Luther! Read Read!

[Catholic_Dude]

Steven Merten:

Hello Edwin,

So Luther believed that either, God infused faith into us and we are saved or man had faith and now God will not allow him to sin OR people turn away from, Jesus and the Father, love for God and neighbor, faith and salvation, through sin. Well if you ask me, that is a pretty big OR.

Here is where I think C’s and P’s are talking past eachother.
I havnt been keeping up like I should, but I made some importatnt points(eg post 123) which I dont remember if it was discussed or not.

I realized something important after Contarini told me that Luther considered things such as even thinking or even being tempted about sins as a sin…it struck me. Luther got a kind of total depravity mindset where he found himself in a bottomless pit of iniquity he unkowingly created. Yet it was all smoke and mirrors the whole time.

Thats where faith alone comes in, and the hatred of works, he saw** himself** as unable to avoid any sin as well as the mountain of sins he thought he was guilty of, and therefore faith alone was the only way to see himself as justified.
Faith Alone was never the issue, it was the solution.

 

[Contarini]

Sherlock:

Well, you’ve made my point for me. Contarini stated that the worst that could be said about Luther’s personal morality was that he used “nasty language”. Let me add to that your list, namely that he was (at least in this case) unwise and harsh without measure.

In his words. The substance of what he taught was standard 16th-century belief.

that latter is going to be defined by Luther, a man with questionable attitudes towards the oppressed masses; no protection against teaching error (infallibility); and no apostolic succession.

Yes right. You seriously think that the Magisterium in the 16th century had a more sympathetic attitude toward the “oppressed masses”? Please indicate this. Show me a papal document expressing sympathy with the peasant rebels. You’ll be a long time looking.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Sherlock:

Ah, yes, “personal morality”.

You’re missing the point. Luther’s view that governments should kill rebels had nothing to do with his teaching. The argument being made on this thread is that Luther’s teaching led to lower morality because he thought sin couldn’t hurt you as long as you had faith. Luther’s views about the evils of rebellion were no different than those of most sixteenth-century people. They aren’t due to his peculiar beliefs on salvation.

What garbage.

If you bothered to follow the argument you would be spared the necessity of invective. I’m not condoning his attitude. I’m saying that it had nothing to do with his teachings. Condemn him, and you condemn just about every member of the elites, Catholic or Protestant, in the sixteenth century.

Gee, how did I know that the line, “Catholics were bad too!!!” was coming?

Perhaps because this is the obvious response when a blatant double standard is invoked?

bad Catholics, whether they be bishops, priests, or layman (and even popes), —are all accountable to orthodox Catholic teaching

That makes your position worse. Why didn’t this orthodox Catholic teaching condemn the killing of rebels? Can you find any evidence that orthodox Catholic teaching was any different from Luther’s position?

those words don’t carry the weight of doctrine

And what on earth makes you think that Luther’s words are any weightier? Catholics have this bizarre notion that everything that came out of Luther’s mouth is dogma. That isn’t even the case with the most hardline confessional Lutherans. Sorry, but this doesn’t let you off the hook. Condemn Luther on this point, and you condemn 16th-century culture generally. Both sides raced to paint the other side as having sympathy with rebels. Protestants argued that the Catholic Church was a rival to the divinely ordained authority of the state (you see this especially in England). Catholics argued that Protestantism led to the overturning of all lawful authority. You’re charging in with a completely anachronistic perspective and applying it selectively to Luther. This is blatantly unfair.

what words of Luther’s carry weight today, and which ones don’t?

Depends what you mean by weight. All Lutherans, and many other Protestants, regard Luther as a highly significant theologian, like Augustine or Aquinas (and yes, we respect those guys as well). So we take what he said seriously. But we think that he, like all theologians, was full of it sometimes, and often reflected cultural attitudes rather than the Gospel. As far as having actual doctrinal authority–for Lutherans, only the Confessions (as found in the Book of Concord) have such authority. Luther’s teachings that didn’t make it into the Book of Concord are no more authoritative for Lutherans than Aquinas’s teachings are for you.

in the end, why bother?

Because I’m a historian, and it’s my job to help people understand history fairly. Furthermore, many people on this board labor under the delusion that if they refute Luther they have somehow refuted Protestantism.

how come Lutherans haven’t formally apologized for their role in such atrocities as the aforementioned Peasant Revolt, or the Nazi Holocaust?

I suggest you take this up with the Lutherans. The Holocaust is irrelevant to this thread. As for the peasant revolt–when Catholics apologize for every peasant revolt (including the 1525 one) violently suppressed by Catholic rulers, then Lutherans have reason to concern themselves with the issue. Luther’s statements are singled out (and were particularly violent in tone) because Luther was being blamed for the revolt. So he had to show that he was on the side of civil authority after all, just like any good Christian.

Because he is a wonderful example of the inherent relativism of Protestantism. Or rather, your defense of him is:
is there any authority that you can claim to support his views,

Why would I want to support his views? I disagree with Luther on all sorts of stuff. I’m just trying to refute erroneous and illogical statements about him. How that is relativistic is beyond me. I have no problem saying that the sixteenth century’s obsession with stability and authority led to religiously sanctioned brutality on a horrifying scale. I’m not a relativist about it at all. It was wrong, period. But this applies to Catholics and Protestants alike.

And if Scripture is the only authority, then by what standard is the Catholic interpretation of Scripture judged to be wrong? I mean, if Protestants can’t agree among themselves about essential matters, how does it follow that Catholics are wrong in their interpretation?

None of this is really relevant, but it’s a blatant example of a non sequitur. Protestant failure to agree doesn’t make Catholics right.

 

[Contarini]

Let me clarify one thing about the “personal morality” argument, because I think it’s being misunderstood. (Not that you are trying very hard to understand, frankly.) My point was that Luther’s teachings did not lead him to go out and offend against commonly accepted standards of morality. I was not claiming that this justified his actions, only that his example (and that of most Lutherans historically, I should add) does not bear out the claim that his teachings led to widespread moral laxity.

Sherlock:

How does rebellion against oppression constitute a deliberate and persistent engagement in sin?

Because the “powers that be” are ordained by God and armed resistance to authority is unqualifiedly sinful. Medieval theologians debated whether in certain circumstances resistance to tyranny was legitimate. Many thought that it was, but only in carefully defined circumstances. The Lutherans themselves debated this with regard to whether Lutheran rulers had the right to resist the emperor. Luther himself was very slow to accept any right of resistance at all, by anyone. His friends and allies finally persuaded him, reluctantly, to give his blessing to the formation of a defensive league of Protestant states and cities within the Holy Roman Empire.

Peasant revolts were never as far as I know regarded as legitimate by the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure of this. I’m not claiming that this was right, only that you can’t legitimately single Luther out for sharing the horror most educated and privileged people felt at these revolutionary movements.

So why, then, is Luther’s rebellion regarded favorably by Protestants, but the peasants’ rebellion is not?

I’m glad you asked, because this touches on one of the truly devastating aspects of Reformation ideology. The Reformers generally saw state authority as legitimate but rejected the idea that the Church formed a parallel hierarchy with rights of its own, as in the medieval system. Some of the Reformed, particularly Calvin and those who followed him, came relatively close to the Catholic position on this, and they were attacked by other Protestants as “new papists” for this reason. But even Calvin denies that obedience to the higher power covers obedience to the regulations of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that are not warranted by Scripture (though I don’t think he makes a good argument for why this is the case).

If you want to blast the Protestants for handing over all authority (essentially) to the State, I’ll be right there with you. Unquestionably the Lutherans were far too subservient to the civil power.

In short, the answer to your question is that the Protestants didn’t regard the Catholic hierarchy as having any legitimate authority (at least not the papacy–to some extent they did recognize the authority of the local bishops; at least some of them did).

did those peasants that Luther proclaimed as all going to hell, really go to hell?

How would I know? I would certainly think not. How is this relevant?

I never said that Luther’s condemnation of rebellion was the result of the “immoral influence of his teaching”.

Then you were not responding to anything I was saying and you have done nothing but distract from this thread.

I’m saying that his support of the brutal suppression of the peasants was personally immoral, though you claim that his “personal morality” was guilty of no more than nasty language.

By “personal morality” I mean the extent to which one lives up to the moral standards commonly accepted in one’s society. Thus, a slaveholder in the Old South could be personally moral, but would still be guilty before God of participating in a deeply immoral system. Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear. My only point was that the view of which Luther is accused (go back and read the first post in this thread) did not find expression in a personal violation of morality as he understood it. He did not think that he could go out and do whatever he felt like even if it was immoral. If you actually cared about the argument, you would have bothered to figure this out. I have made it clear throughout this thread that this is what I am talking about. But no–any stick is good enough to beat Luther with!

Edwin

 

[Steven_Merten]

Contarini:

I have said over and over that Luther thought that a person could not deliberately, persistently engage in serious sin and still have true faith–either such a person did not believe in the first place or they had chosen to turn away from Christ in order to give in to the flesh. No one has disproven my argument, and most of you simply ignore it.

Edwin

Hello Edwin,

I do not know if you missed my post 195 or not.

Are you saying Luther believed that “faith alone”, which brings us justification and heaven, will be judged by Jesus on the grounds of who, through free will, turned to sins of the flesh, and who did not?

Wow! Please give us some quotes from Luther stateing this. Can you not see how such quotes from Luther can be used to bring true ecumenanism between Catholics and Lutherans?

Peace,
Steven

NAB MAT 19:16
“Teacher, what good must I do to possess everlasting life?” He answered, “Why do you question me about what is good? There is One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." “Which ones?” he asked. Jesus replied “You shall not kill”; ‘You shall not commit adultery’; ‘You shall not steal’; ‘You shall not bear false witness’; ‘Honor your father and mother’; and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

NAB JOH 5:27
"The Father has given over to him power to pass judgment because he is Son of Man; no need for you to be surprised at this, for an hour is coming in which all those in their tombs shall hear his voice and come forth. Those who have done right shall rise to live; the evildoers shall rise to be damned."

NAB REV 22:12
“Remember, I am coming soon! I bring with me the reward that will be given to each man as his conduct deserves. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End! **Happy are they who wash their robes so as to have free access to the tree of life **and enter the city through its gates Outside are the dogs and sorcerers, the fornicators and murderers, the idol-worshipers and all who love falsehood.”

NAB ROM 2:6 (St. Paul is speaking)
. . . when he will repay every man for what he has done: eternal life to those who strive for glory, honor, and immortality by patiently doing right; wrath and fury to those who selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness.

 

[angelmessenger]

Yes right. You seriously think that the Magisterium in the 16th century had a more sympathetic attitude toward the “oppressed masses”? Please indicate this. Show me a papal document expressing sympathy with the peasant rebels. You’ll be a long time looking.

Hi Edwin,

While we’re waiting for Contarini to get back to you I thought I would explain that the Church doesn’t anywhere say that her members are free from sin–We only have to look at Judas!

Jesus gathered His 12 Apostles from weak men; During his passion one denied him, one betrayed Him and all ran away except one–St John—If only one or two members remain with the Church–there is the Church

God bless

Jan

 

[Sherlock]

Contarini:

Perhaps because this is the obvious response when a blatant double standard is invoked?.

I never invoked any double standard. That is, I never posited that some individual Catholics (including popes) did not have a poor personal morality. Most informed Catholics will agree that in 2000 years we’ve had about a dozen popes with a poor personal morality—that’s simply a fact. My only point was to say that your contention that Luther’s only bad mark on the personality morality report card was “nasty language”. I disagree: Luther’s support of the slaughter of peasants constituted a black mark. I would say the same for any Catholic who advocated the same. No double standard invoked here…

 

[Sherlock]

Contarini:

In short, the answer to your question is that the Protestants didn’t regard the Catholic hierarchy as having any legitimate authority (at least not the papacy–to some extent they did recognize the authority of the local bishops; at least some of them did).

Edwin

But this doesn’t really answer the question I had posed, which was, how was Luther’s rebellion OK but the peasants’ rebellion was not? I mean, the answer that the Church has no authority such as princes and kings do; and so rebellion to the Church is a “good” rebellion, while peasants rebelling is not; is simply not borne out by the history of Protestants persecuting Catholics, or intra-Protestant fraticide. Apparently, the only rebellion that is OK is the one that happens to be yours. Ah, the joys of relativism…

 

[Sherlock]

Contarini:

By “personal morality” I mean the extent to which one lives up to the moral standards commonly accepted in one’s society. Thus, a slaveholder in the Old South could be personally moral, but would still be guilty before God of participating in a deeply immoral system. Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear. My only point was that the view of which Luther is accused (go back and read the first post in this thread) did not find expression in a personal violation of morality as he understood it. He did not think that he could go out and do whatever he felt like even if it was immoral. If you actually cared about the argument, you would have bothered to figure this out. I have made it clear throughout this thread that this is what I am talking about. But no–any stick is good enough to beat Luther with!

Edwin

Oh, I forgot to address this in my previous posts. In short, what you are saying here is that there is no natural law: as long as someone is acting within the “moral standards commonly accepted in one’s society”, then one’s personal morality os OK. By this logic, the gassing of Jews was OK in your eyes because it was permissible, by the commonly accepted moral standard of Germany at the time of WWII. Hitler was OK, then, unless he used nasty language or practiced some other violation of societal mores. This is relativism, which I (as a Catholic) reject. If Luther advocated the brutal suppression of peasants, his personal morality was lacking. If Catholics advocated the same, their personal morality was lacking. There’s no double standard here: what’s curious is that you want to separate Luther’s personal morality from natural law. I am not advocating doing the same for anyone, Catholic or Protestant.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Steven Merten:

Hello Catholic Dude,

Luther,No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to

kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day.

This does not sound like Luther is giving the same warnings that Jesus gives.

It’s hyperbole - just like the equally “immoral” words of St. Ignatius Loyola.​

And it should be put in context - that’s what would happen if this passage occurred in the works of a Doctor (here one thinks of the vile words of Chrysostom and others, about the Jews ) But no - it’s from Luther, and Luther was a ravening devil in human form ; so all his preaching and his other teaching that is not liable to be misunderstood, is completely overlooked. He is to be judged on a handful of quotations which make him look like a monster.

Is that fair ? ##

**

NIV JOH 14:15

"If you love me, you will obey what I command." INT JOH 14:23Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.” NAB JOH 15:9"As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Live on in my love. You will live in my love if you keep my commandments, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and live in his love. All this I tell you that my joy may be yours and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you." **NAB JOH 15:22 **“If I had not come to them and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; now, however, their sin cannot be excused. To hate me is to hate my Father. Had I not performed such works among them as no one has ever done before, they would not be guilty of sin; but as it is, they have seen, and they go on hating me and my Father.”

NAB MAT 25:41

Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." (ISA 58)NAB JOH 12:44Jesus proclaimed aloud: “Whoever puts faith in me believes not so much in me as in him who sent me; and whoever looks on me is seeing him who sent me. I have come to the world as its light, to keep anyone who **believes **in me from remaining in the dark. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I am not the one to condemn him, for I did not come to condemn the world but to save it. Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words already has his judge, namely, the word I have spoken it is that which will condemn him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own; no, the Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to speak. Since I know that his commandment means eternal life, whatever I say is spoken just as he instructed me.”

NAB MAR 10:17

"Good Teacher, what must I do to share in everlasting life?" Jesus answered, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments:

’You shall not kill;
You shall not commit adultery;
You shall not steal;
You shall not bear false witness;
You shall not defraud;
Honor your father and your mother.’"
**

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Catholic Dude:

Contarini-

If that quote means what it looks like, Im happy that he is exposed so clearly and can show protestants a clear example of what Faith Alone leads to.

Ok, fair enough. But I guess I dont understand how FA stops someone from sinning. Lets say someone did commit 10 murders in a bank robbery, how do they reconcile themself back to Christ?
Ill look into that Galatians work.

That is no different from saying that the sacrament of reconcilation is an inducement to sin. Which is precisely what has often been said, using the reasoning in your post​

Someone who cares about the love of Christ, and knows Him by faith, is not going to commit murder. On the contrary - faith and love will be immense obstacles to sin. Why is this so hard to to understand ? Do we go and commit murder, robbery, and arson as a fruit of being absolved ? Of course not !

Is it so hard to believe that Protestants who live by faith are not aspiring Mafiosi ? ##

 

[angelmessenger]

Although Luther did not invent anti-Jewishness, he promoted it to a level never before seen in Europe.Luther’s 1543 book, “On the Jews and their lies” took Jewish hatred to a new level when he proposed to set fire to their synagogues and schools, to take away their homes, forbad them to pray or teach, or even to utter God’s name. Luther wanted to “be rid of them” and requested that the government and ministers deal with the problem. He requested pastors and preachers to follow his example of issuing warnings against the Jews. He goes so far as to claim that “We are at fault in not slaying them” for avenging the death of Jesus Christ. Hitler’s Nazi government in the 1930s and 40s fit Luther’s desires to a tee

By Jim Walker.

 

[J.Boller]

Sherlock, Contarii wrote that the Southern slave owner would still be responsible to GOd.
His definition of “personal morality” is morality in connection to Society. The slave holder lived in a society in which everyone had slaves, so his actions were considered moral.
Nobody said that there is no such thing as objective morality. In fact, Contarii specifically said that there is-by saying that the slave holder (or Hitler) would be responsible in front of GOd-and for that very reason he employed the concept of personal morality to keep the two concepts apart.

The point being made is that all of the established society at the time of the Reformation was against the peasant revolts. It wouldn’t be fair to expect Luther to see through the injustice of the system when no one else could (except the peasants, obviously).
Was Abraham Lincoln amoral because he was a racist by modern standards? I’d say no. Will he still be accountable to GOd? Maybe, insofar that he knew what he did was wrong.

Angelmessenger, maybe you are right in saying that Luther was a bigger anti-Semite than his contemporaries, my knowledge is much too limited to say.
However, Luther’s writings did did not cause the Holocaust. A long history of anti-Semitism beginning in the time of the church fathers and culminating with the Daggerstab Theory was what led to the Holocaust. There was a small Protestant church fraction in Germany at the time which was hugely anti-Semite, but it’s teachings were not what influenced Hitler or the German people in general.
I understand your argument, but the Holocaust connection was both trite and tasteless.

 

[Contarini]

Although Luther did not invent anti-Jewishness, he promoted it to a level never before seen in Europe.Luther’s 1543 book, “On the Jews and their lies” took Jewish hatred to a new level when he proposed to set fire to their synagogues and schools, to take away their homes, forbad them to pray or teach, or even to utter God’s name. Luther wanted to “be rid of them” and requested that the government and ministers deal with the problem. He requested pastors and preachers to follow his example of issuing warnings against the Jews. He goes so far as to claim that “We are at fault in not slaying them” for avenging the death of Jesus Christ. Hitler’s Nazi government in the 1930s and 40s fit Luther’s desires to a tee

By Jim Walker.

Who is Jim Walker and how is he an expert on sixteenth-century anti-Judaism?

The champion of Catholicism John Eck repeated the blood libel (indeed, I’ve heard it claimed that articles in L’Osservatore Romano and Civilta Cattolica were repeating this absurd claim as late as the early 20th century); Luther did not.

Willibald Pirckheimer got the support of many highly placed Catholics for his program of destroying Jewish books, before Luther ever expressed any such ideas.

Walker provides no support for his claim that Luther took anti-Judaism to a new level. You give us no reason to think that he knows anything about the subject. He gives no specifics comparing Luther to Catholic figures like Eck or Pirckheimer. So why should we believe him?

The classic book on this subject is Heiko Oberman’s *The Roots of Antisemitism *(just to show that I’m not making this up out of my own head). The reference to Eck believing in the blood libel comes from a conversation with Prof. Hans Hillerbrand of Duke University. I admit that I encountered the claims about Catholics supporting the blood libel as late as the 1900s in Cornwell’s *Hitler’s Pope. *While I don’t trust Cornwell’s interpretations at all (and generally find them unconvincing), I presume that he wouldn’t simply manufacture evidence like that; and I have seen the claim corroborated in another work, but don’t remember its title. Hence, I left somewhat of a question-mark against that assertion. But with regard to the 16th century I’m pretty confident. Luther was jumping on an existing bandwagon. He was hardly a pioneer.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Sherlock:

Oh, I forgot to address this in my previous posts. In short, what you are saying here is that there is no natural law: as long as someone is acting within the “moral standards commonly accepted in one’s society”, then one’s personal morality os OK.

No, I’m saying absolutely nothing of the kind, and your claim is flat libel. I’ll say it one more time, as simply as possible:

Angelmessenger said that Luther’s teaching “allowed him ease from his conscience.” My point was and is that Luther never thought it was OK to stop following his conscience (I’m not sure that’s what Angelmessenger was saying, BTW; I just wanted to make sure that this was understood). I’m not disputing that Luther’s conscience was badly formed in many respects, and that this was objectively evil. But his conscience on matters such as Jews or rebellions was formed (badly, we both agree) by the norms of a pre-Reformation society. (I say “pre-Reformation” rather than “Catholic” because not everything in pre-Reformation society was pleasing to the Catholic Church; while I think the Catholic Church was guilty of supporting brutal use of government power and vicious prejudice against Jews, the matter is complicated and we might as well set it aside for now.)

I have never said that this was “OK.”
I have never made a statement about Luther’s personal guilt or innocence (about which I know nothing, any more than I know whether St. Thomas More was subjectively guilty for his cruel persecution of Protestants; I only know that it was objectively wrong).
I have certainly never denied the existence of a natural law or objective morality. Your claims to this effect are flatly false, and you owe me an apology.

We agree that the cultural attitudes of which we speak were objectively evil. My only point is that Luther’s words and actions in these areas were not motivated by the belief that it was OK to sin; he thought (as most people of his day would have thought) that it was a good thing to uphold authority against rebellion even if that involved brutality.

You are taking my words completely out of their context, and since you continue to do so after I have explained the context, it’s hard to remain patient with you.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Sherlock:

But this doesn’t really answer the question I had posed, which was, how was Luther’s rebellion OK but the peasants’ rebellion was not? I mean, the answer that the Church has no authority such as princes and kings do; and so rebellion to the Church is a “good” rebellion, while peasants rebelling is not; is simply not borne out by the history of Protestants persecuting Catholics, or intra-Protestant fraticide.

That doesn’t make any sense. Where did Luther sanction “intra-Protestant fratricide”? We are talking about Luther’s views, not mine. I have never said either that Luther’s rebellion was OK or that the peasants’ rebellion wasn’t. If anything I’d tend to think the opposite.

Rejecting an authority that has no claims over you is not rebellion. For me to deny that the People’s Republic of China has lawful authority over me is not rebellion. From Luther’s point of view, the Pope had no more authority over Christians in Germany than China has over the U.S. So it wasn’t rebellion at all. Similarly, Luther reluctantly came to sanction the view that it was OK for Protestant states and cities to resist the emperor. This, he argued (though he took some convincing) was not rebellion but simply self-defense.

I have no quarrel with your claim that this was a rather skewed way of looking at things, and that if Luther had had more sympathy with the peasants he would have seen that they also could claim simply to be defending themselves.

But that is not relativism, any more than the use of a blatant double standard against Luther by the Catholics on this board is relativism. It’s simply injustice and prejudice, which is quite different. You need to stop using the word “relativism” to let yourself off the duty of thinking about the actual issues here.

Edwin

 

[angelmessenger]

**So vehemently did Luther speak against the Jews, and the fact that Luther represented an honorable and admired Christian to Protestants, that his written words carried the “memetic” seeds of anti-Jewishness up until the 20th century and into the Third Reich. Luther’s Jewish eliminationist rhetoric virtually matches the beliefs held by Hitler and much of the German populace in the 1930s.

Luther unconsciously set the stage for the future of German nationalistic fanaticism. William L. Shirer in his “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” puts it succinctly:

By Jim Walker**

 

[Contarini]

You still haven’t told us why we should believe Jim Walker, or on what basis he is comparing Luther with other figures of his day. Without that, everything you are saying is meaningless.

I’ll trust Heiko Oberman, one of the most respected Reformation scholars of the 20th century (and for what it’s worth he was in the Dutch Resistance as a teenager, so he had personal involvement in the question though he wasn’t Jewish) over this Jim Walker person any day. I googled him and he’s an atheist propagandist with no scholarly credentials that I can see. He cites no Luther scholarship (the only secondary scholarship he cites is on Nazism). Why on earth are you putting such trust in the unsupported claims of this guy?

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Sherlock:

I never invoked any double standard. That is, I never posited that some individual Catholics (including popes) did not have a poor personal morality.

Let’s get our terms clear. If by personal morality you mean people doing what they would admit is wrong, or what is commonly accepted as wrong in their culture (which is what I meant by it), then we are in agreement.

However, from the way you have misinterpreted my remarks it appears that by “personal morality” you simply mean morality in general. And that’s hopelessly vague.

It’s key for my argument to distinguish between the wrong things people do which they clearly recognize as wrong, or could reasonably be expected to do so (even if they don’t like to admit it), and the evil things that are held to be good because of warped cultural values (recognizing that all cultures are warped in some way or another). To repeat (since you seem determined to misinterpret me on this point): I’m not disputing that these warped cultural values are objectively evil, nor that when the evil is blatant and horrendous there is something in every human heart that witnesses against it, however much it may be smothered.

The example of Luther’s attitudes toward the peasants and the Jews clearly refers to the second category of cultural evils rather than a personal defiance of known rules of morality. That’s all I’m saying. And if you condemn Luther, then you condemn the Catholic Church.

Subsuming this under “personal morality” gets you off the hook, but it’s clearly wrong. When a Pope kept a mistress or embezzled money or used indulgences to finance his family’s political ambitions, that was “poor personal morality.” But when abbots and bishops routinely participated in oppressing the peasants (which they did to such an extent that peasant rebellions singled out monastery lands for attack); and when the Church never hinted that this was in any way wrong, and fully supported the rulers in their suppression of the rebellion; well, that goes beyond personal morality. It reflected a widespread assumption that the rights of the ruling classes had to be maintained. And this assumption was not unique to Luther.

I suppose you can call me a relativist if by that you mean that I acknowledge how great a role culture plays in what we see as right or wrong. But I think that’s a silly misuse of language, because I emphatically don’t believe that cultural attitudes are morally neutral. Nor do I believe that cultural norms can completely override the moral law written on the heart. If I’m a relativist, then the Catechism of the Catholic Church is also relativistic for recognizing that people can have badly formed consciences.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

P.S.

I’m leaving to one side the question of just how far the suppression of the peasants was blatantly, obviously immoral. Clearly the excesses were. But was it wrong to kill people who were coming with weapons to sack a castle and kill and rape the people in it? I would say not. Luther was given exaggerated and biased reports about the atrocities the peasants were committing.

I know people on the Internet who said openly that looters during the Katrina disaster should be summarily shot. Is this that different from Luther’s position (as he saw it–recognizing that his perspective was highly biased and he didn’t recognize the fact that many of the peasant groups were actually very restrained and reasonable)?

Others on this very board have condoned the bombing of Hiroshima. I’d argue that dropping an atomic weapon on a city, killing women and children, is far worse than slaughtering armed men who have demonstrated their hostile intent. But we could argue about that.

I’m not condoning Luther’s views. I’m pointing out that even today the question of just what kind of lethal force is legitimate (tied up with the factual question of just how dangerous and unjustified our enemies are–a question we are incapable of judging with entire fairness while in the middle of the crisis) is a deeply contested one among serious, orthodox Christians. That’s not relativism, it’s just pointing out the objective facts!

Edwin