Does relativism come from Protestantism?

[Contarini]

Mark and Contrarini,

I’m convinced. I’m going to backtrack on my conversion. It doesn’t really matter. I’m going to invent some new truth to which I will be firmly committed. I’ve wasted enough time with Catholicism. I don’t need it. I can’t make a decent living being a Catholic anyway so I’m out a here. Whether you join me or not won’t make any difference since your truth is as good as mine. It’s just that I want to retire someday and it doesn’t look good financially that I stay Catholic. Since my knowledge is what determines truth I’ll just make up my own truths as I go along. I guarantee that my truths are going to be less expensive that the Catholic truths. In fact I guarantee that I will make more money.

Let’s see…who will be my Creator? Shall I have sacraments? Most religions do. I wouldn’t have to have any but my tastes run that way so I will. I’ve always liked the smell of burning leaves. So there it is. I’ll burn leaves for my sacrament. I like chant so I’ll play some chant music interspered with a little Rimsky Cosokav and Bach.

I’ll do some more thinking and describe the rest of my religion later. It’s all true and none of it is relativistic because I will believe it firmly. I promise.

CDL

Gregory,

I thought we were getting somewhere, and then you relapse into this kind of illogical rant. I repeat: you are seriously misrepresenting both myself and Steadfast. We are not saying what you insist that we are saying, and I can’t for the life of me see what we have said that gives you this impression.

For what it’s worth, I think your link between Protestant national churches and the rise of relativism has a lot of merit. In the early modern period, truth came to be defined by governments, and at the same time modern philosophers claimed to establish “objective” rational grounds for believing what the government said everyone should believe. No wonder that postmodernists came to see the whole notion of objective truth in a cynical light. They were right with regard to much of the modern project. They were wrong to universalize this cynicism.

Furthermore, in the absence of state churches, Protestant divisions multiplied to the point that it came to seem ridiculous for one of them to claim to have the truth.

We could have a serious, respectful conversation about these things. But it’s hard to do this when every few posts you make a completely irrelevant and groundless outburst accusing us of being relativists.

In Christ,

Edwin

 

[GregoryPalamas]

Edwin,

Yes, your analysis is fairly correct but when truth says that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism… and state Churches are popping up all over the place it is hard to see how your argument that protestants aren’t by definition relativists can be sustained.

At any rate I don’t see the point in continuing the discussion. Each time I point out what is obvious you become offended. Ok. Let it be.

CDL

 

[Steadfast]

My name is Mike, not Mark, unless you’re talking to someone else…

It’s not a big deal though.

GP, I find it so tedious to wade through caricature and ridicule sometimes…I really should just not bother to do it at all; i.e. I should just not react when I see it.

So anyways, cheers, btw, I have a good number of Lebanese Maronite friends here in Detroit. Or, I did at one time anyway. Now I’m married and conjugally cloistered.

 

[GregoryPalamas]

Mike,

Sorry about the name confusion. I left Protestantism because of the chaos in it. New doctrine every week. I got sick of it. We seem to go around and around in ever dizzying circles. I don’t see your point and you don’t see mine so I’m going to drop it.

CDL

 

[lak611]

An opinion piece bitching that Protestants aren’t excommunicating people?

Thanks for making my point for me:

Hilary Rodham Clinton is Methodist.

The UMC is, effectively, “pro-choice”

The Bishops of the UMC refuse to excommunicate Clinton.

Now, we can take the UMC and Clinton to task for their view on abortion, but we cannot possibly take them to task for behaving in accordance with their stated doctrine; i.e. for not excommunicating her because if we did we’d be criticising them for behaving in consistency with their confession though not with what we believe to be an objective truth.

In short, we’d be missing the forest for the trees.

Like Frank Pastore does in the article you linked to.

Now, if she were a Missouri Synod Lutheran or a PCA Presbyterian there’d be a point. But, as it is, there is no point and the article is doubly pointless since it merely wrings it’s hands over an injustice it doesn’t ever really get around to substantiating; which is to say, no examples are given of the leadership of Protestant denominations who are pro-life refusing to discipline pro-choice politicians who happen to be members.

So, the article is bunk.

Well, what about Nancy Pelosi? The Catholic Church has not excommunicated her. John Kerry has not been excommunicated either.

 

[Chancellare]

Chancellare,

You’ve hit the nail on the head. I would add that the French Revolution and finally the Thirty Years war ending with the Peace of Westphalia as visceral challenges against any obedience to truth. Christians have been fighting a defensive war against relativism ever since. It has pretty much overtaken Protestatism and is a serious challenge to Catholicism.

I’d like to think that all of this was an unintended consequence of Luther’s actions but his open letter to the German Princes seems to indicate that this is what he intended.

CDL

Gregory,
The panorama of historical events that laid the foundation of secular and atheistic thinking in Europe did not stop there. Of course the French Revolution and the Thirty years War, as you correctly added, were logical offsprings of the precursors Enlightenment movement. The sad part was that the parents did not foresee the kind of offsprings they begot. What started as a juvenile revolt against church authorities ended up destroying all forms of orthodoxy in the whole European society. Even the pioneers who populated the first US colony were Calvinist puritans who abhorred the Presbyterians and the Anglicans in 16th century England. My study points to a sad connection between Radical Enlightenment to Protestantism to Secularism and the logical relativism spawned when combining all the historical antecedents.
Here’s short list of the connection I’m talking about:

• Radical Enlightenment: 1550-1650 - taught Europeans that Catholic orthodoxy and authority is the root of the ills in European society, which eventually led to Protestantism which inturn to total rejection of religion and all Biblical and Church teachings.
• Protestantism and Reformation: 1500-1750 occurred almost during the Radical Enlightenment period.
• Calvinism - . His “pure doctrine” is gained by appealing, not to tradition, the “deposit” of faith, but to argument in abstract terms exercised upon Scripture. He is neither a critic nor a historian; he takes the Bible as something given; and he manipulates the Apostles’ Creed in accordance with his own ideas. In short, popularized personal revelation from Scriptural reading.
• Puritanism - an offspring of Calvinism. Some of the things Puritans complained about included: ministers wearing surplices (loose, white garments); people kneeling while taking Communion; ornaments, paintings and stained glass windows in churches; the playing of organ music during services and the celebrations of saints’ days. They also disapproved of other Puritan groups such as the Anabaptists, Quakers and Congregationalists and wanted them suppressed.
  Puritanism landed in US soil in 1621 led by John Carver, a group who left England for Leiden, Netherlands and finding the Dutch system inhospitable, took the Mayflower ship to Plymouth, Mass.