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Ani_Ibi
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Occam’s Razor. Arr-arr-arr-arr-arr!You put “Philosophy:” in front of the thread title.
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Zooey
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There’s something to be said, though, for the fact that the survivors of the Plague may very well have been deeply traumatized by it…(One of my relations/ancestors went into a 19th influenza epidemic a Free Methodist pastor, survived, but became a drunkard & a domestic tyrant. Today, we might call it PTSD. Then???
).Whether you died in the Black Plague, or you lived through it, you may well have been so wounded by what you saw,that you were never able to shake it…
And surely, there were many who lost their faith in a God of love altogether…
I don’t think that we, sitting here on this side of the development of antibiotics, modern sanitation, & a knowledge of how disease is spread, can ever imagine what it was like to live even 100 to 200 years ago, much less in the Plague years…
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Ani_Ibi
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Given that Luther’s parents regularly beat him to an inch of his life – so much so that he claims to have entered the monastery to save his life – it is my view that the Plague caused some sort of collapse in him, like PTSD.There’s something to be said, though, for the fact that the survivors of the Plague may very well have been deeply traumatized by it…(One of my relations/ancestors went into a 19th influenza epidemic a Free Methodist pastor, survived, but became a drunkard & a domestic tyrant. Today, we might call it PTSD. Then???
Yet folks look at Luther’s ideas, not how those ideas served to keep the demons of his disease at bay – albeit in an illusory and temporary manner.
Moreover they don’t look at how those ideas might keep various contemporary demons at bay – albeit in an illusory and temporary manner.
I have found few folks – none actually – who are enraged with the Church but who actually know what the Church teaches or who actually have a real issue with the Church. The rage usually comes from somewhere else in a person’s life and the Church is the target of convenience.
Luther’s response to the Church was bellicose at the very least. It was not the response of someone who had found answers but who had found an ever-spiralling cascade of problems – problems which the growing throngs of nationalist land grabbers were happy to encourage him to keep.
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cpayne
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You know, this question relates to your earlier question to toaslan, “When did philosophy depart from nature?” I don’t know that there was a specific “when,” since this tendency goes way back, even to the Sophists. But there are general tendencies that crop up all the time all over the place in philosophical discussions; two of these general tendencies are Nature and Culture.
So when I think of people “claiming to be philosophers,” I think of Culture. Once separated from an objective grounding standard, people can think up anything and everything regarding human life: what is good / bad, right / wrong, the meaning of life, the best political organization, true / false. Anyone’s opinion about anything might be true, if it’s true within that person’s culture or even family or even personal life.
On the other hand, I think of what’s called “the perennial philosophy”—philosophy grounded in the idea of an objectively existing human nature, and the inferences we can draw from the analysis of that nature.
So, for example, both Nietzsche and Aquinas talk about being “true to your nature” in order to discover what is good, true, and right. But Nietzsche is talking about our own irrational passions and personal desires as our “true nature,” and Aquinas is talking about our common human rationality as our “true nature.”
I think this is why some people can even think of gay “marriage” as being “natural” for them. Their sexual preference doesn’t follow the rational ordering of their human constitution (Aquinas), but it does follow their passions and desires (Nietzsche). Which part is their “real nature”? If it’s the latter, the idea of a general reason and a general nature can be dropped out of our cultural life. Once we abandon the idea of a general Nature, all kinds of things can go under the name of “philosophizing.”
So instead of thinking of “philosophy” as such, I think of good tendencies / bad tendencies / indifferent tendencies, within the realm of human reasoning.
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Zooey
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I did not know that!!It would make perfect sense, that a later trauma might have caused him some form of inner collapse.
ETA: Then he may, perhaps, have had no genuine calling to the priesthood in the first place…
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Ani_Ibi
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Could you explain please? Thank you.
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Zooey
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There is a phenomenon that I have seen in the few people that I have met, who have left what seemed like a genuine call into fulltime Christian service, which is that they seem to have such a dramatic personality change…Many times, they seem to have had other motives for pursuing the priesthood, ministry, missionary service, etc.Could you explain please? Thank you.
Sometimes, it was the pressure of family & friends. Sometimes, a desire for a radically different way of life. (Which might have been achieved by, say, a move to another part of the country…). Soemtimes, they have even imagined a scene of some dramatic impact…but which bears little resemblance to a call/vocation.
In other words: Some people seem to see a life of service to the Church less as something they are going to, for God’s sake, and more like a desperate attempt to escape something unbearable in their previous lives. (This may be a variation on the theme of the person who develops “hysterical amnesia”…They, for emotional reasons, rather than physical trauma, lose their memories of the past.)
So we have Luther, who was deeply troubled by the horrific experience of watching the Black Plague decimate the population of his world…But now, I find that he had actually fled from a deeply troubled & abusive home, seeking refuge in the monastery…
The plague would have been a reinforcement of his belief in the world as a dangerous place. (Well, & so it was, but we are assuming his actions were unreasonable). He then repeats his earlier reaction to trauma: Flee into another world. But there is no other world to flee into at that time…So, he in effect, creates a world to flee to…
But why would his faith & his vocation not sustain him? It is true (& I gave the case of my step-great-grandfather) that a presumably genuine call might be forgotten in the midst of an emotional firestorm… Still, the degree of Luther’s reaction to Tetzel has always seemed over the top to me. (Who nails anything, be it good, bad, or indifferent, to the door of a church??? Much less a list of complaints??)
No, what struck me, is the very real possibility that he may, on some level at least, known that he was not called to be a priest; he may have needed an acceptable reason to get out of his home. Lacking one, he either imagined, or even outright invented a divine claim on him, thus creating a reason to leave that did not involve admitting that he was, quite simply, afraid…Which may have been a reasonable fear, given the degree of the abuse…And considering, as we must, that the acceptable degree of beating children in his day was far beyond what would bring in the law at this day & age…
So, he seizes on the one thing that no one can prove is not true: a vocation. How can anyone know whether he has one or not? If he plays his cards right…
And years later, he repeats this reaction to a stressor–this time the plague. He finds–or invents–a reason to flee the monastery, this time. To flee, once again, from a world that has become too much of a threat.
It may not have been coldblooded. It may have been that he had deceived himself into believing he was called, in order to go with his head held high. Or he may have been too traumatized to realize what he was doing.He may even, like some modern PTSD sufferers, have had some form of delusions. The same can be true, of his flight from the religious life.
It would fit in with his previous actions…far better than if we assume he was truly called to be a priest…
It would fit other things, too: He heard voices; he once imagined that a
devil was in his study & smashed an inkwell over its head! This is very, very interesting…
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Ani_Ibi
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Yes. Moreover he made transferences – from his father who illegitimately exercised his parental power – to the Church who legitimately exercised authority.
In his mind he equated wrongful power to (legitimate) authority.
Yes, this is insightful. This was his mistake. All those doctrinal ‘reforms’ were not his mistake. The mistake he made was succumbing to the temptation to not trust anyone but himself.
His religious community was directing him quite well at this time and offering him comfort. Instead of listening to them, he took things into his own hands. He succumbed to scrupulosity. He beat himself, starved himself, went without sleep, isolated himself. No wonder he was delusional.
It was not about Solo Fides. It was about Solo Luther.
And to Eck. Even to Henry VIII. He did not simply disagree. He raged, attacked, slighted, and destroyed. There was a significant disproportionality to his protests.
I had not taken into account the shame he might have felt at having failed at his job. Of course, he was failing at his job. First of all he took a disproportionate responsibility for the death and suffering of the Wittenburg Plague. Then he spent his time doing what he wanted to do to assuage his shame and his duties fell by the wayside. Then he moved from shame to real guilt.
The threat was the need to trust. He would not trust anyone but himself.
I do not believe that it was initially coldblooded. I believe he was sick. But it sure got coldblooded. Many deaths resulted from the Reformation.
But to get back to the OP: Folks back then did not have the knowledge of mental illness that we do now. Hek, we did not even have knowledge of mental illness until very recently. PTSD, for example, is still overlooked, not treated, hidden, fraught with shame.
Luther was a casualty.
The thing is that Luther’s response spoke to many who were looking for reasons not to trust. Certainly the nationalist princes and knights stood to gain much by breaking up the old order and by manipulating Luther. How many biblical scholars do you think there were among the common people at that time? How many could even read?
Yet leaving the Church obviously held much appeal for them. And that’s the point, it was not the Diet of Worms which persuaded. It was the drama of leaving the Church. Even when the abuses of individuals within the Church were rectified, neither Luther nor many who had left came back.
And they have not come back since. In fact they have continued to take the geographical solution to their problems: don’t understand something, afraid of something, then leave! And thus we see the phenomenon of the 33 000+ denominations.
In our own times we encounter people who rage against the Church. I believe that their rage is disproportionate to the problems they identify. They are displacing their anger from individual difficulties to the symbol of authority always and everywhere present in the world: the Church.
And this rage is very bourgeois. Of course it is politically incorrect to approach the middle class as having unresolved individual problems. So their disfunctions are validated by a secular humanistic society who have taken the easy way out and whose priorities are to take advantage of the vulnerable and suffering in order to gain power.
In conclusion, I would say that in the time of Luther the Church community did the best with what they knew then. What is our excuse now? Is there a connection between the rampant normalization of distrust and individual autonomy with the descent of the West into night?
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Truthstalker
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:yup:
Note that smiley stands alone. I disavow any involvement with his opinions. His opinions are his alone and are not necessarily those of this poster. Frankly, I don’t trust the little twerp.
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katy
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In the original post, Francis Schaefer was mentioned. I actually read a book of his, given my by a Protestant staying in my house for a conference. He mistakenly thought I was Protestant. Anyway, I remember that FS blamed Thomas Aquinas for all the problems in the Catholic Church, mainly for looking back to Aristotle. I thought this was strange. Does this pertain to the difficulties protestants in general have with the Church? I have several Protestant friends who are distressed with the way their churches are tending in regard to abortion, homosexuality, marriage, etc. I would like to tell them to just come on Home, but I am sure they would be taken aback.
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toaslan
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YES! The Catholic Church gets that grace builds on nature. Our natures are still intact though wounded. Protestants think with Luther that we are dung: Human nature is corrupted. So for them there is this disconnect between faith and reason. They are tempted to see a contradiction between the two. They are suspicious of reason, like the Spanish are of house pets. They think the Catholic Church has false pride in and impious reliance on logic and human intellect.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about: “The Perennial Philosophy”! It’s the path less traveled by, but the one that takes you to the True West! The right understanding of “Nature” is essential for true philosophy–love of wisdom…
Ani Ibi:
Sounds as wise as that similar wise saying of, I think, Sheen’s…
I’m really enjoying this thread, but no time to be too thoughtful; will look forward to catching up with it in about 2 weeks. Happy Memorial Day to you! God bless all those who died in defence of our country.
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cpayne
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I agree with what toaslan said. Schaefer thinks of Aquinas as being too empiricist in orientation, relying too much on sense observation and logical inference from those observations. FS thinks (1) our rational powers are flawed by sin, and (2) Aristotelian philosophy is an example of the philosophy that “by human reason did not find God,” as the Bible puts it.
Aquinas thinks that (1) reason is trustworthy, as a gift from God, although we tend to use it in wrongful ways and evil pursuits (because we are fallen), and (2) we do need biblical revelation to know God more accurately as He is, but philosophy can provide the “preambles to faith” accessible to all rational creatures, whether Christian or not.
I agree with Aquinas so much as to be rather anal-retentive about it.
Aquinas thinks that (1) reason is trustworthy, as a gift from God, although we tend to use it in wrongful ways and evil pursuits (because we are fallen), and (2) we do need biblical revelation to know God more accurately as He is, but philosophy can provide the “preambles to faith” accessible to all rational creatures, whether Christian or not.
I agree with Aquinas so much as to be rather anal-retentive about it.
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cpayne
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In fact, thinking about the split of nature from philosophy and this whole “descent of the West” thing: I’m seeing religious roots here. A lot of our pathologies are caused by the split of reason and faith. Thank God for “Fides et Ratio.”
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