Revisited a Video on Lutheranism

Here is the video, by a Lutheran clergyman:

Five Roman Catholic Myths About Lutheranism
Dr. Jordan B Cooper | 3 Apr. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ATQA_3BaA

Here is my now updated answer, as in comments also under the video and sometimes with dialogue under themselves:

Misconceptions Largely Not Misconceptions, Lutheranism Remains Wrong
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2024/05/misconceptions-largely-not.html

And the reason I came to the video was, I had just watched Father Gregory Hesse's video about Luther:

Martin Luther,Saint Or Sinner Fr Hesse
10 Year Old Girl Productions | 8 Dec. 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaVfyIfi3O4

It is partly inaccurate and partly reflects Barruels idea that Freemasons were behind the taking of the Bastille.

More like, Freemasons were into oppressing people, including within a year before the taking of the Bastille./HGL

I Get Annoyed to Nervous When Catholics Use the Term Narcissist

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Thomas, Luther, Aristotle · New blog on the kid: I Get Annoyed to Nervous When Catholics Use the Term Narcissist

I am pretty sure that Luther, after I had admired him, like many other Lutherans still do, started to give me Narcissist vibes, notably over Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen, so, why would I object to Joe Heschmeyer calling him a Narcissist straight out?

It's not just the occasion, after coming to disagree with Chesterton on how much St. Thomas' orthodoxy owed to Aristotle, over studying Sorbonne Averroists through the condemnation of 1277 and over learning Aristotle scholars actually have started to consider Averroistic positions as going back to Aristotle. It's also, the term.

Now, I have no problem with assessing Luther as prideful. But that's partly because I came to see him as wrong, and that in turn is partly over having a hard time with how he dissed Mariology in the Sendbrief and was willing to change the text in order to "eliminate an occasion" to "Papists". It's not about trying to clinically assess him. And the term Narcissist, it kind of does. A certain period, when you cursed someone, you cursed him with Hellfire. Now you curse with Mental Diagnoses. Hellfire isn't treatable per se and is applicable in the afterlife. A mental diagnosis is supposed to be applicable in this life, and therefore an actual threat, if coming from someone in a position to get it applied. If a homeless person says about a policeman "il est malade" (he's sick), that's not a threat. If a policeman says about a homeless person "il est malade" it's a bit more threatening. Joe Heschmeyer happens to be a lawyer and as such closer to the policeman than to the homeless person.

I read some statistics about how many of the homeless are what, and while "sex offenders" seems to be an objective status (as long as judges and penitentiaries apply it and no shrinks add diagnoses that could be mistaken for it), "mentally ill" seems to be suspect of being a function of this kind of modern curse. Insofar as it leads to actual measures, it can also lead to trapping someone in a situation of homelessness.

So, one point against "Narcissist" and for that matter "Delusional Narcissist" is, that kind of language can unfortunately have consequences. I was briefly considering, was I too lenient on the N-word used in Rochester, Minnesota, hadn't eugenics targetted black people there? Well, there were states where eugenics were applied in a racist way, but Minnesota seems to have been more inclined to misogyny in application. Kellogg was in Michigan, not in Minnesota. Michigan had about half as many victims as Virginia, but they were (as predictably in Virginia) majority black. Minnesota had half as many victims as Michigan (on a population about half the size), but the majority of victims were women. Obviously, eugenics as such is, for now and thank God, gone, but, medical practitioners who are not applying it can have had grandfathers applying it. And attitudes about certain behaviours, more frequent in black people (in Virginia) or more frequent in women (in Minnesota), making them prone to base false diagnoses on such prejudice.

In some circles among Protestants, the stamp "Narcissist" has become a pretty obvious go to when it comes to motivating breaking friendships and other relations. Sometimes, I'm afraid, marriages, leading to divorce, and remarriage, which Our Lord terms adultery. Now some of them have on top of that tried to say their advice is based on "how Jesus dealt with Narcissists."

The examples given are usually Pharisees (I'll return to a very unfortunate exception briefly), and they are in this case always collective. Jesus calls a "ye Pharisees" (or other group) or a "ye" some term like "brood if vipers" (toxic narcissism involves devious and unexpected attacks) "children" (narcissism is supposed to be one outlet of immaturity among others, I think of when He compared the Pharisees and their reaction to John the Baptist with their reaction to Him ... "like children saying, we have played music and thou hast not danced, we have sung dirges and thou hast not mourned"), "liars, hypocrites" (toxic narcissism has a problem with veracity), "ye fools" (note the plural! in Luke 11:40), and some other things, while each time Jesus is adressing a single Pharisee (Nicodemus, Jairus, presumably St. Joseph of Arimathea, though we only get to see him when it's time for a burial), He does so in gentle and courteous terms, not at all like someone dealing with a Narcissist (or presumed such) today.

These people are even sometimes prepared to consider Our Lord's close kin as Narcissists because of when they asked Him to see them. Not a misunderstanding of the occasion, not a slight overdoing of family obligations, no, it has to be straightout (if somewhat mild) Narcissism. Obviously, this view involves a blasphemy against the Blessed Virgin, at least from their side where Narcissism is supposed to automatically equate with the sin of pride.

Joe Heschmeyer called Luther "Delusional Narcissist" and what about the term "Delusion"? Classically, it could apply to someone like The Emperor of Portugallia (title figure in this novel by Selma Lagerlöf). His daughter, Glory Goldie Sunnycastle, once off to Stockholm, has ceased to send her father letters. He speculates on the reason, concludes she has gone to a far land (the name of which conflates "Portugal" and "Gallia" and therefore certainly isn't an actual country), become Empress and therefore by extension made her father Emperor. Now, this doesn't make him unhappy. But he actually has a breakdown when finding out she is actually just a prostitute. So, a Delusion, in the most classic sense of the word, need not be a very grave thing. But it is a question of things like misunderstanding one's actual identity, belief in actual ranks that aren't there.

Emperor of anything, that's an actual rank. I'm reminded of an anecdote about the Emperor Francis Joseph visiting a mental hospital. He greeted one of the inmates, and introduced himself as the Emperor. "Oh, I thought so too, when I came here" ... Meaning, he was perhaps a bit orrery about his delusion of being the Emperor of Austria, unless he was simply making a joke about a stereotype. "Best X in the world" isn't an actual rank. Unless someone is keeping scores, and the "best" is synonymous to what admits a metric. Currently, since 1993, the world record of high jump is held by Javier Sotomayor, at 2.45 m (8 ft 1⁄4 in). I checked wikipedia.

"Best Aristotelian in the world" isn't how Luther termed himself, he just said he understood Aristotle better than two people a few centuries past. He warned against Aristotle, based on his understanding. If he warned against the Nichomachean Ethics, this may be because that work misses original sin, and therefore presents a picture of purely natural virtue, that misses out on the medicinal virtues Christians need like fasting, due to the fall of Adam. Ironically, once the Deformation got going, he was himself missing out on it. What he said about understanding Aristotle better than St. Thomas and Duns Scotus simply isn't even a claim of being "better than the best" it's a claim of learning that the Renaissance Humanists regularly made against the Middle Ages. Including the Latin. Now, the Latin prose of St. Thomas is less close to the prose of Cicero than the Latin prose of Erasmus or his disciples Luther and St. Thomas More. Would he have been delusional if he had said he wrote better Latin than St. Thomas? No. He would just have expressed the evaluation that Ciceronian prose is the best Latin prose, along with Caesar's prose. And likewise, while he tried to pull a Savonarola on Aristotle, and mistakenly extended it to scholasticism (wherein he was not followed by Lutherans generally, at least the ensuing century, Sweden had some petty but still rivals of the Coimbra Jesuits), this is not even a claim to be personally the best Aristotelian of history, it's a claim of reevaluating what Aristotle really stood for. And as mentioned, probably also of inheriting this reevaluation from his professors. Or inheriting a superciliousness to 13th C. scholasticism over being able to read Aristotle in Greek, which St. Thomas was not.

I'm not a particular fan of Luther. But when it comes to pride, I would say a prideful century tended to enhance prideful Deformers. And as Calvin is ultimately more followed than Luther, it argues Calvin was more prideful. Lutherans are currently 1%, which is not a huge success. Back in the 17th C. they were more important, but that was due to Royal Deformers, like Frederick of Denmark following suite of Gustav of Sweden. It was the pride of secular rulers, and unsurprisingly, Scandinavia today is a highly secularised region of the world. Much closer to New Jersey than to Texas, if you see what I mean. As to Cranmer, he had been a Catholic back when his King (whom he served with devotion) defended the Catholic faith and specifically the Seven Sacraments against Luther. Neither Calvin nor Cranmer can be seen as loyal supporters who in a moment of lucidity admit their master was flawed, because Luther was never their master in the first place. Both have more in common with Bucer, and Bucer was a man trying to mediate between Luther and Zwingli. In order to motivate such a mediation, you have to basically admit both of the "masters" are flawed, and have taken some "extremes" to be avoided. There is no surprise in Bucer considering either Luther or Zwingli or both flawed, just as there is no surprise in Mohammed considering the current Christians and Jews flawed or Joseph Smith considering both Presbyterians and Methodists flawed. It's actually more surprising how Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné romanticised Luther, therein followed by Ellen Gould White, since both had a theology vastly different from Luther's. But given they lived in an era of romanticising pioneers (Washington Irving infamously wrote a novel attributing to Christopher Columbus the pioneering not just of discovering the New World, but even of refuting Flat Earthism, as if it had been a thing), that could explain their attitude to Luther.

Can I remind that, it's a Christian and Catholic thing to be on the lookout against Toxic Narcissism in networks and groups, it's not a Christian and definitely not a Catholic thing, to be a watchdog about individual cases of the potential diagnosis Narcissism? Because, I think Tovia Singer pretty correctly resumes the Pharisee pov when he called Jesus "a Narcissist" ... not meaning that the pov is correct, but just that Tovia Singer is actually in their line, not misrepresenting their pov.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Valens of Auxerre
21 May 2025

Dr. Gavin Ashenden About Anglicanism (Sth Similar is True of Lutheranism) (Shared)

Cosmetic Catholics and the Crisis of Authority. Taylor Marshall exposes Calvin Robinson.
Catholic Unscripted | 11.VI.2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFpm2m-j_Zw

I Don't Think "The Great Controversy" is a Great Book

But I also don't feel Adventists who try to share it should be met by Anti-Terrorist police.

I kind of regret that my example was stolen, as an Ex-Lutheran with some historic knowledge of Luther's real agenda, I found the quotations from Merle d'Aubigné in Ellen White's book hilarious, I was planning to make that a theme on my blog Great Bishop of Geneva!/HGL

PS, it seems that in fact they were ignoring the laws of the canton, which says that if you want to distribute religious tracts, you need a permit for each occasion.

But Anti-Terrorist police dealing with that seems a bit over the top./HGL

Un jour, Luther décida qu'il y avait trop de clergé

Un jour, Luther décida qu'il y avait trop de clergé · Un jour, deux ou six femmes étaient sur le quai d'une ville portière de la Suède

Un autre jour, une décennie ou deux après, des femmes en Sigtuna sortent de chez elles pour braver les ordres du roi Suédois.

Comment "trop de clergé" ...? En plus des évêques, il y avait le clergé à Rome. En plus des curés, il y avait des chapelains, des aumôniers, des clercs qui avaient pour tâche unique de célébrer les messes pour tel ou tel bienfaiteur du monastère ou des chanoînes, il y avait les chanoînes, il y avait des prêtres en monastères, il y avait des prêtres qui offraient des indulgences avec des prêches et les absolutions et communions, donc aussi souvent messes qu'il fallait pour les gagner et encore certaines indulgences étaient donnés pour un don à l'Église pour un but pieux, comme de rebâtir la Basilique de St. Pierre. Ce dernier type n'existe plus dans l'Église catholique, et ses adversaires l'appellaient "vendeurs d'indulgences" ... ceux-là et les prêtres des ordres mendiants étaient ce que Luther détestait le plus. Pour les régions en Royaume Germanique (grosso modo Allemagne, Autriche, parties de la Suisse et Liechtenstein) et les royaumes (deux) dans le Nord qui adoptaient la Réforme luthérienne, le clergé allait être réduit.

Ces deux royaumes, c'étaient la Suède (dont à l'époque la Finlande était un duché) et le Danemark (dont Norvège était l'autre couronne restante, après la perte de le Suède).

Et Sigtuna, c'est en Suède. Entre Stockholm, déjà notre capitale depuis quelques siècles, hormis les temps sous Danemark quand Stockholm n'était que capitale régionale, et Sigtuna, la distance c'est 47 km - de nos jours environ une heure en "RER" et bus, à l'époque une journée à cheval.

Sigtuna avait au Moyen âge plusieurs églises. Les deux plus notables étaient peut-être l'église des Dominicains, "Mariakyrkan" ou Notre Dame, et Sankt Olof ou St. Olave, qui était l'église paroissiale. Le plan des hommes du roi - mercenaires de Lubeck - c'était de chasser les Dominicains et donner leur église, la plus spatieuse, au curé, et de démolir la vieille église paroissiale. Chose faite, quand j'étais à Sigtuna, St. Olave était une ruine, et la Notre Dame était l'église paroissiale, pour "l'Église" lutherienne qu'on appelle l'Église suédoise. Mais, comme dit, pas sans protestes.

Les femmes de la ville, probablement plus ou moins toutes les femmes de la ville, sortaient de chez elles et entouraient l'église de St. Olave. Les mercenaires les citaient d'obéir aux ordres du roi. Elle répondaient :

"Il faut obéir davantage à Dieu qu'aux hommes."

Elles furent écartés, les mercenaires n'avaient pas d'états d'âme et les femmes n'étaient pas soutenues par d'hommes prêts à une chouannerie - bien qu'il en eût d'autres.

De nos jours l'Église suédoise est souvent très œcuménique, et on avait dans la salle paroissiale un icône de l'événement. Je l'ai vue avant même d'être baptisé, et ce m'était une indication que la Réforme n'était pas toujours jo jo ... quelques années plus tard, je me covertis en Catholique.

Réflêchissons. Il y a d'autres occasions pour se poser la question directe sur les raisons pour le Catholicisme ou contre la Réforme en tant que vérités sociales. Aujourd'hui, je vais réfléchir sur l'impact social. D'abord, les Réformes de Luther trouvent une résistance armée, en Royaume Germanique par l'Empereur, tout le siècle entre Réforme et Guerre de Trente Ans on était en guerre, par exemple la Guerre de Schmalkalde; très autrement en Suède (moins au Danemark, hormis Islande ?) par des insurrectionnistes, un peu comme la Réforme anglicane trouve une résistance en des insurrectionnistes surtout en Yorkshire et en Irlande. La société devient plus violente, et les crispations entre peuple et pouvoir vont se solder dans une augmentation de la Repression, du pouvoir repressif de l'état.

Ensuite, les écoles dans les villes étaient surtout gérés par les prêtres notamment ceux qui n'étaient pas curés. Les écoles élémentaires ont persisté, mais les lycées en Suède étaient en berne entre la Réforme et les réformes scolaires de la reine Christine (qui a dû noter ça, ce sera entre autre pour ça qu'elle se convertit au Catholicisme, j'ai visité son tombeau à Rome, dans la Basilique de St. Pierre, vers Pentecôte 1986, déjà en décalage avec l'Église suédoise, et environ deux ans avant ma conversion. J'y étais avec la classe de latin.

Mais, il y a une autre conséquence, peu notée.

Moins de clergé veut dire, en même temps deux choses :

• moins d'argent demandé aux fidèles
• plus d'argent pour chaque clerc restant.

Et une troisième :

• une salle plus pleine en service de dimanche.

Or, la première chose était justement ce que visait Luther ouvertement. La deuxième il l'abordait avec plus de discrétion, mais ça se voyait dans son mépris pour les ordres mendiants. Par contre, il convient de noter que les grands jets de Pat Robertson ou d'autres sont dans cette ligne. Et avec 10 000 en culte de dimanche, chaque fidèle lui paie moins que les fidèles dans les temps avant Luther - et quand même il s'en sort mieux, financièrement. Là où 5000 tsiganes sont assemblés,

Ceci veut bien entendu dire des salles de culte beaucoup plus bondés. Une conséquence de ça a été vue au début de la pandémie en France, en Alsace et Lorraine.

Pour se rallier les puissants, Luther flattait l'idée que les gens, par la piété catholique, devenaient trop paresseux. Les pèlerinages, il était contre - parce que c'étaient des vacances. La Réforme a donc favorisé des structures où davantage de gens travaillent avec plus intense cadence. Les deux phénomènes sont liés. Plus les ouvriers sont nombreux, plus ils deviennent replaçables, et plus ils deviennent remplaçables, plus on peut leur imposer des cadences encore plus intenses.

Or, un autre très grand cluster de la première vague, il était une grande usine de viande. Même si ça avait été une aussi grande usine de légumes, elle aurait fait un cluster, puisque des gens devaient se côtoyer de manière assez nombreux en contacts. Un supermarché grande surface a aussi été touché. Et, le pauvre Luther, aurait-il même rêvé de tout ça? Bon, quand il voyait le diable qui le reclamait comme le sien, ou le Christ qui l'encourageait de retourner et qu'il qualifia du diable, il avait peut-être des présentiments que quelque chose n'allait pas très bien clocher. Mais il bravait ce genre d'inspirations. Il les prenait, toutes, comme des tentations du diable.
/HGL

After Christmas Day came Holy Innocents (More Links)

Have you read of Trudeau? A new Herod type.

Vox Cantoris : CANADIAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS CONGRATULATE FASCIST PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA
http://voxcantor.blogspot.com/2015/11/canadian-catholic-bishops-congratulate.html

I commented among other things that one aspect of title is belittling to Il Duce.

And as we think of the discomforts of the Flight into Egypt, here is a Saint who knew discomfort:

The True Story of St. Christina the Astonishing, the Indestructible Miracle-Woman
https://churchpop.com/2016/01/18/christina-the-astonishing-indestructible-woman/

Since Chesterton considered that Herod was more or less possessed (at least highly demon driven), here is about someone else who might have been so:

A Catholic Life : Martin Luther Admitted to Conversations with the Devil
http://acatholiclife.blogspot.com/2016/10/martin-luther-admitted-to-conversations.html

Which links to this article on Scribd:

The Spirit of Martin Luther
Uploaded by Matthew Plese
https://fr.scribd.com/document/327499371/The-Spirit-of-Martin-Luther#from_embed

Mark Shea tries to explain Indulgences to Protestants

Link:

What is the Story with Indulgences?
by Mark Shea 01/15/2016
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/mark-shea/what-is-the-story-with-indulgences/

Quote:

Most Catholics live and die blissfully unaware that the Church even offers indulgences anymore. (A Catholic friend to whom I mentioned I was writing this article said, "They went out with Vatican II, didn't they?") Practically no Catholic gives much thought to them.

Comment:

That is your "middle of the road US Vatican II accepting Catholic". It is not you "middle of the road Catholic". My Polish priest who received me told me of indulgences, and was satirical about Paul VI abolishing the non-plenary ones "perhaps the treasury of the Church is lessened, or sth?" - and he was obedient to John Paul II, accepting Vatican II, accepting New Liturgy. One Norway resident Spaniard or Latin American told me there was a plenary indulgence attached to the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Quote:

Catholic theology has an incorrigible knack for obscuring marvelous insights in confusing terminology. Thus, for instance, she speaks of "temporal punishment for sin" which sounds to Protestants as though Jesus didn't do enough and you still have to endure extra torture so you'll be fully "punished" in addition to the 80% or 90% of the punishment He took for you. In reality, "temporal punishment" is just Catholicese for what Protestants call "chastisement." That is, it is pain unto life such as Scripture refers to when it tells us God punishes all those he loves as his children. (Hebrews 12:5-6).

Comment:

In German "punishment" and "chastisement" are both Strafe, alternatively, chastisement can be Bestrafung. In Swedish they are both straff, alternatively chastisement can be bestraffning. Luther who spoke German cannot have mistaken "Zeitliche Sündenstrafe" for the punishment of Hell any more or less because it was involving Strafe, since chastisement is anyway Strafe. Even paying a fine involves that word in German. And especially, "zeitlich" should have tipped him off it didn't mean "eternal". Zeitlich means "temporal". Actually, the idea of chastisement, as now (on Mark Shea's words, at least) accepted by Evangelicals, was not extremely popular with Reformers, as far as I can see.

Quote:

What is "merit"? Well, it isn't "extra righteousness earned by particularly nice people who pitched in to help our well-meaning but inadequate Savior's effort at redemption" (which is what many people think "merit" means). Rather "merit" is an old-fashioned term whose modern equivalent (according to theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar) is "fruitfulness." ... Christians, as all Protestants know, are graced to bear fruit by the work of Christ (John 15 and all that). We are commanded by God to bear grace to the world and to each other. For as C.S. Lewis observes, God "seems to do nothing of himself which he can possibly delegate to his creatures." We are thus to bear fruit by acting as agents of grace, doing the will of God and generally "wielding our little tridents."

Comment:

Fruitfulness of this kind was not extremely popular with Reformers either. OK, one more thing : they DID deny that difference of fruit/merit in this sense involves different degrees of bliss in Heaven. We do affirm it. CSL seems to have been here quoted from Letters to Malcolm, unless my memory fails me. And Letters of Malcolm is miles from Luther and a few arms lengths from the Catholics of Luther's time. It helped me become Catholic, nearly as much as Tolkien and Chesterton.

Quote:

An example: I, a man with a bad temper, get baptized, calling on the Lord to be saved. What does that make me? Usually it makes me a Christian man with a bad temper since the gift of new life is grace, not magic. Baptism is not an instant cure-all. It is a gate into the transforming grace of God which, with our cooperation, can eventually heal our brains, hearts and bones.

So then, I come home from baptism full of transforming grace and, finding you did not give me the chocolate Easter bunny I wanted, break your window in a rage. I repent. I am forgiven by God and you. All my guilt is taken away by the blood of Christ the instant I repent. But I still must pay for the window and I still, by grace, have to do something about my temper. Moreover, I am strapped for cash (since I have several broken window lawsuits pending which did not magically disappear when I was baptized). But (asking for God's help) I do what I can to pay you back. You (a Christian with the gift of mercy) forgive the remainder of the debt and even give me a little something so I can afford anger management counseling and legal fees.

Comment:

Let me highlight:

// so I can afford anger management counseling and legal fees. //

Some Protestants have said that Catholic Church (the one back then) was "buying and selling souls" by indulgences. False, of course. But the Vatican II Sect and at least some Trads seem to be way closer to that horrible state by simply cooperating with things like anger management counseling. Anger Management with Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson is a horrible film, say I only based on reading the idea.

Quote from wiki:

After a series of annoyances from the flight attendant and a sky marshal cause Dave, who repeatedly wanted a headset to watch an in-flight movie suggested by Buddy, to lose his temper, the sky marshal, who also mistakes Dave for a racist, tasers him, and Dave is arrested for assaulting the flight attendant, and sentenced to anger management therapy. The therapist happens to be Buddy. Buddy's unorthodox techniques cause Dave to lose his temper, and Buddy tells Dave he recognizes his problem as passive-aggressive anger. After Dave gets into a bar fight caused by another of Buddy's patients, Chuck, Dave is sent back to court and Buddy intervenes on his behalf, choosing to move in with Dave and shadow him in his life as part of more intensive therapy. Failure to comply will result in a year of jail time for Dave.

Comment:

I can relate to a black man mistaking someone for a racist*, but shouldn't he have taken one year of gaol instead**?

I was sentenced to 42 months, officially by court. I went out supposedly a free man 2000, after doing two thirds. Someone seems to have inofficially sentenced me to anger management therapy as well, and I am still being provoked after more than 210 months. Now read:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Council of Meaux vs. Slave Trade (from a book I've been reading some hours by now)
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2010/01/council-of-meaux-vs-slave-trade-from.html

Quote within my essay:

In the words of a Lombard monk of Monte Cassino, the combination of civil war and Arab marauding were devastating southern Italy even as the shipment of Italian slaves had the opposite effect on the enemies of Christendom: "the places across the sea are bolstered by the male and female captivi of our race."

Quote from my own essay:

Is there an application for us, today? Well, if psychiatry is a place where your young ones may have to confront witches, both discrete ones in parts of personnel and stupid ones among fellow patients, and lots of other doctrinally aberrant people, the loss of Christendom may not be to "transmarina loca" but to something alien to Christendom being bolstered in our very midst - by the wrath of people having a hard time forgetting they were betrayed there by fellow Christians. Indeed, often enough by their family or parish, meaning only well as the phrase goes.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Francis of Sales
29.I.2016

* The sky marshal mistaking Dave for one. ** Shouldn't DAVE have taken prison instead. The sky marshal seems not to have been blamed in court at all.

Creation Ministries International Deplore Martin Luther?

If they do so consistently, that is very fine with me. They might draw the consequences and convert to Catholicism.

But perhaps I should not yet be over enthusiastic. It might also be they do not deplore Luther as much when they think of this as Luther against Catholic Church, only when they see the fruits centuries later.

Here is the passage:*

A dichotomy is what occurs when a whole unit is split into two universal, non-overlapping parts. The two parts are universal, in the sense that both together make up the whole, but are also non-overlapping in the sense that the material in each part is entirely separate from the other, with no intermingling between. This is precisely the system of reality that most Christians have adapted today, with devastating consequences.

Modern Christianity tends to treat the world, all of reality, as being comprised of two entirely different realms: The sacred realm, consisting of the things which are holy and spiritual, and to which a Christian ought to pay most attention, and the secular realm, those areas to which the Bible does not speak, and which are much less important for a Christian to engage. The sacred realm generally includes things such as theological beliefs, personal morality, family dynamics, church government, and perhaps ethical behavior. These are the areas to which pastors and church leaders consistently teach, and which are emphasized as having preeminent importance for the Christian. The other half of reality is entirely different, and does not overlap with holy or sacred things at all, it is considered secular. This generally includes areas such as law, government, science, philosophy, psychology, economics, and sociology. In these areas, Christians are rarely equipped with a biblical view, because in most church’s estimations, they are simply unimportant or, worse, a distraction, from the sacred things, such as prayer, or evangelism.

Well, in this sense, the founder of Modern Christianity was Martin Luther.**

He was well aware that divorce and remarriage was against the law of God. Nevertheless he argued that the state should recognise it, since he argued the laws of the state need have nothing to do with the laws of God.

That is ONE of the reasons why I found Martin Luther insatisfactory in my teens. I had already suffered at school from a secular law divorced from the laws of God.

So, which is it, CMI?

Will you reject Luther and reaccept Catholicism, because Luther founded the Modern Christianity whose view you deplore?

Or will you cling to Reformers and say this essay of yours was a mistake, because it logically attacks Martin Luther?

Or, third option, will you say "never mind about logic"?

You are generally doing a good work about Creation Science, and on my own Creationist blog I often refer to you.***

And what you are saying today in the article I cited, the one by Rachael J. Denhollander, you are saying something really good.

There is, of course, alas, a fourth option : going covenanter. Opposite end from dichotomy is celebrating a total immersion of all societal aspects under the direct supervision of pastors of Reformed Churches, like Calvin basically did. And Knox. And Cromwell. But this has not been your style so far.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Ignatius of Loyola
31-VII-2015

* On : CMI : If the foundations be destroyed
by Rachael J. Denhollander
http://creation.com/foundations-destroyed

** Exactly as the founder of Modern Judaism was Kaiaphas.

*** Creation vs. Evolution
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com