Humanism and religion

[muir]

Religions place god as the highest power

Humanism places man as the highest power

Freemasonry and its predecessor the Knights Templar are humanist in outlook. They seek to place man above god. They were the driving force behind the reformation and the enlightenment and today they continue to wage war against the religions of the world

And yet they themselves seem to answer to higher powers that they remain very secretive about. The templars were accused of worshipping 'baphomet' and the freemasons revere the GATOU (great architect of the universe). All masons will tell the curious that the gatou is whatever god the individual mason worships but that is told to non masons or masons in the low degrees to avoid alarming them. One must wonder what the higher initiates inteprete the gatou as...

In the Lurianic Kabbalah, Adam Kadmon is the first being to spontaneously emerge in the metaphysical void, which was formed in the center of the cosmos after the Tzimtzum. The Sefirot and worlds which they comprise are, according to Luria and his disciple, Vital, emanated from the various orifices in Adam Kadmon¹s head: from the ear, the nose, eyes, and mouth. The highest, most sublime of these emanations, forms the world of Atziluth, from the Hebrew "etzel", meaning "near" (to the infinite God). However, even higher than Atziluth, according to the Lurianists, is the World of Adam Kadmon itself, often abbreviated as the World of A¹K, a world so high and sublime as to be virtually indistinguishable from Ein-sof. From within this realm, so close to the infinite God, Adam Kadmon directs the subsequent course of events in the lower worlds.http://www.newkabbalah.com/adam.html

 

[Barnabas]

I think I know what's going on - we're talking past each other. I'm referring to the protestantism that grew out of Europe, and you're referring to the American Great Awakenings. I guess it's probably a European/American thing.



Not at all. They were extremely different at the time and to this day. Luther basically gutted the Catholic church's teachings and said that if it wasn't in the five solae, then it probably didn't matter. They went:

Solae scriptura: Only through scripture. If it's not in the bible, you shouldn't follow it. This excluded church traditions and doctrine.
Solae fide: By faith alone. Only through faith in the scripture can you receive salvation. Your church can no longer sell you salvation
Solae gratia: By grace alone. God loves everyone equally, everyone receives salvation. Gratia universalis - universal grace from God. We can't escape the love of God.
Solo Christo: Through Christ alone. The love of Jesus and his teachings will give you peace and love in your life. He should be the example of your life. Give to the poor, receive in Heaven. All that stuff
Soli Deo gloria. Glory to God alone. God doesn't share his glory. No love for the Virgin Mary, angels or any of the Catholic saints.

Luther was, like you've said, very conservative in his protests and never wanted anyone hurt and just wanted reform of what already stood. Where I'm from you'll see that most of the churches that's around are from before Luther's time, but are completely different. All of the colored windows were smashed and clear windows were set in. Everything's decorated to be as white and bare as possible, to be welcoming and not to try and impose itself upon you.

I was a Lutheran Christian for most of my life, and it's pretty awesome. It's about how we can't possibly please God, because he doesn't want for us to please him. We have to realize that we're all equally flawed, and try to live our lives after what Jesus said. I'm no longer a Lutheran Christian but am in the process of seeking out and becoming a Quaker. I don't mind shitting on Luther and what he said, because he was nutty on certain stuff too. He did live a long, long time ago. When he was born Europeans hadn't even found America.



I agree that those people need to be venerated in their struggle as well, but you've gotta admit that he was the dude that eventually got it done. He was the protestantism guy. I'm sorry to keep pushing this, but if you look up protestantism on Wikipedia, you'll find this at the top of the article:

"Protestantism encompasses forms of Christian faith and practice that originated with doctrines and religious, political, and ecclesiological impulses of the Protestant Reformation, against what they considered the errors of the Roman Catholic Church. The term refers to the letter of protestation by Lutheran princes against the decision of the Diet of Speyer in 1529, which reaffirmed the edict of the Diet of Worms condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heresy. "

I have a feeling these are things were going to have to agree to disagree, to an outsider the catholic church and the Lutherans still look very similar which is probably tied to the degrees of separation the Lutheran church and it's immediate offshoots have from the catholic church, compared to the rest of predominant protestant churches(Baptists and such). And now that I think about it this may be a an American thing, I imagine that Baptists and Pentecostals don't have nearly as strong a presence in Europe as they do in the U.S.

You wouldn't happen to know what the predominant protestant church is in Europe would you?

 

[Lark]

I have a feeling these are things were going to have to agree to disagree, to an outsider the catholic church and the Lutherans still look very similar which is probably tied to the degrees of separation the Lutheran church and it's immediate offshoots have from the catholic church, compared to the rest of predominant protestant churches(Baptists and such). And now that I think about it this may be a an American thing, I imagine that Baptists and Pentecostals don't have nearly as strong a presence in Europe as they do in the U.S.

You wouldn't happen to know what the predominant protestant church is in Europe would you?

You'd be wrong if you're talking about the english speaking world, at least northern ireland or scotland, england is as good as atheist and the anglo-catholics have said that its a post-christian country for a reason.

The anglo-catholics arguably are similar to the RCC but no the Lutherans, no way, there have been consensus documents, such as agreement, apparently, on the issue of so called "faith alone" or "justification" or "salvation" by beliefs.

Its sort of high theology but having read Erasmus and Moore in The Discourse on Free Will there would appear to have been at the time an unbridgeable divide and I dont really see any point in trying to bridge it, better to acknowledge and understand the differences and permit people to think about them and make their own choices.

I dont know how anyone would support or endorse Lutherism contra roman catholicism, although people do, I think its even less likely that Calvinism or many of the (many, many) off shots and splinters could make sense but the whole issue has been further complicated or made difficult by the passage of time and a lot of secluarist propaganda from the time of the counter-reformation, rennaisance and after, that's before you even get to the point of the so called enlightenment. There's been a lot of history which people presume is neutral which is anything but at all.

I dont think its an American/European difference that you've picked up on there particularly, there are a great many baptists and other congregations of that kind in Ni and a lot of the time it has a lot to do with whether they are anti-catholic enough and therefore popular enough with people who are looking for that.

There are some versions of biblical commentary which mention the reformation and describe how as an essentially reactionary revolutionary current it made change impossible or villified it resulting in the counter current of atheism, which remains the popular "polar" alternative to "christianity", as exclusively defined by an actual minority, in places like the US.

 

[Lark]

You're absolutely right on the history angle. He never wanted to leave the church, and they excommunicated him for the views you described above, along with a lot of other views detailed in his thesis that he is known for. However, I don't feel like you're giving the guy enough credit to go with it. When he was excommunicated, he translated the Bible into German, which caused a whole wave of commotion among the normally obedient Catholic/Christian communities of Europe. He started protestantism. Without his critique (protest) against how the Catholic church were doing things back in the day, and his excommunication, it wouldn't have started off. That's my opinion, but I believe that is the general and accepted historical opinion. Correct me if I'm wrong.



It might be a non-issue for you, but I can tell you that a lot of the Lutheran Protestants in my home country would be super stoked if the Catholic church recognized Martin Luther, and finally acknowledged his importance in their own religion as well.

I'll correct you on both counts.

The version of history that you mention is the Luther as "progressive" and its mistaken.

In his discourse with Erasmus, which I'll keep coming back to because its the facts and not the facts as interpreted by anyone else, Luther engages what is, to be candid, Erasmus' pretty superior intellect and when he loses the battle of wits in terms of reason and discussion he resorts of a battle based upon citations and arguments from authority, Erasmus' pretty much beats him on that point too and finally chooses not to carry on the dialogue any longer, Luther scoffs and brags that he has emerged triumphant.

This was a very, very bad development because Erasmus and Moore and others were essentially reforming or progressive figures within the RCC, they wanted to engage people such as Luther in discussion and dialogue as opposed to simply excluding them and dismissing them and seeking to silence them consequently, the way in which the dialogue and discource on free will went with Luther set the tone for all future interaction and dispute.

The excommunication was not something taken lightly at all and was practically a last resort which the RCC had no other choice other than to invoke, Luther had engaged in a whole series of scandals and rebellious actions before hand in order to provoke the RCC into this course of action, he effectively knew he had left them no alternative or other course of action, he'd played that sort of game before, like I say in his discourse with Erasmus. This sort of pattern of behaviour should be familiar to anyone who has ever visited a forum and engaged in online discussion at all, you get people who are adament, or even dogmatic (in the objective and not the prejorative sense of the word), who run up against someone who can argue better than them, thinks descend/escalate quickly, emotionally driven disputation takes the place of any discussion, eventually someone or other of the parties is going to end up with the other on ignore. This is over simplifying it a bit because there were a lot of other politics in play, class struggles between the people and peasantry and between the barons and the universal authority (like between nation states and federations and the UN today).

Luther's translation of the bible was anything but complete, he actually wanted to translate a much, much more limited version that the King James version which is itself missing a number of books which are contained in the RCC canon. I've always found it incredible that there are conspiracies about the RCC repressing religious books or scripture or biblical evidence and counter evidence when from the outset they where seeking to counter such actions and preserve a more expansive canon than their opponents who expected this would only cause confusion and doubt in their followers. If there was any repression of scriptures by the RCC it was a general repression of learning and its belief that error was a big deal (something asserted by Luther and Calvin afterwards).

This is why the so called "higher criticism" of the bible and the discovery of the earliest surviving copies of the bible by so called "bible hunters" in victorian times proved a bigger blow to religious belief than Darwin's contributions to evolutionary speculation about the origin of the species. These earlier bibles appeared to contain contestable revisions, comprehensive edits by scribes and infact revisionism as a norm. This is a HUGE problem if you profess solo scripture, especially if it is not linked to context or circumstances but a fundamental tenet and believed a perrenial thing as Luther did, not so much if you believe that tradition preceeded and produced the bible and is more important than the bible as was the alternative to Lutherism.

Solo scripturalism seems absurd to me, I dont mean the "ordinary absurdity" which you can encounter within religion but something which will multiply error.

There's a lot of good analysis of Luther, like Erich Fromm's in Fear of Freedom, Erikson on the young luther, a couple of others I dont recall which consider his actions and the history of the reformation from a psycho-analytical perspective and none of them embrace the whole "Luther as progress" idea and reveal that the reformation and protestantism isnt anything like it has been imagined by the modern mind, as arising out of the burgeoning illegitimate authoritarianism of the RCC and being protest much like all contemporary protest (which is in one way or another valourised).

Finally I dont know if Lutherans would be stoked by the RCC hierarchy's embrace of Luther's writing, they would likely be suspiscious, at least the general populace and if its anything like here, in NI, then prejudice about the RCC dies hard, especially when there are people in the RCC who are good at confirming the prejudices.

 

[Lark]

People had been seeking reform for the catholic church before and after Luther, and what most people consider protestant is tied more closely to the puritan movement and the American Great awakening. Luther's Church is realistically just Catholicism with some parts taken out(I'm sure you've heard of Lutherans refereed to as catholic lite jokingly).

To call Luther the father of the protestant reformation does injustice to those who came before and after him especially when it's not what Luther himself wanted. Men like john Wycliffe a Jan Huss who both operated before luther seeking biblically based reform are better candidates.

Wycliffe was definitely protestant but he was also a radical, there were others like him, although genuine alternatives to the RCC's monopoly upon Christianity would include Jansianism (spelling) in France or Moravianism.

Luther was not one of the establishment "reformed" churches, like the Church of England in England, or the Church of Scotland in Scotland, although John Knox was more sectarian and probably resembled Lutheranism more than the anglo-Catholics (the fact that they continued to call themselves catholics for instance means something). Those establishment churches were essentially secessionists from the universal authority of Rome, they did keep a lot of the traditions and beliefs but Luther could not be considered in the same category. Perhaps the confusion arises out of the fact that after the peasants revolt in Germany and apparently being shocked at Calvin's theocracy in Geneva, when Calvin attempted to out terror the terror of the RCC inquisition, Luther allied with the German Barons contra Rome and the people. All of which is a great example of the sort of "trying to put the genie back into the bottle" which Luther has been analysed and criticised for.

To refer to lutherans as catholicism lite is truly and absolutely a reflection of misguided evangelical militancy which doesnt know a lot about itself nor the broader history of christendom and after.

 

[magister343]

Luther's translation of the bible was anything but complete, he actually wanted to translate a much, much more limited version that the King James version which is itself missing a number of books which are contained in the RCC canon. I've always found it incredible that there are conspiracies about the RCC repressing religious books or scripture or biblical evidence and counter evidence when from the outset they where seeking to counter such actions and preserve a more expansive canon than their opponents who expected this would only cause confusion and doubt in their followers. If there was any repression of scriptures by the RCC it was a general repression of learning and its belief that error was a big deal (something asserted by Luther and Calvin afterwards).

It is true that Luther wanted to remove the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation from the canon. He also wanted to relocate of the Book of Esther from the canon to the Apocrypha, because the text never mentions God except in its deuterocanonical additions (which St Jerome had wanted to exclude because they are not found in any Hebrew text).

Luther did not however try to keep the books of the Apocrypha hidden. On the contrary, he considered them very valuable texts despite not considering them to be divinely inspired. He included them in an appendix and encouraged people to read them, so long as they took them with a grain of salt and did not consider anything in them authoritative enough to contradict the teachings of the primary canon.


The King James version of the bible published in 1611 contained every book that the Roman Catholic Church considers canon. I have a facsimile 1611 version on my bookshelf with which I could prove it.

It was not until much latter that publishers of "King James Versions" (which were considerably different from the 1611 version) began to exclude the deuterocanon.

Lutheran and Anglican bibles usually included the deuterocanon until the early 20th century. Calvinist bibles were more likely to exclude them before that.

Many of the early bibles which excluded the apocrypha actually included those books in the canons listed in the front, leading some to conclude that they were officially supposed to include all the books that that some printers chose to save money by excluding those books which the protestant laity did not care much about reading.

 

[Lark]

It is true that Luther wanted to remove the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation from the canon. He also wanted to relocate of the Book of Esther from the canon to the Apocrypha, because the text never mentions God except in its deuterocanonical additions (which St Jerome had wanted to exclude because they are not found in any Hebrew text).

Luther did not however try to keep the books of the Apocrypha hidden. On the contrary, he considered them very valuable texts despite not considering them to be divinely inspired. He included them in an appendix and encouraged people to read them, so long as they took them with a grain of salt and did not consider anything in them authoritative enough to contradict the teachings of the primary canon.


The King James version of the bible published in 1611 contained every book that the Roman Catholic Church considers canon. I have a facsimile 1611 version on my bookshelf with which I could prove it.

It was not until much latter that publishers of "King James Versions" (which were considerably different from the 1611 version) began to exclude the deuterocanon.

Lutheran and Anglican bibles usually included the deuterocanon until the early 20th century. Calvinist bibles were more likely to exclude them before that.

Many of the early bibles which excluded the apocrypha actually included those books in the canons listed in the front, leading some to conclude that they were officially supposed to include all the books that that some printers chose to save money by excluding those books which the protestant laity did not care much about reading.

To my knowledge Luther wanted the bible to include not much besides John, Mark, Acts and Romans. Although that could be a distortion resulting from later protestant congregations not wanting to read them and publishers not including them as you say.

Although the King James Bible of today is incomplete when I compare it to my own RCC bible, I dont just mean the scholarly interpretation and explanatory notes which accompany the tex, the book of Maccabees isnt there, excluded because of the passages which suggest that there is forgiveness in the next life aswell as this life, part of the RCC's evidence base for a belief in purgatory, there are other passages missing too, not just big ommissions like entire books such as James.

To my knowledge I did not believe that any of the publishers or translators of the bible wanted to include the apothechary (spelling) for a variety of reasons, the RCC's own reasons, in particular that the great mass of people dont read and interpret books as scholars do, has, unfortunately, been vindicated by history for the most part.

All of this, understandably, means more if you believe something like solo scripture but its also liable that discoveries such as those made in victorian times of edited bibles, the earliest versions casting doubts upon the ascending of Jesus to heaven or resurrection will destroy faith.