults since St. Ignatius against Gnostics. Praise GOD.
Not exaggerating at all. The printing press and publication of the Bible into the vernacular is what caused the Reformation. As soon as people began reading the Bible they saw the lies the Vatican was propagating. The Roman Church was desperate to stop it which is why they outlawed it in the first place. You have a really gross mindset and it's unfortunate you let pedophiles in robes and funny hats dictate your relationship with God.
So, go ahead and stop reading Scripture since you obviously don't think it's important.
>as soon as people began to reading
double KEK
how long does it take to teach someone to read?
how fast was the printing process?
How much did a bible cost?
Not many people could read
Not many could afford a Bible
You think from one week to the next Bibles were everywhere and magically people learned to read.
>lies the Vatican was propagating
like what?
>A really gross mind set
KEK lol
Not so much. Simply, not effeminate.
>reading scripture
Luke 8:18 listen not read
Romans 10:17 hearing not reading
You're sidestepping the issue again. Literacy rates are irrelevant to the fact that the Church intentionally forbid the people from having scripture.
>like what?
What do, I really have to rehas the whole Reformation again? What's with Catholics totally playing dumb about the critiques leveraged against them? Is it a rhetorical trick or are you actually that ignorant? Do we really have to go over again how Catholci inventions include the clergy/laity distinction, icons, relics, the pope, indulgences, Purgatory, justification by works, and so on and so on and so on? Read a book for once.
scripture
>Luke 8:18
Luke 8:18
Take heed therefore how you hear, for whoever has, it shall be given to him, and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.
Cool out of context verse. Totally like a catholic. Here Jesus warns to NOT hide the Word of God.
Again, if Scripture is so unimportant to you THROW AWAY YOUR BIBLES and advocate the Vatican ban them again. Until you do, you're a hypocrite who is enjoying the fruits of the Reformation.
>forbid the people
Ya, so what. That's irrelevant to a populace who can't read. Do you need the Bible in your hand to believe?
>clergy laity distinction
1 Corinthians 12:28
>icons and relics
Acts 19:11-12 2Kings 13: 20-21,
>the pope
Luke 22:24-30 Mathew 16:18-19
>indulgences
Mathew 16:19
and what's wrong with raising money for the church. Of course filthy Luther would try to strangle the growth of the Church. He was a rebel
>Purgatory
1 Corinthians 3:15
Come up short you can only be saved by fire.
>Justification by works
James 2:24
>hear
Romans 10:17 Luke 8:18
The Church grew through word of mouth and tradition.
STOP EXAGGERATING le Reformation
Remember Luther wanted to remove books from the Bible so why wouldn't the Church guard the faith from curious, self important, rebels. He had other motives. His own agenda that wasn't entirely holy.
>Purgatory
>1 Corinthians 3:15
This is nonsense.
>The Church grew through word of mouth and tradition.
Yeah it's not like the Old Testament existed and was constantly quoted as the authority that prophesied Jesus. You "trad" Caths always end up putting tradition above scripture, next you'll tell me "the church wrote the Bible".
>Church intentionally forbid the people from having scripture.
This is historically inaccurate. Look up earliest English translations of the Holy Bible and most of them are pre-Tyndale. The Church opposed unauthorised translations like how an author would be annoyed at you mistranslating his works.
>As soon as people began reading the Bible they saw the lies the Vatican was propagating.
Who is more likely to understand the Scriptures and who is more likely to misunderstand?
Someone trained to do so, following hundreds of years of tradition... ... Or someone without the training to do it, separated thousands of years reading in another language?
Take a look at Plato, for instance. Who is the better source? Plotinus or 20th century Americans who claim Plato was actually a Liberal Democrat?
Lol, so you're just a moron who dogmatically refuses to think for himself. Plotinus is a fine example, because he misunderstood Plato on many key points and created his own system. It wasn't any peasant who wrote about the genuine Plato, but great minds like Heidegger. Likewise it wasn't any untrained peasant wrongly interpreting the Bible, but Martin Luther.
>Plotinus is a fine example, because he misunderstood Plato on many key points
Yes, certainly you, who lived over 2,000 years after Plato, who doesn't speak his language, who doesn't have access to lots of material of his era, who hasn't been trained by generation after generation of Plato followers who learned the unwritten doctrines of Plato know better than Plotinus. Plato was actually an atheist liberal.
And your point was that of normal people reading the Bible and understanding it better than the Church magisterium. Of people highly trained to understand it. The successors of the successors of Apostles.
Yes anon, there is only the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato, and the atheist liberal interpretation of Plato! Nothing in between, nothing else. You are showing you great intelligence here.... You will do anything to escape from the embarrassment of not thinking for yourself. The unwritten doctrines of Plato hadn't even been maintained in one long chain up to that point, and 'Platonism' had long ceased to be centered around a single school. While we can (you may be shocked to know) easily learn the language, and read Plato, and read Plotinus, and read what the countless other records say of Plato's philosophy. A truly great mind does not need some perennialist initiation LARP to understand the philosophy of another culture.
Luther, a great mind trained in the history of Christian thought, came to a profound conclusion about the Bible. I'm not the anon you were arguing with before BTW.
To be fair, the Reformation did kick off a fire storm of randos radically reinterpreting the Bible. We know Luther and Calvin because their views got traction, but the period is full of people bringing back fairly wild interpretations. Calvin had a major beef with a guy who basically became convinced of Arianism and an almost Muslim view of Christ, and some neo-Gnosticism came back too.
But Plotinus is not trying to just do a commentary of Plato at any rate. Plotinus grew up in Alexandria at a time when Platonism was both a major school but also far divorced from Plato because it was mostly israeli and Christian Platonism. Plotinus is a young man when Origen is at the height of his fame in the city and the Gnostics are at their peak. We normally think of Plotinus as "earlier" than Christianity and influencing it, but the influence is probably the other way around. Philo, the great Platonist israelite, is setting the scene centuries before him. Neoplatonism in many ways looks a lot like re-Paganized and abstracted early Christianity, especially Gnosticism with its emenational cosmology and the Monad as the One and the Barbelo as Nous.
But in Augustine's own intellectual journey it is the Neoplatonist, probably Proclus and Porphery, who come first, and so people often put the influence the other way around. Really, Augustine had such an easy idea digesting Neoplatonism because they were already Christian and israeli ideas that had lost some ground after being Gnosticized, but never really left Orthodoxy.
>To be fair, the Reformation did kick off a fire storm of randos radically reinterpreting the Bible.
I know, but one can't be utilitarian with religion. Those randos existing is worth a great mind like Luther speaking his mind about the (or his) true faith. Germany was majority Lutheran for a long time, and it maintained that perfectly until the two world wars.
So, Christianity was in error for 1,500 years until Luther came and corrected everything?
The Saints, including the Doctors of the Church were ignorant? The full revelation was given to a German 1,500 years after who suffered from scrupulosity and who removed books from the Bible he disliked? Who tried to remove even James?
>Christianity was in error for 1,500 years
Whoever conflated Christianity with official church dogma, that came so close to considering so many great Christians heretics?
If Luther was the true faith, those he disagreed with him are the false faith.
And that includes 1,500 of Christianity history. The great theologians, for 1,500 years including the likes of Aquinas teaching error.
Until an enlightened German appeared and came with a new Doctrine.
And then, the intellectual descendants came with brilliant ideas such as Historical Critical Biblical criticism where the miracles can be explained naturally, where with zero evidence it is claimed the Gospels were written anonymously... And now you even claim sodomy is not a sin.
Scholasticsm is hardly the essence of Christianity.
>new Doctrine.
Nothing new about it. It's there written in the Bible. Many believed as Luther did until the Roman Church suppressed it.
>people choose not to believe
Well duh, Jesus said this would be the case. Making it illegal to be an atheist was never mandated by the Bible.
>1,500 years
The Roman Church was founded in the 4th century, continued to split from the east until the Great Schism, and corrupted and degraded more and more as the centuries went by. What's this weird revisionism where you equate the Roman Popes with Christianity itself?
The Latin and the Orthodox Churches are pretty much in agreement on everything other than the issue of "is the Bishop of Rome the first among equals or is he the leader of the Church"? Even the Filioque has been resolved.
Or do you think the Orthodox believe in Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura? Isn't it weird that both Churches who have Apostolical Succession have both been in error for 1,500 years until one German dude found the truth?
Where in the Bible is Sola Scriptura mentioned?
>Even the Filioque has been resolved.
Source on this? I know Maximus the Confessor's writings have attempts at explaining the Filioque from an Eastern perspective but that didn't heal the schism obviously.
Also the other main thing Orthodox and Catholics won't come to an agreement on any time soon is the Immaculate Conception.
>So, Christianity was in error for 1,500 years until Luther came and corrected everything?
Technically, Calving fixed everything, but yes.
All you're saying is that you're incapable of having a personal relationship with God. What you're saying is contrary to Scripture too, as Scripture says the Holy Spirit illuminates understanding.
It's sad that you're basically outsourcing your own relationship with God to someone else.
Anyway, you should read the history of the Reformation. The clergy was hardly a center of learned people back then. They thought that the Hebrew language was evil, many were illiterate and never read the Bible themselves, monasteries were party centers, priests were taking concubines, and many bums joined so they could get a free ride through life. Much like today the Catholic Church is full of communists and homosexuals like Pope Francis himself.
Are the Sparkle Creed folx enlightened?
>history of the reformation
Written by who?
>contrary to scripture
What scripture?
He broke the law of the land at the time.
Again, a rebellious, prideful spirit.
Proverbs 16:18
Romans 13:1-7
2 Timothy 4:3
Tyndale got led astray by the Rebel, Luther.
What would Luther have done to the Bible if he would gave got his way?
The Rebel, drunk on pride.
Not sure exactly what you're referring to. Revisionism on the other side is just as bad. The Reformation was popular with the nobility because it opened the door to seizing church assets and made each prince a "pope in his own lands." There are even cases where princes got leading Evangelicals to support their claims to the legitimacy of their polygamy.
This led to abuses as bad as anything in the middle ages, possibly worse. E.g. throwing contemplative orders who were bothering no one and always keeping their doors open to travelers in need out on to the streets so that their assets and lands could be seized, sometimes letting the soldiers rape the nuns and carry them off. Luther's response to the Peasants Revolt was particularly telling. Religious liberties for the elites, not for the poors — a useful expedient when your goal is temporal power.
>what??? I-is that a BISHOP? Wearing GOLD??? I AM FRICKING GOING INSAAAAAANE
where do you want the fricking gold to go? Should it go into a bank coffer? Maybe all of the magnificient artwork made for public enjoinment should also? All in the hands of billionaires, is that right?
You're so ignorant to think that and that alone is the corruption of the Roman Church, especially in medieval times.
met with Wittgenstein to discuss their epistemological differences
>ended up shouting THIS IS A HAND THIS IS A HAND
Why was Moore so autistic?
Literally me
It is all a matter of obedience. Protestants didn't have obedience to the tradition and magisterium. So, it is easy to fall.
I honestly don't understand how someone can be a Lutheran. If you are a Christian, you either have to be Catholic or Orthodox.
It makes no sense to follow one poorly catechized man with scrupulosity problems over 2,000 years of tradition.
And what about the fruits of Lutheranism? Critical Biblical criticism which is the equivalent of Shakespeare authorship theories? Following the spirit of the world rather than conforming to God?
>t. Saint bone worshiper
>the fruits of Lutheranism
Bach and countless other great geniuses belonging to hundreds of years of Protestant high culture?
Protest c**ts (Blacks all) should just stick to worshipping Israel
I worship your mom's tittays
good thread everyone
It's interesting how American Evangelicalism is collapsing. It was the one outlier in Protestantism.
I honestly can't see how it goes on. Having become a religion proudly pointing to blind faith it has to rely primarily on emotion and identity in making its case to the Lost and to apostates. But emotion and identity lose their purchase without numbers. People living in an Evangelical milieu sustain each other's faith by making it the substance of everyday practice and morality, but that's rapidly decaying, especially as politics has crept in as a religion surrogate or as a way to define religious identity. The culture war might keep people committed to an identity, but it won't keep them going to church, especially those that stay true to Christian principles.
Practice is almost absent from the faith now as well. It's about what you believe, not who you are or what you do. Hence the huge interest in Zen and other foreign religions. They have practiced of self-development and self cultivation. Christianity had these, pilgrimage and asceticism were once part of any Christian life, but they fell away with the Reformation. But if all that faith requires is to hold a belief, if it is not an identity, then unless one likes praise music, church doesn't really serve a purpose.
Mainline Protestant churches are headed towards collapse. Not only are their former heartlands down to 10-15% active observance, but the partitioners are overwhelmingly old. Evangelicals bucked this trend, but it how seems like they will have an accelerated decline, with some parts fracturing off into mere identity groups rather than a church with a universal mission for all man.
I see the most hope in the future of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, particularly if they can put aside schism. Eastern rite Catholicism offers a possible example here. I also see some promise in mainline Protestantism reaffirming its lost unity in a single Church at some point, although it will probably reach a crisis of becoming near defunct first.
Ultimately, people are starved for meaning and purpose, starved for Christ, but much must change for the Church to become ascendent again. It must once again become universal, instead of defining itself against other identities and beliefs. Tilich is instructive here.
anon, I...
https://ideasanddata.wordpress.com/2019/08/22/the-leftist-influence-of-catholicism/
get off the internet and actually speak with christians for once. most people don't even know what orthodoxy is.
>American Evangelicalism is collapsing
Is it? Seems like there is another Great Awakening (tm) going on right now, also I can't see Catholicism doing much when there is a growing Americanization of it and the Pope is opening the doors for Homosexuality, really it seems like in general the only trend is towards Chaos at the moment
So much of the Reformation disputes stem from the transformation of the panentheism apparent in the Patristics, and even St. Paul and St. John, with the sort of classical theism we are now familiar with. Very often, Paul will describe the same thing in two ways, once with man doing certain things, e.g. exchanging the image of the immortal creator for created things in Romans, and once with God doing this things, e.g., "God gave them over to..." "God hardened them," "God confused those who rejected the truth," in Thessalonians, etc.
Both ways are apt because everything exists and occurs through God. The whole Protestant debate over neo-Palagianism misses how the Patristics could have such a strong focus on self discipline and cultivation but not become Pelagians. It's because when we do something, God is also doing it in us, although this does not make our acts God's acts since their proximate cause is not the whole of the Divine Nature, but a portion of being (the privation theory of evil fits in nicely here). There is nowhere where God is not present, nor anything that exists without God. Reformation era conflicts between Calvinists and Arminians come up because God has become just a powerful entity who sits beside the world. So now, if self-control or a person's traits become involved in their salvation there can be concerns about "people saving themselves." This concern only makes sense when one has lost the fact that man does not create himself, and that any act man can raise himself to ultimately comes from grace.
This also helps explain the free will/divine sovereignty dilemma. Man's freedom does not conflict with God's freedom.
Threadly reminder that the papists lost.
At Augsburg
At Munster
At Westphalia
And at the Boyne
imagine this as an SNL skit with Chris Farley as Luther
Lutheranism is so strange. How can you say that you follow the bible when you celebrate strange fire holidays such as christ-mass and easter? The Lutherans also break the 2nd Commandment by having graven images in their churches and homes. The Reformed are the only ones who take bible seriously.
>celebrate strange fire holidays such as christ-mass and easter?
Calvinists are absolutely annoying. They really are trying to beat the trad Catholics on who can be the most insufferable. Why can't you Calvinists ever shut up about Christmas?
They somehow out logicgay'd the Catholic Church, how the FRICK did Lutherans get tricked into thinking they would be good allies?
So..
Was he right or not?
I mean, if one of the outcomes was correct then that means, either bad or good news for the tradcaths.
He was right about the Church's corruption, but backed into a corner and could not back down he declared Sola Fide as an emotional frick you reaction in the middle a court case with the Imperator of the Holy Roman Empire where losing meant death.
Once he was locked in, his """allies"""" screwed over his efforts to supplant the Catholic Church by being more extreme than he was to get more followers ensuring his movement was crippled and would have heresy and then the heresy would more heresy.
So he is a tragic figure, who both the Catholics and Protestants misunderstand