Stephen, Just all goes to show you that nothing is new in all of this neo con hokum. The other day I heard a discussion about Clarence Thomas that spoke about him believing in "Natural Law." Chris Matthews the Irish Catholic brought it up as an example of how the Democrats are prejudiced against someone who was "religious." So who is religious and who isn't? Now the media is determining it and we are once again creating the wars of the middle ages. Erasmus said "enough already" and Luther said: "God likes war and will punish you if you don't do it for him, watch out for the holy spirit he's a bitch!" As for Calvin? According to what you said he is a follower of the male chauvinist Rabbis who eleminated Lilith from history when they canonized the texts. Stopping time and the evolution of truth and raising literacy to the level of Godliness. The Roman Catholic church has Mary, a stand in for Lilith, and therefore are pagans themselves since they believe in reason as a part of the holism of faith. You forgot to say that Calvin believed that the omniscience of God made it impossible for human freedom to exist. So that makes highways to heaven irrelevant as are all of the rest of this stuff.
How do you translate a verb oriented culture into a noun oriented language? Might it be possible that a true scholar would find that too arrogant and difficult to even try, realizing that anything resulting would be a compromise and therefore untrue? Opera's tough, it teaches you all kinds of things and ways to think as a result of the practical need to create a believable world on stage for a couple of hours. Maybe that's the reason all "philosopher" folks that I relate to were composers like Rousseau and Galileo's father or Da Vinci the painter or Beaumarchais. No simpleton's there. They knew that translations of a great drama didn't explain why all those characters speaking translations weren't just silly Englishmen all dressed up in costumes the English would never wear. You have the same prejudice against opera in America where they use "Italian opera" as a synonym for outlandish and strange. Of course it isn't at all. It just isn't "English" to think holistically about anything. The Italian artists I know would never think of translating an Italian poem into English. They say it wouldn't be real. It isn't just the phonemes. The layered meanings of the morphemes are not the same in English. So where does that put super-titles? In the same class as fundamentalists making their religion around translations of a bible from a culture they don't and don't want to understand. Its all in the morphs. Which is one of the reasons that no one these days likes Brown or Chomski. Brown knew that it is all in the morphs. Anyone who doesn't know that is just making it up. Sort of like trying to tell the mind of God in a simple story taken literally in translation. God is in the struggle with the process. Everything else is just shards of a broken pot. Now if Calvin had said that I might care more. REH ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Straker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 4:45 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Cloistered or not? The Holy Ghost is no Sceptic! > Brad: > > Here is how I decided to spend my evening ... composing an > answer to your question that got out of hand (my reply, not > your question). > > > I don't know much about Luther or Calvin, but am I > > wrong to think they were anti-intellectuals? > > Oh yes, quite wrong in any ordinary sense of the term. After > all, Luther has a real PhD, is a Professor at the new > non-Catholic Univerity at Wittenberg, and the first > translator of the Bible into German. He taught Biblical > hermeneutics for ages and published alot of research. If > ever a theology professor was an intellectual - Hans Kung? - > Dr Luther is one. Indeed, he is a *public intellectual* - > just like Noam Chomsky! > > Now, he is also aggressively and resolutely NOT a "humanist" > - not at all "liberal" like Erasmus - and this might > disqualify him in some eyes. But surely you don't have to be > a tolerant liberal to be an intellectual. Luther is a > tough-as-nails absolutist about his understanding of the > human condition. I can't resist - esp. since I have it handy > - passing along a paragraph from Luther's diatribe against > Erasmus's views of human freedom and church politics. Stuff > like this would surely boost the sales of the New York > Review any day. > > "In a word, what you [Erasmus] say comes to this: that you > do not think it matters a scrap what anyone believes > anywhere, so long as the world is at peace... You would > encourage [us] to treat Christian doctrines as no better > than the views of human philosophers -- about which, of > course, it is stupid to wrangle and fight and assert, since > nothing results but bad feeling and breaches of outward > peace... But, as I said, let the words go; for the moment, > I acquit your heart; but you must write no more in this > strain. Fear the Spirit of God who searches the reins and > heart and is not deceived by stupid speeches... You may > applaud your Sceptics and Academics -- till Christ calls you > too! The Holy Ghost is no Sceptic, and the things He has > written in our heart are not doubts or opinions, but > assertions -- surer and more certain than sense or life > itself." > > [from *Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings* (John > Dillenberger, ed.) > (N.Y.: Doubleday/Anchor, 1961)] > > > CALVIN is more plainly a mainstream intellectual: having > received a very humanist education at U-Paris, he did a PhD > in Law at Orleans and at the same time began his career as > the architect of a *reformed* church. His *Institutes of the > Christian Religion* still is counted as one of the great > scholarly expositions of a theological institution. Calvin, > too, chose to be a public intellectual, putting Scripture > into French (and setting a standard for the modern language, > just as Luther had done for German), and even more so by > putting his conclusions into practice, turning the City of > Geneva into a theological state - a "presbyterian Sparta" > one commentator has called it. Needless to say, Calvin was > no humanist either. > > [see Calvin entry in the *Catholic Encyclopedia*: > <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03195b.htm>] > > > Since you mention it, it is relevant to observe that one of > the major reasons Galileo gets into trouble with his church > is his crypto-Protestantism. For example, he very much > annoys the Catholic authorities with his polemically charged > insistence that knowledge of nature - natural philosophy or > science - has got *nothing* to do with salvation, that > science and religion are two completely separate spheres > (with science entirely in charge of nature). Here - without > ever exactly saying so - Galileo is siding with Luther > against the Scholastic philosophers and theologians and > their favourite philosopher by way of Aquinas, Aristotle. In > his most charged anti-scholastic diatribes, Galileo cannot > hold a candle to Luther who described Aristotle as that > "damnable, arrogant, blind, defunct pagan rascal" whose > teachings have been introduced into the universities "by the > Evil One ... on account of our sins." > > Since the Scholastics are "natural theologians" who believe > that the order of nature reveals the nature of 'man' and God > (the "Book of Nature"), Galileo's dismissal of all this > superstitious nonsense - they believe this stuff because of > their child-like fear of death, he says - very much gets up > their nose. > > While Galileo is busy demonstrating that the scripture > teaches how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go, > Cardinal Bellarmine is working on his little tract, *The > Mind's Ascent to God Up the Ladder of Created Beings*. > > Galileo is blindly striding across an intellectual > minefield. > > ... there ... aren't you glad you asked??? > > best wishes, eh? > > Stephen Straker > Vancouver, B.C. > > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
