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Title: 5 Ways To Not Celebrate The Reformation’s Quincentenary This Year
Source:
The Federalist
URL Source: http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/24 ... formations-quincentenary-year/
Published: Oct 24, 2017
Author: Peter Burfeind
Post Date: 2017-10-25 19:05:22 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 3492
Comments: 20
In case you missed the memo, this October 31 is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 Theses on the Wittenberg doors, beginning the Protestant Reformation. A movement of such immense and lasting effect will obviously induce strong feelings. Some of those feelings spring from genuine Reformation issues. Others are rooted in a fantasy of what the Reformation was about, dictated more by what people want it to mean rather than what it actually meant. Here are five of the big misinterpretations of the Reformation to avoid this year. “Catholicism” is not a dirty word. It’s also not a denominational label. It’s what the Christian church is confessed to be in the Nicene Creed. If a church is not catholic, it is not Christian by any historic standard. To be catholic is to claim a universality in space and time, in space with the church across the globe and in time with the church of all ages. Sects are not catholic. Personality cults are not catholic. This is why the reformers had to claim continuity with the historic church. From the historic catholic church, they received and confessed the biblical doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the atonement, and the sacraments, to say nothing of the Bible itself. Their writings repeatedly referenced not only ancient and medieval fathers, but even canon law. Martin Luther himself was a doctor of theology in the Catholic Church, a supervisor of Augustinian monks, and sought to be a faithful servant of the Catholic Church. There’s an argument to be made that had he arisen earlier or later, his movement would be something akin to Augustinianism or Thomism, a school of thought within the greater Western Catholic tradition. Luther would have been appalled that a church was named after him. That’s what schismatic sects did. On the Roman Catholic side of the equation, consider how on several issues the pope’s church embraced Luther’s reforms. Communion is routinely offered in both kinds. The mass is done in the language of the people. The Bible is encouraged to be read. Luther’s famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress,” is even in the Roman Catholic hymnbook! Luther did not separate himself from the catholic church. He was excommunicated by the pope, and for challenging a fundraising racket that went all the way up to the papacy. Luther was shocked by the pope’s involvement and had naively believed Peter’s successor would be just as alarmed by the sale of indulgences as he was. Luther realized the practice of selling indulgences could only be propped up by a corrupted substructure of other doctrines. Luther was a Tea Partier doing a massive diagnostic on the engine of medieval Christianity, hoping to undo a divergent, anti-evangelical (technically, semi-Pelagian, anti-Augustinian, or Neoplatonic) movement of late medieval Christianity, not unlike the way Tea Partiers hope to purge American governance of the anti-Constitution progressive movement. The point is, Luther’s goal was not a radical departure from tradition, but a conservative restoration of catholic Christianity. To celebrate the Reformation as a rah-rah anti-catholic moment in history, one must hitch his wagon to a different movement in Christian history, and that’s the Gnostic or millenarian movements. These always existed in the margins of Christian history, often oppressed, but always united in their anti-clericalism, anti-sacramentalism, and prophetic enthusiasm. Such were the Gnostics in the ancient church and the millenarians in the Middle Ages. These were the “spiritual but not religious,” “I believe in Christ not his church,” and “God is bigger than a church” advocates of the day. Offended by the notion that mere flesh and blood could contain God (i.e., Jesus), they placed greater emphasis on the unbound God who had no need for clergy, sacraments, and formal doctrines. Unbinding God from clearly demarcated forms—the sacraments, the Word, ordained clergy, the flesh and blood of Jesus—blurs the line where God ends and I begin. This opens the door to cults of personality, extreme puritanism, and charismaticism. If I believe myself to be an instrument of God through the cooperation of my inner faculties with God’s unbound Spirit, what else could happen? It also leads to political radicalism, as charismatic leaders and their cult followings decree themselves God’s hand in history bringing about the “new age” or Kingdom of God. This was the position of Joachim of Fiore, the fountainhead of multiple medieval millenarian movements all united in their anti-clericalism, anti-sacramentalism, anti-intellectualism, charismaticism, belief in prophecy, puritanism, communalism, radicalism, and expectation of the imminent coming of God’s kingdom on earth: a new age for the new man. In any event, the Reformation-era manifestation of millenarianism is what has come to be known as the Radical Reformation, whose spiritual heirs were the Pietists, Puritans, revivalists, and the general drift of American evangelicalism today. To confuse Luther’s Reformation as an ally to these millenarian movements, or a culmination of them, does an injustice to the historical record. Luther soundly rejected the Radical Reformation and its anti-ecclesiastical, anti-catholic, anti-sacramental, Gnostic-millenarian roots. W. F. Hegel is responsible for the progressive and Marxist interpretation of the Reformation, that it was all about liberated consciousness. This interpretation is rarer today. Given the current postmodern tendency to consider all things western as evil (excepting, somehow, the distinctly western heritage of postmodern thought), liberal commentators are more likely to focus on Luther’s supposed anti-Semitism. But when they do celebrate him, they do it on Hegelian terms. Hegel is the father of the idea of progressivism, that History is a movement of divine forces working through raised consciousnesses. From Hegel comes progressives’ habit of speaking of “the right side of History” and against “turning back the clock,” as if history has a given end divined only by those with enlightened thinking. Understanding Hegel reveals why progressivism is truly a Gnostic religious movement. Hegel grew up in Wurttemberg, a hotbed of Pietism and millenarianism, which he absorbed. A student of the Enlightenment, Hegel’s project was to cloak his millenarian vibes in the empirical terms of the Scottish Enlightenment. His result was a demythologized millenarianism that gives scientific accreditation to establishing the Kingdom of God on earth. On theological terms, Hegel is the emblem of why evangelical movement has historically devolved into unitarian moralism and political movement, where the government becomes a replacement church. First, the focus of theology transfers from the external—from the clearly demarcated forms of God’s presence (sacraments, dogma, the church, and ultimately Jesus Christ)—to man’s internal faculties cooperating with God, what Hegel following the German mystics identified with the gemut (German for “heart, mind, feeling, temper”). Then begins that fuzzy line between God and me referenced above. I begin to feel I’m God’s hand in history acting out his will to bring about his kingdom. Hegel’s entire project was to rarefy this moment and demythologize it from its Christian conceptual framework. For Hegel, Luther’s movement was a critical point in western history when Christ’s teaching began to be rarefied, or liberated from, its anchoring in the church’s dogmatic teaching authority. Think of it as God leaking out from the Sacrament and being reconstituted in the DNA of raised consciousnesses acting out in political movement. Political philosopher Erik Voegelin rightly called Hegel a work of magic, or alchemy. In any event, Hegel’s premise was just wrong for reasons identified in point two. If, as Perry Miller brilliantly observed, millenarian movements like Puritanism and Pietism liberated people from the treadmill of indulgences but put them on the “iron couch of introspection”—thus paving the way for a Hegelian modernity obsessed with the Self and its enlightened role in inaugurating the new age—Luther rejected this sort of navel-gazing and put the focus on the extra nos (outside of us) gifts of the gospel. The Reformation is not a triumph of the self. If anything it’s a restoration of Augustinian pessimism about the self, rooted in the doctrine of original sin, against a rising humanism in the western church. Given the failed project of progressivism and the constant reminder of humanity’s potential for evil, perhaps Augustine’s and Luther’s ideas should have currency. Piggybacking on the last point, Luther’s famous stance at the Diet of Worms, at which he boldly proclaimed “Here I stand,” is often seen as a triumph of the self against the powers that be, a sign that the stranglehold of institutions on the minds of men was beginning to end. This suits American culture’s post-1960s default existentialism. Accordingly, Luther, like Jesus, was all about cultural iconoclasm, about freeing self-expression from the cultural strictures of the man. Heck, Jesus was the first hippy, wasn’t he? As I write in my book, “Abstracted and then dislocated from any doctrinal, ecclesiastical, or sacramental grounding – these things being way too establishmentarian – Jesus must become a mental projection, an internally-created invisible Guide, a phantasm…. . Jesus becomes nothing more than an abstracted projection of my Self re-cloaked in a Jesus deconstructed from the Gospels, and given back to me in a way that says, Hey, you’re OK just the way you are, because I am just like you.” This is the modern Jesus. It’s a stamp of approval on one’s idealized self. If one is gay, then Jesus is not a homophobe. If she’s a feminist, Jesus was all about empowering women. If he’s liberal, Jesus was all about and only about love and tolerance. If he’s a Marxist, Jesus was all about lifting up the poor and universal health care. Luther’s life story is mustered to this cause. Luther, in other words, was not about directing hearts and minds to the Word of God and Jesus Christ, but about “staying true to himself.” Jesus’ ministry was all about this as well. You couldn’t find a more revisionist history than this. A favorite interpretation of the Reformation is that it was against “legalism” and “Pharisaism.” This derives from Reformation teaching that we are not saved by obedience to God’s law, but through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. “The Law,” though it had a quite specific meaning to Luther—God’s standard of righteous perfection which Christ fulfills and we cannot fulfill—is understood to mean any sort of standards at all. This is the form of biblical interpretation that says, “Whatever’s not in the Bible is permissible.” It’s the “what can we get away with” way of reading the Bible. After all, it was those Pharisees who imposed rules and regulations on everyone, and Jesus was against them. This abuse of the Reformation comes up frequently in discussions of worship practices. Whenever an objection is made to idiosyncratic worship forms that reject all tradition, however biblical and evangelical those traditions may be, the objectors are accused of legalism and Pharisaism. “Where does the Bible support being against clowns in worship?! That’s what the Pharisees did!” Actually, the Pharisees were the “You gotta change with the times” religious party in Jesus’ day, and Jesus was the stick-in-the-mud conservative wanting to go back to Moses’ teachings on the Law. Jesus didn’t reject, but fulfilled, the Law. The idea that the gospel means being liberated from all standards is antinomianism on steroids, a lazy approach to biblical interpretation leaving out any sense of Christian discernment. Like the last point, it masquerades self-expression and self-obsession as Christian piety: “Don’t tell me I can’t lead the congregation with my guitar solo. I’m on fire for the Lord!” Closely related to this concern over “legalism” is the odd claim that any sort of appeal to doctrine or attention on the sacraments is “legalism,” as if legalism is a synonym for preciseness, exactitude, definition, or even just a focus on externals. So, for instance, when someone says you need to be baptized, go to communion, or follow scriptural teaching on communion practice, the retort is, “We’re not saved by the law!” This muddles mandates with legalism. If someone has a gift for you and says, “Go into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and get the gift I have for you,” that’s not a legalistic command, but a mandate defining the terms for receiving the gift. Jesus himself has defining terms outlining his presence, that being his body and blood. It is not legalism to tell the leper, “Jesus is over there, defined by the flesh and blood person there; go to him and pray, ‘Lord, have mercy.’” When the reformers did the same with the doctrines and sacraments of the church, precisely defining the terms for their reception, it was not legalism. It was faithfulness to a Lord whose great gift to us was precisely that, making himself a definable and demarcated, flesh and blood person, so as to be with us, who likewise are definable and demarcated, flesh and blood persons. The Reformation was about a lot of things. Pick your poison this October 31. Discuss how Luther’s more literal interpretation of scripture clashed with the more allegorical (read: Neoplatonic) approach of the Middle Ages. Discuss the differences in understandings on grace between Luther and the scholastics. Discuss what, if anything, the human will is capable of before God. Discuss the nature of the church and its ministry. Discuss how new information technologies contributed to the Reformation, and what that can tell us about today. Discuss the legacy of the Reformation and what it means for faith in Christ. But it doesn’t help to ignore Reformation history and revise its meaning. Lazy glosses of history might pass for things like the 129th anniversary of some event, but not the 500th. Poster Comment: Some interesting points on the philosophic roots of the Reformation and its cousin, the Radical Reformation. In case you missed the memo, this October 31 is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 Theses on the Wittenberg doors, beginning the Protestant Reformation. 1. The Reformation Celebrates Anti-Catholicism
2. The Reformation Was the Coming of Age of Oppressed, Anti-Rome, Pre-Evangelicals
3. The Reformation Is about Liberated Consciousness
4. The Reformation Is All about the Triumph of Self against The Man
5. The Reformation Was Against ‘Legalism’ and ‘Pharisaism’
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#1. To: All, Vicomte13, redleghunter, BobCeleste, A Pole, GarySpFc, Liberator, A K A Stone (#0)
Pretty meaty article, avoids deep theology to examine the history and social impact of the Reformation and, even more, the Radical Reformation and how they have changed (and also remained the same) over the centuries. Plenty of stuff here in easy reading format for any of us to consider. A subtle writer, IMO. Obviously, he knows his topic well. I forgot to include his bio info with the article. And from his website, GnosticAmerica.com, a bit more. His website pulls no punches.
There is only one Church that can claim it. A hint, the one in the midst of which Council of Nicea took place.
That church is long gone. There is a successor of the same name but it has pedophile priests, corrupt popes, instigated the holocaust of the Serbs during WW II, supported slavery and the most despicable colonialism as an institution, etc. IOW, that church of Nicea ceased to exist very long ago even if some so-called bishop of Rome is still parading about for the rubes. I do like how they put Santa at the bottom of the illustration though. So while your usual Romish prattle fails to impress, I see that you missed the larger point in the article, namely, that it is the rise of a gnosticism within all the churches in the form of generic "spiritualism" and "non-doctrinalism" that has returned us to face again the rise of a kind of gnosticism in the modern era. It is the same threat to all denominations who adhere to any relative measure of orthodoxy, to anything resembling the kind of Christianity that the councils of Nicea would find recognizable. Rome is no safer than the Protestants or various flavors of evangelicals. Which is the larger point of the article. At any rate, enjoy celebrating 500 years of Reformation this coming Monday.
The Catholic church is full of sin and deceit. It is not the home of the holy father. Popes regularly let pedophiles harm children.
Well, the point of the thread isn't so much the grossly fallen state of Rome but the rising threat of gnosticism in modern America, itself a continuation and expansion of the ideas of the blighted Radical Reformation. People often think that these are all dusty tales of mostly forgotten history but they are important to having any understanding of how we got from there to here and where we are headed. And in that sense, both Catholics and Prot types are threatened by the rise of the new gnostics in league with the secularists and the occultists.
OK. What is the official Christian church, then?
We do get some 'good' no nonsense Chaplains in the Army. However, I wonder how he handles the Baptist/Evangelical chaplains and Soldiers in his unit. He was unkind in his piece to those groups.
You are speaking of the Orthodox Church if I am not mistaken?
I'd say he was unkind to some of them, not all. I had to re-read those parts myself.
I won't throw stones at Latin/Western Church. But the Church I have in mind is Orthodox Church, Greek, Syrian Serbian, Romanian, Russian etc ... Council in Nicea and others of the Seven Ecumenical Councils that defined the basic Christian dogmas, what books belong to the Bible, and that called by the Christian Roman Emperors, and that at none the bishop of Rome was present, were conducted in Greek, not in Latin.
Constantinople I 381 Formulated the Second Part of the Creed, defining the
divinity of the Holy Spirit
Ephesus 431 Defined Christ as the Incarnate Word of God and Mary as Theotokos
Chalcedon 451 Defined Christ as Perfect God and Perfect Man in One Person
Constantinople II 553 Reconfirmed the Doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ
Constantinople III 680 Affirmed the True Humanity of Jesus by insisting upon
the reality of His human will and action
Nicea II 787 Affirmed the propriety of icons as genuine expressions of the
Christian Faith
Doctine and culture aside, no one can deny that the Orthodox have most faithfully preserved ancient traditions. In part, because Constantinople endured for a thousand years until the Muslim hordes arrived. Rome fell into a dark age during that time and engaged in a lot of papal novelty and rotten doctrine and corrupt habits in the hierarchy. You can't accuse the Orthodox of the same.
You are right. But one pedantic comment. Constantinople was the Rome, the Second and Christian Rome. The Third Rome was Moscow, and the Fourth will not be. We live in times preparing coming of Anti-Christ, the false Christ/Messiah.
You are not :)
Let Rome be Rome, Constantinople be Constantinople, and let your yeas be yeas and your nays be nays. There's no reason to pretend Constantinople is/was Rome. Byzantium had a rather glorious history and was a well-governed and prosperous land for many centuries, a record rarely matched by any ancient empires. No one needs to apologize for Byzantium IMO.
We Westerners sometimes forget the Eastern Empire was in constant large campaign wars with the various Persian dynasties. When the barbarians attrited the West to impotence, the East lost large areas of the empire to the Persians at the beginning of the 7th century under Heraclius. Even though Heraclius recovered his forces and soundly defeated the over extended Persians (quite a feat which included a winter offensive in the Levant and Mesopotamia in 627AD--Persia sued for peace) both empires would never recover to previous strength. Thus allowing a deranged pedophile to conquer eventually both empires. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine%E2%80%93Sasanian_wars#
I'd blame Byzantium's decline on bad trade imbalance with Italian city-states like Venice and on the Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade and the subsequent partition of Byzantium. Even though the eastern empire was eventually partially restored, it was fatally wounded, leaving it rather easy prey for the coming Muslim conquest by the Turks. While the Persian conflicts sapped the Empire, it's hard to say that those led directly to the fall of Byzantium over five centuries later. There was plenty of mismanagement and other conflicts and barbarians at the gates in the interim.
Constantinople was just the capital city of the Roman Empire. Emperor Constantine built a new Christian city in the place of provincial town Byzantium and moved the capital there from Mediolanum/Milan/Milano (Diocletian moved earlier the capital to Mediolanum from Rome). For the Romans and their neighbors of that time it was still Roman state, that was not called Mediolanium nor Constantinoplium, nor Newromium. Denial of the continuity of Roman Empire and calling it "Byzantine" Empire is entirely an invention of the later Western historians and propagandists, inspired by the Pope proclaiming kingdom of Franks the Roman Empire to replace the real Roman Rome with capital in the East. Good illustration that until this time Emperors in Constantinople were recognized as Roman is Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Venerable Bede in about AD 731. ======= "In the year of our Lord 582, Maurice, the fifty-fourth emperor from Augustus, ascended the throne and reigned twenty-one years. In the tenth year of his reign, Gregory, a man renowned for learning and behavior, was promoted to the apostolic see of Rome,' and presided over it thirteen years, six months, and ten days. He, being moved by divine inspiration, about the one hundred and fiftieth year after the coming of the English into Britain, sent the servant of God, Augustine, and with him several other monks who feared the Lord, to preach the word of God to the English nation." "Mellitus also sat among them, in the eighth year of the reign of the Emperor Phocas (602 to 610 AD), the thirteenth indiction, on the 27th of February" "This pope was Boniface, who came fourth after Pope Gregory, and who obtained of the Emperor Phocas that the temple called by the ancients Pantheon, as representing all the gods, should be given to the Church of Christ ; wherein he, having purified it from contamination, dedicated a church to the holy mother of God, and to all Christ's martyrs, to the end that, the devils being ex- cluded, the blessed company of the saints might have therein a perpetual memorial" "God preserve you in safety, most dear brother ! Given the 11th day of June, in the twenty-fourth year of the reign of our most pious emperor, Heraclius, and the twenty-third after his consulsliip ; and in the twenty-third of Tiis son Constantine, and the third after his consulship ; and in the third year of the most illustrious Caesar, his son Hera- clius, the seventh indiction ; that is, in the year of the in- carnation of our Lord, 634." Also Anglo-Saxon Chronicle "AD 583. This year Mauricius succeeded to the empire of the Romans." " interesting ... is the early medieval memorial stone at Penmachno, North Wales, which dates itself with reference to a Byzantine consulship, stating that it was erected 'in the time of the consul Justin'. This has often been thought to refer to the consulship of Justinus in AD 540, which would itself be a point of considerable significance, but it has recently been powerfully argued that the consul in question is actually more probably the Emperor Justin II himself, who was consul successively from 567–79. " From a letter of Pope Gelasius to the Emperor Anastasius in 494 (years after supposed fall of Rome: "There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty, since they have to render an account for even the kings of men in the divine judgment. You are also aware, dear son, that while you are permitted honorably to rule over human kind, yet in things divine you bow your head humbly before the leaders of the clergy and await from their hands the means of your salvation. […] If the ministers of religion, recognizing the supremacy granted you from heaven in matters affecting the public order, obey your laws […] with what readiness should you not yield them obedience to whom is assigned the dispensing of the sacred mysteries of religion." Letter from Pope Gregory II to Emperor Leo III (c. 727) in defense of Holy Images (Icons): "We have received your letter which you sent us by your ambassador Ruffinus. We are deeply grieved that you should persist in your error, that you should refuse to recognize the things which are Christ’s, and to accept the teaching and follow the example of the holy fathers, the saintly miracle-workers and learned doctors. I refer not only to foreign doctors, but also to those of your own country. For what men are more learned than Gregory the worker of miracles, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the theologian, Basil of Cappadocia, or John Chrysotom-not to mention thousands of others of our holy fathers and doctors, who, like these, were filled with the spirit of God? But you have followed the guidance of your own wayward spirit and have allowed the exigencies of the political situation at your own court to lead you astray. You say: “I am both emperor and bishop.” But the emperors who were before you, Constantine the Great, Theodosius the Great, Valentinian the Great, and Constantine the father of Justinian, who attended the sixth synod proved themselves to be both emperors and bishops by following the true faith, by founding and fostering churches, and by displaying the same zeal for the faith as the popes. These emperors ruled righteously; they held synods in harmony with the popes, they tried to establish true doctrines, they founded and adorned churches. Those who claim to be both emperors and priests should demonstrate it by their works; you, since the beginning of your rule, have constantly failed to observe the decrees of the fathers. [...] The making of laws for the church is one thing and the governing of the empire another; the ordinary intelligence which is used in administering worldly affairs is not adequate to the settlement of spiritual matters.[...] Just as the pope has not the right to interfere in the palace or to infringe upon the royal prerogatives, so the emperor has not the right to interfere in the churches, or to conduct elections among the clergy, or to consecrate, or to administer the sacraments or even to participate in the sacraments without the aid of a priest; let each one of us abide in the same calling wherein he is called of God [1 Cor. 7:20]. Do you see, emperor, the difference between popes and emperors? If anyone has offended you, you confiscate his house and take everything from him but his life, or you hang him or cut off his head, or you banish him, sending him far from his children and from all his relatives and friends. But popes do not so; when anyone has sinned and has confessed, in place of hanging him or cutting off his head, they put the gospel and cross around his neck, and imprison him, as it were, in the sacristy or treasure chamber of the sacred vessels; they put him into the part of the church reserved for the deacons and the catechumens; they prescribe for him fasting, vigils, and praise. And after they have chastened him and punished him with fasting, then they give him of the precious body of the Lord and of the holy blood. And when they have restored him as a chosen vessel, free from sin, they hand him over to the Lord pure and unspotted. Do you see now, emperor, the difference between the church and the empire?[...] Roman Empire under Justinian the Great:
Denial of the continuity of Roman Empire and calling it "Byzantine" Empire is entirely an invention of the later Western historians and propagandists, inspired by the Pope proclaiming kingdom of Franks the Roman Empire to replace the real Roman Rome with capital in the East. I can see why you would argue that. Also I see why the West considers Rome the heart of the Roman empire due to its separate history and longevity. The survivors write the history after all. Good illustration that until this time Emperors in Constantinople were recognized as Roman is Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Venerable Bede in about AD 731. I would call both Roman. The Latin and the Orthodox, Rome and Byzantium. But that is influenced by knowing the rest of the story, not just how it appeared to those living at that time. Had the Eastern empire not fallen, we would certainly take a different view. How bitter it must be for the Orthodox to see churches of Rome and Venice adorned with the sacred art looted from Constantinople. And to see the Renaissance, so much inspired by the manuscripts brought by the Orthodox to the West when they fled the final Turkish invasion. The fall of Constantinople and its Sack by Romish forces ranks as a tragedy of civilization with the loss of the Library of Alexandria.
Had the Eastern empire not fallen, we would certainly take a different view. Long after your civilization fails, future people might depict you in a way you would not recognize. Roman state lasted 22 centuries. First half as pagan and second half as Christian. Yet they saw themselves as Roman and had unbroken continuity. Western historians, especially since Enlightenment, hated the Conversion of Rome and hated Constantine the Great as a traitor and creator of Christian civilization. Statue in York where Constantine started his rise. Rise of Constantine 306-324AD: Reconstructed part of New Rome around 1200AD, near the Hipodrome.
Sailing to Byzantium
By William Butler Yeats
I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
I really like that statue, even the motto and their choice of font. Most statues are not as tasteful or skillfully executed. Here in America, we have especially awful statues with a few exceptions like the Iwo Jima memorial. It is beautiful. Too bad it is infested with Turks. I like the sea wall.
He really couldn't look much more like a Lutheran.
Peter M. Burfeind is a campus pastor at the University of Toledo and author of "Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture & Religion according to Christianity's Oldest Heresy." He blogs at gnosticamerica.com. Follow him on Twitter. Peter Burfeind serves as pastor at Holy Cross Lutheran Church and Student Ministry at the University of Toledo. He is also a US Army Chaplain and publisher of children’s educational materials (Pax Domini Press). He lives in Toledo, Ohio with his wife Jillian and four children.
#2. To: Tooconservative (#0)
It’s what the Christian church is confessed to be in the Nicene Creed. ... To be catholic is to claim a universality in space and time, in space with the church across the globe and in time with the church of all ages. ... This is why the reformers had to claim continuity with the historic church.
#3. To: A Pole (#2)
A hint, the one in the midst of which Council of Nicea took place.
#4. To: Tooconservative (#0)
#5. To: A K A Stone (#4)
#6. To: A K A Stone (#4)
The Catholic church is full of sin and deceit. It is not the home of the holy father. Popes regularly let pedophiles harm children.
#7. To: Tooconservative (#1)
He really couldn't look much more like a Lutheran.
#8. To: A Pole (#2)
There is only one Church that can claim it. A hint, the one in the midst of which Council of Nicea took place.
#9. To: redleghunter (#7)
However, I wonder how he handles the Baptist/Evangelical chaplains and Soldiers in his unit. He was unkind in his piece to those groups.
#10. To: Tooconservative (#3)
That church is long gone. There is a successor of the same name but it has pedophile priests, corrupt popes, instigated the holocaust of the Serbs during WW II, supported slavery and the most despicable colonialism as an institution, etc.
The Seven Ecumenical Councils
Nicea 1 325 Formulated the First Part of the Creed, defining the divinity of
the Son of God
#11. To: A Pole (#10)
I won't throw stones at Latin/Western Church. But the Church I have in mind is Orthodox Church, Greek, Syrian Serbian, Romanian, Russian etc ...
#12. To: Tooconservative (#11)
Rome fell into a dark age during that time and engaged in a lot of papal novelty and rotten doctrine and corrupt habits in the hierarchy. You can't accuse the Orthodox of the same.
#13. To: redleghunter (#8)
You are speaking of the Orthodox Church if I am not mistaken?
#14. To: A Pole (#12)
Constantinople was the Rome, the Second and Christian Rome.
#15. To: Tooconservative, A Pole, Liberator (#14)
There's no reason to pretend Constantinople is/was Rome. Byzantium had a rather glorious history and was a well-governed and prosperous land for many centuries, a record rarely matched by any ancient empires. No one needs to apologize for Byzantium IMO.
#16. To: redleghunter, A Pole (#15)
Even though Heraclius recovered his forces and soundly defeated the over extended Persians (quite a feat which included a winter offensive in the Levant and Mesopotamia in 627AD--Persia sued for peace) both empires would never recover to previous strength. Thus allowing a deranged pedophile to conquer eventually both empires.
#17. To: Tooconservative (#14)
(Edited)
Let Rome be Rome, Constantinople be Constantinople, and let your yeas be yeas and your nays be nays.
#18. To: A Pole (#17)
For the Romans and their neighbors of that time it was still Roman state, that was not called Mediolanium nor Constantinoplium, nor Newromium.
#19. To: Tooconservative (#18)
(Edited)
I would call both Roman. The Latin and the Orthodox, Rome and Byzantium. But that is influenced by knowing the rest of the story, not just how it appeared to those living at that time.
#20. To: A Pole (#19)
(Edited)
Statue in York where Constantine started his rise.
Reconstructed part of New Rome around 1200AD, near the Hipodrome.
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