Thomas, Luther, Aristotle

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Thomas, Luther, Aristotle · New blog on the kid: I Get Annoyed to Nervous When Catholics Use the Term Narcissist

If Barth Ehrman says he's a greater expert on New Testament Textual Criticism than C. S. Lewis, he's not technically wrong. He's just wrong about the viewpoint.

Martin Luther's Narcissistic War on Philosophy...
Shameless Popery | 20 May 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl9h3lf1tWw

Whether about Galileo or about Luther.

Some modern Catholic Apologists think they had any harshness on part of the magisterium coming because they were Narcissists.

The magisterium back then would have said they couldn't care less if these were Narcissists, except insofar as it inclined them to be Doctrinally Wrong.

Did you know that Luther spotted a Narcissist? Some consider him Prussian, many more consider him Pole, in Latin he's Copernicus.

Luther on Copernicus: "look, what a Narcissist"

Magisterium on Copernicus: "oh, he didn't say Earth was actually moving, we needn't dig him up and burn his bones."

3:37 In Luther's defense.

Aristotle was by and large read through the lense of St. Thomas. Modern Aristotle scholars would often say that Aristotle is closer to Averroes than Thomas, so, Luther might just have shared an understandable grudge against Averroism, which was fully shared by St. Thomas as well. And also by Bishop Tempier.

6:06 St Thomas and Duns Scotus were Medievals, they would verbally defer to an authority and sometimes voluntarily misunderstand him in order to honour him while remaining Orthodox Christians.

Luther lived after the Renaissance had made this approach highly suspect to many, and I am very sure the lecturer also thought he understood Aristotle better than St. Thomas and Duns Scotus.

They probably also thought they understood Plato better than St. Augustine did.

6:30 St. Thomas may be the greatest Aristotelian, but perhaps not the purest.

It's possible that some purer Aristotelians were among the real culprit list of Laetare Sunday 1277. Like Boethius of Dacia.

While Spinoza doesn't count as Aristotelian, I have met with Spinozists who claim that what Bishop Tempier condemned (in Sorbonne Averroism) was pretty exactly what they believed.

7:15 You are aware that Duns Scotus is even more of a Platonist than St. Thomas, while verbally hailing Aristotle?

At least that's the judgement of Charles A. Coulombe. (Monarchist, Hyperrealist, Ultramontane ...).

7:57 Are you trying to give Narcissism a bad name?

Luther really was a nincompoop on Scripture. And didn't realise it.*

10:20 Breaking away from Church Fathers is not quite comparable to breaking away from Aristotle.

Though, very arguably, he did through the baby out with the bathwater.

11:37 Yes, understanding the Gospel better than St. Augustine, that's the damning part ...

Because it contradicts "all days" in Matthew 28, last verse.

12:34 Calvin's motivation could be that Luther kept Confession and at least nominally Real Presence.

12:43 He may have been less overstimating his person even in Scripture, simply by believing some of the more radical claims that Erasmus made at times, and of Aristotle, it's basically certain.

Learned men in Luther's day knew Greek and had the full Aristotelian Corpus. In St. Thomas' day, it was a portion that was made accessible by Moerbeke OP.

I would not concede they made better use of Aristotle than St. Thomas did, but they did have some advantage in raw expertise, in simple Academic protocol on Aristotle.

And Aristotle was probably not the first, certainly not the last subject on which Academic experts ran wild just because they have raw expertise. Bart Ehrman arguably knows Textual Criticism of the Bible better as an Academic subject than C. S. Lewis did. Doesn't mean that CSL didn't give more useful judgements on the whole. A now deceased Tryggve Mettinger in Lund was an expert on OT Hebrew and OT exegesis. It so happens, he had more knowledge about Babylonian and Canaanean mythology than most Christian or Jewish commenters have had since 1st C AD (when Akkadian died out, one century after Sumerian, even as Sacred Languages, along with the worship of gods like Enlil / Marduk). The problem is, he thought, and his disciple Ola Wikander thinks to this day, this gives them an actual advantage about the OT's "three creation stories" (including the one weeded out from actual texts as we have received them, the one that matches the Ugaritic Baal cycle and Enuma Elish).

Correction on Willem van Moerbeke OP, he did give the full corpus in Latin ... with the connotations terms had acquired among Christian and pretty Platonic users of the Organum, which already was available. So, there were probably some nuance that St. Thomas could have been more sanguine about than if he had known Greek and read him in the original. He was perhaps also more sanguine than Luther, because Aristotle was a dead guy whose work was used by others, while in Luther's day, such dead guys had in quite a different sense "come back to life" starting with Cicero.

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San Cheems

@gustavorvalderrama625

Lets be honest. This is rethoric, Lutherans DID NOT wanted to separate themselves from the Roman Church. Read the other Lutheran Reformers also, Luther was not and is not the super star in our churches! The Popes have been consistent with their claim that they are vicars of Christ. Lutheran piety is not narcicistic and this is prove of the type of Spirit that Lutheranism have. It is all in our documents and I invite you to read them:)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

"Lutheran piety is not narcicistic"

Luther's translation was pretty wild.

I guess Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen is not a Classic in Lutheran Piety.

Neither is his letter to the Bohemians (i e Hussites).

"Lutherans DID NOT wanted to separate themselves from the Roman Church."

That view totally explains the unauthorised liturgic changes in Wittenberg in 1523, by which time Luther had become a Lutheran. Back in 1517, he was still by and large in the spectrum of Jansenist errors (Baius, Jansenius, Quesnel).

Shameless Popery

@shamelesspopery

Prior to his excommunication, Luther was telling people privately that he thought that the pope was the Antichrist. He quite clearly and vehemently rejected Catholic dogma. What does it mean to say that he didn't want to split from the Roman Church if those were his beliefs? Just that he'd be happy to be Catholic if the Catholic Church became Lutheran?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

After his excommunication, he certainly did say in public the pope, qua pope, was that, over an extended period of time.

Like Letter to Bohemians.

For privately before, I'm not saying you are wrong, but I'd like a source.

Shameless Popery

“We firmly believe here that the Papacy is the personification of Antichrist’s throne, and feel we are justified in resisting their deceptions and wiles for the sake of the salvation of souls. I declare that I only owe the Pope the obedience due to Antichrist.”

Letter of Martin Luther to John Lange, August 18, 1520. For context, Luther didn't receive the papal bull Exsurge Domine until October 10, and was excommunicated in January of 1521.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@shamelesspopery John Lange = Johann Lange / Johannes Lang, I presume?

Well, I think that took some digging, but I respect your research.

I wonder what he meant by "the obedience due to Antichrist" ... one simple option is none at all ...

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* I guess some Lutherans will call me out as a Narcissist for that remark.