I doubt it very much. Basics is probably one of the humblest people here.
I doubt it very much. Basics is probably one of the humblest people here.
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Exarch, Coughdrop addict
Has anyone read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics? It's a fascinating read.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran pastor and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was the first of the German theologians to speak out clearly against the persecution of the Jews and the evils of the Nazi ideology.
Ethics (German: Ethik) is an unfinished book by Bonhoeffer that was edited and published after his death by Eberhard Bethge in 1949.[1] The central theme of Ethics is Christlikeness.[5]
At the time of writing, he was a double agent; he was working for Abwehr, Nazi Germany's military intelligence organization, but was simultaneously involved in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.[4]
He intended Ethics as his magnum opus, but it remained unfinished when he was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo in April 1943. On April 8, 1945 he was hanged as a traitor in the Flossenburg concentration camp. As he left his cell on his way to execution he said to his companion, "This is the end – but for me, the beginning of life."
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Last edited by Prodromos; April 21, 2022 at 10:22 PM.
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Exarch, Coughdrop addict
I have only the slightest knowledge of him. An impressive person who navigated a very perilous moral position. As a true believer he'd have faced the wall under Communism, so his loyal service to Germany is understandable, and his treason toward Hitler admirable.
Bonhoeffer may be confused about the founding fathers mostly frank deism (they explicitly separated church and state and used the language of Reason and the Enlightenment and not the OT in the Constitution), but he makes very good points about the ethical paradox facing the various Left Wing movements from the French Revolution onwards of overthrowing the (sometimes self serving) rule of Gods law with something man made, a problem the revolutionary Founding Fathers themselves face.
A glib agnostic like myself will evade the ethical comparison by claiming "Gods Law" is also man made, but genuine Christian belief is free to criticise the replacement of a (fairly coherent) ethical set of norms with something cobbled by a journalist (for example) and it has to be faced.
I like to proclaim "humans are descended from apes" but also "chimps are (in human terms) cruel and violent but humans shouldn't be hehe guys amirite?" and I have to resolve those positions.
I'd like to weakly argue humans have put good (and bad) ideas of their own into the mouth of the God they believe in. I think its why we should respect religions and religious belief by default (but not absolutely), as people who love God will tend to ascribe their best ideas to the Divine. As I'm just a flawed and stupid human it may well be I am wrong and the best laws do come from God.
The jibe of Moral Relativism exposes my moral position to the slippery slope argument. I would counter "Gods law" (especially in the OT) is no completely coherent and does not represent a "natural moral pole" from which decline, although it does contain exceptional and wonderful moral principles as well (especially the NT). I think OT law has slipped down a few slopes too, as has Christian ethics, having succumbed to pressure to support slavery, racism and intolerance at times.
Jatte lambastes Calico Rat
As I said I enjoy telling of what Christ did for me and could do for you if only you would believe it. Does that make me feel superior to anyone? To tell the truth at times I do because I get amazed by the numbers who cannot or will not see what's right before their eyes as I once did too. I speak of course that there is indeed a God in Whom our present and future lies, Who took a sinner like me and put me in this position amongst you all so that I can tell from experience in the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ is truly the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Most if not all the typically regarded “Founders” were opposed to the atheization of American culture and warned against it, and Bonhoeffer's critique alludes to the reasons why. I don’t believe but if anything it has only made me more aware of what they understood.
Originally Posted by John AdamsOriginally Posted by George Washington, Farewell Address to the NationOriginally Posted by GW, Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789Originally Posted by GW orders to the troops, requiring of all officers strict observance of weekly Christian church serviceOriginally Posted by Thomas JeffersonOriginally Posted by Ben FranklinOriginally Posted by James MadisonOriginally Posted by Alexander HamiltonOriginally Posted by Patrick HenryOriginally Posted by John Jay, first Chief JusticeOriginally Posted by George Washington, Resigning as Commander in Chief
Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII
Political figures are in this weird spot where they're either Christian or non-Christian, depending on which can be used to hurt Christians more.
So you'll often hear people argue that a certain Founder who identified as a Christian wasn't really a Christian because he held an unorthodox view on one theological issue or another, and in the next breath argue that Hitler was a true Christian despite the fact that he denied pretty much every distinctive Christian doctrine, simply because at one point in his life he publicly identified as a Christian.
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Exarch, Coughdrop addict
Yes there's certainly hypocrisy in the attacks on many Christians and on Christianity as well.
Bornhoeffer is a valuable figure because he's an example of a Christian life lived in action, in a climate of hostility to the form of Christianity he confesses. While there are elements of the political in his life, certainly his explicit moral position seems to be exemplary (and a positive example) of a Christian life.
When the religious element is less explicitly lived it is less clear. I confidently say i am a cultural Christian, without being a believer. Christianity is an embedded element of the British culture that is the dominant one in Australia. We celebrate Easter and Christmas in a concrete way, that is we cease normal government and business activity by law.
That said Australian society is pretty secular and while Christian mores and ethics are generally admired and sometimes adhered too, to a certain extent our Christianity is painted on. If you like you can say anything good I do is the shadow of my Christian culture, and the bad things I do are my turning away from Christ, that might be simplistic though.
I believe the conduct of the US founding fathers may fall into this sort of category? Its a difficult question. Privately many were churchgoers and prayer-givers. Others were not (Mr Franklin, a sort of founding God Father perhaps?) was quite suited to Paris social life (possibly the most unchristian thing in the world at the time).
In their rhetorical language God and the Creator feature strongly, not denying Christ, and geneally they are positive toward the Church without espousing its doctrines. However Mosaic Law does not get a mention in the actual constitution, rather "self evident truths" of the Creator. This is Enlightenment Deism where the rubber meets the road. YHWH and Deuteronomy are not in any of the Bill of Rights, Voltaire and Rousseau's ideas are clearly apparent and Moses are absent. The Founding fathers seem, to shrink from the more extreme Rationalists who (a bit meanly, but they are reacting to the worst extremes of Papism and Political Protestantism) tear down Christianity as an imposture. They admire Jesus, declare his ethic preaching superior, but careful statements about Providence and the Creator show the infiltration of Reason into the House of Belief.
The separation of Church and state is a clear indication of Freedom of Conscience (a wonderful tenet central to the Age of Reason) as a central pillar of the Founding Father's political world view. This explicitly excludes the state-religion nexus central to so much of the Calvinist Inquistion states, the Commonwealth, much of the Ancien Regime, as well as earlier examples like Caesaropapism and God Kings, etc. Religion in the Unitted States is a matter for the citizen, not the State, and that is a huge change from much of Christian History from Constantine onwards.
It would be wrong to say the Founding Fathers were unchristian or not Christians. They were definitely all "cultural Christians" (yes a weak term), and many were faithful Christians. Not mutually exclusively many were Deists which most Christians today would say is not Christian (as many say Mormons are not, or as many say Hiong Xiuquan's preaching was not). Their public life scandalised many Christians concept of a Christian state (some loyalists saw it as a rejection of God's Anointed IIRC), and politically their state was separated from religion.
Its a great topic, its worth teasing out these meanings because as you say political figures have their religion switched on them for the sakes of arguments in ways the actual person might not agree with.
Just on the Hitler question, that ****ing bastard was a vile scum. His beliefs seem to have been a disguise, and the fact he was raised Catholic, and may have had a Jewish ancestor, or that he tried to impose some shabby concocted fake paganism on the German people do not bear at all on believers or participants in those faiths. The fact he was part of Western Culture is a disgrace to all of us and a warning to look for evil in our own hearts and not to try and pin the faults of a monster on some other group.
Last edited by Cyclops; April 22, 2022 at 04:58 PM. Reason: moral not oral, like not lie, typing too fast 'cause its an interesting point
Jatte lambastes Calico Rat
The Founders were, by and large, classically educated in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. Even amongst themselves they discussed interpretations and importance of the Biblical text as intellectual discourse. Harvard was founded to train clergy after all. Whatever their personal interpretations of God may have been, their widely held contempt for certain aspects of organized religion is too often interpreted as agnostic or atheist. Themes from Exodus were integral to how American colonists and the Founders themselves saw the destiny of America, a land chosen to, as Thomas Paine put it, “make the world over again,” that the God who delivered Israel from Egypt would deliver America from Britain. In his words, “A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now…..The birthday of a new world is at hand.” The relevance isn’t to their personal religious beliefs, but to the nature of what they were trying to build.
The American Republic was built not on the Christian religion, but on what Bonhoeffer called “the congregation of the faithful” who, as Christian refugees, collectively resolved to break the wheel and build a new country upon the law of God. As the Founders themselves often discussed, they are the glue which binds the nation together. Without them, as the Founders also warned, comes a return to the endless cycle of chaos and despotism the Founders saw in Revolutionary France, what Marx saw in history as tragedy and farce, and Hegel, his reference, as a slaughter bench. In Hegel’s case as well as the Founders, the progressive teleology of history as a dialectical battlefield was not random, but according to God’s will. And so, America’s forebears believed, the surest guarantee of American liberty and prosperity is grassroots obedience to the commandments of Jesus Christ. This is the core of what America is designed to be. As Truman put it: “The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount…If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.”
Last edited by Lord Thesaurian; April 22, 2022 at 08:44 PM.
Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII
As I see it man gets what he votes for and it is not necessarily what he expected. Power corrupts and there isn't a nation in all history that has not suffered corruption.
Jesus and the Successful Man
Originally Posted by Dietrich BonhoefferThe figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard. Such thought is a denial of eternal justice. Neither the triumph of the successful nor the bitter hatred which the successful arouse in the hearts of the unsuccessful can ultimately overcome the world.
Christ confronts all thinking in terms of success and failure with the man who is under God’s sentence, no matter whether he be successful or unsuccessful. It is out of pure love that God is willing to let man stand before Him, and that is why He sentences man. It is a sentence of mercy that God pronounces on mankind in Christ. In the cross of Christ God confronts the successful man with the sanctification of pain, sorrow, humility, failure, poverty, loneliness and despair.
God's acceptance of the cross is His judgement upon the successful man. But the unsuccessful man must recognize that what enables him to stand before God is not his lack of success as such, not his position as a pariah, but solely the willing acceptance of the sentence passed on him by the divine love.It was precisely the cross of Christ, the failure of Christ in the world, which led to His success in history.
Only in the cross of Christ, that is, as those upon whom sentence has been executed, do men achieve their true form.
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Exarch, Coughdrop addict
Aye and mankind thought they were doing them a favour when they crucified Him, little knowing He was actually saving many from a Wrath far far worse.
A distinguished bishop, a priest, and a mere peasant are in a great cathedral. In turn the priest and bishop approach the altar rail, beat their chests and declare, “I am nothing. I am nothing.” The humble peasant, moved to imitate, shuffles to the altar and says the same thing. The bishop turns furiously and hisses in the priest’s ear, “Who the hell does he think he is?”
Christopher Insole, “Kant for Christmas”One searches the New Testament in vain for a theology of the laity. Neither laymen nor priests can be found in it, at least in the sense in which we understand those words today.
Alexandre Faivre, The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church
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Exarch, Coughdrop addict
Originally Posted by John Calvin
Originally Posted by Matthew 20
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" For by Grace are we saved.........."
Prodromos,
For sure rather than having a god hanging over us the undeserving Christian has God within him or her.
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Sir Adrian,
Salvation being of God then it must be by Grace for no sinner ever deserves to be saved. What Kellor is saying is that if it was down to man the privileged would benefit over the poor, but alas thankfully, it is God Who by His Grace has chosen all them that are or will be saved. That Grace is fulfilled when a person is born again of the Spirit of God, is imputed with the Faith of Jesus Christ the results being their good works from then on. So what are these good works? Why, preaching the Gospel and obeying the Commandments without fear or favour, to rich and poor alike is all that a Christian can do and that is what James is talking about.
No literally says that salvation is not by works, which is a contradiction of the Bible. It's true that no man deserves to be saved and can save himself which is why you must strive to become as Christ-like as humanly possible, and the only way to do that is through ceaseless prayer and good works. Simply claiming to believe in Jesus is insufficient. Those who truly believe also do works.
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Sir Adrian,
Salvation is clearly not by works, why? Lest anyone can boast that he or she did it rather than God. As for ceaseless prayer and good works the Jews have tried that and failed for centuries. Jesus said, " A man must be born again of the Spirit of God if he is to enter heaven." and " No man can come to the Father except by Me and, no man can come to Me except the Father draws him." How does the Father draw anyone? By the working of the Holy Spirit in breaking through the hardened heart so that that person realizes just how impossible a plight he or she is in and then begs for repentance, which itself is a gift from God should He grant it. Rebirth is the key to being saved and that is all the work of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son and God the Holy Spirit.