Other Dialogue under Luther Video

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HuntingTarg

Blood and hellfire!, people don't seem to understand that this video was made as a summation of the reformation's impact on secular history, not a rehashing of religious debates that have persisted for centuries.

Or maybe people just get triggered when they don't see 'their version' of history being told.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Or when they see a blatantly false version of history being taught and on top of that one totally irrelevant to the real impact on secular history.

This PROTESTANT THEOLOGIAN took the excuse of "impact on secular history" to rehash some anti-Catholic lies.

As an ex-Lutheran I am sorry I believed them and sorry he makes other people believe them.

I will back this up:

Stephen Cornils of the Wartburg Theological Seminary - that's from the presentation of the video.

= Protestant Theologian.

NOT a secular historian.

HuntingTarg

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
That is a big deal
-
if you believe that religious historians are biased and secular historians are not.

Anyone who does not scrutinize their own perceptions cannot be said to be objevtive.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@HuntingTarg Protestants generally don't.

In fact, Protestant Church historiography has a long record of frauds.

Stephen's definition of Indulgences is one of the more persistent ones.

But it's also a "big deal" because of what you said:

"the reformation's impact on secular history,"

How can you correctly do that if you don't know secular history correctly, but mainly the history of why YOUR "Church" considers it as correct to stay out of Catholicism?

HuntingTarg

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
-Where did I identify or 'hat-tip' myself as a protestant? Or do you just conclude that from the fact that I'm not up-in-arms about the video?
-As I already pointed out, most everyone seems to be glossing over the phrase 'might be loosely described as' ( 0:21 ). That's hardly a 'definition.' People who don't already understand theology or western religious history, probably aren't going to tolerate minutes of off-topic discussion just to give context to a single point; that's not good scriptwriting or videography.
-The compartmentalization of subjects, particularly in history, is an interpretive artifice, not a normative boundary, and is one that has been reinforced in the last few centuries by ideologies and policies generally hostile to religious ideas, particularly in Europe and China.

“Whoever does not wish to render history incomprehensible by departmentalizing it – political, economic, social – would perhaps take the view that it is in essence a battle of dominant wills, fighting in every way they can for the material which is common to everything they construct: the human labor force.” – Bertrand De Jouvenel [emphasis mine]

I am not saying the video is great - it is a rushed, broad-brushstroke oversimplification of events. Anything that tries to cover centuries of events in a handful of minutes is likely to be woefully inadequate to a studied historian. It is equally broad-brushstroke oversimplification to call it unfactual propaganda.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@HuntingTarg If you are not a Protestant, I suppose you learnt school history in a traditionally Protestant country.

Even as a "loose description" what he said is simply a lie.

People who don't already understand theology are being misled, a lie is being reinforced.

"The compartmentalization of subjects, particularly in history, is an interpretive artifice, not a normative boundary, and is one that has been reinforced in the last few centuries by ideologies and policies generally hostile to religious ideas, particularly in Europe and China."

This is actually true. In 16th / 17th C. two great works of history were Magdeburg Centuries and Baronius. Magdeburg Centuries with a very pronounced Protestant Lutheran bias, and Baronius as Cardinal of the Roman Church obviously a Catholic.

However, this "more or less innocent" state of polemics in history was already degrading by Foxe' Book of Martyrs and was going to degrade further with people like Voltaire. Sth like "secular historiography" became a practical necessity. I don't support it on all grounds, but I can obviously tell the difference between a secular historian and a religious opponent.

Btw, I just described myself as Catholic.

Bertrand de Jouvenel now ...

Partis politiques
Parti républicain, radical et radical-socialiste
Parti populaire français

"Le Parti populaire français ou PPF (1936-1945), fondé et dirigé par Jacques Doriot, était le principal parti politique d’inspiration fasciste français en 1936-1939 et l’un des deux principaux partis collaborationnistes en 1940-1944, avec le Rassemblement national populaire (RNP) de Marcel Déat."

I can think of worse things in politics, but a non-historian belonging to that party is hardly my dream figure of a historian.

Compartmentalising history, as he put it, has in fact its uses.

HuntingTarg

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
Well, since you have fulfilled my working perception of a well-read, well-versed Catholic intellectual, this could go down many paths - all of them rabbit-trails.

There is another thread where I evoked some ire by describing the Reformation as a momentous shift from Control towards Chaos. Even as a Protestant I hold to that view, because while the Catholic church is almost the archetypical monolithic institution with a true head of power, the body of Protestants does often resemble a headless, flailing creature - more like a cephalapod than anything with a real, solid sub-structure. Doctrinal issues aside, I consider it a difference of kind, not of value. Unlike most, I have nearly no motivation or interest in bashing (or glorifying) historical figures or institutions; I have interest in a coherent, unifying narrative, not debate over specific plot-points for its own sake.

I have no quarrel with you, or with the ordinary lay Catholic, or with the present Catholic church at large. I simply think that what many threads under this upload are ranting or arguing about is non-sequiteur to the purpose of the video. I am no historian; I am no theologian; I do get easily irritated with those who readily expose their ignorance (which is why the Internet has become ine of the great disappointments of my life).

May I bid you a cordial good day?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@HuntingTarg Even a good year. To you too!

I will also make an essay comparing Reformation in four countries. Saxony, Sweden, England and France.

Not whole of Germany, since Heidelberg region actually has less to do with Luther than with Calvin.

What has been said is fairly ... biassed in perception of Tetzel, not entirely without his provocation ... but relevant only to Saxony of the four countries, and not at all sure how much further away from Saxony in Germany.

In England and Sweden, the real implication of indulgences is, a monk saying a mass for someone's soul can win an indulgence for him. AND in both countries, monasteries had been founded on donations : "you have a monastery, you pray here, BUT don't forget to pray for so and so each year on the anniversary of his death up to doomsday".

In both countries or at least Sweden, nobles were enticed to consider this as a fraud about the afterlife and to take back what their ancestors had donated "on fraudulent pretexts". I think in England, the ones looting were even less noble, they were offered not taking back donations of ancestors, but rewards for denunciations about monasteries living a "bad life" first targetting not monasteries but convents, those of Franciscans and Dominicans and Carthusians and Augustinians, where the "bad life" was the fact of living on alms, then later Benedictines and Cistercians. Hence the proliferation of new men among nobility, among these lords Cecil of Burghley.

Obviously, the essay will include this as well as some observations on the failed Reformation in France.

HuntingTarg

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
And I never fail to find a willingness to be civil among Catholic cousins. A fine and bright New Year to you also. 🙋‍♂️

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@HuntingTarg Thank you and sorry for delay in the upcoming essay!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@HuntingTarg Meanwhile:

PragerU Wrong on Luther
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/12/prageru-wrong-on-luther.html

Dialogue under Luther Video
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/12/dialogue-under-luther-video.html

Other Dialogue under Luther Video
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/12/other-dialogue-under-luther-video.html 

HuntingTarg

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
Lol that is quite all right! While I will read said essay with open interest, I didn't mean a unifying narrative about the Reformation: I meant a truly unifying narrative about the whole of human history.

While that might sound grandiose and naïve, I have found the encapsulation of such a notion within the writings of my favorite author, someone whom I view as an honest, if tenuous, bridge between the two 'halves' of Christendom:

" The whole ... tale of human history could be summed up as man's desperate search for anything, other than God, which will make him happy."
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I also love C. S. Lewis, but he did warn about grandiose schemes of history, a kind of intellectual heresy (not same as condemned doctrinal one, not necessarily) which he called historicism.

HuntingTarg

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
By 'historicism' I take you to mean the desire or tendency to try to explain everything in terms of one thing, to have a single gauge or lever that tells all on the machine; I know enough science to know that that is the pipe dream that entrances maniacs and simpletons.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@HuntingTarg Explain all history as one single story.

Now, what was presented was partly simplifying things that don't belong together and partly fake reports.

Fake reports on indulgences, already dealt with, but things that don't belong together is Luther and individual religious liberty.

The first states with individual religious liberty were France, Pennsylvania, Maryland.

They involved mainly two Catholic pragmatists (to extreme pragmatists) : Richelieu and the secret Catholic Charles II.

Pennsylvania famously also involves William Penn, who was a Quaker, one whom Luther would have described as a Schwärmgeist.

Sorry, Maryland actually involved the Anglo-Catholic Charles I.