tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-361002792024-03-06T14:01:11.431-06:00Past Elder Also sprach der Vorsteher. Ein Blog für Alle und Keinen.
Von Terence Maher, PhD.Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.comBlogger786125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-10145173725345452712022-01-01T19:24:00.001-06:002022-01-01T19:24:54.852-06:00Happy Whatever Day This Is, 2022!<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Huh? Ain't It New Years?</span></p>In the world, it's simple -- Happy New Years!<br /><br />The Gregorian Calendar, the Western calendar that is pretty much the conventional standard the world over now, even when alongside traditional calendars, counts 1 January the first day of the new year. It wasn't always so, even in earlier Western calendars. It's gone from 15 March to 1 January to 25 March and back to 1 January! Here's the story.<br /><br />In traditional calendars the world over, a new year begins in springtime, understandable in that the season suggests newness, the start of a new growth cycle, etc. So how did 1 January come to be the start of the new year? The answer, also including why calendars are called "calendars", comes from Rome, as does pretty much everything else.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How New Years Went From 15 March To 1 January.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>New Years Day was 15 March in ancient Rome. But in 153 B.C., the date of the new year was changed to 1 January, because that is the date when the two ruling consuls were chosen. OK great, but what's a consul and why are there two of them? In 509 BC the Romans abolished the Roman Kingdom and established the Roman Republic, replacing the office of king with the office of consul, to be jointly held by two men so power never is concentrated in one man. The Roman Republic lasted 482 years, until 27 BC when the Roman Empire began. The enormous active legacy the Roman Republic left to the entire world is covered in this blog's post for 21 April, the date of the founding of Rome. Here we'll stick to New Years and calendars.<br /><br />"Were chosen" you say, that's passive voice, indicates an agent, someone who did it, so who did it? Originally they were elected. Passive voice again, who's the agent, who elected them? The Comitia Centuriata, that's who, made up of all Roman citizens and divided into centuries, which are theoretically voting groups of 100 though not in practice, which voted first within themselves and then voted as a unit in the election.<br /><br />But, the consuls did not assume office until being ratified by election by the Comitia Curiata, which was made up only of members of elite families. There were two other assemblies in old Rome, the Comitia Calata and the Comitia Tributa, the former under the leadership of the pontifex maximus and concerned mostly with ceremonies, and the latter was administrative and judicial. There were two consuls, not one, and they ruled to-gether rather than a single king. The idea behind this is seen in the word itself. The plural of consul, consules, literally means walking to-gether. However, as the Roman Republic waned and the Roman Empire emerged, while the facade of the republic remained, power moved from the people to the Emperor.<br /><br />In fact, the word "calendar" comes from all this. The first day of each month was called out by the pontifex, pontiff of the state religion, at a place called the Curia Calabra where the pontiff called the Comitia Calata. Hence the first days of the months were called Kalendae, the called, and the rest of the days of the month were called from them.<br /><br />Gee, curia, pontifex maximus, what was once the real deal becoming a facade with real power in a single man, elected officials giving way to appointed ones -- does that course of events in Rome sound like Church as well as Empire? Well, that's another story. Or maybe it isn't. BIG post on that coming right here in a couple of weeks. Now, back to New Years.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How New Years Went From 1 January To 25 March.</span><br /><br />Dionysius Exiguus -- Dennis the Short, in the sense of humble -- in his tables for the dates of Easter in 525 A.D. (abbreviation for anno domini, an ablative of time in Latin meaning "in the year of our lord"; A.D. was his invention too!) came up with a new system for numbering years to replace both naming them after consuls and the system of the Emperor Diocletian, who had been a major persecutor of Christians. In his reform of the Julian (as in Julius Caesar) calendar he set the start of the new year at 25 March. Why? Because in his calendar that's the date that co-incides with the Feast of the Annunciation. Annunciation of what?<br /><br />The announcement by the angel Gabriel to Mary that she would bear Christ and just as important, her consent to do so, that's what. Then count 'em, nine months later, the period of human gestation, comes the celebration of Christ's birth on 25 December. The years themselves though continued to be lined up from January to December Roman style.<br /><br />So why is the Annunciation celebrated on 25 March? Well, not only the Annunciation but a lot of stuff is held in Jewish and/or Christian legend to have happened about that time, which, if you notice, is right around the vernal, or Spring, equinox, the start of the new year in traditional calendars. The date of the creation of the world, of the creation of Adam, of the revolt of Lucifer, the parting of the Red Sea to allow the exodus from Egypt, are all assigned to this time.<br /><br />All of which may be, or may not be, but rather is additional significance piously but needlessly built around this: Biblical clues suggest Jesus was conceived around Passover. In the Law of Moses, in Exodus 12, the day that the Passover lamb is chosen for any year is 10 Nisan, which indeed can fall on what we call 25 March. Whether or not that is when it was, the idea it was meant to express is exactly what the Christian faith holds, namely, that Jesus is the full and final Passover lamb sacrificed for the forgiveness of sins.<br /><br />It's important to understand that it's not that 25 March is for sure the date of the conception of Jesus and therefore is celebrated that day and if it wasn't that day the rest of it falls apart. It's that God become Man in Jesus to be the full and final Passover that takes our sins away and makes us not just creations but also children of God, that's the belief, so his Incarnation is celebrated on a date associated with Passover as he would suffer, die and rise again at Passover time. The point does not depend on the association being literal or exact.<br /><br />OK fine, but why New Years Day three months into the list of months of the year? Because the age of grace, the time from which God entered into human history as a human, God's Incarnation, begins when any life begins, at its conception, not its birth. Therefore dating the age of grace, the years since his coming into humanity, starts from his conception, not his birth. How's that for a "pro-life" witness!<br /><br />The Incarnation, happening on the Annunciation, is of such importance that in the Eastern church it is never moved from 25 March for any reason whatsoever, even if Good Friday or Easter falls on the same day, with special liturgies celebrating both done should that occur.<br /><br />Dennis btw was not a Benedictine, he was one of the so-called Scythian Monks, named after the region where they were, where the Danube meets the Black Sea, the modern Dobrogea region mostly in Romania. But other than not being Benedictine there is only good to say about him, and on 8 July 2008 was he canonised a saint by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church.<br /><div><br /></div>We English call The Annunciation Lady Day (the lady being Mary), and it was New Years Day too until 1752 when the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar was official. In fact, the tax year in the UK still begins on 6 April, which is 25 March in the Julian Calendar adjusted to the Gregorian one.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How New Years Went Back To 1 January.</span><br /><br />Well, that's the way it was until the Gregorian Calendar we use now came about. Who's Gregory? It's Pope Gregory XIII, who on 24 February 1582 decreed the change in the papal bull "inter gravissimas", which means "among the most serious". Ancient practice in Rome and many other places was to name a document after its first word or two (the names of the books in the Hebrew Bible are this way) and the bull starts "Among the most serious duties of our pastoral office ... ". A papal bull, btw, doesn't mean what you might be thinking, chucklesome as that is. It's a formal charter by a pope, taking its name from the bulla, a cord encased in clay and stamped with a seal, used to prevent tampering and thus ensure authenticity. Call it a low tech anti hacking device.<br /><br />The new calendar, a revision of the old calendar of Julius Caesar, wasn't immediately adopted in the civil realm, although it was during this period that adoption of 1 January as the start of the new year really took hold. Not without controversy though, which has a remnant to this day. The original "April Fools" were those who, in the minds of Gregorian calendar advocates, still foolishly insisted New Years was 25 March in the old calendar, which falls in April in the Gregorian calendar, or were confused about it, and tricks were sometimes played on them.<br /><br />The new calendar corrected the drift of the Julian calendar, but the original motivation had nothing to do with changing New Years but with establishing a common date for Easter throughout the Christian Church, following what it took to be the provisions of the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. It met with resistance from non Catholic countries, Protestant and Orthodox alike, seeing it as a Catholic power play, and of course had no relevance to the traditional calendars outside the Christian world of the time. In fact even in Europe the last country to adopt the Gregorian calendar, Greece, only did so in 1923, even after Japan (1873), China (1912) and the newly Communist Russia (1918)!<br /><br />One thing that didn't change, we still start numbering things with 1. So it's 2020 because it's the 20th year of the 21st century, and the last year of its second decade, just like 2000 was the 100th and last year of the 20th century and the 1000th and last year of the last millennium, and 2001 was the first year of both the first decade of this millennium and the millennium itself. 2022 is the second year of the third decade of this millennium.<br /><br />So the story's over, the world now has one calendar functionally, while other traditional ones can continue to be used locally. Well, almost.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What 1 January Is In The Church Calendar (None Of The Above)!</span><br /><br />What a hoot -- the "secular" calendar is of religious origin in the Christian Church! And the church has a calendar too, which isn't really a calendar! It's better called the church year, and the new church year starts with the First Sunday of Advent in the West; Eastern Orthodoxy in most places begins the new church year on 1 September. Some of the things in the church year have a fixed date taken from the secular calendar and fall on that date every year. This is the proprium sanctorum, so named because they are usually but not always about a saint, like the Annunciation is always 25 March. Other things do not have a fixed date from year to year because they are seasons or times in the life of Christ with reference to Easter and in turn, as we saw above, to Passover, which itself does not have a fixed date. This is the proprium de tempore, of time. For example Ash Wednesday, which will be 2 March in 2022 but was 17 February in 2021, in 2020 was 26 February, 6 March in 2019, 14 February (yeah, right on St Valentine's Day, what a buzzkill!) in 2018, 1 March in 2017, 10 February in 2016, 18 February 2015, 5 March 2014, 13 February 2013, 22 February 2012, 9 March 2011, 17 February 2010, and 25 February 2009. <div><br /></div><div>Calendars put out by churches are generally like secular calendars, with the de tempore given on the date they fall that year. So the Annunciation, the old new year, is fixed on 25 March and Christmas on 25 December, but Easter and everything related to it is on a different date each year.<br /><br />1 January falls eight days after the celebration of the birth of Jesus. OK, it's the eighth day of Christmas, let's continue our Christmas celebration as we saw in the Twelve Days of Christmas post. But guess what? In the Law -- Law of Moses -- on the eighth day after the birth a male child the boy is to be circumcised, according to the Law, to put him within the Law, and is also given his name. So on what we call 1 January now, the Church celebrates the Circumcision of Jesus, wherein he is put under the Law that he will fulfill, and his blood is first shed for us as he is put under the Law as it will be shed for us in his Crucifixion as he redeems us from the condemnation of the Law -- the good news, the Gospel!<br /><br />This Jewish circumcision ceremony is called a Bris. When you know what a Bris is, a couple of things follow from it about Jesus. One is, a male child is named at the Bris, so Jesus being named is celebrated either on the same day as his circumcision, which is what we do, or the day after, or, if there is one, the Sunday after but before Epiphany. The name Jesus is a form of Joshua; as Joshua took over from Moses and completed the journey that Moses could not to the Promised Land of Palestine, so this Joshua takes over to complete the journey for us that due to sin we cannot make even with the Law of Moses, the journey to the promised land of eternal life with God.<br /><br />The other thing is, the maternity of Mary as mother of this fully human and fully divine child who would do this for us is honoured too. This originally stems from refuting the claim of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius (386 - 450, give or take), that Mary was the mother of Jesus as a human only. The Maternity of Mary was to emphasise that Jesus born of Mary is fully human and fully divine.<br /><br />So for the Christian, it's Happy Feast of the Bris of Jesus!! So the story's over, there you have it! Well, uh, just one more thing.<br /><br />Rome, be it Empire or Church, is ever at the ready to tinker with stuff, and tinker they did. First, in 1931 Pope Pius XI moved the Maternity of Mary itself to 11 October. Then, at Vatican II, in replacing the traditional church calendar and lectionary in the various forms it has existed for centuries with a whole new one with three different versions of the year, guess what -- they ash-canned the Circumcision altogether too! In place of commemorating his shedding of blood at his bris to put him under the Law that points to his shedding of blood on the Cross to redeem us, they put in a local Roman practice from about 1500 years ago, the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God! Which is not exactly the old Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And, as if that weren't enough tinkering, in 1967 they added a brand new one to be celebrated the same day, a World Day of Peace.<br /><br />I'm sure Mary loved that one! She's thinking, It ain't about me, you clowns, it's about him, and by the way, he said the peace he leaves is his peace, not as the world gives peace but the Holy Spirit sent from God after he returns to the Father. Or, as she had to say to those serving the wedding at Cana, Do whatever he tells you.<br /><br />And that is her message, for which we honour her this day, but above all listen to her. Happy Feast of the Circumcision -- even amid our infatuation in some circles with reworking the novus ordo, we still got it! -- and whether you include it this day, to-morrow, or next Sunday, the Name of Jesus!!<br /><br />And do whatever he tells you, like his mother said.</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-33324902917721819912021-11-11T13:26:00.000-06:002021-11-11T13:26:51.255-06:00What's An Armistice? Veterans Day / St Martin's Day 2021.<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">Here is what the world knows about Veterans Day, although given the state of "education" these days that may be overly optimistic. More on that later. 11 November was originally Armistice Day, from the armistice that ended hostilities in the First World War on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, GMT (or UTC), in 1918. Later, with another and even worse World War having been fought despite a War to End All Wars, in 1954 Congress changed the observance to include all veterans, hence Veterans Day. While it's now broadened, and for good reason, from the original Armistice Day, it's not to be confused with Memorial Day, for those who died in service in uniform, or Armed Forces Day, for those currently serving. There's a lot to be learned from how this observance came to be.</span></p><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">So What's An Armistice?</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">The English word armistice is transliterated from the Latin armistitium, which literally means a stopping of arms. It's a truce, a cessation of hostilities. Now, if you're one of those getting shot at, that's a good thing -- but, it's not a comprehensive social and political solution to what led to the hostilities, and not even necessarily a permanent cease fire, let alone that universal aspiration of beauty pageant contestants, world peace. Which means, hostilities may well resume at some point. And always have.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Here is what the world probably does not know, or care about. 11 November is the feast day of St Martin of Tours, who is the patron saint of, guess what, soldiers, and after whom Martin Luther was named! Hmm.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">So Who Is St Martin of Tours and Why Is He Patron Of Soldiers?</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Martin was born a pagan around 316 in what is now Hungary, and was what is now called a military brat. Then as now, military families move a lot, and Martin grew up where his father was stationed, at Ticinum, which is now Pavia, Italy. His father was a tribune, which is roughly equivalent to a modern colonel, in the crack Roman unit the Imperial Horse Guard (equites singulari Augusti). Being a military kid, he was named Martin, from Mars, the Roman god of war.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">The year of his birth, 316, was also the year it became legal to be a Christian in the Roman Empire, but it was a decidedly minority religion, and in the army the cult of Mithras was common. When Martin was ten, he ticked off his parents by starting to go to church and taking instruction as a catechumen (you know, the Sunday School, mid-week, etc of the time). However in 331 at 15 he joined the army, as sons of senior officers did, in a provincial cavalry unit (ala, or wing, the root of our word aileron) and about 334 was stationed at Samarobriva, the Roman name for what is now Amiens in northern France.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">One day, by the city gate of Amiens, he passed a man freezing on the road, tore his military issue cloak in half and gave half to him. That night, he had a dream seeing Jesus wearing the half a cloak. This shook him up, and he got baptised that year, 334, at 18. He remained in the army, but in 336 when it looked like the army and the local Gauls were about to engage at Worms, he declared he was a soldier of Christ and could not fight. He was thrown in the brig (military jail) and charged with cowardice. He offered to be in the front lines but unarmed, and the army was going to do just that with him, but the Gauls made peace with Rome and the battle did not happen.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">After that Martin was discharged from the service. He went to Tours, and began to study with the renowned, even in his own time, St Hilary. Hilary was a convert too, and he vigourously opposed the Arian "Christianity" of the Visigoths. He was elected by the faithful of Poitiers as their first bishop (they did that then), married with a daughter and all (they did that then too). Martin, thinking he was God's soldier now, set about combating the Arian heresy too, which about did the church in at the time.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">He and Hilary were both forced into exile by persecution. Martin lived as a hermit but when Hilary was restored in 361 Martin joined him. He started a monastery in nearby Liguge, which is still there as the now Benedictine (of course) St Martin's Abbey, from which he preached Christianity all around the area. Later, the people of Tours made him their third bishop when the old one died in 371 and he was finally persuaded to accept. From there he soldiered on to preach the true Gospel in Gaul, and, to get away from the attention of his office, he established another monastery, Marmoutier, which also later became Benedictine, on the other side of the River Loire in Tours, about 372, which lasted until the French Revolution in 1799 and is largely in ruins now.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">A good insight into Martin is something that happened in 385. Remember that 385 is just five years since the Imperial Edict of Thessalonica defined what is and is not the Catholic Church, and made the Catholic Church the state religion, which makes heresy a state offence punishable by the Empire. In 385 Priscillian, bishop of Avila in Spain, and his followers were brought before the Emperor, Magnus Maximus, on charges of false doctrine, heresy, stemming from their severe asceticism, and the penalty was beheading. But Martin, though he was quite opposed to Priscillian, hurried to Trier, where the Imperial court held forth at the time, not Rome, to protest the sentence as both unjust in itself and an unjust imposition of civil power in a church matter. The Emperor relented, but, after Martin left the court beheaded them anyway. This was the first time ever that a Christian executed another Christian for heresy, and Martin was absolutely disconsolate after he heard the news and urged mercy toward Priscillian's followers.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Martin died 8 November 397 and was buried 11 November, which became his feast day, though the date of death is the usual practice for determining a feast day. He was widely venerated for centuries, which I will not go into except for this -- soon after his death it became the custom to begin a 40 day fast in preparation for Christmas, the quadragesima sancti Martini or St Martin's Fast, (forty days of St Martin, literally) with his feast day being the last non-fasting day until Christmas. This original Advent eventually got shortened into what we know as Advent now. More on that in the "Advent" post coming up.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">An Armistice on St Martin's Day 1918.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">So, 11 November, feast of the patron of soldiers for centuries, is the date of Armistice Day, now Veterans Day? Hmm. Coincidence, or one of those little things that pokes through from what is beyond the surface? That's not all. there's something else just a little too co-incidental? The military campaign that led to the armistice is the Hundred Days Offensive, aka the Grand Offensive, from 8 August to 11 November 1918. Guess where the Hundred Days Offensive started. With the Battle of Amiens, where the Roman officer Martin had given the freezing beggar the cloak. Hmm.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Yeah but that was a long time ago, right? Yes it was, and that's part of the point of all this. The armistice of 11 November 1918 turned out to be just that, a cessation of hostilities. What was fought as The War to End All Wars would become World War One, as hostilities resumed in an even worse World War Two. Along with the millions of lives lost, millions more lives were forever changed, and, something changed in what might be called the spirit of Man too. The great sense in the age leading into these cataclysms that Man was on an upward spiral of progress toward an enlightened future lay rotting like the wreck of that great expression of the age the aptly named RMS (Royal Mail Steamer) Titanic.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Why aptly named? The Titanic was one of three ships, built to be the most luxurious ever at sea. They were called the Olympic class, after the ancient Olympians, and were the Olympic, which began began service 14 June 1911, the Titanic, which began service 19 April 1912, and the Britannic, which began service 23 December 1915. The Britannic was requisitioned as a hospital ship and sunk 21 November 1916 off the coast of Greece after striking a mine. The Titanic sunk 15 April 1912 after hitting an iceberg.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">The "Titans" had lost, but unlike the mythological battle, in which the Olympians were the victors and established a new world order, this time, who would be the victorious Olympians, or if there even were victors or Olympians, was not clear. Even the surviving Olympic-class ship, the original Olympic herself, did not survive the economic realities of the post WWI age and was sold for scrap in 1935. The old world order, and its certainties both temporal and eternal, was gone. Man began to speak of life as absurd, and amid an apparently essentially meaningless existence the search for "meaning" was on.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">One could respond to this new situation in various ways. One could deny the whole thing and remain "irrelevant" and "inauthentic", either by holding on to a religious faith from the old order's certainties, or equally by holding on to the secular faith in the progress and perfectibility of Man or to hoping for the restoration of the old political order. Or, one could simply accept that life is absurd and meaningless and ask nothing more of it. Or, one could understand that meaning is not objective but something Man, meaning human society, creates for itself, or each man creates for himself. (I know, too many ors.)</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">This last idea seems so modern but is actually as ancient as anything held to be a "certainty", an absolute truth, from the old order. It just seems new because it re-appears in different formulations. Lately, it's usually in phrases like "social construct" etc. After WWII, Sartre's famous "existence precedes essence", which comes from a lecture he gave in 1945 just after WWII ended, was often heard. Thing is, Protagoras, who lived before Socrates (hence the term "pre-Socratic") taught that Man first exists then creates what he takes to be truth, essence, etc. even before Plato, Aristotle, Christianity and much else held to be foundational in tradition came to be.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Protagoras' statement is usually given as "Man is the measure of all things". As often happens, that isn't the full statement, and the full statement supplies clarifying context the partial statement doesn't. The full statement is, "Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not". Protagoras wrote many works but little to nothing survives of them. The famous statement actually comes from Plato, quoting Protagoras in the dialogue Theaetetus, line 152a.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">As what was to end all cataclysms (WWI) only led to further and worse cataclysms (WWII), Man spoke increasingly not just of absurdity and meaningless in life, but of Angst, existential anxiety, in which Man on the one hand yearns for the certainties and meanings of the old world order but on the other knows they are but lost illusions that no longer work since we know them to be illusions of our own making.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">The resolution? There isn't one. That embodiment of the old order, the Titanic, sank 15 April 1912, just over a century ago. The spark that would light the keg of the War To End All Wars, the assassination of Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand along with his wife Herzogin Sophie, on 28 June 1914, is also just over a century ago. 2018 was century since the armistice, in our time hostilities continue amid the wreckage of the arrangements worked out nearly a century ago following the War to End All Wars, in Southeast Europe, the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">And now, the situation is not just one of absurdity, meaninglessness and Angst. One hundred years on, more or less, from the collapse of the old world order and its temporal and eternal certainties, their loss has now become normal, and what was once sensed as a loss or void, is no longer sensed as such, because they were never known anyway. Angst, anxiety, is the norm and no longer experienced as anxiety, and, though the void which produced the Angst remains, the void is not sensed as any void at all. And in recent years, the former certainties, orders, values, meanings etc. insofar as they are known at all, which isn't very far, are characterised as systemic problems whose ill effects we must make conscious efforts to remove. </div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Thus we become as a people like a person with Alzheimer's, prisoners of the present, no longer recognising the world and our relation to it, and rejecting any information about what that is outside of our own thoughts.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">This is exactly what Cicero described as the Roman Republic he tried so hard to preserve was transformed in the Roman Empire which he tried so hard to prevent: Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit id est semper esse puerum, which in English is, To not know what happened before one was born, that is to be always a child.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Children. Alzheimer's patients. Trapped in a present they do not understand, and thus think it is not understandable, nor that there is such a thing as understanding anyway beyond norms of human, not objective, origin. There is no fact, only feeling, only lived experience, and no need to examine if our understanding of that experience is flawed, because that idea is itself a product of a systemically flawed system.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">So in the legend the Twelve Titans fell to the Twelve Olympians, but in the reality now not only are no Olympians going to show up, but also any emerging new order must not be based on anything from any previous order since it's all bad. If Genesis isn't witness to Man as fallen, the world history of Man surely is. A history filled with the universal intuition that Man is less than he is meant to be or can be, a history filled with however many religious, philosophical, social and political programmes and movements to accomplish this fulfillment -- and a history filled with the dashing of all of them.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">There's twelve something else who had something to say about that. The Twelve Apostles. They got told to go into the world with the message. The message is:</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">- that Man just isn't going to get himself out of his self-constructed mess,</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">- that God has seen that, and became Man in Jesus to die to pay for all that and rise again, so that Man can by the gift and power of God repent of his own self-destructive efforts and start over, be reborn in faith in the One God has sent,</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">- that because of Him one can be washed clean by being covered in his sacrificial blood, and even amid the brokenness of this world live in partial experience of that which is beyond it, dying with him to rise with him.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">That message continues to-day as God calls and feeds Man in the church wherever his Word is properly preached and his Sacraments properly administered.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Interesting that in that context, on 11 November, St Martin's Day, in 1483, Mr and Mrs Luther brought their day old baby boy to be baptised, and following the traditional custom he was given the name of the saint of the day -- Martin Luther, who like his namesake would devote his life to preaching the true Gospel against false doctrine and corruption from state control of the church.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">So on 11 November, Armistice Day now Veterans Day and also St Martin's Day, as we rightly remember and celebrate in gratitude those who have served to preserve and defend our temporal freedom, let us also remember that armistice is the best we can do, the hostilities cease for a while only to resume, and let us remember and celebrate in gratitude Him who gained our true freedom for now and all eternity, who gives peace not as the world gives peace, but for real and for ever.</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Pacem relinquo vobis, pacem meam do vobis, non quomodo mundus dat ego do vobis non turbentur cor vestrum neque formide. Peace I leave you, my peace I give you, not as the world giveth give I unto you, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. (John 14:27, used in the liturgy after the Agnus Dei before Communion)</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Here is the Collect from the mass propers for the feast of St Martin of Tours:</div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Lord God of hosts, who clothed Your servant Martin the soldier with the spirit of sacrifice, and set him as a bishop in Your Church to be a defender of the catholic faith: Give us grace to follow in his holy steps, that at the last we may be found clothed with righteousness in the dwellings of peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.</div><div><br /></div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-635090391742296352021-10-31T12:36:00.003-05:002021-10-31T12:36:47.655-05:00Reformation Day and All Saints Day / Reformationstag und Allerheiligen, 2021. (Halloween too!)<p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Yeah, everybody knows 31 October is the day Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door and started the Reformation. Everybody knows it's Halloween too. What does this mean?</span></p><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">What does "Halloween" mean?</span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Let's start with Halloween. The word is a contraction actually, the "een" being short for "even" which is in turn short for "evening". Evening of what? Evening before All Hallows, that's what. So what or who in the hell are the hallows? "Hallow" is the modern English form of a Germanic root word meaning "holy", which also survives in modern German as "heilige". The Hallows are the holy ones, meaning the saints.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">1 November has for centuries been celebrated in the West as the Feast of All Hallows, cognate with the German word for it, Allerheiligen, which is now usually expressed in English as the Feast of All Saints. The term Hallowmas was once common for it, the mass of all hallows. Halloween then is a contraction for the Eve of the Feast of All Hallows, the night on 31 October before the feast on 1 November.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">This in turn is part of a triduum. Huh, ain't that in Holy Week? Well, yes, that's the best known one, and these days about the only known one, but there's actually several tridua in the liturgical year, and this is one of them, called Allhallowtide. It's comprised of the Eve of All Hallows, All Hallows (Saints) Day on 1 November, and All Souls Day on 2 November.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">About the only other times you hear "hallow" in some form or other in modern English is its retained use in the traditional wording of the Our Father, "hallowed be thy name", or in the phrase "hallowed halls" in reference to a university or some esteemed institution. "Hallowed be thy name" literally means held holy be thy name, "thy" being the second person familiar form of address modern English doesn't use.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Origin of All Saints' Day. Lemuralia.</span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">So when did we start having a Feast of All Hallows on 1 November? Well, we started having a Feast of All Hallows, or Saints, long before it was on 1 November! In the Eastern Church, all the saints are collectively remembered on the first Sunday after Pentecost. It really got rolling when the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire Leo VI (886-911) built a church in honour of his wife when she died, but as she was not a recognised saint he dedicated the church to all the saints, so that she would be included in a commemoration of all saints whether recognised as such or not.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">In the Western Church, the whole thing got rolling when Pope Boniface IV got permission in 609 AD from the Roman emperor Phocas -- again this would be the Eastern Roman Emperor, as the Western Roman Empire was long gone by this time -- to rededicate the Roman Pantheon to Mary and all martyrs. What's the Pantheon? A big temple built by Agrippa, Caesar Augustus' best general officer, to Jupiter, Venus and Mars in 27 BC. It was destroyed in a major fire in Rome in 80 AD. The emperor Domitian rebuilt it, but it burned again in 110 AD. The emperor Trajan began reconstruction and it was completed by the emperor Hadrian in 126 AD. That's the building that's there now.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Boniface rededicated the Pantheon to Mary and all martyrs on 13 May 609 (might have been 610) AD. Why 13 May? Because it was on that day that the old Roman Lemuralia concluded. What's a Lemuralia? The Roman poet Ovid says it originated when Romulus, one of the co-founders of Rome and from whom the city is named, tried to calm the spirit of his brother Remus, the other co-founder. Why would Remus' spirit need calming? Because Romulus killed him with a shovel to make sure he didn't name and rule the city, that's why.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">At any rate, over time it became the day, or rather days, there were three of them, 9, 11, and 13 May, when the head of the household (the paterfamilias, father of the family) chased off the lemures (one lemur, two or more lemures) who were vengeful spirits of the dead ticked off at the living, for either not having been buried properly or treated well in life, or remembered well in death, and out to harm or at least scare the crap out of the living.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Because they appeared so scary, they were also called larvae (one larva, two or more larvae) meaning "masks", which is also how the "mask" of early stage life, which in some animals is nothing like the adult stage, such as the caterpillar to the butterfly, came to be called larva. Anyway, paterfamilias went out at midnight looking to one side and tossing black beans behind him saying "haec ego mitto his redimo meque meosque fabis", or "I send these (beans), with these I redeem me and mine" nine times. Then, he banged bronze pots to-gether saying "manes exite paterni" or "Souls of my ancestors, exit" nine times.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Western All Saints' Day Gets Moved By The Pope. Way More To It Than That Though. </span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">In putting the Feast of All Saints on 13 May, Boniface meant to both replace the old Lemuralia and transform it into a Christian observance for all the Christian dead. The replacement anyway worked, and over time the Lemuralia were largely forgotten. So why isn't All Saints' Day still 13 May? Because Pope Gregory III (731-741) built a place in St Peter's in Rome for veneration of relics of all saints, and moved the date to 1 November. Now, this isn't the St Peter's that's there now, it's the old one begun by Constantine -- remember that because it's gonna be a big deal on this subject later in this post. It stuck, and in 835 Louis the Pious, son and successor to Charlemagne (aka Karl der Grosse), with a big nudge from Pope Gregory IV, made it officially stuck, and there it is to this day.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Btw, Gregory III was a Syrian and the last pope who was not a European until the current pope, Francis. Sort of: Gregory was Syrian descended too, whereas Francis was born of Italian immigrants to Argentina, so, Gregory III is still the last pope both neither European nor European descended.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Gregory III is also the last pope to have held off assuming office until approval by the Exarchatus Ravennatis. Holy crap, what's that and how did it hold up papal installations? In Gregory's time the Western Roman Empire was long gone, and the surviving Eastern Roman Empire was trying to hold Rome, and Italy generally, to-gether against the onslaught of Germanic types, mainly Lombards, by means of exarchs, direct representatives of the Eastern, and now only, Roman Emperor, in Constantinople. The Emperor Maurice (Flavius Mauricius Tiberius Augustus, actually) established two exarchs, one in 584 in Ravenna, the last capital of the Western Empire before its collapse, and one in Carthage in 590 to administer northern Africa and Spain, which were also having trouble holding off Islamic forces. You didn't think this Islamicist thing was anything new, did you?</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">This preserved something of the old full Roman Empire, and re popes, this preserved the approval of the "bishop" of Rome by the emperor of Rome. The Exarchate of Africa lasted until 698 when it was defeated by forces of the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate (capital, Damascus). The Exarchate of Ravenna lasted from 584 until 751, when the last exarch (guy named Eutychius) was killed by the Lombards, whereupon the Franks under their king, Pippin, Charlemagne's dad, took over and gave the exarchate's lands to the pope in 756, which began the Patrimonium Sancti Petri, the Patrimony of Saint Peter. These papal states continued in one form or another for 1,173 years, until 1929, when the Lateran Treaty between the pope, Pius XI, via his secretary of state, and the king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, (the last one, he and all male members of the House of Savoy were ordered permanently out of Italy by the referendum in 1946 to establish a republic) via his prime minister, Benito Mussolini, abolished them and established as the only papal state the Vatican City State which exists to-day.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">The end of the Exarchate of Ravenna in 751 didn't end the ratification of "bishops" by the "Roman" emperor btw. The empire of the Frank general Charles Martel would evolve into The Holy Roman Empire, Imperium Romanum Sacrum, and see itself as the continuation, the transfer of rule, translatio imperii, of the full Roman Empire -- meaning, not just from the end of the Western Roman Empire with the deposing of Romulus Augustus by Odoacer in 476, as is often noted, but the whole pie, from Caesar Augustus through Constantine VI of the Eastern Roman Empire.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Huh? Whozat? OK, first Charles Martel. He lived from 23 August 686 to 22 October 741. His name means "Charles the Hammer", from the Latin Carolus Martellus, Karl Martell in German. Boniface said he couldn't have evangelised the Germans without him (and his army). He was one of the greatest generals anywhere anytime. He held off the Islamic invasion of Western Europe in October 732 (you didn't think this Islamicist thing was anything new, did you?) at Tours, defeating vastly superior forces, which is how he got the name "the Hammer". But, he was not all hung up on being king of anything.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">His son Pippin was, and, the Eastern Empire had failed, exarchates and anything else, to protect the West against the Lombards or the Islamic Caliphate. Plus, Emperor Constantine VI, who had become Emperor at age 9 and presided over the Second Council of Nicaea at age 16 (hey, when you're emperor with a state church you get to do stuff like that), kept losing battles, which led to a revolt he crushed severely. Then he divorced his wife for not producing a son (happens a lot, too bad they didn't know anything about genetics) and married his mistress, which lost him what little support he had left.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">His mom Irene hadn't relinquished regent powers over him and kept the title Empress, so her supporters blinded and deposed him on 19 April 797. So now, on top of the inability of the remainder of the Roman Empire to hold things to-gether in the West, it's gonna be led by a woman, and that's a bit much! I mean, a woman can be Empress by being the wife of the Emperor (Empress Consort), or by being the widow of an Emperor (Empress Dowager) and if she's also the mother of the current Emperor (Empress Mother), but rule in her own right (Empress Regnant), another story. So, the next big Western step was, against all this, the crowning of Charles Martel's grandson Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800 in St Peter's (the old one, remember?). Which kinda worked both ways, as Charlemagne had just bailed old Leo out from being blinded by the Romans themselves!</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Yes this was the first Roman Emperor in the West in about 300 years, but the coronation was explicit; this wasn't just a restoration of the Western Roman Empire that ceased in 476, Charlemagne was the rightful successor to the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VI, so he and not Irene was straight up Roman Emperor, period. For a while Irene thought marrying Charlemagne might fix this, but that idea never made it to first date, although Charlemagne's fourth and last wife, Luitgard, had died 4 June 800, so he was eligible.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">So now there were two "Roman" emperors, not West and East, but each claiming rightful rule over the whole thing in continuous succession. Neither one of them actually Roman, but hey. Now it's kinda hard to preserve an empire when you gotta split it up among your kids, so things bobbled for a century or so, until 2 February 962, when the German king Otto became der Große, the Great. Having overcome all opposition from anybody, he was crowned King of Germany in Aachen, Charlemagne's old capital, on 7 August 936, and on 2 February 962 was crowned Romanorum Imperator, Emperor of the Romans, in Rome at St Peter's (still the old one) by Pope John XII -- whose control over the Papal States (remember that, I told you this stuff all hangs to-gether eventually!) he had just secured. John though soon sent emissaries to the Eastern Empire, Otto got wind of it, went back to Rome and had a pope more suitable to him selected (that's Leo VIII). Poor old John went off with one of his mistresses and died of a heart attack during sex, though other accounts say her jealous husband killed him. Apostolic succession, indeed. BTW, "Pope Joan" legends come from one of his mistresses who had a real influence on him.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">This whole deal was so about being the Roman Empire that the "holy" thing didn't get added until a couple hundred years after Otto, with Frederick the Red Beard (ok Barbarossa), crowned, as it's done, King of the Germans (ie Romans) in Aachen on 9 March 1152 then Emperor in Rome (where else?) by the pope (who else?, this time Eugene III) on 18 June 1155. Fred btw asked for and got an annulment of his marriage to his wife, Adelheid, in 1153, on the grounds that they were too closely related (that's called consanguinity) to be married. They were only fourth cousins but the consanguinity became suddenly an issue after she kept not having kids, imagine that, then he tried to get a wife from somebody at the Eastern Empire court in Constantinople to further express the whole one Rome thing, but that didn't work out, so on 9 June 1156 he married a nice French girl, well countess actually, who became Empress Consort (remember what that is) and they had 12 kids, one of whom became the next "Roman" Emperor (Henry VI).</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Btw, ever wonder why it's called the Vatican? Because it's on the Vaticanus Mons, that's why. OK but what is that? The hill (mons) where the Vates (that's VAH-tays) hang out, that's what. OK but who are they? They were prophets and oracles of pre-Christian Rome. The name originally applied to the Janiculum, a hill across the Tiber from Rome itself and its "seven hills" founded by the god Janus, according to Roman religion. Eventually it came to include the plain in front of it, where Nero built a circus, that became the supposed site of the martyrdom of St Peter, over which supposed site Constantine began construction of a big church, St Peter's. Remember that? All this stuff does tie to-gether!</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><strong>Samhain.</strong></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Thing is, there already was another non Christian celebration about this time. The Celts had something called Samhain, which means "Summer's end" and is still the word for November in Irish, as two other of their big celebrations, Bealtaine and Lunasa, are the Irish words for May and August. It was a harvest festival, but also included the realisation that Winter is coming and thus grain and meat for the season for people and livestock alike is prepared, the bones of the slaughtered animals thrown into bone fires, which is now contracted to bonfires, from which the whole community lighted its individual home fires. Also it was thought the world of the living and the dead intersected on this date, and the dead could cause damage to the living, so the living wore costumes to look like the dead or appease them or confuse them and minimise the potential damage. Your original trick or treat.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">So a feast that started out to replace or transform one pagan observance involving the dead ends up on another, first Roman then Celtic. So whadda we got? A supposedly Christian celebration that's just a non-Christian one with a Christian veneer over it? Well, to some extent, yes. The mistake would be to see this as the whole story. Judas Priest, we ain't even got to the Reformation yet, howzat figure into all this? And how come Luther's out there nailing stuff to the church door on Halloween? Was he trick or treating or something?</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">As to the general idea, guess what, people die, Christian or non Christian, and the people they leave behind feel the loss and want to remember them. Hardly surprising that Christians would want to do that, hell, everybody does, and that's why there's remembrances of various kinds in cultures all over the world. Given the Christian knowledge of salvation from sin and death by the merit of the death and resurrection of Jesus, a commemoration of those who have passed from this life to the joy of that salvation in God's presence would even more suggest itself, and show the fulfillment of a universal human inkling with all its folklore in the revelation of the Gospel. IOW, if anyone ought to commemorate their dead, it's Christians who know God's revealed truth as to what death, and life both here and beyond, is all about.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">But, as we've seen, it's easy to get confused again, get drawn back into the folklore, begin to evolve a sort of hybrid of truth and the guesswork expressed in the folklore, and confuse that for Christianity itself. As an example, remember old Gregory III setting up a place to venerate relics in St Peter's? Why would one venerate something from the body of a dead Christian? Is there even the slightest suggestion of such a practice, or it having any merit, in the Bible? No. Luther mentioned there are many things which even if they began with a good intent originally become so clouded with the sort of thing we manufacture for ourselves in folklore that the intent is long since lost.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">What Is An Indulgence?</span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">What is an indulgence anyway? It has nothing to do with forgiveness of sin, and we'll see in a minute doesn't have bupkis to do with Purgatory either. In Roman Catholic thinking, a sin may indeed be forgiven, but, consequences remain for punishment. Some sins are so serious that, if one does them knowing they are serious yet freely deciding to do it anyway (full animadversion is the term for this if you want to impress somebody), the rejection of God is so complete that it is mortal to the life of the soul, for which reason they are called mortal sins, and the punishment and consequence is eternal if there is no repentance.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">But, even if one repents and is forgiven for a mortal sin, it's still like most sins which aren't so serious, called venial sins, where the punishment is not eternal loss of life, but temporal. The sin reflects an attachment to some part of God's creation over God himself, and one must undertake the removal of that attachment to creatures rather than the Creator through works of mercy, charity, penance, prayer and the like; one must undertake the sanctification, the making holy, of himself. The problem is, while this may be done over time, you may die before you have enough time here. Hence Purgatory, where the process begun here is completed if you die before completing it here and "walk right in" as they used to say.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">But good news! Not good news as is the Gospel; if that were understood we wouldn't even be into this nonsense, but guess what, you don't actually have to do all this cleansing and sanctifying yourself. See, there's a whole treasury of merit from Jesus and the saints, called the thesaurus ecclesiae. Huh? Ain't a thesaurus a list of synonyms? Yes, and no. "Thesaurus" is borrowed by English direct from Latin which borrowed it direct from Greek, and it means a treasury or storehouse.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">So what's up with a list of synonyms? Well, on 29 April 1852 a retired physician named Peter Mark Roget published a book called "Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition". Man, they just don't give books titles like that any more! He meant the word as it stands, a treasury or storehouse of English words etc. It was a huge hit, went through twenty eight printings before he died at 90 on 12 September 1869, was continued and expanded by his son then grandson and continues to this day in later editions as a standard reference work, so much so that "thesaurus" has come to mean, well, a thesaurus, from this particular thesaurus as a treasury of synonyms.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">So why does a physician make a treasury list of synonyms? It wasn't just a retirement project. He began the list in 1805, when he was 26, a young physician. His mother was a paranoiac, his father died young, his sister and daughter had significant mental health issues, his wife died young, so from both nurture and nature he had problems with depression and the list-making helped him find relief. Then thirteen years into it, in 1818, his uncle, despondent over the death of his own wife, slit his throat and Dr Roget tried to prevent then save him but couldn't. Dr Roget published a number of scientific research papers as well, even invented a slide rule that works for logarithms of logarithms, so one can use roots and exponents in calculation, which take their place in the development of human knowledge, but his enduring contribution "Roget's Thesaurus" we should note is the work of a man overcoming his own internal struggles, a monument and inspiration to such efforts. </div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">So, this thesaurus or treasury of the church works like this: just as one's sins affect others, so since we're all members of the body of Christ the church, the merit of Christ and the saints can affect others too, and the church, given the power to bind and loose on Earth and it will be bound or loosed in Heaven, can apply that merit to other members, not to forgive the sin but reduce the temporal consequences needing sanctification, and that application is tied to various pious things you do, like say venerating a relic.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Holy crap that's a lot of thinking! I guess the message that by HIS stripes, meaning the marks of his suffering, we are healed, that he redeemed us like a coupon, paying the price, taking for us the punishment we are due, is just too good to really be true, so we tack all these human thinkings-through onto it to make it more palatable to our understanding.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">St Peter's, Luther, and Tetzel.</span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Well back to this church that's been standing in Rome for over 1000 years through lots of stuff good and bad and is in pretty bad shape, but given as Constantine started it you kind of don't demolish stuff like that, so whaddya do? Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) was the first guy to think yeah maybe you do either completely rebuild it or tear it down and build a new one. He had some plans drawn up but died before much was actually done. Finally Pope Julius II (1503-1513), the one just before Leo X to whom Luther addressed "The Freedom of the Christian", laid the cornerstone for the new St Peter's in 1506.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Costs a lot of money, and Julius liked building stuff. The project was begun 18 April 1506 and wouldn't be completed until 18 November 1626 when Pope Urban VIII dedicated the church. Funding was to be provided in part by selling indulgences. Facilitating this was Albrecht, or Albert, von Hohenzollern, who became archbishop of Magdeburg at age 23 in 1513 and bought himself election to the powerful post of archbishop of Mainz in 1514. To pay for it he got a HUGE loan from Jakob Fugger. Don't laugh at the name, he was a serious, serious dude, banker to everyone who mattered. He loaned Charles V, he to whom the Augsburg Confession was presented, most of the money to buy being elected Holy Roman Emperor, for example.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Albrecht then got permission from Pope Leo X to sell indulgences to pay the loan off as long as half was sent to Rome to pay for St Peter's. A Fugger agent tended the money, and Albrecht got his top salesman in a damn Domincan (friars are always suspect; if they were up to any good they'd have been proper monks like the Benedictines, everybody knows that) named Johann Tetzel.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">When the gold in the coffer rings,</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">the soul from Purgatory springs.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Sobald das Geld im Kasten klingt,</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Die Seele aus dem Fegefeuer springt!</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">That's not even RC theology, as Cardinal Cajetan later said. Whozat? The Dominican (them again!) who was papal legate to the Diet of Augsburg to examine Luther's works. So, it would be overly simplistic to the point of just plain false to ascribe Luther's posting of the 95 Theses to Tetzel and that famous jingle. The sources, the depth, the background of what led to the Reformation go much deeper than that -- which is why I spent all that time on all that ancient stuff. This had been coming for a long, long, time, centuries of it. Luther knew that. Tetzel died a broken man, shunned by all sides, and while Luther fought him strenuously in life, as he lay dying Luther wrote him a personal letter saying the troubles were not of his making, that this "child" had a different father, as Luther put it.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">For us Lutherans to-day to not understand what that different father was would be false to our Lutheran Reformation and to Luther himself. What do we really have here? A misunderstanding (Luther) in reaction to a misunderstanding (Tetzel and indulgences and the late mediaeval papacy) which once the misunderstandings are cleared up, we can maybe issue a joint declaration on the doctrine of justification or something, the whole thing can be resolved and we're one big happy family again? No, and in the words of the great theologian Chris Rock, hell no.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reformation.</span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Theologians like to call the problem one of justification versus sanctification. What does this mean? Sanctify, to make sanctus, which is the Latin word for holy, right back where we started. Justify, to make justus, which is the Latin word for just. How can a person be just before God if he is not holy? Well, he can't. It gets worse. Not only can he not be just before God if he is not holy, there is no amount of time and works that will make him holy enough to be just before God. It gets worse yet. Even when God calls out a people and gives them his Law to show them exactly what he wants, and sends prophet after prophet to get them back on course, we still can't do it.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">But having shown us this is the case through the Law, it gets better with the Gospel, which is just a contraction of old English words for good news. And the good news is this, that he has himself done for us what we could not do for ourselves, which is, fulfill the Law on our behalf, taking the punishment we deserve on himself and paying our debt, thus literally redeeming us. Turns out those human inklings were on to something but couldn't grasp what it is. Salvation is by works, but the works of Jesus, not us; our salvation is by faith in the merit of Jesus, that as he took our sin and it was credited to him though sinless, we take on his holiness and it is credited to us though we are unholy.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">It's so utterly simple. What then, we are to do no works at all? Not in the least. We are to do good works; we are not to trust in them for our salvation in any part but to trust wholly in his works. This too is utterly simple. It's our sinfulness that wants to make it complicated. This happens in two opposite directions. Among Lutherans it happens when to keep clear on justification we mention sanctification little if at all, as if once justified sanctification will take care of itself. It doesn't. Justified is the adjective, sinner is the noun. We are justified sinners; we remain sinners. Simul justus et peccator is the Latin for this.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">The other direction is to figure our works have just got to have something to do with it, and mix that in with the good news of salvation through faith in the works of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and come up with a sort-of good news where it's all him, except that it's you in there too with some punishment to work off and holiness to attain.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Thus do indulgences become a corruption of the Gospel and obscure it, whether they are sold or not. Thus does so much else become a corruption of the Gospel and obscure it -- the office of holy ministry becomes a priesthood, celebration of those who have gone before us in faith become another spirit/ancestor thing, the church itself becomes a part of the state, doing good works because we are saved becomes doing good works in order to be saved, on and on.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">And worst of all in that the mass, or Divine Service as we often call it, becomes no longer first his gift of his word to us through the transformed synagogue service of prayer, Scripture reading and preaching, and then his gift of the same body and blood given for us now given to us as the pledge of our salvation and his testament to us his heirs, but it becomes a work to be done, and effective not through the power of his word to do what it says, but by simply by having worked the work (ex opere operato).</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reformation Day.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Reformationstag.</span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">And so on 31 October 1517 Father Martin Luther posted his document on the door of a church in Wittenberg, right? Well, no. What he did that day was send a cover letter with his document to Albrecht, mentioned above, since it was by his authority that the indulgences were being sold. That's what happened on 31 October 1517. Albrecht got them in late November (and we complain about snail mail now!), conferred with theologians on faculty at the University of Mainz, and forwarded them to Rome.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">OK. so what about the church door thing? Here's the deal. The title of the document is Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum. A Disputation, disputatio in Latin, is a formal moderated academic event, in which a statement or statements are argued to be true or false by reference to an established written authority, such as, in religion, the Bible. This kind of argumentation is called argumentum ad verecundiam, argument from authority, in which the authority is cited in support of the argument's conclusion. It is one kind of what is called defeasible reasoning. Great Caesar's Ghost, what is that? It simply means reasoning that is rational but not demonstrated by logical deduction from a prior statement. Musty late mediaeval stuff? Defeasible reasoning is a major player in the development of AI (artificial intelligence) these days.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Luther was awarded the Doctor of Theology degree by the university on 19 October 1512 and two days later became a member of the theological faculty there with the position Doctor In Bible. The "95 Theses" as they are commonly called were written therefore in the academic language, Latin, rather than the language of the land, German, because it was an academic document calling for the academic event called a disputatio, or Disputation. Neither the document nor the posting of it was intended to start a popular movement, it was a university, academic matter.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">The church was All Saints Church in Wittenberg -- hey, the all saints thing again! -- which was and is commonly called the Schlosskirche, or castle church, as distinct from the Stadtkirche, or town church, of St Mary. It was built by Frederick III, called The Wise, who was the Elector of Saxony, one of the seven who elected Holy Roman Emperors. He also founded the University of Wittenberg in 1502, and attached the castle church to it as the university's chapel.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">So why All Saints Church to build a story? Huge reason. All Saints Church, unlike the town church, had a huge collection of relics of the saints, thousands of them, collected by Frederick, and veneration of them was one way to earn an indulgence, for which purpose they were put on display once a year. You get 100 days indulgence per relic. By 1520 Frederick had over 19,000 of them, and taking that as a round number, (19K x 100)/365 is 5,205 years and some change. Now, the "days" are not, as is often thought and was noted above, time off from Purgatory; it is time off from what would otherwise have to be punishment here on Earth, therefore shortening one's stay in Purgatory, where there are no earthly days, to complete what was not completed here in earth.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Holy crap that's a lot of thinking! Oh yeah, we've been there before. Now we see how out of hand it was, and also see that the out of hand thing isn't even the worst part, you can curb the out of hand stuff, and it is now largely curbed even in the RCC, but the worst part remains, the near total eclipse made of the good news of salvation in the Gospel, getting justification and sanctification all mixed up. Luther as a priest saw the effect of this first hand, with parishioners skipping right over the repentance and changing lives, the sanctification mentioned above, to a financial transaction that takes care of everything, when in fact the indulgences themselves presuppose such repentance and emendation of life and only affect temporal punishment, not forgiveness.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Luther preached on this earlier in 1517, wrote an academic treatise on indulgences, and followed correct church procedure, contacting his ordinary (that means his ecclesiastical supervisor, a "bishop") the Bishop of Brandenburg Hieronymus Schultz, and finally the archbishop on 31 October in hopes that they would take corrective action. </div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">So what's up with a story about nailing stuff to a door when that isn't what happened? Just more spurious legends about religious stuff that ought to be left in the past where they belong? No, and here's why.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">The corrective action for which Luther hoped never happened, and neither did the disputatio. University documents are not private documents, and the Latin document was soon printed in Basel, Leipzig and Nuremberg and widely distributed, and in Nuremberg a city official named Kaspar Nützel translated them into German around Christmas and distributed them, so those outside of academia could read them. So how'd he get them if they weren't posted? Universities at that time were in transition, from the Scholastic mode of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance mode of humanism. One feature of that was discussion societies to promote classical ideas, called sodalitas litteraria. One such fellowship was the Staupitzkreis, or sodalitas Staupitziana, around Luther's mentor and dean, Johann von Staupitz, and Nützel was a member.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Academic custom calls for a disputation document to be published by the university press, and there is no evidence that the University of Wittenberg ever did so. Of course not, things never got that far. Rules also called for posting on every church door, so, for one thing such a posting would not be unusual or draw a crowd, and also, only one church is mentioned in the account from which the legend grew, that of Phillip Melanchthon, who wasn't there and took a post in Wittenberg the following year, in his book Historia de vita et actis Lutheri in 1548, 31 years later.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Albrecht's advisers in Mainz suggested local action to silence Luther but Albrecht wanted action from Rome, and he got it. In January 1518 Tetzel had theologian Konrad Wimpina write theses against Luther, which Tetzel defended in a Disputation at the University of Frankfurt. By February 1518 the pope (Leo) tried to get authorities in the religious order to which Luther belonged, the Order of St Augustine, to shut him up, and appointed a then-renowned theologian, Silvestro Mazzolini (another bleeding Dominican!) to prepare a formal case against him, which he did, side-stepping the spiritual aspects to focus on papal authority. In April 1518 Luther published a popular work, thus, in German, a "Sermon on Indulgences and Grace", stressing the case for repentance and good works rather than indulgences with money going to build the new St Peter's Basilica rather than help the local poor. It circulated throughout the Holy Roman Empire and this, not a posting on Halloween, is where a large audience beyond academia heard of these things. Then in August 1518 Luther was summoned to Rome. In preparation, Luther wrote an "Explanations" on his theses, showing this was not an attack on the pope. His defence before Cardinal Cajetan was in Augsburg in October 1518. The Explanations were rejected, as was Luther's request to have the matter reviewed by theologians, and Luther appealed to the pope directly.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Luther didn't see any of this coming in his activities of 1517. He was not out to begin a Reformation. But as 1518 unfolded, with the Explanations, the Sermon, the various formal proceedings, he could see that the matter of indulgence abuse was but the tip of the iceberg. The power and efficacy of indulgences was the surface of a much deeper problem, the obscuring of the Gospel and the perversion of the church's mission to spread it and minister its sacraments, those gifts of grace, grace coming from the Latin for "free", gratis, from Christ himself, in Baptism and the Eucharist. A reformation of the church, not a founding of a new church, was indeed underway. Ten years later, 31 October 1527, Luther, now excommunicated from the Roman Cathoic Church, and company toasted the sending of the theses to Albrecht as the beginning, 21 years before Melanchthon wrote his story about nailing stuff to a church door.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">The imagery of the church door story may be just a story, but it expresses something quite real. So well that even by the 100 year anniversary of the Reformation (let's call it centenary, that's the Latin-derived name for such things) in 1617 it was celebrated as such.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">A Quick Look East.</span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">BTW, the Eastern Church isn't off the hook here; while this indulgence thing was a Western thing and there is no equivalent to the remission of temporal punishment for sin in the Eastern Church, there was the practice of absolution certificates, which in some places did lift punishments, but primarily were issued by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem to pilgrims there and were distributed abroad, which absolved the sins of whoever bought them -- as distinct from an indulgence which does not absolve sin but remits punishment due to forgiven sins, which if they're forgiven then why is there still punishment, holy crap brace yourself for another lot of thinking -- and the proceeds paid for the heavy costs, including taxes, of maintaining the shrines in the Holy Land. Even worse than indulgences, or at least just as bad, technical differences regardless.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion.</span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b>So we see that Luther had a specific purpose on a specific day in a specific place for specific reasons.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">You know what? Though the Disputation the 95 Theses called for was never held, something much better happened. It's called the Lutheran Reformation, in which no new church was started, but the one church, the church that has been there all along, the church that will be there all along, the only church there will ever be, was reformed where the Gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered after the institution of Christ rather than that plus a hell of a lot of thinking that added all sorts of emendations by Man.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">This reformation in the beginning was at the risk of life from the powers that be. Thankfully those times are over, but as with the indulgences themselves, it is not that itself which is the main thing, but the Gospel for which it was done. We celebrate this great working of the Holy Spirit, in reforming the church against both pressures to maintain the old errors and against pressures to take the Reformation into further errors, on 31 October, Reformation Day.</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Reformation Day, whether it's Sunday or not, until recently. As if something for which our Lutheran fathers risked literally everything needs to be moved for the convenience of us who benefit from it to the nearest Sunday to make it easier and therefore get more numbers. Do any of us need police protection to safely move about as Lutherans that moving it to Sunday will change?</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">Thanks be to God for the reformation of his church!</div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; margin: 0px;">And Happy Halloween while you're at it.<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>Happy All Saints Day (Allerheiligen) too!</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-50044015135739513452021-10-23T16:06:00.000-05:002021-10-23T16:06:24.193-05:00Boethius, Terence, Wheel of Fortune. 23 October 2021.<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Festschrift for the feast of St Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, 23 October.</span></p>Now whoda thunk that an apparently purely entertainment TV game show actually references one of the more important topics in philosophy, with a history back to ancient Rome and an influence for centuries thereafter, including why there's Lutherans and what we think we're doing here.<br /><br />It all comes from the Latin phrase "Fortes fortuna adiuvat" which is usually translated "fortune favours the brave" and is generally taken to mean that those who take risks, or at least take action, are going to be luckier, or at least get more results, in life than those who don't.<br /><br />It was first written by a Roman playwright named Terence, which is also my first name.<br /><br />There's just a bit more to it than that. First a bit about who that Terence was, then about who this Terence is, then about the famous phrase, then what it means and the significance of that.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">About Terence, or, My Name Is Terence and I'm a Playwright.</span><br /><br />The English name Terence comes from the Roman playwright Terentius. Here's where the fun starts. Terence is a "first name" in English but Terentius is not a "first name" in Latin. It wasn't my name at birth and it wasn't his at birth either. And, I am not of the ethnic descent of the people who gave me that name, and he wasn't either. Let's start with the Roman Terence.<br /><br />Here's the deal on him. The Roman Terence was born around 185 or 195 BC, depending on which ancient source got it right. He was born in or around Carthage, or possibly to a woman in Greek-speaking Italy (yeah, they spoke more Greek than Latin in Rome back then, it was the cultural language) who was sold into slavery and then taken to in or around Carthage. He himself was sold as a slave to a Roman senator named Publius Terentius Lucanus, who brought him to Rome, gave him an education, and then, apparently impressed with the result, adopted him and freed him, which made him a Roman citizen. Ancient sources indicate he was lost at sea in 159 B.C., making him either 36 or 26 at the time of his death.<br /><br />So why do we call him Terence? Well, Romans actually had three names. First comes the praenomen, which means your first name, or given name as it is called. Second comes the nomen, aka the nomen gentile or sometimes the gentilicium, which by whichever term designates the clan, or gens, from which one came. Third and last comes the cognomen, which designates your family branch, stirps in Latin, among the branches (stirpes) within the clan. We still use the cognomen term in estate law, where distribution of the estate per stirpes is equal to each branch no matter how many people are in each branch, as opposed to per capita, by head, meaning equal to each individual. This structure is even older than the Romans, who got it from the Etruscans before them.<br /><br />But that's Romans, not slaves or kids of slaves who become slaves themselves. Nobody knows what Terentius' birth name was, but it wasn't Terence, sure as hell. His name reflects his status as a Roman citizen, upon being freed. So he took the praenomen Publius, meaning "public", which was one of the relatively few first names, and was also his former master's first name, and took the clan name of his master, Terentius, and for a last name to distinguish his family within the clan, took Afer, since he was not a blood Terentius but from Afer.<br /><br />Afer, what the hell is that, sounds like Africa. Yeah it does and for good reason. Africa now means the whole continent, but in Terence' lifetime it meant the land of the Libyan tribe the Afri, who hung in and around Carthage, which is in modern Tunisia but was founded as a Phoenician colony in 814 BC, or so the Romans said. But when the Romans trashed Carthage in 146 BC, by which time Terence had been dead several years, the Carthaginians themselves were called Punic, a reference to Carthage's Phoenician origin, and Afri came to mean the Libyan Berbers around them.<br /><br />So hard telling. He may have been a Berber, although that use of Afri is just a little later than his lifetime. Or, he may have been Afri, who were descendants of Abraham's grandson Epher, hence the name Afri, according to Titus Flavius Josephus, the great Roman historian. Btw Josephus was another non-Roman who got a Roman name on being made a Roman citizen, and is there ever a story to that. Or, Terence may have been none of the above and was who knows what, since when you're a slave you don't get a hell of a lot of choice about where you end up.<br /><br />Afer as a Roman cognomen meant people who whatever else were from in or around Carthage, but that doesn't clarify whether he was from there originally, and if so was he Afri or something else, or was he something else and got brought there.<br /><br />So we got a guy whose birth name and people are not known, who was sold as a slave but treated well and educated, and when freed took his former master's praenomen or given name, his clan name, within which he was distinguished by his Carthaginian/Tunisian origins at least with regard to the Roman world.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">About Terence, or, My Name Is Terence and I'm a Blogger.</span><br /><br />Now, when I was adopted, my new mother wanted to name me Cornelius Steven, but my new dad wanted Terence James. Dad won. Which is unusual twice over. For one thing generally mothers get naming rights, and for another the usual RC practice in those days was to name a kid after one of the saints. So here's my dad naming me after a pagan Roman playwright and the RCC allowed it, and so I was baptised at Holy Name By God Cathedral in Chicago.<br /><br />My details aren't as murky as the Roman Terence, but here's the thing. I don't know how it's done now, but in those days after an adoption a birth certificate was rewritten with the adoptive parents as if it were a live birth. What I have for a baptismal certificate is not the certificate itself, but a signed documents from Holy Name By God Cathedral ("By God" isn't actually in the name, I'm just clowning around, happens from time to time on this blog) dated 1958, probably because we were in Minnesota by then and a parish wanted evidence that I had been baptized. It says that a baptism was on record for 7 July 1950 and there's my adopted name. Thing is, according to the court documents, I wasn't placed in my adoptive parents care until later that month, and the adoption and name change wasn't official until February 1951. So, it may well be that the baptism was re-expressed to reflect my later adoption and name change. Even God knows better than to mess with Cook County (ok, more clowning around). But no matter how exactly it happened, I ended up with a non-saint's name, and picked by my dad, both factors unusual at the time.<br /><br />My adoptive parents were of Irish-American stock, which completes both the irony and the fittingness of the name Terence for me. I learned later, from seeing the adoption papers among my parents' stuff after they died, my original name. Douglas John Clutterham. The last name is English, from the Suffolk area specifically, making me an Angle by descent, not Irish.<div><br /></div><div>As to my original first and middle names, nobody knows where they came from! Through a series of events that I had nothing to do with (it was my older son and what turned out to be my oldest brother poking around ancestry stuff online running across each other) I connected with my family of origin and in that discovered that nobody knew anything about Douglas John, my biological dad thought it was going to be Keith, so who knows, maybe some clerk in Cook County just put something since it was going to change anyway. <br /><br />So I get a first name from a guy whose first name it wasn't! Which is OK, you don't hear Publius much these days. And neither that Terence nor this one started out with the name, or came from the people who gave him that name (he wasn't Roman and I ain't Irish), but got names that look like it by, as they say in insurance, major life event. He by being adopted and freed from slavery and made a Roman citizen, me by being adopted. I doubt Dad was thinking of all that, but he did know the correct spelling to give me, which, the original being Terentius, is Terence. No double damn r.<br /><br />Which was totally in tune with what was to come, namely, the great gift of the Christian faith, as revealed in Scripture and accurately confessed in the Book of Concord. Not in not having a saint's name, since there ain't no Saint Douglas either, but in getting Terence. Luther admired the plays of Terence and quoted them a lot, and thought they were good for kids to learn in their educational formation.<br /><br />Ain't that a kick? My first Lutheran pastor once said -- not sure if he was joking or not -- that my growing up in Minnesota and going to a Bavarian Benedictine founded school and picking up German and the whole German thing was God's way of getting me to be ready to be Lutheran, so I could lapse into German when ranting. Maybe more clowning around. But right there at the RC origins, I was given the name of a Roman playwright Luther admired!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">About the Saying, or, What the Translations Can't Translate.</span><br /><br />Now to the phrase itself. I think I learnt it "Fortuna fortes adiuvat". OK, "adiuvat" is the verb and verbs go at the end of a sentence in Latin, so at least that part's right. It means "helps" or "assists" or "aids", and you can see it in the derivative English word "adjutant", which means a helper, or assistant, or aide. So what's "fortes"? It's the direct object of the verb, the one helped or assisted or aided, and means "the brave" or "the strong", and you can see it in the English word "fortitude" for courage aka guts or grit.<br /><br />So, the generally accepted Latin form is "fortes fortuna adiuvat" and the generally accepted English translation is "fortune favours the brave". It was widely used as a proverb and first appears in a play by Terence, namely, in line 203 of Phormio. End of story? Oh hell no.<br /><br />For one thing, the first of many, some Latin scholars contend that it should be fortis fortuna adiuvat. Huh? Well, Latin is an inflected language, which means that the function of words is shown by differences in how the words end rather than by prepositions cluttering things up and word order as in English. These differences are classified into typical uses of words, called cases, and direct objects, which are that to which the action of the verb is applied, go in what is called the accusative case.<br /><br />Some say that while "fortes" is the usual ending of the word in the plural accusative in Latin generally, in Terence's time -- which was 195 or 185 to 159, which was the era of the Roman Republic, before the Roman Empire -- the accusative plural was then fortis, not fortes, and so in his play it's actually fortis fortuna adiuvat. The Latin texts available online give it both ways.<br /><br />The next thing is, fortes literally means the strong, as in physically powerful, not the brave, but just like "strength" itself, the word took on a figurative meaning of brave or courageous from the associated connotation of those characteristics with the physically strong. Like we may say "Be strong" meaning to man up and get through it rather than start working out. So that makes it literally "fortune favours the strong".<br /><br />Now to the verb. "Favours" is a little different than "aids" or "assists". "Favours" in English is more a general reference to your overall chances, but the Latin as "aids" or "assists" or "helps" means that someone or something is actually actively helping or assisting you. That's a real big difference, and that's where "fortuna" comes in. The word is obviously the root of the English words "fortune", "fortunately" and the like, but while now it's like random chance or good luck or something like that, in Latin and to the ancient Romans it wasn't just that, it was the goddess Fortuna who was in charge of that.<br /><br />So altogether, that makes it translate more like the goddess "Fortuna helps the strong".<br /><br />That was a real big deal. Fortuna's sacred day was 11 June. The cult of Fors Fortuna (hey, there's that "strong" thing again) was found all over the Roman world and was a festival on 24 June. Fortuna was known as Tyche to the Greeks, from whom the Romans took much of their original state religion, and Fortuna, as Tyche, was all over the Greek world before the Roman world. The Roman name comes from Vortumna, which means "she who spins the year" and if you're paying attention, there you go with a "wheel of fortune".<br /><br />But, just like with the saying from Terence, wheel of fortune isn't all there is to it. It's rota Fortuna in Latin, not just wheel of fortune, but the wheel of the goddess Fortune. As she spins the year what happens to you during the year shakes out. Thing is though, you don't get to buy any damn letters to move things in your, uh, favour, so instead, you'd better hit her temple and make her happy, or, you might just say she's a fickle whore who does what she damn well pleases anyway so who cares about her temple. Both opinions and behaviours were common in the ancient world.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">About Augustine's Answer, or, So What?</span><br /><br />Now is this just some more musty old stuff from Past Elder? Hey, why do you think books with titles like "Purpose Driven Life", "Your Best Life Now" and are best sellers for years? Why do you think people say "shit happens"? Judas H Priest, the whole question of whether life is just a bunch a random stuff that happens without any meaning or any ability to change it much and then you die, or, does it have a meaning, maybe even a reason or purpose, and you can get in there and affect it, has been bugging Mankind since there's been Mankind. It's the biggest question of all -- Why?<br /><br />So we've got the wheel of the goddess Fortuna, and the original Wheel of Fortune, Rota Fortuna. As she spins the wheel, bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, stuff just seems to happen, and here we are wondering if there's any rhyme or reason to it, to life. A lot people still wonder that about life.<br /><br />Terence's phrase became a commonplace saying and had been used and/or quoted by heavyweights of Roman literature. Pliny uses it in his Epistles (don't freak, no lost works of the Bible here, just means "letters"). Cicero referred to it as a proverb. Virgil used it in the Aeneid (Book Ten, Line 284) as audentis fortuna iuvat. Audentis is where English gets audacity, audacious, etc, iuvat is just plain helps, the "ad" intensifies the intention toward (that's what "ad" is, toward) someone, so you get the idea. And Ovid topped that in his Metamorphoses (10/86), saying not just Fortuna but God himself helps the bold. Well OK he actually wrote audentes deus ipse iuvat, I translated.<br /><br />Another guy from Carthage, good old Augustine, took Fortune on in De civitaitis Dei contra Paganos (On the City of God Against the Pagans). The book is usually known in English under more or less half its title as "The City of God", but leaving out the rest of its title also leaves out the author's reference to why he even wrote it. Gus wrote "The City of God" right after the Visigoths trashed Rome in 410. The Romans were wondering if maybe that sacking happened because of two things. One, thirty years before, the state abandoned the traditional Roman religion for the new state Catholic Church that was established by the co-emperors Theodosius in the East and Gratian and Valentinian II in the West issuing the Edict of Thessalonica on 27 February 380. Two, the new Imperial religion then launched a massive destruction of the sites and institutions of the old Imperial religion (details in the next section). As part of making the case that these two things were not the cause of things falling apart, Gus says Fortune, since she brings good things to good and bad people alike, is unworthy of worship. That's his answer to why good things happen to bad people I guess, along with why abandoning the traditional religion didn't bring down the whole damn Empire.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">About What Sets Up Another Answer, or, Everything Falls Apart.</span><br /><br />But Boethius, writing over a century later, about 524, as he was waiting to be executed, took a different slant on Fortuna. Holy crap, executed -- for what? Well, more Goths, this time of the Ostro kind. Visigoths were from what is now Spain, Ostro or East Goths were from the Balkans.<br /><br />The Western Roman Empire was gone by 524. The last Western Emperor, Romulus Augustus, had been deposed by Odoacer, a non-Roman Roman officer of uncertain origin though his name is Germanic, on 4 September 476. Odoacer's army proclaimed him the first "King of Italy" though he was a "barbarian". At first the Roman Senate thought it would be fine to just continue under the remaining of the two Roman Emperors, the Eastern one, Zeno at the time. Zeno made Odoacer a Patrician but also thought he should restore emperor Julius Nepos, whom Romulus Augustus had overthrown. Well actually his father Orestes, Julius Nepos' military chief of staff (magister militum) overthrew him, then named him emperor.<br /><br />Odoacer declined to do so, and as his power increased, Zeno determined to get rid of him and promised Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, that he and the Ostrogoths could have Odoacer's Italian kingdom if they would get rid of him. Theodoric and Odoacer's forces slugged it out all over Italy. Now both these guys were Arian Christians btw, not the kind still around. Anyway, a treaty was signed and a celebration arranged, at which Theodoric proposed a toast then killed Odoacer personally. And that's the real story of the real "Dietrich von Bern". (OK you Lutherans oughta be laughing like hell right now, if not, go read the preface to the Large Catechism.)<br /><br />Which far from being a "useless story" here shows that the century between Augustine and Jerome, both of whom we saw in recent posts on each's feast days, and Boethius, was one hell of a century. Here's a timeline of the major events Rome did replacing its traditional religion with its new Catholic Church.<br /><br />380, the Roman Empire both East and West constituted the Catholic Church and made it the state religion on 27 February with the Edict of Thessalonica; Damasus, pope after killing supporters of a rival, is proclaimed to have the true faith from Peter, emperor Gratian refuses title of pontifex maximus, head of the state Roman religion, established by Numa Pompilius, second king of Rome, elected by the Senate after the death of the first king and co-founder of Rome (21 April 753 BC) Romulus. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church begins.<br />382, Jerome called to Rome to help Damasus, then run out of town after Damasus dies.<br />390, the Roman Empire destroys the Temple of Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi.<br />391, the Roman Empire destroys the Serapeum and Great Library of Alexandria.<br />392, the Roman Empire ends the Eleusinian Mysteries after 2,000 years.<br />393, the Roman Empire ends the Olympic Games, dedicated to Zeus, begun 776 BC, after that year's games.<br />394, the Eastern Empire crushes classic Roman resistance to the Catholic Church on 6 September at the Battle of The Frigidus.<br />394, the Roman Empire disbands the Temple of Vesta, established by Numa Pompilius, second king of Rome (715-673 BC), and puts out its eternal flame.<br />395, Augustine becomes Bishop of Hippo.<br />410, the Visigoths under Alaric sacked Rome on 24 August.<br />420, Jerome died on 30 September.<br />430, Augustine died on 28 August at 75.<br />455, Rome was sacked again this time by the Vandals.<br />476, Romulus Augustus was deposed becoming the last Western Roman Emperor on 4 September by Germanic foederati (non-Roman allies) of Rome under Odoacer.<br />475 to 480, somewhere in there, Boethius was born.<br /><br />The entire world these guys knew changed completely during these decades. Jerome himself said of it, that the city which had conquered the world had now itself been conquered. Augustine and Jerome lived at the end of the Western Roman Empire, which is also to say at the end of the full Roman Empire, either divided into East and West or undivided, whereas Boethius never knew that and was born right about the time the last Western Roman Emperor was deposed leaving only the Eastern Roman Empire.<br /><br />As the Western Roman Empire approached its end, at the same time as its state Catholic Church was busy destroying the institutions of the classic Roman religion, its theologians were busy incorporating and synthesising the state church's faith with classic Roman philosophy -- which religion and philosophy were derived from ancient Greece before them -- and the bishop of Rome increasingly became a symbol of stability that the emperor of Rome no longer was.<br /><br />Goes like this. "Pope" Leo himself met with no less than Attila the Hun in 452 and averted a sacking by the Huns, due to the grace of God. Well, the one helluva lot of gold he brought along to buy them off mighta helped too. Then on 2 June 455 he met with Genseric, King of the Vandals, trying to repeat his performance with Attila, which this time did not prevent a sacking but did hold its severity down somewhat with less physical destruction than the Goths did in 410.<br /><br />But the Vandals, like the Goths Germanic types who were Arian Christians and who by then were operating out of North Africa, made off with so much loot, and people to be sold as slaves, that it became legendary, and centuries later, the religious and social order destruction following the French Revolution was described as "vandalisme" by the bishop of Blois Henri Gregoire in 1794, the year the Reign of Terror ended, which quickly became a name now used for any notable destruction -- vandalism.<br /><br />It is right here that the doctrine of "Petrine" supremacy becomes established. Petrine, what the hell is that? Nothing to do with St Peter, but with the popes, the bishops of Rome, who had come from being proclaimed by the Roman Empire as conservators of the true Apostolic faith in 380 to just 70-some years later meeting with leaders of powers about to kick Rome's butt. But in the face of that oncoming destruction Leo asserted a religious authority complementary to his civil influence, with the bishop of Rome assuming the significance of the long-gone undivided emperor of Rome, the last emperor of an undivided Roman Empire being Diocletian, who retired (about the only one to do so without being killed into retirement) 1 May 305.<br /><br />So from an edict issued during the reign of the last Roman Emperor of both the Eastern and Western Empire, Theodosius in 380, Leo just decades later harks back to the last Roman Emperor of an undivided Roman Empire. Just as "Rome" became more a concept than a place as new imperial seats of power (Trier, Milan, etc) emerged, as Herodian put it "Rome is where the Emperor is" (OK that's an English translation of his Latin words), so now Rome asserts itself as the seat of power, and not just a concept, and that is where Peter is, meaning Peter's supposed successor the bishop of Rome, and he heads the whole Christian church, with the heads of local churches being valid insofar as they are "in communion" with him.<br /><br />None of which has the faintest justification in Scripture, but when the entire world about you is swirling down the tubes politically and culturally it looks pretty good, and when this pontifex maximus, now the Roman pope rather than the Roman emperor, is about all that's left it looks damn good. Unfortunately it still looks damn good to many looking for the Kingdom of God to have the same external signs of visibility and continuity as a Kingdom or State of Man.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">About Boethius' Answer, or, So What Revisited?</span><br /><br />Theodoric, though Germanic, was interested in keeping the culture and institutions of the Roman Empire going, and appointed Boethius his Master of Offices (magister officiorum), the head of the government bureaucracy. Theodoric was educated in Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Empire, and kind of worked out a deal where the defeated Romans could continue their thing under his rule while the Goths continued the Goth thing. As part of this, Theodoric, though an Arian Christian, was pretty favourable toward the Pope, head of the Catholic Church, about the only major institution of the Roman Empire in the West to survive. Theodoric was effectively but unofficially the new Western Roman Emperor.<br /><br />Boethius, a Roman, was a Trinitarian, or Nicene, Christian, which is to say Christian in the usual sense now, and eventually Theodoric, an Arian Christian, came to distrust him, thinking he might be more in sympathy with the effective AND official emperor of the surviving Eastern Roman Empire, which was Justin, also a Nicene Christian. So he ordered him tried and executed for treason. Thing is, while he is awaiting execution, he writes this book, one of the most influential books ever, and for some time THE most influential book in philosophy, as a consolation, but it's not the Consolation of Christianity but the Consolation of Philosophy. Well, De consolatione philosophiae, actually. Christianity is never mentioned or treated by name, but it sounds a lot like Christianity, and that's because since Augustine Christianity sounded a lot like Plato.<br /><br />The basic idea of the Consolation is pure Platonism -- even if everything looks like it's going right straight to hell it ain't. Now you might say well hell, don't Christians believe that too? Yes they do but with a different idea about why that is. For Christians it's not just a matter of an ideal world that is truly real beyond the mess we see here, old Fortuna spinning her wheel in what only appears to be real.<br /><br />But Boethius, and this is typical of everything about him, blended Christianity and Roman/Greek philosophy to-gether, so that while Fortuna may indeed spin her wheel, apparently at random and pretty much indifferent to the results, nonetheless, distinct from Gus' take that therefore she is unworthy of worship, she is herself subject to God and her effects and any other such effects all bend to the unseen plan of God, so it's all good even when it looks like pure crap. So the Consolation is kind of like the Book of Esther, in which as the rabbis pointed out God is not mentioned yet he is everywhere present in it.<br /><br />Boethius was on a mission, and the mission was, to pass on the learning and wisdom of the Greek/Roman world falling apart in his time to the new world that would emerge from it. So he translated into the new language of learning, Latin, the great works of classic learning in Greek.<br /><br />Specifically, he attempted to pass on the system for organising and teaching knowledge outlined in his book De arithmetica. You may have heard of this system, it's the Seven Liberal Arts. And within that system, for example, he attempted to pass on the three-fold division of one of those arts, called musica -- but, musica means a hell of a lot more than we do by "music". What we mean by music was the lowest of three levels of it and best left to the uneducated. All that stuff was the subject of my doctoral dissertation, and a lot of it is summarised in the post "Readin, Writin and Absolute Multitude" posted in February on this blog.<br /><br />What's "absolute multitude" and didn't I mean arithmetic? I ain't gonna tell you here since it's in the post and no I didn't mean arithmetic, which too was more than the word means now. Well hell, you didn't think the future Past Elder was gonna write another music theory dissertation in which some obscure piece or musical relationship is analysed into further obscurity while putting everyone who isn't into such things, which is nearly everyone, to bloody sleep, now did you? Hell no.<br /><br />You can read a rather good summary about Boethius by "Pope" Benedict XVI, given at a general audience on 12 March 2008, <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20080312_en.html">here</a>.<br /><br />Boethius succeeded in his mission. His works would form the backbone of the learning system for centuries in the new world that emerged from the ancient. The Consolation was one of the bedrocks of education and formation for hundreds and hundreds of years to come. King Alfred of old England, Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth (not the current one, the first one) all translated it, it's all over Dante and Chaucer's original works, Shakespeare too, and students read and studied The Consolation for a thousand years after.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">About Time, or, Conclusion.</span><br /><br />Ironic, isn't it, that Theodoric, the non-Roman Arian Christian Germanic type who became effectively the new Roman Emperor, in the West anyway, and Boethius, the Roman Nicene Christian that Theodoric had executed for suspected Eastern sympathies, were both concerned that Roman, and thus classical Greek along with it, learning and culture survive into the new world just beginning to emerge from the destruction of the Western Roman Empire.<br /><br />They succeeded.<br /><br />The Eastern Roman Empire survived until it fell to the Islamic Ottoman Empire in 1453. Whereupon the Russian regime of Ivan III (no, not the "Terrible", that was Ivan IV, his grandson) of the Grand Principality of Moscow took up the mantle: Czar, or Tsar, is a Russianisation of "Caesar", Ivan married the niece (Sophia Palaiologina) of the last Eastern Roman Emperor (Constantine XI), and Moscow established itself as the "Third Rome". The state church of the Roman Empire survives in the East in the various churches known as Eastern Orthodoxy. I might mention that the Eastern Roman double-headed eagle, adopted by the Russian Empire, survives in the coat of arms of the Russian Federation, after an interruption by the Soviet Union. Then again, I might not.<br /><br />In the West, the state church of the Roman Empire survives in what is known as, though this is not its actual name, the Roman Catholic Church. It would be joined by what its participants understood to be a transfer of rule, translatio imperii in Latin, of the authority of the Roman Empire in what would later become known as the Holy Roman Empire, sacrum romanum imperium in Latin, which survived until Napoleon dissolved it in 1806.<br /><br />As the Empire was falling apart and the Western Empire fell in 476, the idea that this fall happened because of abandoning traditional Roman religion for the then 96-year-old state Catholic Church was so prominent that, as we saw above, Augustine wrote a huge volume generally known in English as The City of God to say that wasn't so.<br /><br />It was so.<br /><br />Not as a matter of the truth or falsity of any religion. Believe what one will about why it happened, there is no disputing that it did happen that:<br />1) in the West, although the translatio imperii is defined in terms of political entities, these entities brought with them the culture and learning evolving through the Romans since the ancient Greeks, and this survived and grew throughout the Holy Roman Empire, and<br />2) in the East, though the Eastern Empire survived nearly a thousand years after the Western, it fell to the Islamic Ottoman culture and the mantle passed to Russia.<br /><br />The Roman Empire did not survive the abandonment of its traditional religion for its then-new state church, but its state church did survive the loss of the Empire, and around it, both East and West, new entities carried on the culture and learning. This is why Boethius' answer is to be preferred over Augustine's, which is actually no answer at all.<br /><br />Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great orator and statesman of the Roman Republic, once said "Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum." Yeah, yeah, what does this mean? To not know what happened before one was born, that is to be always a child (boy, actually), that's what it means. Godfrey once said to me that institutions have memories too, and an institution that loses its memory functions much like a person who does -- institutional Alzheimer's.<br /><br />We ourselves are products of an evolution of culture and learning that came to-gether in ancient Greece and matured in Rome. But here's the thing -- while much is made of the Roman Empire, the culture and learning that it passed on was largely matured in the Roman Republic. Cicero, that great champion of republican Rome, saw an empire coming and tried to articulate republican values against it. He was proscribed by the new regime, captured and executed on 7 December 43 B.C. What he feared was exactly what came to pass. The Empire had the culture and learning of the Republic, but traded the dignity and freedom of the Republic for a strong custodian state that would take care of everything. The transition was clear enough that just a few decades into the Empire, Juvenal wrote satires decrying what was lost, including the famous warning, Who guards the guardians? (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, Juvenal, Satire VI, lines 347/8) The Roman Empire was distinctly un-Roman, as was and is the state Roman church it founded some three centuries later that would survive the Empire.<br /><br />New entities emerged, that like the Empire had the culture and learning but within had quite un-Roman political structures. Now comes the difference for us. The outcome of the world war that began just over one hundred years ago in 1914 brought an end to the last remnants of those political entities that continued the evolution of classic culture and learning. We are now in a period much like those which followed both the falls of the Western Empire. Comparisons of the present with "the Fall of Rome" are often made. But which Fall of Rome? Generally the comparisons refer to the fall of the Western Empire in 476. But as we have seen with all this Boethius stuff, there's the fall of the Western reconstitution of the Western Empire as the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and then fall of spin-off empires still within its world order in WWI, and the fall of the Eastern Empire in 1476, but, before all that the real Fall of Rome, the fall of the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire, which gave to itself and all later "Romes" a distinctly unRoman character.<br /><br />The difference now is, whether that culture and learning will continue in the order which is still emerging one hundred some years later after the fall of the remnants of that world order in WWI is yet to be seen. The 20th Century saw two of the most disruptive regimes in all of human history, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and an even worse world war after the first one that was supposed to "end all wars" but didn't and only led to worse wars. Win the war, lose the peace. Even now our headlines are daily full of events from states imposed on what is now called the Middle East after the first, and in the case of Israel, second, world war.<br /><br />More than just the incomplete chronology at this point, the real difference is that where before, in the transition from Republic to Empire and from Empire to resurrected Empire, the new entities were at pains to preserve the learning and culture from before, even within structures that are foreign to it, now no transition or transfer is sought, but now, peace to many is characterised by a full scale retreat from, and ignorance of, and more recently outright rejection of, the culture and learning that went before, seeing it as part of the package that was the problem, and from which we have moved on. Is that moving on, or cultural Alzheimer's? And, an Alzheimer's that mistakes its condition for Progress, when in fact it is just as Cicero said, always to be a child. And due to the technological advances in its toys, much like a child with a loaded pistol.<br /><br />The Wheel of Fortune was, and endures as, an allegory. You can get all hung up in why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and whether there's anything to life but a bunch of stuff that happens and then you die, but what you gotta see is that the wheel keeps on turning. Big wheel keeps on turning, proud Mary keeps on burning, just like Tina Turner said. Things change, and you can't get all hung up on one point in the process. The mighty fall, the lowly rise. Riding high in April, shot down in May, like the Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon song written for Sinatra says. (Hey, that song made it into the Tony Hawk video game Underground 2.)<br /><br />Stay in the process, not one point of it, and that applies equally to when things look good as to when things look bad. You can't put your trust in any one point in the process, whether you like that point or not, because the process is gonna keep right on processing. There ain't no Fortuna, and the process itself ain't God either. And just like Boethius -- not to mention St Paul -- said, there is a God and while things aren't all good all things do work to-gether for the good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)<br /><br />Fortune does favour the brave. And as Ovid tweaked it, God himself's gonna help ya. Except Ovid didn't know how. None of us (Mankind) does, did, or can, which is why the whole life thing bugs us so much and we come up with all sorts of answers to it. But God himself helps you with finding out how he's gonna help you too. He reveals it, first in the Law of Moses, then in the Gospel, or Good News, of Jesus Christ. The wheel stops there even if it keeps on turning in the world. Sooner or later the world is gonna stop too. But the good news is, you're free even when you remain here, Jesus paid your price on the cross for your disconnect with the "wheel", he gives you new life in him in Baptism, his Law and Gospel are proclaimed to you in preaching by the Office of Holy Ministry, and he gives you his body and blood in Holy Communion that he gave for you at Calvary as his sure pledge of that.<br /><br />Besides, Vanna is way better looking than any representation I ever saw of Fortuna. I wasn't thinking about it at the time, but it's kind of a wild ride that a guy who doesn't start out with the name Terence says something that leads right into Boethius, the major force in the intellectual transition from the ancient world to the modern one, then, as the postmodern one is emerging from that, another guy who doesn't start out with the name Terence becomes a Philosophiae doctor writing about it for the postmodern world.<br /><br />So take it from Terence, either one -- Fortuna fortes adjuvat. (Yeah I know I wrote adiuvat above but since I'm saying it as I remember being taught it, I'll write it in closing with the spelling more common to ecclesiastical Latin as I was taught to write and pronounce it.) But more importantly, take it from God how that works out, as he revealed it to us in the Law and Gospel of Scripture, and accurately confessed in the Book of Concord.</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-75715107757420064552021-10-13T16:24:00.001-05:002021-10-13T16:26:57.612-05:00Hold Fast To Hype. 11 October 2021.<p><b>Preface.</b></p><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-3356454463129393790" itemprop="description articleBody">It is fitting indeed and just, right and helpful unto salvation -- oh wait, not that kind of preface, but it is dignum et justum to say I did not write what follows this preface. It is an article by Patrick Marrin of the National Catholic Reporter, with copyright given. It is, or at least was, also published online <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_17_35/ai_54033013/"><span style="color: #05519e;">here</span></a>. I am posting the text, typos and all. The article refers to an accompanying story, and that is also given. The accompanying story is an address given by Godfrey Diekmann OSB in 1997.<br /><br />What is all that and why should I care? Because of its spill-over effect on us. That is what this post is about, to make it clear what the real nature of what is spilled over is, in the words of those who formed it themselves. Godfrey was a leading figure, both in the movements in the decades before Vatican II that led up to it, and at Vatican II itself where he was a peritus. What's that? "peritus" in Latin means skilled or expert, and in church usage it's a noun meaning an expert in theology appointed by the Vatican Secretary of State to attend and advise a church council.<br /><br />It was my inestimable privilege to have known Godfrey, a stunning accomplishment of the human spirit and a professor and Benedictine extraordinaire, even if he was, IMHO, wrong about damn near everything. I'm actually much more in awe of his much lesser known brother, Father Conrad, whose World Lit I class (Homer, the Greek tragedians, Virgil, Dante and Cervantes, I suppose to-day we would say Western Lit I, though Conrad also offered a wonderful class on haiku which I also took), though at 0800 on Minnesota Winter mornings, was among the singular experiences of my life.<br /><br />Father Godfrey was born into eternity on 22 February 2002. There's some real irony here. Godfrey was a champion of "collegiality" and 22 February, in the new order to which Godfrey was such an influence, is now in the Roman Calendar the Feast of the Chair of St Peter. I suppose it might have been fitting etc. to post this on that date. Formerly, 18 January was the Feast of the Chair of Peter at Rome and 22 February was the Feast of the Chair of Peter at Antioch. The novus ordo abolished the former and combined it with the latter.<br /><br />Either way though, it's all about chairs, as in seats of authority. Yet our beloved synod, ever ready to engage in Vatican II for Lutherans, in its current worship book reinvents the 18 January date as being about the confession of St Peter and ignores the 22 February date, though that is the date traditionally associated with St Peter delivering his confession! This blog disentangles the well-intended but misguided the story of these feasts on that date, along with much else that comes from it, in the post "22 February. The Confession of St Peter. On Chairs, Guardians, Noble Lies and Pious Fictions Too."<br /><br />So, 22 February is taken with much bigger stuff than Godfrey's dies natalis. And actually it is even more fitting to post this on 11 October, the anniversary of the opening of Vatican II in 1962. That was my original intent when this post was first created in 2019. But, on 1 October 2019 I took a bad fall in the rain, with injury to the right shoulder, at first expected to heal with immobilization but examination by an orthopaedist revealed more extensive damage requiring a hemiarthroplasty, which was done 10 October 2019. So I was a bit taken up at the time. </div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-3356454463129393790" itemprop="description articleBody"><br /></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-3356454463129393790" itemprop="description articleBody">So instead I posted it on 4 December. Why then? Well, that was in 1963 the promulgation date of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which is the document of Vatican II most directly affecting not just Catholics but non-Catholics as well, particularly those like ourselves (LCMS) who historically retain liturgy. It is this document that both summed up the drift of the preceding decades of the "liturgical movement" and resulted in a wholesale change to the previous liturgy in the promulgation of what is often called the novus ordo, though that is not its actual name. </div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-3356454463129393790" itemprop="description articleBody"><br /></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-3356454463129393790" itemprop="description articleBody">Liturgical rites are named for the pope under whose authority they are promulgated, thus, it is the Mass of Paul VI. He promulgated it on 3 April 1969 and it was to take effect with the beginning of the church year, the First Sunday of Advent, of that year, but, he was so unhappy with the text prepared for it that that didn't happen until a revision came out the following year, which is why one sees both 1969 and 1970 as its date. 2019 was its 50th anniversary.</div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-3356454463129393790" itemprop="description articleBody"><br />Novus ordo means "new order" in Latin, which though that is not its name describes exactly what it is, a new order. The bumbling around its initial appearance is but openers for no end of bumbling around in the decades since, which continues unabated to the present re both its Latin typical text and translations thereof. The only thing that Magnum Principium, "The Great Principle" in Latin, Pope Francis' document of 3 September 2017, really clarifies is that bumbling around following Vatican II is now the irreversible norm of the Catholic Church. The extent to which this bumbling around is completely antithetical to the reforms of the Lutheran Reformation is detailed in this blog's post for 25 June, the anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession. In 2021 Francis both reversed the ruling of his predecessor allowing priests to say the former liturgy on their own authority, now it must be approved by a bishop and not celebrated in a Catholic church, and announced a two-year series of sessions culminating in who knows what in 2023.</div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-3356454463129393790" itemprop="description articleBody"><br /></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-3356454463129393790" itemprop="description articleBody">The bumbling continues unabated, and the only thing clear is, wherever it ends up it will not allow what was there before, the very heritage we Lutherans were at pains to demonstrate we do not reject but reform. Yet now most in LCMS are as unfamiliar with traditional Lutheran liturgy as Catholics are with traditional Catholic liturgy, <br /><br />I would not now give a ginger snap -- or, in the magnificent phrase now nearly entirely absent from usage, a popefig -- about all this except for its woeful effect on Lutherans, distancing us from our common heritage no less than it has with Catholics, all the while presenting a pastiche that looks traditional superficially but in reality is an intentional break with the very tradition it claims to renew. There's more to tradition than wearing vestments, following a church-approved order and talking about Jesus. Both the article and the accompanying story are expressly clear about a message I heard daily in those heady days, that this is a real and intended break yet one that is not really a break at all, but a return to and a renewal of something that had been increasingly obscured in the last millennium and a half.<br /><br />Sounds a lot like an acknowledgement of what we call the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and the Reformation, doesn't it? Yes, it does. I refer the reader again to this blog's post for 25 June for a fuller discussion; here, I present an interview with and address by one of the architects of both the council and its new liturgy, then following that, the main points which show this to be quite something different than what we are about. The opening address of the council on 11 October 1962, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia (Mother Church Rejoices) ought well be retrospectively re-titled Lacrimat Mater Ecclesia (Mother Church Weeps), which will be the title of our examination of Mr Marrin's article, and the "accompanying story", which follows. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Diekmann says hold fast to hope - Vatican II figure Godfrey Diekmann</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><div style="font-style: italic;">Vatican II participant appeals for restored priorities, transformed lives<br /><br /></div>Vatican II, regarded by some as one of the most revolutionary councils in church history, is now the subject of video retrospectives and historical overviews that pronounce who won, or where the pendulum has come to rest. If anyone is watching or reading, the easiest verdict is that the council is fading in both time and influence, its prophets either gone or all but silent.<br /><br />With at least one notable exception.<br /><br />Even at 90, Benedictine Fr. Godfrey Diekmann carries his 6-foot-3-inch frame straight and tall behind the aluminum walker he is pushing swiftly down the long monastic corridor at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn. His face -- large, sculpted and serene -- glows above his black turtleneck.<br /><br />He is a man on a final mission, made all the more urgent by a doctor's verdict last August that he could die or be incapacitated at any moment by a, host of heart troubles that have left him too fragile for any further medical remedy.<br /><br />Diekmann, regarded by many as one of the giants of the American church and a key participant in the work of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), has been using his borrowed time since Benedict August to reassert that the most important goal of the Second Vatican Council was to recover for everyone full and confident access to an intimate life with God through Jesus Christ. The key to opening up the institutional church to this life was to restore an understanding of the church as the body of Christ. This single reform held revolutionary implications for every aspect of the church's governance, worship, spirituality and mission. (See accompanying story.)<br /><br /><div style="font-style: italic;">The body of Christ<br /><br /></div>For Diekmann this is no worn cliche but Christianity's best-kept secret, a startling revelation conveyed in the prayer offered daily during the preparation of the wine at Mass: "By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity."<br /><br />In his 63 years teaching patristics -- the rich treasury of writings from the first centuries of the church -- Diekmann has struggled to convey to his students the meaning of the patristic adage: "He became human that we might become divine."<br /><br />"My main point in teaching was to make my students realize what Christianity is -- that it's not just being good with the grace of God helping us, but it means real transformation, that you are sharing the divine nature. This must be taken seriously.<br /><br />"What does it mean to say that we are members of the body of Christ?" Diekmann asked. "It means that in some absolute, almost contradictory way, we are sons and daughters of God, and not just as a figure of speech. The very fact that we casually keep on talking about being adopted children of God is proof that obviously we don't have the faintest idea what this is about, because adopted, by itself, in present usage, can only mean a matter of the law.<br /><br />"We acknowledge that Christ, of course, is the tree Son of God. But we are now also tree sons and daughters of God, but by a gift -- by adoption -- and this is actually sharing the life of God. That is a staggering thing, and for many Catholics it is completely new."<br /><br />For Diekmann, these "glad tidings" so exceed the claims of ordinary religion, are so stunning in their implications, even theologians fail to comprehend them. The language of Western philosophy has never been able to adequately express what the Eastern church has always celebrated through symbol, music and ritual in its liturgy, Diekmann said.<br /><br />For all the controversy that swirled about Vatican II, this is what it was basically about -- to re-animate the church and its members as the body of Christ.<br /><br />Diekmann believes that we cannot overstate the importance of this restored ecclesiology and must not allow it to languish. It was the soul of the 40-year pastoral liturgical movement that helped prepare the church for the Vatican Council, and it is the one image of the church that has the power, lacking in other images, to inspire us to embrace the gospel's call to become participants in the life of God.<br /><br /><div style="font-style: italic;">Resistance to the council<br /><br /></div>The main source of conflict during and after Vatican II was that the ecclesiology being displaced, a highly centralized and hierarchical model based on Robert Bellarmine's image of the church as a "perfect society," was well entrenched in 1959 when Pope John XXIII surprised everyone by convening the council.<br /><br />The pre-Vatican II church most older Catholics remember, enshrined by the Council of Trent in 1563 and bolstered by Vatican I in 1870, was a proud if isolated medieval cathedral/fortress at the height of its triumphalist stature. The Catholic church was the oldest, largest, wealthiest, authoritarian institutional religion on earth. For many, it was also divinely ordained, infallible and changeless.<br /><br />Diekmann shares the view held by many church historians that such a structure was rooted not in the New Testament but in Emperor Constantine's decision in 313 to advance Christianity as the state religion. The church went from being a countercultural force and catalyst to being guardian of the status quo. Bishops became territorial, or diocesan, governors, a corruption of their original servant roles and a blow to collegiality, or shared authority among all bishops. "From the time of Constantine until Vatican II, you had an uninterrupted development of clericalism and centralization," Diekmann said. By unplugging this ecclesiology, the Catholic church set a bold precedent for institutional change worldwide.<br /><br />The laity, the Catholic church's now nearly 1 billion adherents, had the most to gain by the council's recognition that baptism entitles every member of the church to "conscious, full and active participation" in the worship and life of the church. Every Christian shares in the risen life and redemptive activity of Christ -- priest, prophet and king -- through the use of his or her own charisms.<br /><br />Diekmann recalls the speech given by Cardinal Leo Suenens during the council on the charisms flowing from baptism: "Each one by baptism has his own charism and contributes something to the church, first of all to the local church, or ecclesia, to which you belong, and then to the entire church. In God's plan you are indispensable. This is terribly important -- the importance of laity of themselves."<br /><br />The idea of lay charisms was little understood at the time of Suenens' speech in the 1960s, even as the idea of the body of Christ was rejected by some in the 1920s as too dangerous, too much like the Protestant idea of the "priesthood of the faithful."<br /><br />While many council reforms are coming more slowly than supporters had hoped, Diekmann the historian believes in taking the long view. What the council adopted in principle still needs to be fully implemented: "But the momentum of 1,600 years cannot be reversed in a mere generation," Diekmann cautioned. "The doctrinal foundations have been firmly placed by Vatican II, and, contrary to increasingly pessimistic evaluations, the substructures of renewal are being placed, often by trial and error if not by official initiative."<br /><br />Even apparent crisis and controversy can be interpreted positively. The shortage of ordained clergy, for example, has opened the way for non-ordained men and women to serve as parish administrators and has prompted creative extensions of the sacramental work of Christ through lay leadership and outreach. Diekmann said he is joyful in the freedom of the Spirit evident in such adaptive situations. He points to early church writings as an untapped treasury of solutions and models for today's needs. The revolution will continue; there is no turning back. The full application of Vatican II's vital ecclesiology will come because it is the will of the Holy Spirit.<br /><br /><div style="font-style: italic;">Astonishing series of miracles<br /><br /></div>Diekmann's confidence is rooted in his own experience at Vatican II, where he served as a member of the preparatory commission for the document on the liturgy. The council was for him and many other witnesses an astonishing series of miracles -- unforeseen events, opportune moments, dramatic interventions and come-from-behind victories that advanced the daring new ecclesiology, first in the liturgy document, then into the debate on the nature of the church itself.<br /><br />One Protestant observer and close friend of Diekmann, the late Albert Outlet of Southern Methodist University, expressed amazement at the council's dramatic reversal of 1,600 years of church history: "My conviction is that never before in the entire history of Christianity has there been such an obvious intervention of the Holy Spirit as there has been here," Outlet said.<br /><br />There were setbacks as well. The one Diekmann regards as doing the most damage to the intended impact of the council was the misapplied emphasis given to the phrase "the people of God" in the aftermath of the council.<br /><br />An Old Testament designation, the phrase was used as the title of Chapter Two of the "Constitution on the Church," and there only to indicate that the whole church is more important than any one part, including the pope or the bishops. Unfortunately, it was later received widely as the operative image for the church, supplanting the body of Christ.<br /><br />This led to de-emphasis of the most important message flowing from the council. The bold assertion of divine life through baptism, real incorporation into God's own nature, was conveyed as only a special closeness to God within the fellowship of the church. What the council had powerfully proclaimed it failed to effectively teach.<br /><br /><div style="font-style: italic;">Liturgical buzzword<br /><br /></div>The idea of fellowship, or koinonia, became the buzzword of many liturgical reformers eager to replace the formal, vertical, divine worship in the old liturgy with the new, theologically horizontal and less formal celebration of a meal with the human Jesus in community. The result was a false evaluation of the transcendent and immanent dimensions of the liturgy. The former emphasis on transcendence became a one-sided stress on immanence -- we become pals with God. Both dimensions are essential. This misunderstanding created divisions within the reform effort and became a source of untold confusion and criticism in the wake of the council, and this has continued to distract and delay implementation of its deeper purposes.<br /><br />For now, Diekmann is less interested in arguing than in appealing for an openness to the life that is meant to flow freely through the church to each member of the body of Christ. Any structure that blocks that life limits ministry within the church and blocks the urgent mission of the church to proclaim the gospel to the whole world.<br /><br />As Diekmann anticipates his own face-to-face encounter with God, he has seized every opportunity to alert others to his concern that the gospel of divine life is not reaching the church or the larger world clearly and fully.<br /><br />When Cardinal Joseph Bernardin attended graduation ceremonies at St. John's University in June of 1996, just months before his death, he asked to see Godfrey Diekmann.<br /><br />"Before Mass he called for me. He said, `You know I'm sick and I'm not sure I can finish with the Mass. I don't want to just make conversation, but I asked for you so you could tell me what is closest to your heart.' And for 35 minutes I talked about being sons and daughters of God, how that is the essence of Christianity, how that is the glad tidings. He took all of that it in, he listened. Then he said, `You are perfectly correct that we haven't done enough to make that clear.'"<br /><br />In recent interviews and letters to his many friends, Diekmann's long story of the miracle of the council is being distilled to a kind of mantra he seems intent on proclaiming until the time silence, claims him:<br /><br />"Baptized Christian, remember of whose body you are a member."<br /><br />By PATRICK MARRIN Special to the National Catholic Reporter Collegeville, Minn.<br /><br /><div class="article_copy_right">COPYRIGHT 1999 National Catholic Reporter</div><div class="article_dist_right">COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group<br /><br />[Here is the "accompanying story". It is also online <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_17_35/ai_54033014/?tag=content;col1"><span style="color: #05519e;">here</span></a>.]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Christian, remember your baptism" - 1997 address from Fr Godfrey Diekmann</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>These remarks were delivered by Fr. Godfrey Diekmann as part of a panel discussion at St. John's School of Theology, Collegeville, Minn., on April 17, 1997. Panelists were asked to speak about the meaning and purpose of the Second Vatican Council and on the state of the reform and renewal in today's church.<br /><br />Cardinal [Leo] Suenens [of Belgium] stated that Vatican Council II was a council about ecclesiology, about the nature and activities of the church. I believe most theologians would agree. So I suppose the first question that comes to mind is what is the church?<br /><br />It may come as a surprise to many to discover that Vatican Council I in 1870 and Vatican Council II have given radically different answers to that question. For more than three centuries before Vatican II, the accepted answer would have been that of Robert Bellarmine: The church is a society. There are two perfect societies, that of the church and of the state. That's not a very spiritually inspiring definition, is it? It is a definition in fact which a priori excludes the very possibility of collegiality. It was only in the 1920s that a new, or rather, the biblical, Pauline and patristic understanding of the church, began to surface again in the Western church. And it became the leitmotif of the pastoral liturgical movement, namely, the church as the body of Christ.<br /><br />The body of Christ. Too bad it was called mystical body of Christ. At that time many were put off by the word mystical: What has that got to do with me? Perhaps at the present time the term would be welcomed.<br /><br />The concept of church, or body of Christ, only gradually gained acceptance. It was a very sensitive subject. We had to be very careful in speaking of it, or printing an article about it in Orate Fratres or Worship [magazine], principally because, I suppose, of our post-Reformation nervousness about the priesthood of the laity, of the faithful. Only with Pius XII's encyclical on the mystical body in 1943 did it gain respectability. Let me quickly enumerate five of its most inspiring and revolutionary implications.<br /><br /></div>1. Every baptized Christian is an active, co-responsible member of the body having a distinctive contribution to make. This became the Magna Carta of the laity, the basis of active participation in the liturgy and the great movements of the time; the Jocists, the Family Life Movement, the Catholic Worker.<br /><br />2. Collegiality: Bishops are not vicars of the pope. They, too, are vicars of Christ. The diocese is not just a geographical division of the universal church; it is the local church, united to all other churches, and in a most special way to Rome, the church of the pope. The bishop's leadership is made manifest above all in the celebration of the Eucharist.<br /><br />3. The presences of Christ: Not only in the eucharistic bread and cup but "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them." This involved a long overdue rethinking of sacraments. Sacraments are not just external signs to confer grace, that terribly mechanistic, automatic understanding of the sacraments that created rightful scandal among our Protestant friends. Sacraments are not things, they are acts. They are acts of Christ. Christ is in our midst, continuing to send the Holy Spirit for the upbuilding of the church.<br /><br />4. The recovery of the resurrection of Christ as redemptive: We in the West for some 500 years at least had put almost exclusive emphasis on Christ's passion and death as effecting our redemption. How bad the situation was is clear from the fact that [F.X.] Durrwell's book on the resurrection as redemptive, published in 1960, just a few years before the council, created heated controversy. But the apostle Paul said, "Christ died for our sins and rose for our justification," that is, that we might have life, Christ's life.<br /><br />No wonder Augustine could cry out, "We are sons and daughters of the resurrection, and Alleluia is our song?<br /><br />5. And what is that life of Christ? It is the life of the risen Christ. It is divine life. We are sons and daughters of God, not by nature but by gift. This is the essence of the Christian glad tidings. To quote a patristic cliche, "God became human that we might become divine." Or, as St. Leo the Great tells us, "Christian, remember your dignity." And that thought, I submit, constitutes the one and only school of Christian spirituality of the biblical and patristic period. There are dozens of schools of spirituality at the present time. This is the only one that I could recognize in the writings of the early church: "Christian, remember who you are," or equivalently, "Christian, remember your baptism."<br /><br />I should, by right, add a sixth point. Since Vatican II, a new situation has arisen, a rightful demand to achieve and to put into effect the equality of male and female. In this question, also, the doctrine of the body of Christ, as expressed, for example, in Galatians 3, or 1 Corinthians 12, the body of Christ concept gives us the strongest and clearest biblical warrant for urging the radical equality of men and women. You all know the famous passage: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free person, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).<br /><br />In conclusion, therefore, let me say, the topic of our discussion is the renewal of the church. Those of us who are old enough will remember what an exhilarating and enriching period of spiritual renewal were the several decades of the pre-Vatican II liturgical movement, a movement inspired by the doctrine of the body of Christ. It was a voyage of ever new discoveries. When all is said and done, Vatican II was a church-wide effort to effect spiritual and structural renewal by that same doctrine.<br /><br />I submit that it is a complete misunderstanding of the council to think that the concept "people of God" was meant to replace that of the "body of Christ," as largely happened after the Vatican Council II. The chosen people of the Old Testament, the Jews, were already spoken of as the people of God. The new dispensation offers something gloriously new, the people of God have become the family of God, true sons and daughters of God.<br /><br />The term "people of God" was used as the heading of Chapter Two of the document on the church chiefly to pick out, to give prominence to, one important aspect of the body of Christ, namely, that the entire body is more important than any of its members, even pope and bishop, and that applies also to the teaching of infallibility. The total body is greater than its parts.<br /><br />In a word, renewal of the church according to the council demands of necessity the recovery in the popular minds and perhaps in that of theologians the biblical and patristic understanding of the church as the body of Christ. "Baptized Christian, remember of whose body you are a member."<br /><br /><div class="article_copy_right">COPYRIGHT 1999 National Catholic Reporter</div><div class="article_dist_right">COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group</div><div class="article_dist_right"><br /></div><div class="article_dist_right"><b>Lacrimat mater ecclesia.</b></div><div class="article_dist_right"><b><br /></b></div><div class="article_dist_right">Let's take a look at what we've just read.</div><div class="article_dist_right"><br /></div><div class="article_dist_right">1. Constantine did not decide in 313 to advance Christianity as the state religion. This is a reference to the Edict of Milan (Edictum Mediolanensa) of February 313. The Edict exists in two versions. One is that of Lactantius, a scholar who was tutor to Constantine's son Crispius, whom Constantine ordered hanged in 326 and shortly thereafter had his stepmom Fausta executed by immersion in boiling water, which was not a Roman method of execution, but was a technique of abortion, suggesting an adulterous relationship and pregnancy. The other is that of Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea. For one thing, the two versions are not at all the same. For another, Lactantius' version is not in the form of an edict. For another, far from making Christianity the state religion, it simply granted Christianity legal status, and ordered reparations made for recent persecutions. For yet another, it wasn't even specifically about Christianity, it grants legal status to any and all religions found in the Empire! The advancement of Christianity as the state religion did not come from Constantine but in the joint declaration of the co-emperors (Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius I) on 27 February 380 with the Edict of Thessalonica (Cunctos populos) defining what is and is not the Catholic Church and making it the state religion.<br /><br />2. Nowhere in our Lutheran Confessions is there anything even remotely like a concept or sense of reversing 1,600 years (well, at the time the Confessions were written it would have been about 1,100 years) of bad development, jumping over centuries to restore and renew a lost purity of New Testament and Patristic (the "fathers" of the first few centuries of church history) times. This idea of some sort of lost ideal in the early church, whose purity is to be recovered and restored, is entirely a churchy version of an endemic Romantic fiction of C19 when the "Liturgical Movement" began, a "noble church" as the ecclesiastical expression of the "noble savage". Noble savage, btw, is a phrase often associated with Rousseau, but, he never used it; it comes from John Dryden much earlier, in his play published in 1672 The Conquest of Grenada -- I am as free as nature first made man / Ere the base laws of servitude began / When wild in woods the noble savage ran. "Savage" at the time did not have its common pejorative connotation now, but quite the opposite, a sense of free, unrestrained, even superior for not being held back by later imposed norms.<br /><br />3. What our Confessions do state, in complete contrast to the above, is continuity with the past, warts and all, and re the warts, removing them by the criteria of, not a model of a lost past, but whether it contradicts anything in Scripture. Wrt to worship, our Confessions repeatedly point out that our services are NOT a new order but for the most part the ones previously in use. Godfrey makes an anonymous reference to Pius XII's encyclical Mystici corporis Christi (Of the Mystical Body of Christ) of 29 June 1943, yet omits anything about it not concerned with the liturgical movement, resulting in an emphasis both misplaced and misunderstood. 1943 -- the insistence on the value of each human life to the Church carries over to society, in contrast to Nazi Germany's Aktion T4 programme of killing of those with mental or physical disabilities or those of races or cultures deemed inferior, or as we put it now, insufficient quality of life. Also, while the encyclical is clear that the Church is not composed of an active clergy dispensing the sacraments and a passive laity receiving them, it is also clear that this life happens within the visible structure established for it by Christ, namely, the Pope as head and the bishops in communion with him.<br /><br />4. This in turn led to one of the great bumblings-around since the council. The encyclical says the mystical body of Christ is the Catholic Church. "Is", or in Latin, est. Lumen gentium, "Light of the nations" in Latin, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church as it is called, in its eighth paragraph says instead that the Church subsists in (Latin, subsistit in) the Catholic Church. Many critics of Vatican II have seen this as the Catholic Church backing off from its former self-understanding. For decades now the Catholic Church has put forth explanations how these two different statements are the same. Guess what, they are the same, and guess further what, that is not good news though it sounds like it. Subsistit in simply means that the church of Christ is only fully found within the visible structure of the Catholic Church, though elements of the Catholic Church sufficient for salvation can and are found outside its visible structure. IOW, we Lutherans and others are saved by those elements of the Catholic Church which can exist outside the visible Catholic Church and which we do not deny, such as Baptism.<br /><br />5. If Godfrey et hoc genus omne want to lament the phrase "people of God" overshadowing "body of Christ" they need look no further than right here, not at est and subsistit in. Mystici corporis and Lumen gentium do not use the same nouns for what is supposedly the same in the verbs. Mystici corporis says the body of Christ is the Catholic Church. Lumen gentium says the Church, not "the body of Christ", subsists in the Catholic Church. Oh, but church and body of Christ are the same thing, one might say. Indeed they are, but look at why that is. The Church is what it is because of each member's baptism into the life of God, says Lumen gentium in chapter two, which thus forms them into not the Old Testament people of God but a new people of God. IOW, the body of Christ and the people of God are equivalent terms for one thing created by one source, baptism. If they are not equivalent terms, two nouns for the same thing, then est and subsistit in cannot be equivalent verbs, two verbs for the same thing. The documents themselves bear that out.<br /><br />6. This bumbling is the fons et origo by which Pius XII's encyclicals, not just Mystici corporis, are stood on their heads. Mediator Dei (Mediator of God, 20 November 1947) both champions the sacraments and liturgy as mediating the life of God to the members of the Church, and warns against the effects of trying to encourage this participation by applying to liturgy the Romantic fiction discussed above, thinking one has recovered some lost past purity, an effort he calls liturgical archaeologism. Yet it is just this liturgical archaeologism that is the modus operandi celebrated above of the novus ordo. Lex orandi lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing, says the maxim derived from Prosper Aquitanus, a student of Augustine. The original goes ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi, that the law of praying establish the law of believing, which in Catholic hands is sometimes used to establish doctrine on liturgy, yet, this is contradicted both by the principle of sola scriptura, by Scripture alone, that doctrine is determined, and by Pius XII himself in Mediator Dei, saying that the proper distinction between faith and liturgy (so to speak!) is expressed by lex credendi legem statuat supplicandi, the law of belief establishes the law of prayer.<br /><br />Point being, as you pray so shall you believe, and as you believe so shall you pray. It works both ways. If you pray in a manner devised out of a liturgical archaeologism, a Romantic fantasy of having jumped over a millennium and one half of loss of purity, so shall you believe about the faith, the church, the works. And, if you have faith that includes such a Romantic fantasy, so shall you change the liturgy, the church, the works. The latter is how the novus ordo and all the rest came to be, first in the Catholic Church and then in other churches or parts thereof who adopt and adapt it. The former is the ongoing effect once the latter has become the norm. And the greatest irony here of all is that this is entirely inconsistent with and false to the much vaunted idea of a body, which does not stay the same but grows, the same organism in later stages as in earlier ones, the same person at seven as at seventy, who at seventy does not jump back to seven but moves forward in organic continuity, and as the body of Christ has the guarantee that even the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. <br /><br />In the case of the mystical body of Christ this organic growth is both promised and guaranteed by Jesus (lo, I am with you always etc.) through the Holy Spirit. Which is why there was, and is, a Babylonian Captivity but not a Babylonian Extinction, why real liturgical reform proceeds within the organic continuity of the Body of Christ, the Church, as our Confessions state, normed by what is inconsistent with Scripture not with a Romantic C19 fantasy about a distant past.<br /><br />It's bad enough that for Catholics Vatican II makes normative exactly what Pius XII in Mystici corporis, Mediator Dei and for that matter Humani generis showed to be dangers to and dissent from Catholicism, and presents a contemporary pastiche that looks traditional, being made up of this and that from here and there, something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue (literally, in the case of Advent), but actually is anything but traditional and dismisses three-fourths of the elapsed development of the body of Christ the Church. But that is their problem.<br /><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Our problem is when we follow suit and likewise, without meaning to or even recognising it, we incorporate this intended break with the Church's organic development in which our Confessions so proudly demonstrate we stand, by adopting and adapting the novus ordo pastiche model of a lex orandi that is quite at odds with our confessed lex credendi, thus no less than the cowo crowd trying to infuse Lutheran content into a concept of worship not meant to contain it. </span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><br /></span><span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">In this way is our lex credendi subtly altered and compromised. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Novus ordo? Bogus ordo. Sacrosanctum concilium?</span> Sacrorectal concilium. Better that we stand with our Lutheran principles of reform, within the organic development of the church, the body of Christ, preserving the usual ceremonies, for the most part similar to the ones previously in use, and for the sake of good order in the church retaining the traditional lectionary.</span></div></div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-18511789335628988782021-09-30T12:14:00.002-05:002021-09-30T12:14:40.779-05:00St Jerome. 30 September 2021.<p>Now here's a hell of a guy.</p>Let's start where I started, long ago in a galaxy far far away -- by which I mean, the preconciliar Roman Catholic Church. There's been lots of councils to be pre- to, here and now it means the last one, pre-Vatican II.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Jerome Of My Younger Days.</span><br /><br />Here's what I recall from those days. We used an official Bible in Latin, and our English versions were made from the Latin, and that Latin Bible was the Latin translation of St Jerome, often called the Vulgate. Vulgate? What's that, looks like vulgar, something dirty in it? No, the name comes from the Latin word for ordinary people, vulgus, since the translation was into the language of ordinary people there and then, Latin. Protestants didn't use the Vulgate. They had the King James Bible, translated from Hebrew and Greek, not translated from a translation into Latin, therefore, they claimed, more accurate.<br /><br />Not so, we were told, or at least I remember being told. St Jerome, for one thing, was a saint, a term not at least as yet applicable to modern Biblical scholars. And, he was much closer in time to the Biblical, particularly the New Testament, authors, which meant his understanding of the languages was more immediate and not from scholarly studies centuries later. And also, he worked from better sources than we have, including texts that no longer exist. Therefore, in using Jerome's Latin Bible, we are using a source altogether more trustworthy than the much later sources and scholarship of the Protestant Bible translations.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Historical Jerome versus The Jerome Of Faith.</span><br /><br />What's ironic is, while famous in our day for translating the Bible into the dominant language of the people of his place and time, in his own day Jerome was highly controversial not for translating but for the text from which he translated. He used the Hebrew text of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, but the Jewish translation into Greek called the Septuagint was considered the normative and inspired text for centuries, going back to the Greek-speaking early church. The New Testament quotes the Old Testament from the Greek, and its longer canon (list of books) was the basis for the Old Testament canon.<br /><br />We still have echoes of that controversy now, the so-called Apocrypha. The Septuagint has books and parts of books in it that the Hebrew Bible doesn't. Bibles of Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox origin retain the use of the Septuagint as the basis of their Old Testament, Bibles of Protestant origin use the Hebrew Canon. Nobody put anything in or took anything out, they just use different but related sources. The Septuagint was accepted by the proverbial "early church" and Jerome was going against the grain to favour the Hebrew canon and text rather than the Greek.<br /><br />Even so, the books in dispute were not rejected altogether, but placed in between an OT of the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible and the 27 of the NT, and given the name Apocrypha, from the Latin aprocryphus which transliterated the Greek apokruphos, which means obscure or hidden. In this context, obscure was not about being "lost books" or anything, it was about their canonicity and use for doctrine. Those who accept their canonicity call them deuterocanonical, from the Greek for second canon, meaning added later to the canon. But in neither case, not Jerome, not Luther, not the King James Version, were they discarded altogether and not published, as has been the innovation in recent times of non-Catholic Bibles.<br /><br />Another enduring echo of that controversy is that while the Hebrew Bible is arranged in three distinct parts, namely Law, Prophets and Writings, the Septuagint is not, and though many Bibles now use the Hebrew Bible as the OT, the book order has the Prophets and Writings mixed to-gether as in the Septuagint rather than retaining the three-part division of the Hebrew Bible.<br /><br />Actually though, Jerome was controversial for a hell of a lot more than that and was run out of Rome! Holy crap, people jumped all over Jimmy Swaggart for getting caught with a prostitute, but that ain't nuttin compared to Jerome's story. Here it is.<br /><br />Jerome was born a pagan in a town called Stridon, which was in the Roman territory called Dalmatia. The town no longer exists because the Goths trashed it in 379, and no-body knows exactly where it was, except that it was in Dalmatia, which was more or less modern Croatia and Bosnia and Slovenia. As a young man he went to Rome to pursue classical education, and by his own account pursue the various extra-curricular activities often found in student life then as now. Somewhere along the line he converted to Christianity and was baptised.<br /><br />After some years in Rome he set out for France, well, Gaul then, and ended up in Trier, which is about the most magnificent and enchanting place it has been my good fortune to visit, ever, anywhere. But I digress. Here in this most wonderful place he seems to have taken up theology. Then about 373 or so he sets out for what is now called the Middle East, particularly Antioch, in what is now Turkey and one of the oldest centres of Christianity. It was there that he came to give up secular learning altogether and focus on the Bible, learning Hebrew from Jewish Christians, and, apparently seized with remorse for his past behaviour, got into all sorts of ascetic penitential practices. Always a danger -- the Good News just isn't good enough or news enough, gotta have works!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Ladies' Ear Tickler Enters the Story.</span><br /><br />But in 382 he goes back to Rome again, this time as assistant to Pope Damasus I. Now there's another hell of a guy. Man, papal elections just ain't what they used to be. Once upon a time, they were a matter of the clergy and people of the area choosing a bishop, or overseer, with overseers from nearby areas confirming it. But by this time we have Constantine, and Christianity attaining respectable state-recognised status, and now the Emperor confirmed newly elected bishops. That's helpful, sorta, because sometimes more than one guy claimed to be elected, sometimes in more than one election!<br /><br />So when Pope Liberius, whom the Emperor Constantine had thrown out of Rome, died on 24 September 366, one faction supported Ursinus, the previous pope's deacon, while another, which had previously supported a rival pope, Felix II, supported Damasus. The patrician class, the old noble families of Rome, supported Damasus, but the plebian class, the regular folks, and the deacons supported Ursinus. Each was elected, in separate elections. Some real "apostolic succession" there, oh yeah.<br /><br />It gets worse. There was outright rioting between supporters of the two, each side killing the other, so bad that the prefects of the city had to be called on to restore order. Damasus got formally recognised, and then his supporters commenced a slaughter of 137 of Unsinus' supporters, right in a church. Damasus was accused of murder, and hauled up on charges before a later prefect, but, being the favourite of the wealthy class, they bought the support of the Emperor and got Damasus off. He was known as Auriscalpius Matronarum, the ladies' ear scratcher.<br /><br />Damasus was "pope" from 366 until he died on 11 December 384. During which time, we have to remember to really get what was going on here, the Emperors East and West made the church as headed by Damasus in Rome, and Peter in Antioch, the official state church and the one recognised as "catholic", in the Edict of Thessalonica on 27 February 380, the birthday of the Catholic Church, as distinct from the catholic church. It was during Damasus' papacy that the Emperor Gratian, one of the signatories to the Edict of Thessalonica, refused the traditional title of pontifex maximus, the chief priest of traditional Roman religion, and the title then became associated with the bishop of Rome as the chief priest of the new Roman state religion. In sum, this is the era of the beginning of the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Babylon of course being a figure for Rome).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Back to the Historical Jerome.</span><br /><br />So in 382, when Damasus calls Jerome back to Rome to help him shape things up, what was being shaped up was the two-year-old Catholic Church, the new official state religion, which by Imperial edict was the only church entitled to the description "catholic" (whole, complete, entire, universal), or even the name "church". All others were defined as truly demented and insane, heretics and, since God's gonna kick their butt, deserving of such punishment as the Empire should choose to inflict.<br /><br />What, Past Elder up to his usual Catholic bashing? No, it's what the text says -- Hanc legem sequentes Christianorum catholicorum nomen iubemus amplecti, reliquos vero dementes vesanosque iudicantes haeretici dogmatis infamiam sustinere 'nec conciliabula eorum ecclesiarum nomen accipere', divina primum vindicta post etiam motus nostri quem ex caelesti arbitro sumpserimus ultione plectendos. The Western Roman Empire at this time was starting to fall apart and was just decades away from totally falling apart, so a lot of this had to do with trying to prevent that.<br /><br />Jerome was no slouch at matronly ear tickling himself, and once back in Rome soon had a little group of wealthy patrician widows around him, whose money supported him, a Paula in particular. And he had this ascetic works-righteousness thing going, into which he got them all. Nothing like having lots of someone else's money to support you if you want a monastic ascetic life. Hell yes.<br /><br />In fact, the daughter of Paula, a lively young woman named Blaesilla, after just four months of having to live this way, died of it! Yeah, died. On top of which Jerome tells Paula not to mourn her daughter. This got the Romans really upset, there was an inquiry into just what was really going on between Jerome and Paula, and then Damasus dies, and with that support gone, Jerome is forced out of Rome.<br /><br />So where's he go? Where else, the Eastern Empire, where they really get into all this monkery and fasting and stuff. Paula and her money follow. The whole sham of a works-based sparse life funded by patrician wealthy-class money. There's some real apostolic stuff for you. Lemme tell ya, if somebody wants to convince you of their mistaking the physiological effects of self induced glucose denial for some sort of spiritual state of attainment, you'd be better off running right to the nearest McDonald's and ordering a double quarter pounder, which, if memory serves, is combo 4 on the menu.<br /><br />Personally I like our Nebraska favourite Runza better, which also makes a helluva burger, and it's Wolgadeutsch too, but being a regional chain may not be available where you are. But I digress. Happens. Part of the fun of reading Past Elder. Back to the story.<br /><br />This sort of stuff is not self-denial, it's life denial. Utterly pathological. It is no curb whatever to excess and greed, but is rather an equally odious extreme reaction to it, both extremes equally devoid of the Gospel altogether. It comes rather from an empire about to collapse under both the tension within, its classic past and Christian present and efforts to reconcile them with huge civil unrest in its wake, and threats from without, in the West. Which was bad enough, but in the East it did not collapse for another thousand years or so, and continued unabated, which is equally bad. The opposite of greed and excess is not this pathological repression, but Judas H Priest, just eat a normal balanced diet and go about a life of use to God and your fellow Man, stay in your parish where you find everything that made the saints saints, the Word, the Word preached, the Sacrament, and your fellow Christians.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Word of the Lord Endures Forever -- Despite the "Church".</span><br /><br />Well, it would also be about a thousand years or so until THAT message got out, something called the Lutheran Reformation, by a fellow survivor of the remnants of all this nonsense, guy named Martin Luther. Sorry if this stuff isn't in the sanitised reductive biographical sketches that turn up in treasuries of prayer and stuff like that, but them's the facts. It's a disgusting pagan mess, massacres, murders, politics, scandals and all, and from the time of Jerome's life on, was the official religion of the state, held to be right from the Apostles, which remained in the East, and remained in the West after it reconstituted itself as the Holy Roman Empire, and remains to this day in the former state churches that survive these empires.<br /><br />This is the world of Augustine, Jerome, Damasus, etc -- the Western Roman Empire, which contains Rome, once the centre of the whole thing, in utter turmoil between its classic philosophy, art, culture and religion and the new religion, in attendant civil turmoil, and under assault from Germanic forces outside it. The sack of Rome came in 410, 24 August to be exact, by Alaric, King of the Visigoths. The efforts to synthesise Rome's past and present failed utterly to preserve Rome. But it created a state religion which survived the death of the state that created it, and became the one remaining link upon which the new state would be built, the Holy Roman Empire. It survives to this day: in the West as the Roman Catholic Church as well as other once-Catholic state churches, some of them with the word Lutheran in them, most having now severed or softened the once-mandatory connexion to their modern states, and in the East as the various Eastern Orthodox churches.<br /><br />And all of it based entirely on the characteristics of that age, not in the least on the Gospel, as a dying empire tried to redefine itself for survival -- hence "true" churches, "apostolic succession", "bishops" who were as well state officials and political powers, and all the other nonsense by which the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches try to justify themselves and their pagan accretions which would hold the catholic church in captivity until the Lutheran Reformation. The need for such a reformation was so strong amid all this horse dung and bullroar that once it happened later "reforms" blew right past the Lutheran Reformation to an opposite but equally bad extreme, which to-day but not originally travels under the name Protestant or, in the US, Evangelical.<br /><br />So we have a pope supported by the wealthy Roman class in their twilight who kills his opponents and becomes by edict of the Emperor the true recipient of the true faith, and a holy man whose "I'd better inflict all this on myself" asceticism is funded by more wealthy Roman class money, which kills the daughter of his main supporter and disgusts even the Romans.<br /><br />So what do we do then, forget about all this as an unholy mess we can ignore and just get back to the Bible, the "New Testament" church? No. And hell no. Judas H Priest, the New Testament church did not have the New Testament as we have it, so how ya gonna do that? You ain't.<br /><br />Because here's the thing, the Babylonian Captivity was just that, a captivity, not an extinction. The catholic church survived and continues to survive even the invention of the Catholic Church by the Roman Empire. And why is that? Because of the truth expressed in the motto of the Lutheran Reformation, which motto is simply Scripture itself, from both the New and Old Testament, specifically I Peter 1:25 which itself quotes Isaias 40:8.<br /><br />VDMA. Verbum Domini manet in aeternum. The Word of the Lord endures forever. It cannot be overcome, and on its central truth about Jesus Christ is built the church against which the gates of hell itself cannot prevail, let alone the Roman Empire. It can survive power mongers like Damasus and pathological lunatics like Augustine and Jerome.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Word of the Lord Endures Forever -- Despite Translators.</span><br /><br />Particularly Jerome. Even though it's the work of a nut case whose nuttiness was fatal and whose supposed self-denial was based on the wealth of others, Jerome's new Latin translation did do two major things. 1) It established a better text of the Bible in the most widely understood language of its time, which remained key in the availability of the Bible for centuries to come, as Latin became the language of learning. 2) It introduced to a thoroughly Gentilised Christianity, who had the barest of understanding of the Jewish faith that Christianity fulfills, and who had instead replaced such an understanding with reworkings in Christian dress of their own classic philosophy, a more Jewish understanding of the texts, admired to this day by Jews. Not to mention the Hebrew itself.<br /><br />Not only that, but Jerome set in motion a tradition of selections from Scripture for reading at the preaching part of the Divine Service which would continue for about 1,500 years, and still continues as what we now call the "historic" lectionary. And why is it "historic"? Because it's, well, old, you know, historic? Hell no. Because there's another one now, a product in the 1960s of part of the church still in Babylonian Captivity from its last council, Babylon II, er, Vatican II, and widely adapted by wannabes.<br /><br />The Western Roman Empire, under its new Germanic leaders, managed after a few hundred years known as the Dark Ages to more or less reconstitute itself as the Holy Roman Empire, and the old state church of the old Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, was right there to take its place in the reconstituted Roman Empire. Some consider the HRE to have begun with the coronation -- by the "pope" of course -- of Charlemagne, Karl der Grosse, in 800, as Emperor of the Romans, and some consider it to have begun with the coronation -- by the "pope" of course -- of Otto on 2 February 962. But in any case it lasted for about another 1,000 years, and formally ended on 6 August 1806 at the hands of Napoleon. The deposed last HRE, Francis II, however continued as Francis I, Emperor of Austria. That makes Francis (Franz actually) the only Doppelkaiser in history. Huh? Kaiser, that's a Germanisation of guess what, Caesar. Doppel is double.<br /><br />But by about 100 years after that, the underpinnings of the Roman Catholic Church seemed even to many within it as wearing a bit thin, the Roman Empire being long gone and now the Holy Roman Empire being long gone too, and movements began in various circles, some Scriptural, some doctrinal, some liturgical, to re-express this whole deal in terms not so connected to things long gone. So they set about coming up with something more attuned to the existentialism and phenomenology then all the rage.<br /><br />A small example of that, but symptomatic of the large examples, is the Exultet prayer in the Easter Vigil liturgy. It ends with a prayer for the Holy Roman Emperor, which although that part had not been said since the last HRE, Franz II mentioned above, quit in 1806, it was not removed from the Exultet until 1955 as part of Pope Pius XII's massive revision of the Holy Week liturgy.<br /><br /><b>The Word of the Lord Endures Forever -- Despite "the Church". Again. </b><br /><b></b><br />So once again, just as in the time of Jerome, Augustine, Damasus, et al, we have an entity trying to preserve itself by merging its past with its present and future of a different origin. But this time, that past was itself exactly the product of what was once the different origin the last time around. IOW, both that church's Empires, Roman and Holy Roman, were gone and now their church had to go it alone in another emerging new world, and once again it sought to reinvent itself as a synthesis, hybrid, reconciliation, something like that, of the two. This culminated at Vatican II, when the old Imperial church reinvented itself for a new post-Imperial age.<br /><br />Problem is, as we saw, the old Imperial church was just that, the old Imperial church, not the catholic church or the church of Jesus Christ, so one of the two elements being synthesised into the new synthesis was itself a previous synthesis of Christianity and the old empire. The proponents of this movement thought Christianity, the catholic church, the church of Jesus Christ, to be re-emerging after centuries of being obscured, jumping over centuries to before Constantine, but in fact it was being yet further obscured; the Babylonian Captivity in which they were still captive deepened, only re-expressed in terms of the new Babylon that no longer had it as its church, or had a church at all, so it seemed new.<br /><br />We shall see in our next post, in an address by one of its architects and champions, this overriding essential idea of a reversal of corrupting influences since Constantine. It sounds good, very good. Almost sounds like us talking about the Babylonian Captivity! It isn't. Why? For one thing, all its points were made, prior to the council and with no need for a council to be called, by Pope Pius XII, particularly in his encyclicals Mystici corporis Christi (The Mystical Body of Christ, 29 June 1943), Mediator Dei (Mediator of God, on liturgical reform, 20 November 1947) and Humani generis (Of the human race, 12 August 1950).<br /><br />While RC apologists love to proclaim Vatican II as in harmony with these and bringing them to fruition, this is false. As if that were not clear enough in the documents themselves, in which the things against which Pius warned as threats to and dissension from Catholicism became normative Catholicism, it is quite clear in the many theologians censured in the wake of these encyclicals (de Lubac, Congar et al.) who became the movers and shakers at Vatican II.<br /><br />For another, the notion that before Constantine there was some sort of pure unified church from which we deviated and to which we can return is nothing more than a Romantic fiction akin to Rousseau's "noble savage". This pure early church was in fact a bleeding mess, as is evident from St Paul's epistles through the Patristics (the "fathers"; theologians from roughly 100 to 450 or to 787, the year of the Second Council of Nicaea, the last council recognized by both the Eastern and Western Church). One sees an amazing spectrum of widely divergent ideas of who Christ is and what Christianity is, which only appears pure and unified through the self-selective lens they think they are discarding of the very Trinitarian Christianity toward whose triumph over the others Constantine contributed.<br /><br />For yet another, a body grows. It is not the same at 70 years as it is at 7 years or 7 months, and if it has gotten off course in its later years, correction from that does not consist in returning to what it was in earlier years. A 70 year old does not become a 7 year old again, discarding everything. As regards the contributions of Jerome, a reform based on this is simply nothing more than the "exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism", which has since come to be called "liturgical archaeology", against which Pius XII warned (Mediator Dei 64) as he encouraged lay participation. <br /><br />In this way it only superficially resembled, with such things as vernacular languages and free standing altars, the real reformation of the church, which had happened nearly five centuries before! They think they addressed what we did in the Babylonian Captivity but missed entirely the nature of what we did. And so the Whore of Babylon thoroughly remodelled the brothel, with a new order of liturgy (yeah, literally, a novus ordo) complete with new calendar of observances and new lectionary of readings, replacing the one that had grown for centuries.<br /><br />Now that's not surprising, that's what you do when you're the Whore of Babylon, and the Babylon that formed you and kept you as its whore is gone and there is a new Babylon.<br /><br />But these "reforms" came about on an entirely different basis than the reforms of the Lutheran Reformation, which did not run from the march of history nor wish to discard or disparage it, for all its warts and blemishes, did not seek to reverse or jump back over centuries of development, as if the Holy Ghost took a nap for some 1,600 years, did not engage in liturgical archaeology, but instead accepted it and moved on, not reinventing anything but consciously maintaining continuity, as the Augsburg Confession takes great pains to point out, discarding only that which contradicted Scripture but otherwise retaining the ceremonies and readings previously in use.<br /><br />The difference between, and essential incompatibility between, Lutheran liturgical reform and Catholic liturgical reform is more fully treated in our post for 25 June on the presentation of the Augsburg Confession.<br /><br />What is surprising now is that the churches of the Reformation generally, and even those of the Lutheran Reformation, jumped on board with this Roman insanity, took the novus ordo and revised and reworked their own versions of it! So now we have an "historic" lectionary right alongside a Vatican II For Lutherans Lutheranised version of this novus ordo. We even lead the Whore herself in this regard, because we didn't have to wait a generation or so for a Roman Imperial official with only the church of the former state left -- a "pope", in case you were wondering -- to say it's OK with a motu proprio! And then his immediate successor reverses it. Utter madness.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion.</span><br /><br />So on this feast of St Jerome, let us remember that, you know what, he really was closer to the authors and sources of the Bible than our vaunted modern scholars working removed by centuries, and really did, nut case and all, contribute to the church, which even he and his contemporaries and times and subsequent times could put in captivity but not extinction, a thing of great value in the Vulgate Bible and the tradition of the historic lectionary.<br /><br />And let us remember that the Reformation has already happened and not at all on the basis that fuelled Babylon II, er, Vatican II. We continue as the catholic church where the Word is rightly proclaimed and the Sacraments rightly administered, no new faith, no new doctrine, no new anything, and sure as hell no new orders of worship based on the scholarship emerging from the dissolution, not just politically but in every way, of the Holy Roman Empire, in which Roman effort there is no "hermeneutic of continuity" whatever but a pathetic old whore trying to still work the streets. With us it is rather the organic continuity of the catholic church normed by its very own book, the Bible, rejecting only what contradicts it.Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-4509544707279395042021-09-30T11:32:00.000-05:002021-09-30T11:32:11.024-05:00St Michael's Day / Michaelmas / Michaelistag 29 September 2021.<p>This was a pretty big day for centuries. So why was that and why don't we hear much about it now? That's what this post is about, and in finding out we'll see lots of ways the feast has impacted modern life. </p>It's not completely lost. It's still contained in our LCMS calendar. Phillip Melanchthon even wrote a poem for the day which became a hymn, "Lord God, To Thee We Give All Praise", which is "Dicimus grates tibi summe rerum" in his Latin original -- yes, Latin. We still have that too. It's hymn 254 in The Lutheran Hymnal, or, I suppose it won't hurt to say, 522 in LSB.<br /><br />Here's why the big deal. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael in the Bible.</span><br /><br />Michael is one of the angels, and is mentioned by name in three books of the Bible, Daniel, Jude and Revelation aka the Apocalypse. His name means in Hebrew "Who is like God?"<br /><br />In Daniel, Gabriel, another leading angel, tells Daniel that Michael is his helper in defending the Jews, wrt Daniel's prayer that the Jews be able to return to Jerusalem (Daniel 10). That return (and much else) is covered earlier this month in the post Temples, Taxes, Vespasian and Now. Later in the Book of Daniel (chapter 12) Michael is identified as he who stands up for "the sons of thy people", the Jews, who will do so in the final battle at the end of time. This is the only time Michael is mentioned by name in the Hebrew Bible.<br /><br />It is not the only time he appears, depending on to whom you listen. Some say he is the "captain of the host of the Lord" in the Book of Josue, or Joshua, 5:13-15, but some say this cannot be since he accepted worship and only God can do that. So then some say the figure was actually a disguised appearance of God himself, and then some others say (like my historical-critical Scripture profs in college) that that is what "angels" are anyway, not separate beings but muted references to God himself, out of piety so Man can withstand the interaction.<br /><br />Rabbinic tradition variously credits him with being the angel 1) who rescued Abraham from Nimrod's furnace, 2) who protected Sarah from being defiled as Abraham's sister as Abraham tried to protect her by calling his sister and not wife, 3) who told Sarah she would have a son, 4) who brought the ram provided by God for Abraham to substitute for that son Isaac in sacrifice, 5) who was the angel who wrestled with Jacob, 6) who was the angel who spoke to Moses in the burning bush and later taught Moses the Law, on and on, also including references in writings not in the Hebrew Bible such as protecting Adam and Eve after the Fall and teaching him how to farm.<br /><br />This role of protector and defender was passed on to the early Christian church, among so much else in Judaism, and not just in these stories, he is mentioned twice in the New Testament.<br /><br />In the Letter of Jude, verse 9, he argues with Satan over Moses' body, also a Jewish theme, keeping Moses' body hidden so reverence would be directed to God and not misplaced hero worship, something which crept into that church anyway as saint veneration and relics. In the Book of Revelation, or The Apocalypse, chapter 12, Michael is given a similar role in the last battle at the end of time as he had in the revolt of the angels in heaven at the beginning, as military leader of the forces of good.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael in Later Stories.</span><br /><br />There are many other legends of Michael's intervention on behalf of Christians in history, of which we will mention two as particularly noteworthy. He is said to have worked with the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, and a celebration on 8 November became the main feast of St Michael in the Eastern Church. Also he is said to have appeared over the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian in Rome to answer the prayers of Pope St Gregory the Great in 950 that a plague in Rome stop, after which the mausoleum, destroyed by the Visigoths and Goths but rebuilt as a papal fort and residence, was called Castel Sant'Angelo, Church of the Holy Angel, the angel being Michael, and is still there to-day with a HUGE statue of St Michael on top of it.<br /><br />It was later connected by a fortified covered passage, the Passeto di Borgo, to St Peter's Basilica by Pope Nicholas II (pope from 25 November 1277 to 22 August 1280), to provide an escape route for the popes, which turned out handy for Pope Clement VII.<br /><br />Now there's a story! Clement had allied with French forces to offset the power of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, he to whom the Augsburg Confession was presented, and Charles' army had defeated them in Italy. However, there was no money to pay the soldiers, and it is never ever a good idea to mess with military payroll then, now, or ever. In this case, the troops figured well hell, there's all these riches in Rome, let's go there and take them if we're not going to get paid, which is exactly what they did, about wiping out the Swiss Guards on 5/6 May 1527, the "Sack of Rome". Clement made it out to Castel Sant'Angelo but became a prisoner there and eventually surrendered on 6 June.<br /><br />Neither the HRE Charles nor Martin Luther approved of this, but it did have the practical effect of curbing papal power over the Holy Roman Empire, with a lot of money and land changing hands. Luther saw Christ's providence in this, or at least a great irony, saying that the Emperor who persecuted the Lutheran Reformation for the Pope ends up himself having to destroy the Pope. Might just be something to that. To commemorate the fight put up by the Swiss Guards, new ones have their swearing-in on 6 May to this day.<br /><br />The Passeto and Castel sant'Angelo still exist, the latter now as an Italian national museum. Not surprisingly, so much intrigue having played out in it historically, it is the headquarters of the "Illuminati" in the fictional "Angels and Demons", a recent movie by Dan Brown of da Vinci Code fame.<br /><br />St Michael has thus become the patron of guardians of various kinds, from policemen to the sick. Western church writings speak of his feast from at least the 6th century, and other observances based on other appearances and legends arose elsewhere. But 29 September as the Feast of St Michael is among the oldest observances in the Western calendar.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Feast of St Michael the Archangel, and All Angels.</span><br /><br />Why is that? Not to mention, how is that? For feast days, the custom in the church is to take the date of a saint's death, that being the day he was born to eternity as it were, as his feast day, or if that is unknown, the date of something else he did or is associated with him. Now Michael being an angel and all, didn't die, so it can't be his date of death, so what is that something else?<br /><br />Here's what. The feast isn't actually the Feast of St Michael, but the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St Michael. The Leonine Sacramentary, from the Sixth Century (the 500s) gives a Feast of the Birth of the Basilica of the Angel on the way to Salaria. The Gelesian Sacramentary, from the Seventh Century, gives a Feast of St Michael the Archangel, but both of these were on 30 September. Then in the Eighth Century, the Gregorian Sacramentary gives a Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St Michael the Archangel, but puts it on 29 September, which is when they had a vigil for the dedication.<br /><br />That's just as well -- gonna need 30 September for the Feast of St Jerome, who died on that day in 420. So we have a feast on 29 September of the dedication of a church to St Michael, howdya like that? Two things about that. For one thing, "church", didn't it say basilica, what the hell is a basilica? A basilica originally was not a church at all, but a meeting place for merchants and mercantile justice, but as they were pretty nice big buildings, they got taken over as churches, with the state Catholic Church and all, and later such churches were called basilica from the get-go.<br /><br />For another, the specific basilica whose dedication established the feast on 29 September hasn't existed for over a thousand years! One thing's for sure though. 29 September sure in the hell ain't what Vatican II made of it in the novus ordo, where it's now the Feast of Michael, Gabriel and Rafael. Utter revisionist bullroar. 29 September has been about Michael, and the whole company of angels by extension, since it started, and even if the basilica disappeared a thousand years ago, why in the hell a thousand years later does the Whore of Babylon mess with it?<br /><br />Because that's what the Whore of Babylon does, mess with things. Gabriel has his own feast day, which is 24 March, and in the Eastern church his day is 8 November in the Julian Calendar, which is 21 November in the Gregorian Calendar, and he has two other days as well (26 March and 13 July if you wanna know, the first for his role in the Annunciation and the other for all his other stuff). Rafael has his own feast day too, which is 24 October.<br /><br />It's interesting the both these feasts were only put in the General Roman Calendar in 1921, however, in the sanctoral calendars at lexorandi.org, the 1731 Lutheran Almanac, on the 200th Anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession, has Gabe's but not Rafe's, and "The Calendar", which I believe is Loehe's, has Rafe's but not Gabe's. My "Manual of Prayers", ordered prepared by the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore with Imprimatur 17 May 1889 by James Cardinal Gibbons no less (it was my dad's, I'm old but not that old), has Rafe on 24 October and Gabe but on 18 March, so 1921 didn't start anything but standardised it for Rome.<br /><br />To its credit, among the many things to its credit, The Lutheran Hymnal -- you know, THE Lutheran Hymnal -- doesn't jack around with any of that, but simply retains The Feast of St Michael and All Angels, and to its credit, Lutheran Service Book, while it does often follow the novus ordo model of jacking around with stuff, doesn't jack around with this one. And given that the dedication thing has kind of lost its significance, the basilica being dedicated being gone a millennium now, it's still worth mentioning since originally that is why 29 September.<br /><br />And yes, it's kind of like an All Angels Day too. Which is just fine. St Michael being the commander of the angelic forces, like any good commander, he doesn't forget his men.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Michaelmas the Quarter Day.</span><br /><br />We ain't done! Michaelmas has all sorts of stuff attached to it. For one thing, Michaelmas is also one of the four Quarter Days in Mother England: Lady Day 25 March, Midsummer Day 24 June, Michaelmas 29 September, Christmas 25 December.<br /><br />What the hell is a Quarter Day? These are four days roughly equivalent to the two equinoxes and two solstices, when business and legal dealings need to be settled -- rents and bills are due (the rent thing is still often followed in England), judges had to visit outlying areas to make sure no matters go on unresolved, servants and labourers are hired so employment isn't up in the air, stuff like that. This is big stuff, coming from the Magna Carta itself of 1215, when the barons secured against the king, John at the time, the principle that no-one's right to justice will be sold, denied, or delayed.<br /><br />Ever gone to a job fair resume in hand to meet prospective employers? You're right in the tradition of Michaelmas! At harvest's end, on the day after Michaelmas labourers would assemble in the towns for just that purpose with a sign of the work they do in their hands to get employment for the next year. Such events came to be called Mop Fairs, from those seeking employment as maids showing up with a broom in hand, like a resume to show the prospective employer what work they could do.<br /><br />Pay your taxes due in April? You're right in the tradition of the Quarter Days! Lady Day was the first day of the calendar year until the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, and when taxes were due. The English tax year still starts on "Old" Lady Day, 6 April. "Old"? Read on; there's an "old" Michaelmas too.<br /><br />Btw, the lady in Lady Day is Jesus' mother Mary, and the day is more widely known as the Feast of the Annunciation, commemorating the announcement by Gabriel to Mary that if she consented she would bear Jesus, nine months before his birth 25 December. And re calendars, Julian refers to Julius Caesar who set the old calendar, and Gregorian refers to Pope St Gregory who modified it into what we use to-day.<br /><br /><b>"Old" Michaelmas and New Calendars. </b><br /><br />In England, the modified more accurate Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1752, and on 3 September in the old Julian Calendar the date became 14 September in the new Gregorian calendar. Many were confused by this, thinking they had lost 11 days of their lives, leading to protests in the streets. Michaelmas was the first big deal to happen after the change, leading some to say that since we lost 11 days, Michaelmas is really 10 October in the new calendar, which is then "Old" Michaelmas Day.<br /><br />A lot of the resistance to the Gregorian calendar came from it being done by a pope. It was actually the work of Aloysius Lilius. Whozat? An Italian mathematician and astronomer who did the essential work of correcting the drift of the Julian calendar. The year in the Julian calendar is 11 minutes shorter than a year actually is, so over the centuries the date of the March equinox isn't on the March equinox, for example, which throws off when Easter is along with everything else. Christmas in July indeed! The church needed to fix this.<br /><br />Lilius' work, with some tweaking by Christopher Clavius, a German Jesuit mathematician, was proposed to the papal commission in charge of calendar reform in 1575. Gregory made it official on 24 February 1582 in the papal bull "inter gravissimas". It's named as is the custom in many places from its first couple of words, which here mean "among the most serious", and changing to the new calendar was taken in many Protestant countries as a deference to papal power.<br /><br />More musty stuff from Past Elder that can be left in the must? Yeah well it's why we have the calendar in world-wide use now. And also, in computer science there is the Lilian Date, named after Lilius, which is used to calculate the number of days between any two dates since the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar on 15 October 1582. The Lilian Date was invented at IBM by Bruce G. Ohms in 1986 and is used in the date conversion routines in IBM's LE (language environment) software.<br /><br />And Clavius is quite a guy, twice over. He started out thoroughly in the thinking of his time, the geocentric model of the universe, along with the theological addendum that since the Bible presents the universe in those terms, if it isn't in those terms then what can you believe the Bible about anyway and the faith falls apart (the issue another post here in September takes up). Nonetheless, he saw there are problems with the Ptolemaic model though he opposed Copernicus. Galileo respected him for that, and the two met in 1611 going over the observations now (then) possible with a telescope, and guess what, he changed his mind, and, didn't lose his faith.<br /><br />Also, in logic, there is Clavius' Law, lex clavia in Latin, aka consequentia mirabilis, the admirable consequence. So what's that? It establishes that a proposition is true if its negation (opposite) is inconsistent. There's two aspects to this. If a statement is inconsistent then its opposite must be true, so, if a statement is inferred from its opposite being inconsistent that's the consequentia mirabilis, and if a statement itself is inconsistent then the inferred opposite will be true is the lex clavis. Huh, gimme an example, never heard of it!<br /><br />OK, heard of Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum (that's pronounced KO-jee-to btw), I think therefore I am? There you go. You might think the thinking is all messed up but there's no denying there was thinking itself, therefore a thinker. Actually Aristotle said this long ago, in the Nicomachean Ethics (1170a25) and in the Protrepticus, which survives in fragments. (Judas H, what's a protrepticus? A protrepsis is a rhetorical exhortation to get you to think or live differently than you are, another word for which is paraenesis, though sometimes paraenesis is used to mean exhortation to continue thinking or living the way you are.)<br /><br />Or how about this. Someone says, there are no truth statements. But for that to be true there must be truth statements.<br /><br />Here's the consequentia mirabilis (lex clavia, Clavius' Law) in formal notation:<br /><span class="mwe-math-element" face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 17.5px;"><img alt="(\neg A\rightarrow A)\rightarrow A" aria-hidden="true" class="mwe-math-fallback-image-inline" src="https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/c34db436d79883fb6c7035acfe83f1753250748e" style="border: 0px; display: inline-block; height: 2.843ex; margin: 0px; vertical-align: -0.838ex; width: 15.817ex;" /></span><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 17.5px;"> </span><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 17.5px;">is equivalent to </span><span class="mwe-math-element" face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 17.5px;"><img alt="{\displaystyle (\neg \neg A\lor A)\rightarrow A}" aria-hidden="true" class="mwe-math-fallback-image-inline" src="https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/db6ecf63069a53ee33f5485f4bcef62e246bd47c" style="border: 0px; display: inline-block; height: 2.843ex; margin: 0px; vertical-align: -0.838ex; width: 16.336ex;" /></span><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 17.5px;">.</span><br /><div><b style="color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 17.5px;"><br /><b style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;">Michaelmas, Curfews, Goose Dinners and Sheriffs.</b><br /><br /></b>We still ain't done! For centuries, it was a holy day of obligation -- you gotta go to Mass. As the Germans were Christianised, St Michael took the place of Wotan, and you will find St Michael chapels in the mountains, previously sacred to Wotan, there to this day. <b style="color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 17.5px;"> </b></div><div><b style="color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 17.5px;"><br /></b>Michaelmas was also the start of winter curfew, which lasts until Shrove Tuesday, with bells being rung at 2100 hours (that's 9pm) to signal the curfew, which is literally lights out, "curfew" meaning "cover the fire", put out the household fires and lamps.</div><div><br /></div><div>Michaelmas is also called Goose Day, because goose is eaten for the meal, coming from the practice of those who couldn't pay their rent or bills on the Quarter Day offering a goose instead to the landlord. There's an old rhyme -- He who eats goose on Michaelmas Day, shan't money lack his debts to pay.<br /><br />It also started the new term, Michaelmas term, at Oxford and Cambridge. Still does!<br /><br />It is also the day when peasants on manors elected their new reeve. What the hell is a reeve? A serf elected by the other serfs to manage the land for the landowner nobleman, the lord. A reeve of an entire shire was a shire-reeve. What the hell is a shire? That's what counties were called in Mother England before the Norman Conquest, county being the name of the land controlled by a count in continental Europe where the damn Normans came from. Bunch of old stuff lost in history? Got a sheriff in your county? It's exactly why the chief law enforcement officer of your county is called a sheriff, a contraction over time of shire reeve, and why your county isn't called a shire.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Now.</span><br /><br />So there's stuff from this all around our modern life. And now, maybe, one more. Back to the legends about St Michael, one of them is, when he kicked Satan out of heaven, which was on 29 September story goes, Satan fell to earth and landed in a bunch of blackberry thorns, which totally ticked him off so he cursed the fruit of the bush, stomped on them, breathed fire on them, spat on them and just generally went nuts. This curse renews every Michaelmas Day, so, what ever you do, DO NOT pick or eat blackberries after Michaelmas!<br /><br />Which in our digital age opens a whole new question -- if you have a Blackberry phone, can you use it after Michaelmas Day?<br /><br />Aren't saint's days just a riot? A little bit of something real -- there really is a St Michael the Archangel and he really is the military commander of God's forces, stands ready with all the faithful angels to help and protect you, and will function as such on the End Time -- and a whole lot of legend, leading to some pretty amazing history, both of which have left common elements large and small on life to-day.<br /><br />Happy Michaelmas! And have some goose, but before 2100. And touch up that resume, if you're looking for a job. Been there and it's tough. Put your trust in God, in this and in all things; I mean who is like God, just like Michael's name means. And, you got people -- and angels.</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-34376450887703087542021-09-27T20:51:00.000-05:002021-09-27T20:51:23.953-05:00Temples, Taxes, Vespasian and Now. (2021)<p>Vespasian is usually mentioned as this terrible pagan Roman general who hated God and whose forces therefore obliterated Jerusalem and the Temple in it. Actually, his campaign in Palestine is rather of a sidelight in his career and had no religious motivation at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> What's more, if it weren't for the same guy in charge of destroying Jerusalem and the Temple there would be no Judaism now at all. The real deal about him will show us something important about religious reactions, to him and more importantly religious reactions to things in general. Here's the deal.</span></p><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Temples.</b><br /><br />First Temple.<br /><br />The destruction of the second temple shows that Israel has been a massive pain in the butt for everybody else for centuries, not just recently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Notice it's second Temple. There's been two temples, and both were destroyed by conquering foreign powers. </span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">The original Temple was built by King Solomon, who reigned from about 970 to 931 BC (or BCE if you will), helped by an architect from Tyre in Phoenicia (now in Lebanon) named Hiram. It was to replace the Tabernacle constructed 440 years earlier under Moses as the Israelites went from Egypt through the Sinai Desert on their way to conquer Canaan. Thus it was to be God's dwelling place on earth, and be the sole place of worship sacrifices, replacing local ones. Solomon's dad King David had gotten quite wealthy from trade with the Phoenicians. </span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">More murky historical stuff nobody cares about from Past Elder? Yeah well the Phoenician alphabet is the oldest one, traders carried it across their known world, the Romans adopted and adapted it, whereupon it became the alphabet used world wide now and is the reason you're reading this or anything else, so relax.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">This first Temple, Solomon's, was plundered by Pharaoh Shoshenq I of Egypt (called Shishak in the Bible) about 926 BC during the reign of Solomon's son and successor Rehoboam, at a time of Israelite civil war during which they split into the Kingdom of Judah (the tribes of Judah and Levi) and the Kingdom of Israel (the other ten tribes) to the north. Not least of the issues in the split was the Temple, which put out of business the various local temples and their priests.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">It was restored in 835 BC by Jehoash, King of Judah. Then it was plundered again about 700 BC by Sennacherib, King of Assyria (capital, Nineveh, modern day Mosul, Iraq, see Kings II in the Bible), not on religious reasons as he plundered everyone who didn't accept Assyrian rule, especially the Babylonians; he obliterated Babylon (about 53 miles south of modern Baghdad, Iraq) in 689 BC. Assyria also obliterated the Kingdom of Israel around 722 BC or so and deported the people (2 Kings 17:6) to nobody knows where exactly as no identifiable further record of them exists, hence lost "Lost Tribes of Israel". Josephus says they were beyond the Euphrates River and too numerous to even guess by his time. This left the Kingdom of Judah, which is why Jews are called "Jews" since the other tribes are lost (lots of fanciful theories about where they went abound). </span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Assyria fell apart amidst internal strife, Babylon came roaring back which kind of got the Egyptians nervous, and when King Jehoakim of Judah quit paying tribute -- which doesn't mean saying nice words, "tribute" comes from the Latin tributum, meaning contribution; it's money and/or goods and services given as a sign of submission -- and hoped the Egyptians would contain the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar (the second, actually) eventually conquered Jerusalem on 16 March 597 BC and looted the city and the Temple, and took the current king and other notables, like Ezechiel, to Babylon. But resistance remained, the new king Zedekiah allied with the Egyptians, the prophet Jeremias warned this is not gonna end well, and it didn't. </span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Nebuchadnezzar had enough and obliterated the Temple in 587 BC and started resettling the locals to Babylon, the famous "Babylonian Captivity". So now all twelve tribes had been deported. This wasn't just about the Israelites; resettlement of conquered peoples for more politically practical reasons was a common practice in ancient Assyria and Babylon. Ancient? We do it now! In die Vertreibung (expulsion) after WWII about 31 million ethnic Germans were expelled from lands that would no longer be Germany as the victors determined the borders that would eventually become Germany as it is now. Then again the Nazi Generalplan Ost under Himmler planned the ethnic cleansing of eastern Europe for more Germans to move in; the Soviet victory at Stalingrad started the process by which it wasn't successful. And there's the Nakba (catastrophe) in 1947/8 in which about 700,000 Palestinians were evicted or fled to avoid eviction in the creation of the modern State of Israel.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Second Temple.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">The second Temple dates from 516 BC. What happened? Babylon fell to Persia, or in modern terms, Iraq fell to Iran, in 539 BC, that's what. The great Babylon was overtaken by a power that became even greater, Persia, specifically, the First Persian Empire, sometimes called Achaemenid Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II actually; Cyrus I was his grandfather). It became the largest empire the world had yet known and lasted until it was conquered by Alexander the Great, who greatly respected Cyrus' legacy and made a point of visiting his grave in 330 BC. His grave is still there, in his capital Pasargadae, near modern Shiraz, Iran; a UNESCO World Heritage Site and to this day site of celebrations on Cyrus the Great Day, on 29 October, the day Cyrus entered Babylon, and on Nowruz, Iranian New Year, on the spring (in the northern hemisphere) equinox on or around 21 March.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">There's a lot to respect. Cyrus was a conqueror indeed, but he did not obliterate those he conquered and allowed them to keep their culture within his empire under a client-ruler (satrap). In a move that was not unique toward the Jews but actually typical of him toward conquered peoples, Cyrus issued an edict whereby the Jewish exiles in Babylon were allowed to return to their land and rebuild their temple. This momentous event is among many other places recorded in the Bible; in fact the Jewish Bible, which is more or less the Christian Old Testament though with the books in a different order, ends with the account of the edict in II Chronicles 36.</span><br /><br />(Side note. Chronicles was originally one book called The Matters of the Days in Hebrew. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek couple centuries before Christ since most Jews spoke Greek at that time (what is called the Septuagint) the book was divided in two and called The Things Left to the Side, or Paralipomena in Greek. When Jerome translated the Bible into Latin in C5 AD (what is called the Vulgate) he called them Chronicon, Chronicles in English, and the two-part division and the name Chronicles has pretty much stuck in anybody's translation since, although older RC translations like the one I grew up with whose OT is based on the Septuagint, which has a few more books than the Hebrew canon, retained the name Paralipomena, along with other Greek-like spellings such as Ezechiel and Jeremias that I use sometimes.) <br /><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">The fact is, the usual term "captivity" makes it seem much different than it actually was. Psalm 137 (136 in the Septuagint and Vulgate, the famous "super flumina babylonis", above the waters of Babylon), which the Septuagint attributes to the prophet Jeremias no less, is a lament of the exiles for being in Babylon rather than Judah, not for being treated poorly, human rights abuses as we might say now, but for being unable to sing a song in a strange land of their native land even when asked to by the Babylonians, and prays that their right hand lose its ability if they forget Jerusalem (guess there weren't any lefties) or prefer present joys to Jerusalem.</span><br /><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Yes they were exiles with the loss of their land and Temple, but they were not slaves, they were not prisoners, they were not badly treated. In fact in 538 BC when Cyrus allowed their return to the land from which they were exiled most chose to stay! Esther, a Jewish woman and protagonist of the Biblical book, became the wife of whom the book names Ahasuerus, King of Persia, and thus a Jew becomes Queen of Persia! (The story is pretty wild; I'll leave that to the book.) Ahasuerus is generally identified as Xerxes I, the fifth king of the Achaemenid Empire (First Persian Empire) from 486 to 465 BC. He's the one who lost big-time to the Greeks under Themistocles at Salamis in September 480 BC. The Septuagint and the Vulgate identify him as Artaxerxes I, the sixth king and the third son of Xerxes, whose rule was 465 to 424 BC. Either way, well after 538 BC when Cyrus allowed the return. </span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">So, there's ambivalence in the Bible itself about the return -- unless one is one of those who can't handle ambivalence in what is supposed to be the word of God and thus says since it can't be it isn't. On the one hand, Isaias (oh sorry, Isaiah) 45:1 says God anointed Cyrus to make his proclamation of return and rebuilding, and as anointed one is what messiah means, he is so described, the only non-Jew in the Bible to be called an anointed one of God. On the other hand, most Jews stayed. For those who returned, the rebuilding of the Temple was complete in 516 BC, a little over twenty years after the return. This is recorded in the Book of Esdras (oh sorry, Ezra), which was originally one book along with the Book of Nehemias (oh sorry, Nehemiah), the two were not separated until the first printed Bibles in C16 AD, and also recorded in variants called 3 and 4 Esdras, or 1 and 2 Esdras by those who call 1 and 2 Esdras Ezra and Nehemiah, found in the Apocrypha in modern Bibles if that is included.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Second Temple Judaism was not like that of the First, in either the building or the religion. The building itself was not a reconstruction of the first but a rather plain structure, which those returnees old enough to remember the first found very disappointing. It is not the ruins of this building that are there to-day but we'll get to that. Also, the returnees did not return to the Kingdom of Judah; the kings were gone, and the land became a client-state of Persia under its Babylonian name Yehud. Before, the temple priesthood was subordinate to the kings, but with them gone, the priesthood increased in power, with the High Priest effectively becoming the ruler, a role that would endure after the Greeks and then the Romans took over, with the latter making sure the High Priest didn't rock the boat.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">The second Temple did not have the Ark of the Covenant from the first Temple and the Tabernacle of Moses before it. One of the strangest things about the Bible is that despite the enormous importance of the Ark, containing the stone tablets given by God to Moses at Mount Sinai and all, there is absolutely no mention of what happened to it after the destruction of the first Temple. Speculation abounds of course, to the present day even to hit movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark. </span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">And too, in contrast to Jewish reaction to later catastrophe, it was thought that God had allowed the destruction of the first Temple and the "captivity" due to their lack of adherence to Biblical religion and dalliance with the gods and women of those around them, so on returning a great emphasis was placed on getting it right and sticking to it -- no intermarriage, even with those who hadn't been deported, a purity of community, a purity of Temple worship with the priestly animal sacrifices, and study of the Law of Moses and the Prophets. To this end, Esdras and the 120 Men of the Great Assembly (Nehemias 10) codified existing observances into three times of prayer to correspond with the times of sacrifice in the Temple, morning, afternoon and evening, thus establishing a form that is still used in synagogue worship and was adapted by the Christian church into Matins, Vespers and Compline. </span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">They also established the central prayer of Jewish worship, the Amidah, which means "standing" because it is said standing, also called the Shemoneh Esreh, which means "eighteen" because it is composed of eighteen blessings, said on weekdays at all three times of prayer to this day. The Amidah for Sabbath condenses the petitions since Sabbath is a foretaste of eternity when no petitions are needed, and the Christian church evolved a Christian prayer in exactly its structure, which is said to this day too -- usually called the Gloria, from its first word in Latin. They also finalised the canon, the list of books to be considered authoritative, of the Hebrew Bible as we have it now (when used as the Old Testament in Christian Bibles the book order is different but the list is the same).</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">The building was different too, twice over. What is there in ruins now is neither the first Temple nor the original second Temple but a massive rebuilding and replacement of it undertaken by Herod the Great, Jewish client king to the Romans of Judea at the time of Jesus' birth. Herod was Jewish, but an Edomite (descendant of Esau) and also a Roman citizen. He began as governor of Galilee in 41 BC with the backing of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, was appointed King of Judea by the Roman Senate in 37 BC and given military support to bring the area under tighter Roman control. When Marc Antony lost out to Octavian as the Roman Empire was taking over the Roman Republic Herod was solidly behind the new Empire and switched allegiance to Octavian, who as Caesar Augustus was the new and first Emperor and the guy mentioned in the famous nativity account in Luke read at Christmas who ordered the census. Herod brought a great deal of prosperity to Judea and at the same time was quite cruel. Look at the dates -- all this is happening in the unsettled violent change from Republic to Empire, same era as the Arminius episode, and Herod was concerned to maintain his power. This is the same Herod who would order the Massacre of the Innocents recorded in Matthew, but nowhere else, which some say indicates the passage is a literary invention to mirror the Passover slaughter in Exodus, but given that Herod had his wife (one of them, anyway) and several of his children killed as well as many others as threats to his power that particular massacre probably wasn't all that significant to warrant mentioning with non-Biblical sources. </span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">The second second Temple, so to speak, Herod's, was begun about 20 BC. The Temple per se was completed in about three years, but construction on the entire complex continued much longer. John 2:20 says it had been under construction for 46 years when Jesus went there for Passover. So, at the time of its destruction in 70 AD none of it was very old at all. It's what it meant that was, and its loss was of huge impact. But before we get to the impact of the destruction we need to get to the destruction itself.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Before we do, have you noticed something? How is it that a guy who died in 4 BC, BC standing for Before Christ, was in power when Christ was born? That's because Christ was around Before Christ too. Huh? Here's the deal. The calendar in world-wide use now was originally produced by commission of Pope Gregory the Great, who was head of the Roman Empire's state Catholic Church a little over a hundred years after the Western half of the Roman Empire, the part with Rome actually in it, collapsed in 476 AD. Part of the idea was to number the years going forward starting with Christ and going backward from him. Thing is, the calculations of what year that was were a little off b</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">ut we didn't know that until the calendar had been in standard use for centuries. So keeping the same year numbers, the year Christ came was about 4 BC.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><b>Taxes and Religious Significances.</b><br /><br />While Jews and Christians assign various religious significances to the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, to the Romans doing it had no religious motivation or significance whatever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br /><br />The Romans could not care less about whatever local religious observances there were in the areas they controlled, unless they rocked the boat about who runs things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What motivated the First Jewish Revolt was all about who is the true god and what therefore one does or does not do, such as pay taxes to foreign rulers, but the Roman reaction to it was mostly about the non-payment of taxes by Jews who thought it wrong to pay them, as well as attacks by Jews on Romans in the area, not about who was right about God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Roman governor ordered the Temple plundered for the money since they would not pay, which resulted in an escalation in which the Roman garrison was taken and the client king (Agrippa) had to flee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When initial attempts to quash the rebellion failed, Emperor Nero had enough and ordered General Vespasian to take over and, as we might say now, turn it into a parking lot.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This question of taxation by the Romans that would lead to the obliteration of Jerusalem was long-standing. It's the same issue in the New Testament passages Mark 12:13-17, also told in Matthew 22:16-22 and Luke 20:20-26, namely, asking Jesus if it's moral according to God to pay taxes to Rome. It's the same issue in Jesus calling a tax collector for the Romans who was himself Jewish to be among the Apostles!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Who, btw, was Matthew himself! Not the kind of guy you want around if you're looking to attract followers, since he would have been largely despised, yet Jesus called him and not after extensive catechesis or a change of heart on Matthew's part but while he was on the job collecting taxes, just telling him "Follow me." It's the same issue in the famous parable told in Luke 18:9-14 of the Pharisee and the Publican, sometimes translated tax collector.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">OK, what's a publican? Don't hear anybody talking about publicans now do you? Yeah you do, we just don't use that term for them. A publican (publicanus in Latin) was a private contractor with a public government contract for which it successfully bid. They're in the news now all the time. Then as now a lot of their activity was in construction of public works and buildings, and in supplying the military. This practice began after the overthrow of the Kingdom and the establishment of the Republic around 500 BC and the oldest surviving account of such activity is from 390 BC. Our modern practice comes directly from the Roman Republic. But there are two important differences.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">One is, there was no Roman IRS, and the publicans also collected taxes in Roman controlled areas. The other is, Senators could not participate in running a publican company (societas publicanorum) and publicans could not hold Senate seats. No Dick Cheneys. Also, publicans were mostly of the equites class, which is often translated as Knights but was not knights in the mediaeval sense we usually think of, but a property-owning based class (horses were part of the property, which is the basis for the later use of the term) and, they were the lower of its two ranks, with the senatorial class number one. That's the Republic. With the Empire this began, along with much else, to change. It had to.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">In the Republic, there was a temporary position called dictator (one who speaks, ie commands) which the government could appoint for a specific cause (causa) to address a crisis. The dictator was to resign upon completion of the task or after six months. Julius not-yet-Caesar had gathered a great deal of power from his wars in Gaul (France) and Britannia (England) and the Senate ordered him to resign his command and return to Rome. To do so would leave him open to prosecution as a war criminal, so instead, he returned to Rome alright but at the head of his 13th Legion (Legio tertia decima gemina) which was illegal as hell, a capital offence actually to exercise imperium (command) in Rome itself, crossing the boundary river the Rubicon 10 January 49 BC.</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">He knew exactly what he was doing and what would happen. It's from this event that we get the phrase "crossing the Rubicon" for taking an action after which there is no reversal or point of return, and also the phrase "the die is cast", from his reported words by Suetonius "iacta alea est" as they waded through the river (it's shallow), though modern usage usually changes the original word order to alea iacta est. </span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">The die was cast. He was now not only open to prosecution as a war criminal but subject to the death penalty for violating the restrictions of command. It set in motion a long civil war in which the Roman bureaucracy was centralised and strengthened, what was left of the Senate proclaimed him dictator perpetuo (dictator in perpetuity), two months later on the proverbial Ides of March (the 15th) in 44 BC he was assassinated in the Senate, which in turn led to further civil war, with his adopted son Octavian being named Augustus (illustrious one) by the weakened Senate on 16 January 27 BC, though he himself liked Romulus as a title, as the reference to the founder of Rome connoted a second founding of Rome, and Imperator Caesar divi filius, Commander Caesar the son of the god (Julius Caesar had been declared a god by the Senate on 1 January 42 BC).</span><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">So there you go, from imperium legally broken to Imperator legally established, from complete defiance of the Roman Republic and its concepts to a Roman Empire based on very non-Roman concepts. This is covered in more detail on other posts on this blog, but the point here is, in the time of Jesus' public ministry, 30-33 AD, the Jewish Revolt, 66-73 AD and the destruction of the second Temple in it (70 AD), Rome was not this great monolith but in the stages of becoming one amid great political and social upheaval in changing from the Republic to something very different, the Empire, with sentiment from significant Romans that this change was not for the best and being a republic was better.</span><br /><br />This wasn't a problem just for Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What we now consider great Roman figures also had a tough time in this transition -- Cicero, Horace, Seneca, Stoics in general, Tactitus, all of them leery of the Empire and much in sympathy with the former Republic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the extent that not just Jesus died in this context -- Cicero was executed and Seneca, under orders from Nero, committed suicide.<br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">At the time of Jesus' death the Empire was quite new, only 60 years old. When the great revolt began it was 93 years old. When the Temple was destroyed it was 97 years old and just the year before experienced huge upheaval with the death of Emperor Nero. Territorial governors like Herod and local tax collectors like the publican were in a very precarious position toward both the local population and the government they worked for, with their roles changing dramatically as the autocratic centralized nature of imperial Rome rapidly evolved and diminished them. </span><br /><br /><b>Vespasian.</b><br /><b></b><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Vespasian distinguished himself in the ongoing conquest of Britannia, which began in 43 AD under Emperor Claudius, in which Vespasian commanded one of the four legions sent (Legio secunda Augusta, to be specific). He retired from the military after that and pursued a political career, retiring in 51 after incurring the disfavour of Claudius' (fourth) wife Julia Agrippina, who was the mother of Nero by an earlier marriage and whom Claudius made his heir. Vespasian's military expertise is no doubt why Nero appointed him to take care of this political problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Josephus' account is controversial among Jews; he was a Jew himself, but also a Roman citizen and had imperial patronage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ironically, he regarded Vespasian highly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">With the death of Nero political chaos fell upon the new Empire, and in 69 was the Year of Four Emperors, Vespasian being the last.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Theoretically, he did not have the pedigree for that, being of the equestrian not senatorial class, but the army was behind him and the Senate soon confirmed him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was all for the Empire, and it being rather new at the time, was suspicious of those still hankering for the old Republic, particularly the Stoics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was otherwise known as quite amiable though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Emperor he embarked upon many reforms, extended financial generosity to many, and to the public as a whole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">One such is still famous, the so-called Colosseum!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's real name is Amphitheatrum Flavium, or Flavian Amphitheatre in English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why "Flavian"?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's from Vespasian's actual name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In English we tend to refer to significant Romans by one name, but a Roman had three.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His was Titus Flavius Vespasianus. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Flavius is his nomen, the name that gives your clan (gens) and identifies you as a citizen, hence the Romans would use that and not what looks like a "last" name in English but in Latin is a cognomen, originally a nickname but later identifying your family within the clan.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Flavian also describes the dynasty he established.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a ten-year reign, he was succeeded by his son Titus, who had also taken over the destruction of Jerusalem when his dad got involved in bigger stuff, and also was then the first emperor to be succeeded by a biological heir.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Among his reforms was the re-institution of vectigal urinae, yup, a urine tax, not for taking a leak but for buying urine!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Huh?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, public toilets also were a collection place for pots to piss in from lower classes, and the urine was used for its ammonia content in tanning and laundering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, laundering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There's a great story Suetonius records that when his dad re-instituted the tax his son Titus said "Dad, that's just gross" (or words to that effect in Latin) whereupon Vespasian held up a coin and asked Titus if that seemed gross, and when Titus said No, Vespasian said pecunia non olet, money doesn't stink.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The phrase is still used to distinguish money from its source, and I think the term for a public toilet in French and Italian is a Vespasian; why Spanish did not get this I do not know!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Marx himself in Das Kapital uses the phrase to identify the phenomenon that from money itself one cannot tell how the person with money got it or from what trade it came.<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Vespasian was all for the Empire. We saw that the huge transition from a Republic to an Empire meant Rome was discarding some essential Roman ideas and principles, and the Empire was thus quite un-Roman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, by the time Rome defined the Roman Catholic Church by imperial decree and made it the state religion in 380 (Cunctos populos) the state church was quite in line with the distinctly un-Roman characteristics of the Empire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its further development after the Empire faded and the "Holy" one came about was also quite in line with that, and even now this former state church retains the nature of the state church though the state is gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, the Catholic Church is in no way the catholic church.<br /><br /><b>Third Temple?</b></div><b><br /></b>Vespasian is remembered for his role in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, though his son Titus finished the job, but, he should also be remembered for his role allowing the creation of a form of Judaism that could survive the destruction and is the form in which we know Judaism now, so it's not so ironic after all that Josephus thought highly of him.<br /><br />As the destruction neared, everyone understood that this would end everything if it happened. There wouldn't even be a "captivity" somewhere. So, a Pharisee named Yohanan ben Zakkai tried hard to get the Jewish side to stand down, and when they wouldn't, he arranged a secret meeting with Vespasian to save what he could from the now inevitable destruction. He asked Vespasian only for sparing the town of Yavne (Jamnia) and its teachers, as well as Gamaliel's descendants and a physician to attend a Rabbi Zadok who had been fasting 40 years that things might not end this way.<br /><br />Zadok is an interesting name for a rabbi. Zadok is the name of the high priest of the First Temple of Solomon and David and from whom the priestly party in the Second Temple, the Sadducees, were named and claimed legitimacy, and who accepted only the Torah (first five books of anyone's Bible, the books of Moses). The teachers and scholars in local synagogues, the rabbis, had no Biblical office, accepted the Prophets and Other Writings as well as oral tradition and the ability to make further rulings as necessary, and weren't so sure a Temple built under foreign authority was all that legitimate. These are the Pharisees, which means "ones set apart", as in for teaching and study. <br /><br />Vespasian granted his request. Upon which, Yohanan told him he would be emperor. Yohanan saw Rome as the fourth of the four world powers prophesied in Daniel 7:23, and saw Vespasian as fulfilling the prediction of Isaias 10:34 that the holy house would fall into the hands of a king. About three days later, word arrived that Vitellius, the current emperor, was dead and the Senate had named Vespasian emperor. Vespasian had never supported Vitellius in his overthrow of Otho, the previous emperor, who committed suicide when he lost, and Vespasian's forces defeated Vitellius' forces and killed him, whereupon the Senate proclaimed Vespasian emperor 21 December 69, though communications being what they were at the time, it would be some time before he knew. That's why Vespasian left for Rome and the actual destruction was carried out under Titus, his son.<br /><br />The school and centre at Jamnia has enormous ongoing influence. With the Temple, priesthood and sacrifices gone, the religion revealed by God in the Hebrew Bible was now impossible to do, so what do we do? Jamnia, be it an actual council or a centre of activity, answered this challenge, and the answer turned the Judaism of the Pharisees into the rabbinical Judaism we have now.<br /><br />Yohanan issued nine edicts which modified the observance of observances commanded in Torah so they could be done outside Jerusalem and the Temple and its priests, which were now destroyed. The gathered rabbis also instituted an observance called Tisha B'Av (the ninth of Av, which falls between mid-July to mid-August in the now-standard Gregorian calendar), patterned after Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) with a complete fast and four other prohibitions, and the Book of Lamentations, composed after the destruction of the first Temple and attributed to Jeremias, though the Bible itself is not clear on that. Regardless, its use laments the destruction of both Temples, which happened on the same day, the ninth of Av, and other calamities that later befell the Jews on or around that day are often added too now.<br /><br />Lamentations is an extraordinary book. It both accepts that the destruction was a just response by God to the sins and faithlessness of the people, and notes that maybe the punishment could have been not so harsh. It accepts that God has been gracious in the past, and notes that this does not guarantee he will be gracious now or in the future. It accepts that this may mean that God has rejected his people, but hopes that based on the past he will be gracious again. The church uses it too, as part of a night service called Tenebrae, which existed from at least C9 until early in my lifetime, when in 1955 Pope Pius XII changed Holy Week services into what they are now. Tenebrae as held now in some churches on Good Friday is loosely based on the original Tenebrae but does not use Lamentations. (Maybe I can talk my pastor into it one of these days, although a traditional Lutheran Tenebrae on Good Friday evening with the Seven Last Words or a Passion reading is the most gripping service we have so I'll be quite happy if we stick with that.)<br /><br />The most far-reaching of all of Yohanan's work is this: what is to replace the sacrifices that bind Man to God now that the place and people to perform them are gone? Based on Osee, oh sorry, Hosea (the name means "salvation") 6:6, which is, "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings", he concluded and persuaded the others to conclude that our mitzvoth (prayer and good deeds, especially the 613 commands of the Law of Moses in Torah), replace the sacrifices going forward until such time as the Temple is restored, the Third Temple. <br /><br /><b>Now.</b><br /><br />So here we are, now. Is there gonna be a Third Temple? Depends on who you ask.<br /><br />Orthodox Jews say yes and pray for it daily. Orthodox? What's that? While all Judaism since the destruction of the second Temple comes from Yochanan et al. at Jamnia, in mid-C19 Germany a movement coalesced around Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) called Reform Judaism, which rejected traditional rabbinic Judaism as really the product of exclusion, a ghetto mentality, incompatible with modern life, but did not see it as a rejection but reclaiming the ongoing spirit of rabbinic Judaism from its shell, much as Ezra and the 120 Men of the Great Assembly had done. Each synagogue was a temple, not just one in Jerusalem, so there is no need to restore it or the sacrifices which reflect a primitive time out of which we have grown. A middle ground between the two emerged in Germany around Zecharias Frankel (1801-1875) known as Conservative Judaism, and its position on the Temple and sacrifices is typical: yes to rebuilding the Temple, no to the sacrifices and references to sacrifice are removed from the Amidah and other prayers. Both of these movements are now primarily found in the United States, where many Jews now view being Jewish as more a social and ethnic thing and among those who have a formal affiliation Reform is the biggest.<br /><br />On top of that, even if the Temple is to be rebuilt, there's a big problem. The space is taken. Right on top of the site of both temples is the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine begun by the fifth Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (646-705). While the motives behind building it are disputed by historians, its significance is clear: it's from this site Muhammad's "Night Journey" around 620 through the heavens is held to have happened, beginning with the silver domed al-Aqsa mosque next to it, which is the third holiest site to Muslims of any kind. All indications are, it ain't going anywhere anytime soon.<br /><br />Finally, there's another option as to the current significance of the Temple and its sacrifices. What if the third temple, so to speak, has already happened? What if the full and final sacrifice has already been offered? What if that's why there is no reason to mourn the Temple, what it was there for has been fulfilled? What if that answers the questions of Lamentations, yes we are justly rejected by God for our faithlessness but yes, he will be merciful again, this time to the extent of paying the price himself, becoming incarnate as a human in Jesus of Nazareth to be priest, sacrifice, temple and all? What if we are just like the lame beggar in Acts 3, who was put by one of the Temple gates to beg, and encounters Peter and John on their way in for Minha (afternoon service)?<br /><br />Peter, John, the Temple and Jesus are physically gone. Being a beggar is the same. He couldn't go to where God was, so God came to where he was. It's still like that. We can't go to where he is, so he comes to where we are, priest, sacrifice, Temple and all, as the Office of Holy Ministry rightly preaches the Word and rightly administers the Sacraments of Baptism into his death and Communion in his Body and Blood given for our salvation.<br /><br />Wir sein Pettler (modern German: Wir sind Bettler). Hoc est verum.<br /></div><p><b>We are beggars. This is true.</b> </p>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-14403644190874696672021-09-18T16:55:00.001-05:002021-09-18T17:37:02.491-05:00The Divine Setting. An Essay on the Lifted Cross. 2021.<p><strong>Sic enim Deus dilexit mundum ... </strong>(Joannes 3:16) <b>For God so loved the world ...</b></p>In a previous post, O Friend of God, we dealt with "Holy Cross Day", or as it is sometimes called among us, The Triumph of the Holy Cross. We saw that the actual name of the day is The Exaltation of the Cross, that exaltation is used in its literal Latin sense of lifting up, and that neither the lifting up nor the cross lifted up refer to the triumph of the cross of Christ as the means of salvation, but to the lifting up of a supposed relic on 14 September 335 A.D in Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which still stands.<br /><br />So we impose good theology over silly legends about scandalous facts to retain the feast. This is a problem and this post addresses that problem further, not regarding that particular feast, but regarding the actual triumph of the actual cross. Over particularly recent centuries and continuing in this one, our empirically based human view of the world, and consequently the value of its parts, has yielded an astounding harvest of knowledge, which may seem at odds with traditional Christian belief.<br /><br />Thus many people who by training or temperament primarily listen to the voices of human knowledge waver regarding Christianity, either hesitating, thinking they would have to be false to themselves to embrace Christianity, or turning away from it altogether, thinking they have gone beyond it. And some seek a middle ground by recasting Christianity, trying to both go beyond it but nonetheless preserve its veneer.<br /><br />This problem is not new and not unique to our times. It will seem so if one ignores history. From the fall of the Roman Empire in the West in 476, we have been through several such cultural revolutions, each with increased vigour and effect.<br /><br />Charlemagne's (768-814) establishment of a new social order akin to the former Empire brought a new emphasis on learning in parish schools. Otto's (936-973) even moreso. In the Twelfth Century (1100s), what is now traditional Scholastic theology was in its time an attempt to reconcile the Faith with the rediscovery of secular learning from the ancients. It was hotly contested from within and without the church, yet, as Aquinas pointed out, if God is the source of all knowledge, ultimately there can be no conflict. Then came the via moderna, the modern way, in the Fourteenth Century (1300s), seeing the previous developments as the via antiqua, the old way.<br /><br />Toward the end of which another one began, starting in Florence, often dated for convenience to 1396 with the invitation by Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of the Republic of Florence, to the Byzantine scholar Emmanuel Chrysoloras to come there and teach Greek. The fall of the Roman Empire in the East to the Muslims in 1453 brought a flood of Greek scholars in its wake. This brought many new texts to awareness, made others known directly rather than through Latin translations, and began a shift away from the scientific orientation of the previous period to the arts as well. Hence, "humanism", and the idea that the previous age was a "middle" age between antiquity and the rebirth of its learning, hence the terms Middle Ages and Renaissance.<br /><br />In all of these, Christian faith was recast into then-current terms, which to those accustomed to the previously current terms seemed like a departure from the Faith. And in all of them was a distinct sense of having moved forward from the limitations of the past. Finally in the 1700s came The Enlightenment, where the dawn of modern knowledge brought this tension to a head. One side of it, best exemplified by Descartes, Locke and Hume, sought harmony between knowledge and faith, though now not necessarily Christian faith but in a more general supreme being (Deism), but the other side of it, best exemplified by Spinoza, was exactly a rejection of Faith, seeing no need to recast what is now surpassed.<br /><br />And now in our "post modern" age, what may seem a new crisis of faith and empirical knowledge is actually the same problem once again, and once again with increased vigour and effect.<br /><br />The purpose of this post is to show that traditional Christianity -- Baptism, the Eucharist, and the actual lifting up and actual triumph of the Cross -- does not require any such falsification to oneself or recasting of faith. An important note, though, as it may seem to some that this post is indeed such a falsification and recasting. This is not the case. The entire post is about nothing more, nothing else, and nothing less, than grace -- the free gift of God for our salvation in the lifting up of the cross and the triumph of the cross, historically, and its fruits given to us here and now sacramentally in Baptism and the Eucharist.<br /><br />And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. Et ego si exaltatus fuero a terra omnia traham ad me ipsum. John 12:32.<br /><br /><b>What Is Evolution? </b><br /><br />In our time this problem is nowhere more evident than in the supposed conflict between modern scientific knowledge and the account of creation in Genesis. OK, right here is one of those ironies that this blog finds hilarious. Wanna know what? Of course the famous book re evolution is Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) "On the Origin of the Species" (1859). Guess what, ya know what "genesis" means? The English word is derived from a Latin word which in turn transliterated into Latin the Greek word for -- origin! Hey, looks like two contradictory and conflicting accounts of origin, huh?<br /><br />Well, no. Genesis is not the name of Genesis in Genesis. HUH? OK, Genesis is in the Old Testament and the OT is in Hebrew, right, so why a Greek name? Because the name in English comes not from the Hebrew Bible but from the Jewish translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek called the Septuagint, that's why. The Hebrew name for the book is not "origin" (genesis). Rather, as is customary in Hebrew, the title is derived from its first words, which are "in beginning", bere syt, or bereshit as it is often written in English. Nothing about origin. Hey, isn't the beginning the origin? Well, sort of, but not necessarily, and, there's something in English that makes the translation a bit different than the Hebrew it translates. Here's the deal. There is no definite article -- "the" -- in the Hebrew. There isn't in Latin either. In the Latin translation of the Bible, called the Vulgate, the first words are translated in principio, at first. And the next word is -- God (deus). In (the) beginning, God. At first, God.<br /><br />Genesis/Bereshit starts with God. Not with "the beginning" or "the origin", with God. God is not proven, not deduced, not induced, not described, not defined, nothing like that. God simply is. It's not that there is a "beginning" or an "origin" and God either did or did not have something to do with it. Rather, God is, before any beginning or origin. That's why, when Moses asks God his name -- a reasonable question, all the various gods of various people have names, what's yours -- God doesn't give him one. The "name" he gave himself in Exodus chapter three, there being no present tense of "to be" in Hebrew, can be translated as I am who I am, I will be who I will be, etc. and Moses is told to say I am sent me to you. "I am" is not a name, it is a third-person use of a first-person statement, God is not god or a god, God just is. Thus, any beginning or origin is an action of God. So, "the beginning" or "the origin" is not the beginning or origin of everything, it is the beginning of a creative action of God, and that creative action of God is the origin of all things.<br /><br />The idea of God, of a power greater than ourselves, of something beyond our complete grasp which gives rises to a sense or idea of holy, is a universal sense as ancient as Man. But that is also problematic. Man has expressed this sense in a variety of ways. Sometimes he takes natural forces beyond his control as therefore his gods, and worships them and/or prays to them to control the forces of nature, taken to be gods, in his favour. Sometimes he posits supra-human beings who control these natural forces, and similarly worships and/or prays to them to the same end. Sometimes this expression is applied to the totality of the universe, as an impersonal way or law that is operational throughout, within which one can learn to live in harmony. Sometimes the universe itself is god.<br /><br />Genesis confirms this universal sense as valid, but contradicts all those expressions of it. God is not heaven and earth; heaven and earth are creations of God who preexists them and is distinct from them. Likewise, everything else in the universe, forces like wind and rain, places like rivers, everything, are not gods nor are there gods controlling them. Nor is God the totality of it, but they are creations of God who preexists and is distinct from them all. Therefore, they are not objects of worship or veneration either.<br /><br />The next few verses make that quite clear, as the things Man deifies are described as creations of the deity -- heaven and earth, the seas, the sun, the moon, life in any form, life in human form. For example, the sun that lights our world is not god, not a god, nor is there a sun-god whose function it is to control the sun.<br /><br />Well fine. So is Genesis just another order out of chaos myth from antiquity, all of which we should abandon now as we understand the order better and better? Is not the ancientness of the sense of a higher power, the idea of holy, itself a sign that these are simply the reactions of men with little knowledge of their environment so they create myths of gods to explain it for lack of anything better, but now that we have something better, we no longer need the myths of earlier times?<br /><br />Notice something? We didn't even get to the "six day creation" thing before losing our faith! In other words, the primary thing revealed, and right away, in Genesis and thus the entire Bible, which is that there is a god and everything else proceeds from the creative action of this one god, doesn't even need the six-day thing before grounds to abandon it arise, passing it off as the early attempts of man to understand his environment, which we have long since passed.<br /><br />And we notice something else. Genesis describes God's creative actions in precisely the order we understand them scientifically -- first the material universe and its unfolding, not static, organisation by God (let's call it the geosphere), then its inhabitation by biological life and its unfolding, not static, organisation by God (let's call it the biosphere), then the appearance of biological life that is both conscious and self-reflective, having a mind that shares something then of the God who created it (let's call it the noosphere, from the Greek word for mind, nous).<br /><br />This is nothing other than evolution, literally. Now before the moaning and groaning starts (is it too late for that?) let's look at what evolution literally means. The word comes from the Latin evolutio, which does not mean "evolution" with its modern connotations, but rather an act of rolling out or unfolding. The root is "e volvo" which means "out of the roll" (yeah, Volvo means roll, great name for a great car, let's roll!). The verb is "evolvo" which means "to unroll" or "to unfold", whose perfect passive participle is "evolutus". Great linguistic Judas what's that? Relax, a perfect passive participle is a verb form denoting the state of something having been subject to an action. Here, it's having been rolled or having been unfolded, "evolutus", which as a verb is "evolutio", the act of rolling out or unfolding.<br /><br />So, Genesis presents evolution. The rolling out, the unfolding, of creation by its creator. Therefore, the argument over "evolution" is not over whether it happened, but how it happened. Specifically, did this rolling out, this unfolding, which both Genesis and current human knowledge agree happened, happen impersonally according to either random or chance events or laws or ways inherent in Nature, or personally, as the willed creative act of a pre-existent God.<br /><br /><b>Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.</b><br /><br />So asks God in Job 38:4. The question not only addresses Job; it can be asked of any of us, and the point is the same as to Job, which is, God's understanding, as a Being or Power greater than ourselves, is not our understanding nor can our understanding comprehend God's. Which makes sense. If there is a God who communicates with us, God speaks to us not as an equal since we are not God or a god, but as a part of his creation that has consciousness to receive the communication, which therefore will have its limits. God speaks to us in terms of our experience.<br /><br />This is apparent already in the first sentence of Bereshith. "The heaven and the earth" describes the universe from Man's point of view here on the earth, not from God's point of view as its Creator. Our point of view now has expanded, and was not available to humans at the time Bereshith was revealed. We know that the earth and the heavens are not distinct. Earth is but one planet revolving around one star among many, the number of which we do not know except that it is huge. It's all heavens, and earth is part of that, but it doesn't look that way when you're on earth.<br /><br />The rest of the creation account proceeds along these lines, in terms of our, not God's, experience. Creation is creation, whether viewed as an earthbound creature seeing "heavens" above, or viewed not from earth and seeing earth too as part of the "heavens". Heaven and earth, then, are relative terms. In earlier times, the discovery that earth is not the centre of creation, with heavens above it, seemed to cast doubt on everything -- if Scripture is off in its very first words, why should it not also be off in the rest of it too?<br /><br />What was lost in that controversy, the famous Galileo episode, was any sense of what God was reminding Job in his circumstances. And this loss is the very same loss that will lead to what is called The Fall just a little later in Bereshith. What is this loss? It is the loss of the fact that God speaks to us in terms of our experience and not his, that God does not reveal to us everything of his experience because we, as created beings, cannot receive or comprehend the experience of our creator. As Scripture will shortly put it, we are created in the image of God, but we are not created as equals, as other gods, and therefore we cannot elevate our understanding, even that part of it which is an understanding of God, to his level.<div><br /></div><div>This is understandable even if one does not believe in God or any god; IF there is one, whether or not there is or is not is not the question. that god's totality would not be fully communicable to a created being who does not also have that totality.<br /><br />In this regard it is significant to note that the noun we translate as "God", singular, in the Hebrew is plural, Elohim, but the verb we translate as "created" IS singular. Of course we can theologically abstract from this a reference at the outset of Scripture to the Trinity -- a plural God acting in the singular. But God is not here inviting us to theological abstraction but is revealing to us the nature of our experience as conscious reflective beings. God is not, in the Bible, providing us a divine textbook, or an algorithm, but a human user's manual, of creation. And a user's manual is written to convey to the user, in terms his experience will allow him to understand, information he does not have, not about how something was made but about how to work with it. IOW, it is not a "how I did it", but a "how you use it" book, what is called a vademecum, which means "Go with me", directions to be taken along as one goes about doing something.<br /><br /><b>Vade mecum. Go With Me.</b><br /><br />So, the revelation of the fact of creation is one thing, and the manner of creation is another, and the two ought not be confused. God reveals the fact of creation by expressing it in terms of human conscious experience at the time of revelation. Light and dark, heaven and earth, evening and morning, day -- all of them earth bound, not characteristic of the universe. There is no evening and morning as we experience it here on earth anywhere else but here on earth. There is no 24 hour day as we experience it here on earth anywhere else but here on earth. Even in our human speaking these words have "literal" and "figurative" meanings, as in "the evening of life", "shed some light on the subject", and so on. For that matter, time itself does not flow at the same rate throughout the universe.<br /><br />Had God revealed the nature of the universe in scientific terms Genesis would have been rejected from the start. How is a man standing on earth looking up at the heavens to be told that in fact he is not looking up at all, that there is no "up", that "up" is a sense brought about from the fact of his standing in a particular place, and that "beneath" him there is also an "up" he would experience were he standing there? And how is a man standing on earth looking "up" at the heavens to be told that in fact where he stands is itself part of the heavens, that there are no "heavens" distinct from earth except in his experience of standing in a particular place, and that "above" him there is not a dome holding back water, that the blue he sees above is in fact not there at all, it's a visual effect brought about under the conditions of standing where he stands to look at it, namely, the scattering of light by the gases and particles in the atmosphere and blue scatters more because its wavelength is shorter? And how is a man standing on earth looking "up" at the "heavens" to be told that not only is he looking out, not up, but he is also looking back, that the light he sees from the stars in the heavens is not what is happening there now, but light from events ages ago that is just now making its way to be visible to someone standing where he does?<br /><b></b><br />All of what we now know would have contradicted his experience entirely and therefore been rejected as fantastic, literally -- a fantasy with no relation to reality, ie, his experience. Which in turn would leave the message God seeks to communicate to Man inaccessible -- that all of what Man sees, including Man himself, is the creation of the God who seeks him and is subject to the will of God, not Man. The fact of creation is revealed to Man via a manner of creation that makes sense within his experience at the time of its revelation. Revelation done any other way would reveal nothing!<br /><br /><b>Fiat voluntas tua.</b><br /><br />Thy will be done, is what that means in Latin. The words are from the so-called "Lord's Prayer". The Lord, Christ, in giving this prayer, stated a version of the traditional Kaddish, which exists in several related versions. Jesus gives his version, not a new prayer.<b> </b>Here in English is the Kaddish Shalem, the "complete kaddish" -- there are longer special versions for rabbis, mourners, and for after a burial. Then followed by Jesus' version.<br /><br />Kaddish Shalem, the "complete Kaddish".<br /><br />May his great name be exalted and sanctified is God's great name<b> </b>in the world which he created according to his will! May he establish his kingdom and may his salvation blossom and his anointed be near during your lifetime and during your days and during the lifetimes of all the House of Israel, speedily and very soon. And say ye, Amen.<br />May his great name be blessed forever and to all eternity! Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honoured, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be he, above and beyond all blessings, hymns, praises and consolations that are uttered in the world! And say ye, Amen.<br />(The Hatzi Kaddish, or "half Kaddish", ends here. All versions begin with it.)<br />May the prayers and supplications of all Israel be accepted by their Father who is in heaven. And say ye, Amen.<br />May there be abundant peace from heaven, life, satisfaction, help, comfort, refuge, healing, redemption, forgiveness, atonement, relief and salvation for us and for all his people Israel. And say ye, Amen.<br />May he who makes peace in his high places grant peace upon us and upon all Israel. And say ye, Amen.<br /><br />Jesus' Kaddish, the Our Father.<br /><br />Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.<br /><br />Now, Jesus gave his version of the Kaddish when his followers asked him to give them a special prayer like all the other great teachers seem to do. Just as Moses asked God for his name like all gods have names in our experience. And just as God gave no new name, Jesus didn't give them a new, special prayer. He gave them a succinct version of what they already had! His point being, besides the prayer itself, that no such carryings-on are needed before God. And, if this is from the anointed who is prayed for -- that is what "Christ" means, the anointed one of God -- then who better to refine and focus it for our use!<br /><br />Our point here though is the prayer itself and the matter of will, and whose will, ours or God's. Voluntas, the Latin word for will, is the basis of the English word voluntary. Voluntary means according to one's will, willing. Which means there is a choice involved, it is a matter that is neither inevitable nor compelled. This is exactly what Genesis reveals to us about everything, the universe. It exists not by some historical inevitability or by an inherent following of impersonal laws, but by the will of a being, God.<br /><br />In all its stages, the act of creation is spoken of in Genesis as an act of will, voluntary -- let there be, etc. Except, and this is key, in the last stage, Man. This is not spoken of as "Let there be Man", but rather, "let us make Man in our own image". The creation of Man as a being in the image of God, then, is related differently than all the creation before it. This voluntary, willed, creation culminates in the emergence of a being who himself is endowed with the capacity for voluntary, willed action. This being, the human being, marks the entry into the unfolding of creation of a created being who himself creates, not out of nature or instinct, but voluntarily, willed, like his creator. Man is conscious.<br /><br />Which is both our glory, and our problem. Our consciousness contains, unlike anything else in creation, the capacity for acts of will that are conscious, which is to say, self-conscious, not in the usual conversational sense, but in the sense that we are conscious of our capacity and the choices we can make. Which is why it is not until this point in the evolution, the unfolding, of creation that God gives a commandment. Up until this point he doesn't need to, since nothing in creation until this point has this capacity for willed action that is conscious of itself. But Man, which the text makes clear is comprised of both male and female, is in the image of God, but is not God. Or, if you will, this creature is in the image of the creator but is not the creator. Therefore, the creator, or, if you will, God, gives this creature directions.<br /><br />Be fruitful and multiply. This is the first commandment (mitzvah) given to Man; the first of the 613 mitzvoth in the Law (id est, the Law of Moses, the first five books of the Bible). This is more than a commandment to reproduce. The animals reproduce, even care for their young for a time, by nature and instinct, and need no such direction. So why give it to Man? Because Man is to make a home, raise a family, and, subdue the earth. Man is a part of creation, but apart from the rest of creation; no other part of creation is told to subdue the earth because no other part of creation could be told to subdue the earth. Only Man, with the divine-like capacity for self-conscious willed action, could be told this.<br /><br /><b>Who Told Thee Thou Wast Naked?</b><br /><br />And what are the results of this command? What results has this uniquely self-conscious will-endowed creature produced in subduing the creation of which he is both part and its crown? The results are everywhere to be seen in both the present and in history -- and in the first chapters of Genesis. The creation of Man is different than the creation of everything else. We saw that in the first creation account (chapter one) it is not "let there be ..." like the earlier parts of creation but "let us make ..." And in the second creation account (chapter two), this point is made again. God formed Man, in this chapter the male. The Hebrew verb, yatzar, as is often commented, relates to a potter forming clay. What is not so often commented is that this verb is written differently regarding the formation of Man than the formation of prior creation. With animals it is written with one yod, but for the formation of Man it is written with two.<br /><br />Which fits exactly. This creature, Man, has something the others do not, namely the image of God, which means a capacity for acts of self-conscious will. But this is still a creature, not another god. Therefore the formation is written with two yods, because Man is torn within himself and needs "commandments", needs direction from his creator. Of himself, his will may not be God's will. He has a Yetzer tob, a good inclination, and a Yetzer ra, a bad inclination. And this condition is dealt with, as God directs Man not to be his own arbiter of good and bad, good and evil.<br /><br />This is the essence of the human condition -- a being in the divine image who can will acts apart from the will of the Divine who created him. The man is told, in the figure of tending a garden, which is to say, subduing the earth, that he may do it all, except, decide for himself what is good and what is bad, what is good and what is evil. This is God's function alone. For Man to assume that function, to become morally autonomous from God, is the creature assuming the role of the creator. Which in a word, is pride. And indeed, pride goeth before the fall.<br /><br />And that is exactly what happens in the Genesis story. Once Man assumed moral autonomy from God, ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so to speak, everything falls apart. When the unfolding, the evolution, described in Genesis, gets to Man, its continuation becomes voluntary, literally, a matter of will, and the will is now Man's, not God's.<br /><br />Having assumed moral autonomy, acting like God when he is not god, the creature acting as if he were the creator, Man gets it wrong. Whereas they were not ashamed at their nakedness before each other, in fact did not distinguish nakedness at all, now they find it an issue. It is not that there is nakedness, and having eaten of the forbidden fruit, now they realise it. It is that, having claimed moral autonomy, acting like God, they define good from evil, and find something that is in fact good, evil, and devise measures to correct it -- to correct what is already correct.<br /><br />This changes everything. Now, when they sense the presence of the Lord, instead of creatures happily welcoming their creator, they hide! So instead of the creature seeking his creator, the creator now seeks his creature. "Where art thou?" And the man starts making excuses -- oh well hey, I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid from you. Just a sec, lemme put something on. We don't have any clothing stores yet, but we sewed these fig leaves to-gether.<br /><br />And God asks them, What's up with that? Where'd you get this "naked" thing because I didn't say bupkis about it, let alone opening a clothing store. And the sorry story continues. Does the man say, Sorry God I blew it. Hell no, he blames his wife. So God asks her, and what does she do? Same thing, does not accept responsibility for her action but blames something else, the serpent, as Genesis puts it, or diminished capacity, as she would put it now.<br /><br />Genesis describes exactly what is observed in human history down to the present. It's not that we try to get it right and fail, it's that we decide what is right and try to get that. And the results are mixed. For example, as Man begins to live more in cities, he finds he has a pollution problem with all the horses defecating all over town. Then he invents another work vehicle that doesn't need horses, a horseless carriage. Problem solved! Except, problem not solved, as he discovers later on the fuel emissions from his horseless carriage create an even worse pollution. Or, for example, as he subdues the earth and attains the ability to harness the power of the atom, he finds a limitless source of power, yet, should there be an accident, the results are disastrous, and, he can also use that power to either create weapons in which thousands are killed in an instant, or, to understand and treat disease at a fundamental level.<br /><br />And when things go wrong, we do just as Adam and Eve, the story describes our behaviour exactly; we start blaming someone or something else, rather than recognise our own failure.<br /><br /><b>Memento mori.</b><br /><br />Remember that you will die. That's what the Latin means. It comes from the triumphal processions in ancient Rome, where as the conquering general as he rode in his chariot through the throngs of cheers and accolades, his servant behind him would keep saying to him, Remember that you will die. The idea was to not get carried away with all the pomp and circumstance and remember that even though you have gotten this by your accomplishments, you will die like any other man.<br /><br />Death. We know we are going to die, and we don't like to think about it very much, yet we do because it happens to those around us and we know it will happen to us. Death is first mentioned in the Bible here in Genesis, in connexion with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the day you eat of it you will surely die, God says to Man.<br /><br />No you won't, says the "serpent". In fact, you will not only not die, you will become like God, he adds. So Man eats of the fruit, and guess what -- he does not die! So the "serpent" was right and the Bible even bears that out? What's up with that? Or with this -- does the Bible contradict itself even on its own terms right in its first pages, first saying God tells them they will die in the day they eat the fruit, then saying they don't? If so, why bother with it then?<br /><br />OK. Manifestly, physical death did not enter creation with this original sin. For one thing, to threaten a consequence which does not exist and of which therefore Man has no knowledge would be meaningless to Man. For another, as we saw Man eats and does not die. Something else happens instead that is "death". For another, nothing in the preceding text gives any basis for thinking creation was meant to be eternal from creation on. For yet another, a few verses later God becomes concerned that Man, having eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and having become like God -- having declared his moral autonomy and now functioning like a god instead of a creature -- will now eat of the fruit of the tree of eternal life and live forever. If he were not already going to die at some point, it would be meaningless for God to be concerned that he won't die at some point.<br /><br />So, the death spoken of is not physical death, it is the something else that happens. And what is that something else? The order of creation is broken. Man is not going to function as he was created to function. Since he is going to follow his own will, make his own choices, determine what is good and evil, he will have trouble in fulfilling his commandment. Subduing the earth will be difficult, and so will being fruitful and multiplying. Just as Scripture says, Man does not experience physical death from his sin, he experiences the death of the order of creation as it was intended, including the death of his role in it. IOW, spiritual death, and I don't mean "spiritual" in some vague general "spirituality" but literally; his spirit dies and Man will henceforward have broken that image of God in which he was created.<br /><br />It's still there, but it is broken, and it cannot repair itself. Or better, a spirit, having been alive, is now dead and cannot bring itself back to life again. The consequence for assuming moral autonomy from God is -- assuming moral autonomy from God, which shatters the image of God in which he was created and kills his spirit.<br /><br /><b>Memento</b>, <b>homo</b>, <b>quia</b> <b>pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. </b><br /><b></b><br />Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return. That's what the Latin means. It expands on the Roman memento mori. It is from the service for the beginning of Lent, called Ash Wednesday, from the custom of imposing ashes on the foreheads of the faithful in the shape of a cross.<br /><br />Hey, when you gonna talk about Adam? OK, now. Adam, the word for the creature, comes from the word for the "dust" or soil from which he was formed, adamah. When "Adam" is first used (1:27) it is not as a name, a proper noun, for one man. It means Man, both male and female, and not just one male and one female. It becomes a personal name in the next chapter (2:7). And Adam names his wife Eve, Havvah in Hebrew, from hayah, to live, as no human lives who is not born of "woman". The collective use rather than reference to one person returns in Genesis 5:1-2, where the collective Man is specified by sex, male and female. Adam is Man.<br /><br />Huh? So whaddawe got here, two conflicting accounts? Sure looks that way, and not just re Adam either. Looks like in one account a male human was created, then all the animals, not before humans as in the other account, and since none of them was a suitable partner for the male, a female was created from the male. Biblical scholarship generally posits two sources that were combined by a later editor for the book as we know it now. So then what? Dismiss Genesis as a combination of two related but separate creation myths, is that what Past Elder is saying here as his professors taught? No, and hell no. It doesn't even matter whether that literary theory is true or not, because it does not change what God is revealing to Man.<br /><br />Just as with creation itself, the revelation is not a treatise from God on HOW he did it, but a revelation THAT he did it, and communicated in terms comprehensible to Man at the time of its revelation. Not a textbook, not an algorithm, but a user's manual, a vademecum.<br /><br />And here again, the creation of Man is different than the creation of everything else. Not a Let There Be but a Let Us Make. Unlike everything else, Man is revealed as created from something that already exists, dust. The crown of creation is himself created from Creation. This act of creation Genesis calls formation. Man is related as formed from something that already exists, dust.<br /><br /><b>O felix culpa.</b><br /><br />So, the appearance of a self-conscious being capable of voluntary acts of will marks a fundamental change in the unfolding, the evolution, described in Genesis. We saw this in four ways:<br /><br />One, the divine act of will is not "Let there be ..." but "Let us make ...".<br />Two, the Hebrew verb is written here with two yods instead of one, indicating that this creature's will is his, which may or may not align with God's.<br />Three, after this creature emerges, commandments are given for the first time, since no other creature needs them.<br />Four, this creature unfolds not from nothing, but from existing Creation.<br /><br />And then, this product of a fundamental change fundamentally changes how the unfolding unfolds, so that it is now no longer unfolding according to the will of God, or if you will, so to speak, according to its nature.<br /><br />What? What kind of God is this? Is God then a creator who creates a creature who can fail then says "Here you go, follow the directions"?<b> </b>And, if this God is all knowing, he knows the creature will fail. If this God is so great and loving, why didn't he create Man so he could not fail, why not create a creature that is happy and stays that way, including, not die?<b> </b><br /><br />O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem. O happy fault which gained us such and so great a Redeemer. That's what the Latin means. It's the famous verse of the Exultet (more recently given by the ever-changing but oh-no-nothing-really-changed Roman Catholic Church as Exsultet), a sung poem of praise, though not sung by a praise band, at the Easter Vigil after the procession with the Easter Candle. Though one will search in vain for this verse in the cobbled up version of the Exultet offered in Lutheran Service Book. Why its most famous phrase was cobbled out of it remains one of the enduring quirks of LSB, but I digress.<br /><br />It comes down to this. All the storm and stress about Creation and Evolution etc is just unnecessary, and fuelled by nothing but misunderstanding and fear. Genesis presents the unfolding of God's creativity and that is evolution. The unfolding is laid out with utter precision in the succession of geosphere, biosphere, then noosphere. And with the emergence of the noosphere, a new aspect enters creation, a being, Adam, who is distinct from the rest of creation in having the image of the Creator but distinct from the Creator in not being a god himself. His participation in the continuing unfolding, which is to say, evolution, is literally voluntary, subject to his will, and he blows it, shattering the image of his Creator he bears beyond repair through his own will.<br /><br />This is exactly what the "creationists" and the "evolutionists" both miss, with opposite yet similar consequences. The "creationists" assert creation by God, the "evolutionists" assert evolution, and both are right.<br /><br />The evolutionist misses two things. One, that evolution is not a push, but a pull, not an impersonal push of natural law or chance, but an intended personal pull exerted by a Being we usually call God. Two, with the emergence of Man, co-operation and participation in the pull becomes voluntary and is thwarted by Man's own voluntas, will. The origin of the species is not the origin of life; there is nothing to fear here.<br /><br />The creationist misses that in Scripture God is not writing a scientific treatise or algorithm of how he did creation, but a revelation that he did creation. Meaning that our understanding of the "how" of creation is no more to be made into a god, into the basis for our self-understanding, than more obvious forces such as thunder, our sun, etc were to be made into gods in earlier times. The origin of the species is not the origin of life and not the origin of everything; there is nothing to fear here.<br /><br />For as in Adam all die so in Christ are all made alive, it says. And so it is -- in Adam, Man, we men (don't get goofy here, it means male and female) lose the image of our creator and lose any ability despite our best efforts to successfully co-operate and participate in the unfolding, the evolution, God has begun. Yet, the emergence of such a being, Man, cannot be otherwise -- an unfolding into increasing complexity, from geosphere to biosphere to noosphere, will with the emergence of the noosphere become voluntary, a matter of will. The cruel God would be not one who creates it so, but one who just leaves it so.<br /><br />But God does not leave it so. Nor is there a general "theistic evolution". Rather, this theos, this God, reveals that he turns this fault, this inevitable voluntariness, without which Man would not have the image of God but simply be an android rather than an anthropos, into a happy fault, by himself becoming Man so that the evolution may continue, the pull continues not by the efforts of Man's will but by faith in the assumption by God the Creator of the brokenness of His own image in the creature. THIS is who dies as a result of assuming willed control over good and evil -- not Man, but God become Man in Christ!<br /><br />Now that's something to exult -- should we now spell it exsult, Rome? -- about, just as the Exultet says. The Creator is creation's Redeemer too! Such and so great a redeemer indeed! I make all things new, he says. Not just all people, all creation. Ich mache alles -- nicht nur alle -- neu. The pull of evolution revealed in Genesis is restored in the cross of Christ, he who was God made Man, and when lifted up in the cross suffered the death that is our consequence so that we might regain the image of God which was intended, willed, by God.<br /><br />And not only that. There's more! Not something else, but more to this same something. That sacrifice of God on behalf of Man in Christ, is not just words in a book, or something that happened a long time ago, but it is offered to us here and now! In the Divine Setting -- which is to say, the universe -- precisely because there is no universal such as a 24 hour day, a disruption in the ordinary operation of matter, such as say a resurrection, also is a disruption in the ordinary operation of time. Therefore, that one sacrifice, that one lifting up of Christ on the cross drawing all men to himself, which is to God that sacrifice of his body and blood, is given to us outside the normal operation of time and matter, in, with, and under the elements he instituted of bread and the fruit of the vine (vine being a grapevine). The sure pledge of our salvation and redemption!<br /><br /><b>Et ego si exaltatus fuero a terra omnia traham ad me ipsum. </b><br /><br />And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. (In case you forgot.)<br /><br />The "literal meaning" of Genesis has absolutely nothing, nothing, to do with creation in six twenty-four hour earth days, nor with a single first human named Adam being made from dust. AND, the fact that creation did not happen in six twenty-four hour earth days and that Man did not descend from two individuals named Adam and Eve in no way, no way, overthrows the literal meaning of Genesis or proves either Genesis specifically or the Bible generally false and/or irrelevant.<br /><br />In fact, what God revealed to Man in Bereshit (that's Genesis, in case you forgot) in terms of Man's experience at the time and place it was revealed, is confirmed over and over again by the astounding harvest of knowledge resulting from our empirically based view of the world that is now our experience. The phenomenon of Man, the human phenomenon, is nowhere presented more exactly than Bereshit, as we have discussed above.<br /><br />Why then fear or repudiate the progress of the world? Why multiply warnings and prohibitions, as if there were nothing more to venture or to learn? Nihil intentatum (Nothing unattempted). All over the world, Man yields an astounding harvest, in laboratories, in studios, in factories, wherever he labours. Embrace it, since without the sun revealed in Scripture, this astounding harvest disperses wildly into sterile shoots, and this vast crucible would never learn its source and destiny in the crux (cross) of the Creator incarnate in Man who overcomes all and when exalted, that is, lifted up, on the cross draws all to himself.<br /><br />The divine setting.</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-16214119719027483252021-09-13T15:47:00.000-05:002021-09-13T15:47:36.316-05:00Holy Crap Day. 14 September 2021.<p>In many places a commemoration we Lutherans usually call Holy Cross Day is observed on 14 September. Its actual name is Exaltatio Sanctae Crucis, which in Latin means "Exaltation of the Holy Cross". Thing is, exaltatio in Latin does not mean what its derivative exaltation has come to mean in English. It means raising aloft, so the name actually translates as "Raising Aloft of the Holy Cross" which is pretty close to its Greek name "Raising Aloft of the Precious Cross". I ain't getting into the Greek. I also ain't getting into all the other "Holy Cross Days" on 13 September, 12 October, 6 March, 3 May and 1 August either!</p>But I am getting into making clear that the literal exaltation, the lifting up, of the cross for which this "feast" was instituted is not a reference to either Christ or the cross of Calvary as the means of salvation or its triumph, but to the lifting up of a supposed relic. Here's the deal.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So What's a Holy Cross Day?</span><br /><br />Glad you asked. But before getting down to that, let me be clear about two things. None of what follows should be construed as knocking the historic liturgy and things related to it. I consider it one of the great treasures of "Lutheranism" that they are retained except where they contradict, as distinct from are commanded by, Scripture. <br /><br />It should be construed as what it is, knocking the retention of this "feast" as in any way aiding either the work of zealously guarding and defending the liturgy or of deepening the awareness of and reverence toward what was accomplished for us by Christ on the cross.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Origin of Holy Cross Day</span>.<br /><br />So why a Holy Cross Day on 14 September? Because on 14 September 335 the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was concluded. The dedication itself was the day before, then on 14 September the "cross" was brought outside for veneration by the people. And, the Roman Emperor, Constantine, made it a feast day. That's why. What in all church planting Judas does that mean? And what cross? Why, the "true" cross, discovered by the Emperor's mom Helena on a dig funded by the Imperial treasury, that's what cross! Huh?<br /><br />So why ain't the church called the Church of the Holy Cross then? Well guess what, there was already something standing there, which was another church, well a temple actually, to the goddess Aphrodite, known to the Romans as Venus, she from whom the planet, and also Friday, is named. Some say the place was originally a Christian worship site, for reasons that will presently be clear, and that the temple was later built by Emperor Hadrian in his rebuilding of Jerusalem.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why Jerusalem Had To Be Rebuilt. Again.</span><br /><br />Now why rebuilding? Well, Jerusalem was completely trashed by the Romans in 70 AD. Why? We need to back up a bit to get back to Hadrian. Here's a summary of the events as related to out topic here. They have much wider effect and significance than this topic, and that is covered in our post Temples, Taxes, Vespasian and Now later this month. It started in 66, when some Greeks started offering pagan sacrifices outside a synagogue in Jerusalem. At first, the Roman soldiers stationed in Jerusalem did not get involved in this local matter. But next thing you know, the Jewish priests quit offering token sacrifices to the Emperor. The Roman Empire generally left you alone as long as you paid tribute to the top and didn't rock the boat, which is how its surviving state church still pretty much operates. And then next thing you know there's protests against Roman taxes, call it an ancient Tea Party, and muggings of Romans living there. Finally, when some of the boys from duty stations in the area go in to intervene they get their butts kicked by a bunch of Jews (that's the Battle of Beth Horon) and that clean pisses off the Roman Emperor, guy named Nero.<br /><br />Old Nero tells General Vespasian -- who had distinguished himself in the Roman invasion of Mother England (OK Britannia at the time) in 43 as commander of Legio secunda Augusta (Second Augustan Legion), one of the four legions deployed -- to go in and open up a major can of whoop-ass on Judea. Which he commences to do along with the forces of his son, Titus, also a general, in April 67, with total forces of about 60,000. By 68 they had pretty well cleaned house in the north, and in the south the Jews pretty well cleaned house on each other with infighting, so about all that was left was Jerusalem.<br /><br />But then something else happened back in Rome. Nero was getting too bizarre for even the Romans (more about that in the post for 22 February), the Senate and the military went against him, he was declared an enemy of the people, so he bolts and commits suicide in 68. All hell breaks loose and in 69 Rome goes through four emperors! First, the new emperor, guy named Galba, gets assassinated by a guy named Otho who wants to be the new emperor so he bribes the Emperor's bodyguards, the Praetorian Guard, to kill him. Then a guy named Vitellius, with the best legions in the Roman army on his side, defeats Otho and inspires him to commit suicide, but then Vitellius pisses everybody clean off by having so many feasts and parades that he about bankrupts the Empire. So in July 69 Vespasian gets hailed as emperor by his army and other Roman armies -- Roman armies did that sometimes, that's also how Constantine would later get his start as emperor -- and, thinking maybe that isn't such a bad idea, Vespasian heads to Rome and his allied armies kick the living crap out of Vitellius' forces and kill him, and the Senate proclaims Vespasian emperor 21 December 69. Helluva year.<br /><br />Vespasian had left crushing the Jewish rebellion to his son Titus, which he bloody well does, so thoroughly destroying Jerusalem that Jospehus, the Roman name of the great Jewish contemporary historian Yosef, says you wouldn't have even thought the place was once inhabited. This includes the destruction of the Temple, which happened on 29/30 July 70. In the Hebrew calendar it was Tisha B'Av, or the 9th of Av (a month in the Hebrew calendar) and guess what, it was on exactly that date that first Temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians, leading to the Babylonian Captivity (the one of the Jews, not the church) some 656 years earlier.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why the Destruction of the Second Temple Is a Big Deal.</span><br /><br />The destruction of the Second Temple has enormous consequences for both Christianity and Judaism. To have the centre of one's worship and people's identity destroyed for the second time was catastrophic. And this time there wasn't even a captivity in which to be carried off. Worst of all, with the Temple, its priesthood and sacrifices now gone, it would now be impossible to fully follow the Law. How does a religion and people based on the Law continue when observing the Law is no longer fully possible?<br /><br />There's only two answers: one, the Law could now pass because it had been fulfilled, or two, something else would take the place of the Temple sacrifices until such time as they could be restored. The second answer was forthcoming from Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai. During the siege, he was slipped out in a coffin, and knowing the destruction was coming, and sensing Vespasian would become Emperor, negotiated from him three things: 1) sparing the city Jamnia, 2) sparing its sages, who were students of Rabbi Gamaliel, grandson of the great Hillel, and whom St Peter mentions as having argued against killing the Apostles for their messianic beliefs about Jesus, and among whose students St Paul counts himself, 3) a physician to attend an old rabbi (OK, his name was Tzadok) who had fasted for forty years hoping to ward off any destruction such as has just happened. It was here that Judaism as we know it, in the absence of the Temple, began to take shape. Basing himself on Hosea 6:6, he concluded that our mitzvoth (good works) and prayer would now take the place of the sacrifices commanded in the Law.<br /><br />The other answer is that the sacrifices had culminated in that to which they pointed, the sacrifice of Jesus at Calvary, who is now both priest and victim, and temple, and the destruction of the Temple is what was meant when Jesus said some of those living would see the end, meaning the end of things as they knew it -- which some of them did.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Hadrian Rebuilds Jerusalem.</span><br /><br />The story goes that, as Hadrian, who had become Emperor on 10 August 117, was rebuilding Jerusalem, which began in 130, there was a site that had been a Christian church reportedly on the site of Jesus' burial, so Hadrian, who hated Christians, ordered dirt brought in to cover the site, then had a temple to Venus (Aphrodite to the Greeks) built on top of the earth on top of the old church site. So Constantine ordered the temple destroyed and the earth underneath it moved back out!<br /><br />Makes for a nice story, but the story is pure bull. Hadrian located the forum for the new Jerusalem where Roman fora were always located, which is, at the meeting of the main north-south road through town and the, or one of the, main east-west roads. In Jerusalem it was the latter case, and the forum was located in the space between the two east-west roads and along the north-south road, and the temple to Venus was part of that. So far from being a special action against Christians, it was just a following of standard Roman practice anywhere.<br /><br />And, that the site is that of Jesus' tomb is so unlikely as to be nearly surely false. The Bible says Jesus' tomb was outside the city walls of Jerusalem, and this site is within the walls of Jerusalem. Oh well, some say, the walls of Jerusalem in Jesus' day were different. Two problems with that. If they were east enough of the current walls to make the site west of them, Jerusalem would have been quite a narrow city, which it wasn't. Also, building a tomb west of the city is highly unlikely, as wind in Jerusalem generally blows from west to east, and thus would blow over the tombs bringing ritual impurity, not to mention a possible stench, to the city and in particular to the Temple Mount. So, graves go to the east of the city.<br /><br />Also, these bogus legends obscure the fact that while Hadrian did see Christianity as an uncouth superstitious cult dangerous to a humane social order, that was nothing compared to his regard for Judaism, of which he wanted to remove all traces altogether. What Hadrian actually did do has nothing to do with temples to Venus on Christ's crucifixion or burial site. The rebuilding of Jerusalem was as a new city with no Jews, called Aelia Capitolina, Aelius being Hadrian's clan name (nomen gentile) and Capitolina referring to Jupiter Capitolinus, which is the great temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill in Rome and from which comes the English word capitol, btw. He built a temple to Jupiter on the ruins of the Temple site, forbade observance of Jewish law or its calendar, especially circumcision which was held to be utterly barbaric, publicly burned the Torah scrolls, and attached Judaea to Syria and renamed it Syria Palaestina, Philistine Syria, in 135.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Helena.</span><br /><br />And, to those unlikely to be true legends, add those about Helena and the finding of the "true" cross. Helena was the mother of Constantine. His father was Constantius, however, it is unclear if she was a legal wife or a concubine, which then meant an extra-legal wife, since the marriage was between social classes (he was noble, she was not), and that was prohibited by Roman law (same problem Augustine had with "the one" who was mother of his son). Helena's unclear status was controversial for both husband and son, and Constantius later dumped her in a power deal to solidify his political position to marry another (Theodora), which he did in Trier, then called Augusta Treverorum and his new capitol. Son Constantine the "Great" would later do the same thing for the same reasons. Once her son became Emperor, Helena returned to public life and was made Augusta Imperatrix, and was given unlimited access to the imperial treasury to locate objects of Christian veneration.<br /><br />The story is, after the Temple of Venus was torn down and the land removed, excavation found three crosses at what was supposed to be the site of Jesus' burial. So a woman near death was brought in, and did not recover on touching the first two crosses but did on touching the third, which Helena then proclaimed was the cross of Christ. Problem is, for one thing contemporary accounts of the excavation (Eusebius) do not mention Helena being there at all, rather unlikely for the Augusta Imperatrix to not be mentioned if she were there. For another, the legend about authenticating the true cross appears not only later, but in at least three distinct versions, the one just related, and one where a dead man was touched to each of the three and came back to life at the right one, and that the inscription put on the cross was still on it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Take Your Pick. Or Not. Exaltatio Sanctae Crucis.</span><br /><br />What a wretched mess, most of it legend of the most spurious kind and the rest of it fact of the most disgusting kind. A verifiable total confusion of the Two Kingdoms (left and right hand) surrounded by unverifiable legends that don't even agree with each other. This honours the cross of Christ? Such a miserable excuse for piety should be shovelled out and thrown away just like Constantine shovelled out what Hadrian shovelled in. The object of our veneration is not the cross per se, or toothpicks from it, or legends about finding it, or big fancy churches built at state expense on the supposed site of it, or a feast day established by a Roman Emperor, but Christ and his action on it for our salvation, whose body and blood he gives you right in your own parish in Communion at Divine Service.<br /><br />The true Raising Aloft of the Holy Cross is not like some empty fiction, for example the story about Dietrich von Bern, or these miserable True Cross legends, imperial-sponsored liftings-up thereof and feast days commemorating them. Or in trying to rewrite the narrative so the facts are whitewashed out and a new narrative put in place. The true raising aloft of the holy cross is as St John says in John 12:32 "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." Et ego si exaltatus fuero a terra omnia traham ad me ipsum. The Alpha and the Omega, and his Omega Point, through whose exaltation, lifting up, we are drawn from the Alpha and raised aloft to the Omega.<div><br /></div><div>More on that in our next post.</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-57914191723455589092021-09-10T22:11:00.008-05:002021-09-10T23:13:38.043-05:00Arminius, Herman the German, Us and Now. (2021)<p>As we commemorate a world changing even that happened in September 2001, we might learn something from a world changing even that happened in September 9. And you gotta wonder why no-one ever says there's an inherent contradiction between being so big on the Romans as I am (the Republic, not the Empire nor the Church) and having an image of the Hermann Heights Monument in New Ulm MN, which is a copy of the Hermannsdenkmal in Germany, as a cover photo as I do. Well actually it's no wonder, which we'll explain later. The wonder is, this monument commemorates one of the most decisive events in world history that changed all subsequent history to the present, but now, hardly anyone knows about it, and there's reasons for that.</p>Huh? What does that even mean? OK let's start with Who's Hermann.<br /><br /><b>Who's Hermann?</b><br /><br />Hermann is a name given, possibly first by Martin Luther, to a guy named Arminius. Great, who's Arminius? Arminius is the Latin name of a hostage from a Germanic tribe called the Cherusci, who lived right around present-day Hannover. Hermann was the son of the tribal chief Segimerus (in Latin, in German it's Segimer). He was taken hostage, raised in Rome, given military training, made a Roman citizen, and made a member of the ordo equester, the order of knights. This is not knights in the European mediaeval sense, but a property-based class below the patricians. Patricians are so-named as the descendants of the patres, the founding fathers and families of Rome. The ordo equester was originally based on the ability to provide men and horses for military service, so that's how horses come in, and also where we get the word equestrian. In Arminius' time the ordo equester was just below the ordo senatorius, the order of Senators and their families. Arminius was about eighteen when Jesus was born in another part of the Roman Empire.<br /><br />Arminius turned against Rome and united various Germanic tribes against Roman direct rule, and sometime in September 9 A.D. inflicted arguably the worst defeat ever suffered by Rome in its entire history. In German this is called die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald. Holy crap, what's a schlacht, what's a wald, and what's this Teutoburger thing, some kind of hamburger at Five Guys? OK, die Schlacht is a battle, der Wald is a forest or woods, and Teutoburger is the name of the forest. However, the German name only dates from 1875, centuries after it happened, and the reasons for that reflect not so much the ancient battle but its continuing influence even up to the present time. Yet that influence, though there, is hardly known now, and there's reasons for that. Which is why I'm posting about it. Here's the deal.<br /><br /><b>Why the Battle Was a Big Deal Then.</b><br /><br />The Latin name for this event comes from when it happened. It's called clades variana, the Varian Disaster, after Publius Quinctilius Varus, the losing general. Arminius lured his former ally into a trap, and defeated three Roman legions (Legions XVII, XVIII and XIX) plus six cohorts of associated non-citizen auxiliary troops and three squadrons of non-citizen cavalry (alae), with a total Roman loss of somewhere between 15 to 20K men. It was so bad that as it was ending Varus, following custom, committed suicide by falling on his sword, as did a number of his sub-commanders. The rest were killed, including his second in command, the Legate Numonius Vala, who tried to run away. The others were either killed in action, or, Tacitus records, later cooked alive in native German religious rituals, and many captured soldiers were made slaves. Arminius had Varus' head cut off and sent it to another German king, Maroboduus of the Marcomanni, to propose an alliance, but that king stayed out of it and sent the severed head to Rome for disposition. Topping it all off, in what the Romans considered a great shame and humiliation, each legion had its aquila, eagle standard, captured.<br /><br />No Roman account tries to minimise the extent of the loss. Bear in mind that in 9 AD the Roman Empire was just 36 years old, under its first emperor, Caesar Augustus, and eager to establish itself over the former Roman Republic, for which some still held sympathy, so it was not in any mood to sustain catastrophic defeats. Suetonius records in The Lives of the Caesars, sometimes called The Twelve Caesars, original Latin title De vita caesarum (On the Life of the Caesars), that Caesar Augustus was so upset at the magnitude of the loss that he repeatedly banged his head on the wall shouting Quintilius Varus gimme back the legions (well, he actually said Quintili Vare legiones redde, I translated).<br /><br />OK so where did this happen exactly? The precise location of the battle was not known for centuries and is still not settled, and, the whole engagement happened in several places over several days, but in general it was just south and east of Hannover, Arminius' tribe's area, which is east of the Rhine and north of the Danube, or Rhein and Donau in German; or Rhenus and Danubius in Latin. In present-day Germany, it's in the states of Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia), and Niedersachsen (Neddersassen in the local dialect), Lower Saxony, both created 23 August 1946 by the British military administration of their occupation zone following World War Two.<br /><br />After the clades variana, from 14 - 16 AD under Tiberius, who succeeded his stepdad Augustus as Emperor, Roman forces under the command of Tiberius' nephew Germanicus inflicted some severe but local losses on the Germans, including recovery of two of the three lost eagle standards. That's how Germanicus got the name by which he is known; it's a victory title (that's called an agnomen btw) conferred by Rome. With this, Arminius and his Germanic allies were defeated and honour recovered, but that didn't restore things, and the ongoing effects have a lot to do with what happened next. Which is, Tiberius ordered operations to cease; he was satisfied with the result and thought that anything to be gained from further expansion frankly was just not worth what it would take to gain it. That changed everything. Details in the next section.<br /><br />After their impressive victory, the unruly Germans descended into internecine war. Tacitus records that a plot to poison Arminius by Germanic rivals was proposed to Tiberius but he rejected it, saying Rome does not avenge itself by secret plots but by open arms. And guess what, in 21 AD, just 12 years after the battle, Arminius was killed by rivals in his own tribe who thought him too powerful. The Romans continued to hold him in high regard and respect, as Tacitus and others record, as one who had the skill to beat them even at the height of their power. Typically Roman.<br /><br />The third and last eagle standard (aquila) was recovered in 41 AD by forces under the command of Publius Gabinius, by which time Claudius, Germanicus' brother, was emperor. Yes, the Claudius of the famous historical novel "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves.<br /><br /><b>Why the Battle Was a Big Deal Later. </b><br /><br />So how did Rome's decision to never again attempt direct rule of Germania, though it may make treaties and arrangements with client kings, shape the course of all subsequent European history and American too? How does that happen? And how does it happen that hardly anyone will hear of it in general education? Here's the deal on that. <br /><br />The impressive stand against Rome forever determined the culture of subsequent Europe. Rome's decision that further expansion was just not worth it began a military boundary across continental Europe (which is to say, Europe) that would last 400 years, with the effect that Latin and Germanic cultures remained distinct. To this day there is a palpable difference in the "feel" of those parts of Europe which were part of the Roman Empire and those that weren't, as those areas which Rome never directly ruled did not absorb Roman culture into their identity.<br /><br />Had Rome expanded, here's how Europe would have become much different than it is. Kind of like dominoes. The rest of Europe would have been under direct Roman rule. <div>- So the German language would have evolved as another Romance language. </div><div>- Then later on in the Roman Empire, when it replaced traditional Roman religion by creating its state church the Catholic Church in 380 AD, that church, though present because by that time it was the only one, would have been much more secure in its presence with a more unified state and culture behind it, which in turn would not have allowed the conditions in which the Reformation happened. </div><div>- And thus the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648, which devastated all of continental Europe to an extent not surpassed until WWII, and was between the Protestant of various kinds states of northern Europe and the Catholic ones in southern Europe, which they still are though nominally even now, would not have happened. </div><div>- And in turn the colonisation of the Americas would not have seen such intense rivalries. Thus the "French and Indian War" that began in 1754 between the French and British over American colonies would not have happened. </div><div>- Which in turn would not have helped ignite and become part of the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763, which as Winston Churchill commented was the world's real first world war, as it was fought in Europe, both Americas, Africa, India and the Philippines. That war did not change the various belligerent states per se (status quo ante bellum, status as before the war) but did produce a massive shift in alliances largely as a result of changes in colonial jurisdictions. That shift in alliances brought about a complete change of the balance of power in Europe; Britain emerged as the world's superpower, Prussia emerged as the driving German power, a drive for independence emerged in the British American colonies, followed by France's decline and eventual internal revolution, and finally, the Thirty Years' War, fuelled a desire among Germans for a unified state (nothing like modern Germany existed before 1949). all of this evolving from Tiberius' decision in 16 AD not to pursue further expansion into Germania, and none of which would have happened without that decision. </div><div>- Which takes us back to Arminius. <br /><br />Arminius and his victory continued its influence in the Germanic sagas that formed a Germanic sense of identity. Not in historical record but in literary sagas; Arminius is the basis for the character Sigurd in the Volsunga Saga and the Niebelungenlied.<br /><br />By Luther's time (1483-1546), about 1500 years after the battle, the Roman Empire was long gone but its state church, the Roman Catholic Church, was not, and it continued as the state church in what understood itself as the restoration of the Roman empire, what is now, but was not then, called the Holy Roman Empire. At the same time, Europe was experiencing a massive transformation. The "Black Death", which was called the Great Plague at the time (1346 - 1353), had wiped out roughly half of Europe's and the Middle East's population. Food prices and land values dropped and the demand for workers rose. Also, beginning in Florence in the 14th Century (1300s) and extending to Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, all cities within the ancient empire, and eventually to Rome itself, feudal society, which was based on land and class, began giving way to a mercantile society, based on trade, capital, goods and services. There being no explanation for the plague catastrophe, theories abounded, and there was an awareness of the emergence of a via moderna, a modern way, across the board, in society, theology and philosophy, art, science, everything. Adding to this transformation was the arrival of scholars with classical Greek texts fleeing the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire to the Muslims on 29 May 1453.<br /><br />Manuscripts long tucked away in monastic libraries were examined, and among many other discoveries, Tacitus' histories were found and with that recovery of information about Arminius. Thus Luther found in Arminius a figure for a successful stand against Rome, this time not militarily or politically, but religiously, against the necessity of control by Rome's church of ultimately everything.<br /><br />Later, Arminius also became an important figure in German opposition to French control, once again of the ability of Germans to stand against great empires, Roman or otherwise. From 1792 through 1802, the French, who killed their royalty and had a revolution to establish Liberty, Equality, Fraternity but instead got a Reign of Terror then Napoleon, were at war with pretty much everyone else in Europe. Not to mention within themselves. Napoleon had ended the 1,000 year run of the "Holy Roman Empire", in which nothing like modern Germany existed, and with his final defeat in 1815, the battle and Hermann became a symbol for a concept of a united German people free of non-German control.<br /><br />The Congress of Vienna (1815), much like the EU would do after WWII, attempted to establish a balance of power so that Europe would be at peace, but it did not result in a German nation. The original monument was begun with an idea in 1834, the foundation stone was laid in 1838, the finished base was dedicated in 1841, but the 1848 German revolution did not result in a unified German state either and work (and money) stopped. Prussia's victory over Austria in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 rekindled the ideal, and the victory in the Franco-Prussian War (1870) brought even more enthusiasm for the ideal. The completed monument was dedicated 16 August 1875, with Kaiser Wilhelm I, the first head of the German Empire, the first united German state ever, in attendance. That's why the German name for Arminius' battle in 9 AD only dates from 1875.<br /><br />Upon this completion a society for the aid of German immigrants began work on a replica, to be located in New Ulm, MN, which as the name indicates, was heavily German and not coincidentally the home of the society's head. The cornerstone was laid in 1888, and was dedicated in 1897.<br /><br />Part of the united Germany free of foreign control thing was not just latter-day "Romans" to be free of like the French and Austrians, but the Kulturkampf against the control of the Roman Catholic Church of university and church/state positions. Thus Catholic Germans were not altogether on board, later joined by others. On the 1,900th anniversary of the battle in 1909, there was a large event from 14-23 August, and during World War I the monument became a symbol for hoped-for eventual German victory.<br /><br />After the defeat, in the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) it became a meeting place for those hoping for a restoration of the old order, and plain old tourism began as well. With the Nazis, they used it somewhat, but turned it down as any official symbol, preferring to have their own events and monuments. Quite in character, as much of the initial support for the Nazis was in the hopes of a successful restored Germany only to find the Nazis had a very different Germany in mind and despised the old order. After World War II, insofar at it was promoted at all it was purely as a tourist attraction.<br /><br />On the 2000th anniversary of the battle, 2009, the Germans, who will likely take 1000 years to recover, especially in their own minds, from the taint of the "1000-year Reich" (Tausendjähriges Reich), Hitler's vision of the endurance of his German state, the whole thing was downplayed. Der Speigel reported that even in the deliberately small scale re-enactments, most of those participating wanted to play Romans, not Germans. The battle or Hermann is barely mentioned in German schools. Why? Association with Hitler in particular and with nationalism in general, which it is feared could lead to someone like Hitler. The reality is, Hitler had little use for Arminius, and Arminius had nothing to do with what others later made of him.<br /><br /><b>Why the Battle Is a Big Deal Now and Going Forward. </b><br /><br />So we have choices. As to Arminius himself, there is no contradiction in using the Herman the German monument on Past Elder. Arminius was a Roman. Meaning, he was a Roman citizen, which takes no regard of ethnicity, race, national origin or anything else. A citizen is a citizen. That's where we got the idea. Moreover, in Roman society he was made an eques, a member of the equites just under the senatorial class, and had a Roman education as well as military training. Which shows that even successful opposition to Rome is Roman.<br /><br />As to our choices. We could continue doing what we are doing, which is either or both of 1) thinking ourselves more advanced and/or intelligent than those who came before us and since they did not experience life as we do now therefore we need not pay them much attention, and 2) suppress anything that does not fit or confirm our narrative or contradicts it, and/or rewrite it so it does.<br /><br />This will work -- in the same way a self-fulfilling prophecy works. As we follow part two it confirms part one, and so we fall in line with centuries and millennia who have done the same thing, quite unaware both that they did it and we are doing it, and quite unaware that there is not a modern narrative or meta-thought that one or another ancient Greek did not express and comes to us through the Romans, also quite unaware that we are doing the same thing with new labels and better technology, sure that our new labels and better technology make it something new, and last, quite unaware of what brought us to where we are now thus we misunderstand where we are and misidentify who we are, seeing none of this. This is the course of most of our present educational, ecclesiastical and societal institutions.<br /><br />Or, we could give up our box that we don't see is a box because we believe it to be not a box and beyond boxes, and learn from them. Not to know what happened before one was born is to be forever a child. Thus said a great figure of the Roman Republic (Cicero). It's a motto of this blog, and for good reason. Those who would establish the Empire in place of the Republic in 27 BC and were in power in 9 AD had him proscribed (proscriptio) as an enemy of the state and executed him in 43 BC. They had to. Just as those who follow either or both of the paths away from the heritage given us by the Roman Republic must either ignore or falsify him and that heritage.</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-7080779904477530282021-09-04T18:46:00.001-05:002021-09-06T17:22:14.928-05:00Augustine and Happy Birthday, Western Catholic Church. 6 September 2021.<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Huh?</span></p>Nah, 6 September is not the birthday of the Catholic Church. What happened on 6 September 394 is the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I defeated the Western Roman Emperor Eugenius at the conclusion of the two-day Battle of The Frigidus.<br /><br />Judas H Priest, where and what in the hell is the Frigidus, never heard of it and why should I have heard of it, or care to hear of it? Because though nobody ever hears about it these days it changed the entire course of history after it, that's why. Here's the deal.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: 700;">What's a Frigidus and Why the Battle. </span><br /><span style="font-weight: 700;"><br /></span>OK, The Frigidus is a river. The Latin name means "cold" as its English descendant "frigid" suggests. It is in modern northeastern Italy and Slovenia and is now called the Vipacco in Italian and the Vipava in Slovene, and of course I gotta tell ya it is called the Wipbach in modern German, or, as b and p get sort of interchangeable in German sometimes, the Wippach.<br /><br />So why was there a battle there and why should I care to know? Goes like this. On 27 February 380, the Eastern Roman Emperor Flavius Theodosius Augustus, and his two Western Roman Emperor counterparts, Flavius Gratianus Augustus (Gratian) and Flavius Valentinianus Augustus (Valentianin II), (the two were senior and junior Augustus, respectively, more or less co-emperors) jointly issued the Edict of Thessalonica. The edict is also known by its Latin name, Cunctos populos, which means "those people" (plural accusative case). Latin and other languages typically use the first word or two of a document as its title name.<div><br /></div><div>This edict did not, contra the usual summary, make Christianity the official religion. Christianity was not, contra another summary often heard, some unified happy whole, identified by the word "Christianity", not divided as it is now, whose happiness and unity we should or could recover now. From the start there were many versions of what "Christianity" is, there was no "traditional" Christianity. What the Edict did was make one of the versions the state religion. That version is called "Nicene Christianity", from the Council of Nicaea, called and presided over by Emperor Constantine (the "Great"), though he was not Christian at the time, in 325 AD to define what is now traditional Trinitarian Christianity from the various other contenders for what is Christianity, principally the Arians, but also the Novatians, the Macedonians, the Anomoeans and others.<br /><br />The Edict made Nicene Christianity the official state religion which was to be universal, or catholic, in the Roman Empire overall, and it required that all subjects of the Empire must hold this faith as delivered to Rome and preserved by then-current Pope Damasus I and then-current Bishop of Alexandria Peter, and it declared that these alone shall be called "Catholic Christians", the universal faith of the Empire, and all others, being truly demented and insane (vero dementes vesanosque, in the words of the edict in case you thought I'm making stuff up) are thus heretics and not even churches, subject to such punishment as God and the Empire should choose to visit upon them (divina primum vindicta, post etiam motus nostri, quem ex caelesti arbitro sumpserimus, ultione plectendos, in the words of the edict in case you thought I'm making this up).<br /><br />The council didn't settle things. Constantine himself, not being a member of any version, was tolerant and taken aback by the continuing controversy, wondered if maybe the council got it wrong, and was finally baptised on his deathbed by a "bishop" sympathetic to the Arians (Eusebius of Nicomedia). His son and successor Constantius II was openly sympathetic to the Arians, and his successor Julian wasn't sympathetic to any version of Christianity and wanted to get back to traditional Graeco-Roman religion, for which he's sometimes called "Julian the Apostate". Julian's successor Jovian only lasted eight months and though Christian didn't push one version of that over another, and his successor, Valens, was an Arian Christian!<br /><br />Valens died in the disastrous Battle of Adrianople (in modern northwestern Turkey) against the Goths on 9 August 378, which marked the beginning of the end for the Western empire and also of Arian influence in the Eastern empire. So when Gratian (remember him above?) asked Theodosius, who was Trinitarian and from Hispania (modern Spain and Portugal) to take over the army in the East, this effectively made him Eastern emperor succeeding Valens, on 19 January 379, and things were anything but settled, politically or religiously. The year after the edict, 381, Theodosius convened another council, the First Council of Constantinople, to settle things, at least the religious ones. Notice how it's emperors, not church types, convening church conventions?<br /><br />So who are Damasus and Peter? We'll meet Damasus in the post later this month on Jerome, but in this context suffice it to know that he was Bishop of Rome from 1 October 366 to 11 December 384. OK, nice to know, but why does it matter? Here's why. In those days previously, popes were elected locally by the clergy and laity, but now they had to be confirmed by the Emperor. The Emperor Constantius II had sent the previous pope Liberius into exile for not sharing his sympathetic view of the Arians, and when Liberius died 24 September 366, two different popes were elected in two separate elections. The deacons of the church and the plebian class (regular people) elected Liberius' deacon Ursinus, but the patricians, the wealthy upper class, elected Damasus. Mob violence ensued, including deaths and massacres by Damasus' faction of Ursinus' faction, and the city authorities had to restore order. Which they did, on the side of Damasus, since the patricians had bought Imperial support, and he was confirmed pope 1 October 366, and exonerated of charges of murder. And also adultery. His dalliance with wealthy women had earned him the nickname auriscalpius matronarum, the ladies' ear scratcher. How's that for "apostolic succession", just what you'd expect from the conservator of the true faith, right?<br /><br />Peter was Peter II, the 21st patriarch of Alexandria, a student of St Athanasius (we'll meet him again below), a major opponent of Arian Christianity, who had been exiled by the local prefect on orders from Emperor Valens (an Arian) and went to Rome where Damasus supported him until he could return to Alexandria in 373.<br /><br />Cunctos populos refers to Damasus as pontiff (pontifex) but to Peter as bishop (episcopus). Why is that significant? "Pontiff" comes from pontifex, which means bridge builder. Originally, a pontifex was a high religious official in the Collegium pontificum, which included the Vestal Virgins charged with maintaining the fire in the Temple of Vesta believed to be essential to Rome's survival, and the highest ranking of them was the pontifex maximus. As the Republic declined this office became more and more political and in the Empire was held by the Emperor. The last to use it was Gratian, one of the signatories to the Edict, and after he renounced it pontifex became associated with Bishop and pontifex maximus with the Bishop of Rome, and still is to-day. The use of pontifex in the Edict only wrt to Damasus and Peter as epicopus, since any episcopus is a pontifex, indicates pontifex maximus is intended.<br /><br />Before we continue this part of the story, we need to stop this part here around 380 to introduce the other part, namely Augustine. Before that though, four ironies that result from this part. 1) The Council of Nicaea and the First Council of Constantinople are often called the first "oecumenical" councils, but the word does not mean what we mean now; it does not mean all the various Christian churches, but rather, drawn from all the Roman Empire. 2) The "Nicene Creed" used in most current Christian churches is not the Nicene Creed, as in the creed from that council, but rather the revision and expansion of that creed at the First Council of Constantinople, and more exactly not even that but liturgical versions of it, not the conciliar statement itself. 3) The liturgical versions changed the statement of the assembled councils, "we believe", to "I believe" reflecting its non-conciliar liturgical use as an individual statement of faith stated collectively, which is why recent attempts to revert liturgically to the conciliar use are invalid. 4) We get the word creed from the incipit (first word) of the Latin liturgical version, credo, I believe.<br /><br />So, 27 February 380 is the birthday of the "Catholic Church", as distinct from the catholic church. The Eastern version took hold earlier but it was a little more unsettled in the Western Empire, and it took 14 years for resistance to this in the Western Empire to be crushed militarily. That's what happened 6 September 394, so, though the Catholic Church has its birthday with the issue of Cuntos populos on 27 February 380, 6 September 394 is a sort of Western birthday, since that is when resistance to it in the Western Empire was crushed by military power from the Eastern Empire. And it's no co-incidence at all that this was at the hands of Theodosius, who would be the last Emperor both East and West.<br /><br />And all this fits right in with St Augustine, whose feast is 28 August, who in 380 (Cunctos populos) was a pagan and a professor in Carthage, and in 394 (The Battle of The Frigidus) was about to be named Bishop of Hippo in the new state church.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A Renowned Professor Get Caught Up In This.</span><br /><br />Augustine was a Roman citizen, from what are now called Berbers, and was teaching in Carthage in 380, seven years away from being baptised by the state bishop, Ambrose, of the state church in the state's Western capital by then, Milan. Diocletian, the last emperor of an undivided Roman Empire, had made Milan, then called Mediolanum, the Western capitol in 293 and Nicomedia, now Izmit Turkey, the Eastern capitol in 286, and called his new provincial units diocese, after himself. Constantine moved the Eastern capitol to nearby Byzantium, renamed it Constantinople, which is now Istanbul Turkey. You get to name stuff after yourself when you're really powerful.<br /><br />The Roman Senate, still in Rome, was not shall we say comfortable with this new state religion in the two new capitals of the Empire, and lots of academic disputes and apologetics on both sides went back and forth, but no violence. During this unsettled time Augustine gets appointed to the most prestigious professorship in his world, at the Western capitol Milan in 384, and is all caught up in the swirling controversy between the old religion and classic philosophy and the new state church.<br /><br />He also gets caught up in his mother Monica's designs for his career. Now with a prestigious academic position, mom says his longstanding relationship with a woman he never names but called "the one", of some 14 years complete with son, called Adeodatus, meaning "given by God", hasta go. So he caves and sends her away, she saying she will never be with another man, he finding a new concubine to tide him over until the proper social marriage his mom, "Saint" Monica, arranges with a then-11 year old girl (yeah, really) can happen.<br /><br />And about concubines. Ain't what you think. A concubine in ancient Rome was simply a wife that Roman law forbade you to marry due to your or her social class. These marriages denied legality by Imperial law were rather common, and the church didn't come down on them since it wasn't the couple's fault they weren't legally married. Something to keep in mind when "the one" gets called concubine in the modern sense, their relationship gets passed off as merely lustful and their son whom they named Gift of God passed off as "illegitimate".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Take, Read -- This Christian Bestseller!</span><br /><br />No wonder the dude was confused! His whole world is swirling in unsettled controversy and mom is running his life like a beauty pageant mom. And then, as he's all upset about his life, he has this really weird experience where he hears a kid's voice saying "Take, read" (the famous tolle, lege). Now what he was told to take and read you won't likely find in your local Christian bookstore, but was among the most widely read books, first in the Imperial Christian state church and then through the Middle Ages. It's a Life of St Anthony of the Desert, written by St Athanasius about 360 in Greek, but best known in a Latin translation, Vita Antonii, made about ten or so years later by Evagrius, who was, or was not, depending on whose side you are, the true "bishop" of Antioch 388-392.<br /><br />Hoo-boy, old Tony. He was a wealthy Egyptian who became Christian at about age 34, so far so good, sold everything and took up with a local hermit. Tony in NO way was the "Founder of Monasticism", as religious hermits of various religions were common on the outskirts of cities; Philo the Jewish-Egyptian writer mentions them all, sharing the Platonic idea of having to get out of the world to get into an ideal. Pure Platonist Idealism. Sure glad Jesus didn't do that or let his Apostles do it either when they wanted to, but went back to Jerusalem where real life had things for them to do.<br /><br />But old Tony went the other direction, and left even the outskirts for the desert itself to get away from it all to get into it all. But the crowds followed -- everybody loves an exotic "holy man" -- and Tony took on the more advanced cases of this mania and left the rest to his associates, sort of a Christian Oracle of Delphi, which "guidance" was later variously collected as the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, or Apophthegmata, if you want a word to impress somebody sometime.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Famous Professor Converts.</span><br /><br />Anyhoo, Gus reads this in 386, and on the Easter Vigil of 387, Ambrose baptises Gus and his son. The next year, 388, he determines to return home to North Africa. Which he did, but along the way both his mother and his son died, so he arrives alone in the world, and understandably unsure of himself once again. Next he sells the family stuff and gives the money away, except the house which he turns into a sort of lay monastery. I guess that's what you do when you read about dudes in the desert, rather than go through the grief and live on in the world of people. Then he gets ordained presbyter or "priest" in 391 in Hippo, now Annaba, Algeria.<br /><br />This mostly academic and political controversy, in which Gus' unsettled life had its context, and of which it is typical, changed the next year when Western Emperor Valentinian II was found hanged in his home on 16 May 392. His half brother and co-Emperor Gratian was already dead, killed 25 August 383 in Lyon France by forces of Roman generals who thought he was losing his grip. The official word was Valentinian was a suicide, but his wife and others thought he was done in by his military power behind the throne, a Frank named Arbogastes. The Imperial Milan court church's bishop, Ambrose, left the question open, suicide being a no-no for a Christian Emperor held up as a hero.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A Digression, but a Damned Important One.</span><br /><br />What's a Frank? Not a hot dog, that comes from Frankfurter, and originally meant Frankfurter Würstchen, which means "little sausages from Frankfurt" served on a bun. They originated in the 13th Century and became the peoples' food for coronations of the Holy Roman Emperor starting with Maximilian II, a Habsburg and nephew of Emperor Karl V, he to whom the Augsburg Confession was presented, on 25 July 1564. About 1800 or so, a butcher named Johann Georg Lahner from Coburg, Bavaria, introduced the Frankfurter Würstchen to Vienna. Now Vienna had its own sausages, which were a mixture of pork and beef called Wiener, from Wien, which is "Vienna" in German. Lahner modified his product by mixing the original pork with beef like the Viennese and calling the result simply a Frankfurter. German immigrants brought the product to the US at Coney Island, and at St Louis where the German American owner, Chris von der Ahe, of the St Louis Brown Stockings, now the Cardinals, started selling them at baseball games. So there -- the inter-relation of hot dogs, Lutheranism, St Louis and the Cards! Toldya it was important! The name got shortened to "Frank", they're hot, and the "dog" thing came from rumours that the makers actually used dog meat. Myself, I like kosher beef hot dogs, not at all the original!<br /><br />Oh yeah, almost forgot, what's a Frank? The name comes from the Roman name gens Francorum for these Germanic barbarians who threw their axes (the franks), whose own ethnic history says they were Trojans under Priam who ended up on the Rhein, oh sorry, Rhine, after the fall of Troy in Homeric times. Which is exactly the ethnic history Augustus tried to blend into Roman understanding at the beginning of the Empire by having Virgil write the Aeneid!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Back To the Story.</span><br /><br />On 22 August 392, Arbogastes, who being a Frank and not Roman could not be Emperor, names a Roman Christian named Eugenius the Western Emperor. Eugenius though Christian was sympathetic to traditional Roman religion and started replacing Western officials sympathetic to the Eastern Empire. The Eastern Empire put off recognition of the new Western regime, and finally in January of 392 Theodosius declared his two-year-old son Honorius as Western Emperor and begins preparing an invasion of the Western Empire, which began in May 394 and concluded in the victory at The Frigidus 6 September 394. Arbogastes commits suicide and Eugenius is beheaded by the Catholic forces of Theodosius.<br /><br />The new Imperial state Catholic Church was on a real roll. It had destroyed the Temple of Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi in 390, the Serapeum and Great Library in Alexandria in 391, the year Augustine was ordained a priest in the official church, then had ended the two great rituals of ancient Greece, the Eleusinian Mysteries in 392 and the Olympic Games after the ones in 393. Then later in the same year, 394, as the Battle of the Frigidus, it puts out the fire considered essential to Rome's survival at the Temple of Vesta, and disbands the women who were personally selected by the pontifex maximus, when that meant the head of the traditional Roman religion rather than the head of the new state Catholic religion.<br /><br />The next year, 395, Augustine becomes religious head, which is called bishop, of the Roman Imperial administrative unit called a diocese, in Hippo. Guess Gus knew on which side his bread is buttered.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">It All Comes To-gether, It All Falls Apart.</span><br /><br />The Battle of The Frigidus effectively ended any Western resistance to the new state church. But those old Roman families knew a thing or two about survival and before long they were papal families, eventually supplying Pope Gregory, made Pope 3 September 590, who ruled the state church like a real Roman indeed. This enormous civil war though left the Western Empire greatly weakened, and it collapsed a thousand years before the Eastern Empire did, with the Visigoths sacking Rome in 410. So Augustine, by then 56 and still Bishop of Hippo, writes more Platonism to assure the shocked Romans that though the joint was a mess it was not the fault of the new state Roman Imperial religion having replaced the traditional Roman religion thirty years before and its subsequent eradication of it, the real and ideal City of God was the real winner.<br /><br />Well, back here in reality the "City of God", Rome, was first sacked by the Gauls in 387 BC, and after the 410 sack by the Visigoths, got sacked again by the Vandals in 455, but Gus died at 75 on 28 August 430 so he missed it. And Rome would be sacked again by the Ostrogoths in 546, and again by the Arabs in 846, and again by the Normans in 1084, and last by soldiers of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, but not on his orders, in 1527. And you know what Gus, the ascendancy of the new state religion DID have a lot to do with the Fall of Rome. How so? Because the new state religion the Catholic Church was as false to the catholic church of Christ as the Roman Empire had been false to the Roman Republic. The civic side of this transition is covered in our post for 21 April, the Founding of the City.<br /><br />Anyway, that's the famous book The City of God, which is actually only the first part of its title, which is On The City Of God Against The Pagans (OK it's De civitate Dei contra Paganos, I translated). "Pagan" is another term reinvented by the new church. It once meant someone from the country, or a civilian, but with the Imperial Catholic Church firmly in the cities, and their faithful thinking they were a church militant, soldiers of Christ, which, the state military having kicked the crap out of the former religion for the state church, I guess kind of fits, and "pagan" came to mean someone adhering to the old religion which hung on more in the countryside rather than just someone from the sticks.<br /><br />For all his Platonic faults and his immersion in social-political turmoil and change of his time, Augustine was aware that six twenty-four hour periods is not even the "literal" reading of Genesis. More on that in a later post this month. Busy month, September.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Aftermath.</span><br /><br />That Platonic idealism guided and fuelled the West as it struggled through centuries of chaos and tried to reinvent its former glory with the Holy Roman Empire, which, as has been famously remarked, was not holy, not Roman, and not much of an empire. Hell, it was Frankish, the new Romans! Old Arbogastes would have liked that! And it by God had the Roman state Catholic Church with popes and bishops and diocese and all the Platonism reinvented as Christianity you can shake a stick at, complete with justification as the City of God.<br /><br />Which wholesale hijacking of the catholic church as the Catholic Church, one might say its Babylonian Captivity, lasted for a thousand years. Then a poor guy in a screwed up world with a screwed up life, and a barbarian to boot, a German named Martin Luther from outside the old Roman boundaries, seeks solace in a religious order modelling itself after Augustine's Platonic idealism turned into Christian monastic asceticism, and discovers none of this crap is gonna save you but simply faith in the Son sent by God to be the sacrifice which takes away our sins, just like Scripture, which is supposed to be the church's book, says.<br /><br />And so begins the disentanglement of the catholic church from the Catholic Church of the Roman and Holy Roman Empires. They tried like hell to make the catholic church, the pillar and ground of truth, the bride of Christ, into the Whore of Babylon. The vestiges of Theodosius' state Imperial Catholic Church continue in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. That's bad enough, but after the Lutheran reformation began, opposite but equally false reactions to the Babylonian Captivity arose, and several "second" or "another" reformations (Nadere Reformatie), took the "Reformation" well beyond anything about the Lutheran Reformation, and continue on in later church bodies. On top of which, some Lutheran churches became as obscenely an extension of the state as the "Catholic Church" had been. <br /><br />The guideline of the Lutheran reformation was, if it contradicts Scripture it must go but what doesn't is retained, since the power of the Gospel and Word and Sacrament is such that not even the Roman Empire could entirely keep it out. The Babylonian Captivity was a captivity, not an extinction. But with these later guys the guideline became, if it ain't in Scripture it goes -- depending on whose version of what is in Scripture one buys -- thus losing his Divine Service of his body and blood for our salvation, and in some cases even Baptism as well.<br /><br />And lately all of these anachronisms, the state churches that survived their original states, seem intoxicated with a Rousseau-like Romantic fiction, which is some sort of resurrection of an imagined pure church of the Apostles and Church Fathers, rediscovered by their scholarship of course, a noble church, sort of an ecclesiastical version of Rousseau's "noble savage". It was precisely this against which Pope Pius XII warned in 1947 in Mediator Dei, which he called an exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism and has since been called liturgical archaeology. And it must be said some of these anachronisms have the word "Lutheran" in their names. Thus the equal but opposite errors of the old state church and of the later Reformers, equally condemned in the Lutheran Confessions, continue as well.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion.</span><br /><br />But while all of this rages about us, and even infects the Lutheran Reformation, thanks be to God for the Lutheran Reformation and its confession of the true teaching of Scripture, the book that is the church's own measure and norm, while yet retaining what does not contradict it. Even if that is found in a minority of churches with "Lutheran" in their names.</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-16360121163654136182021-08-27T21:46:00.000-05:002021-08-27T21:46:33.055-05:00St Monica and Vatican II For Lutherans. 27 August 2021.<p>We Lutherans are about to celebrate the Feast of St Monica on 27 August. Thing is, since there's been such a feast starting in the 13th Century, the Feast of St Monica is 4 May, and the Lutheran Reformation didn't have an issue with it. But Vatican II did in the 1960s and moved it, so of course we follow suit as if Vatican II were held in St Louis.</p>Huh? Who cares? Who is Monica, and why should I bother about this Monica anyway? The last Monica anyone heard about was Lewinsky or Seles! What difference does any of this make? I mean, it's all adiaphora, right, so why trample on my Christian Freedom with all this dead weight from the past?<br /><br />OK, Monica was the mother of St Augustine. Great, whozzat? Well, he is arguably the most influential Christian theologian ever. We'll leave whether that was for better or worse, as well as biographies of Augustine or Monica, aside here. You can check that out in our next post, for 6 September, or at Section VIII of Eastern Church/Empire, Western Church/Empire, posted on 16 January annually on this blog.<br /><br />Except for this essential: Augustine was quite non-Christian, anti-Christian really, held the most prestigious professorship in his time, and his conversion was brought about in part by the example and prayers of his Christian mother, Monica, which is why the church honours her.<br /><br />When the church sets up a day in honour of someone, the traditional practice is to choose the day on which the person died, if known, since faith sees that as the day they were born into eternity. St Augustine's date of death, his heavenly birthday, is 28 August 430, so 28 August is his feast. Simple. But St Monica's date of death is not known, and when the person's date of death is not known, some other date of significance about the person's life is chosen. Here's the story on hers.<br /><br />St Monica's feast day was not a part of the overall observance of the Western Church for about three-fourths of its elapsed history to date, until about the time of the Council of Trent in the Sixteenth Century. However, it was long observed by the Augustinian Order. Geez, whazzat?<br /><br />OK, the "Augustinian Order" is a rather motley assortment of religious associations rather than a clear cut single entity, all of them tracing their origin to St Augustine and his rule of life, or regula in Latin. That's what it literally is to be regular -- you live under a regula, or rule. Readers here may have heard of one such Augustinian. Guy named Martin Luther.<br /><br />Anyway, in the Augustinian Order but not the church as a whole, there was, besides the observance of the feast of St Augustine on 28 August, another observance whose focus was his conversion to Christianity, which conversion in turn influenced the entire later church.<br /><br />This Augustinian feast, the Feast of the Conversion of St Augustine, was and still is celebrated on 5 May. So they celebrated the single biggest human factor in bringing about that conversion, the example and prayers of his mother, St Monica, on the day before, 4 May. The Conversion feast never did make it into the overall Roman Calendar, but when St Monica's did, since her date of death is not known, the traditional Augustinian date was retained, 4 May. Simple.<br /><br />And was retained in the Lutheran Reformation for centuries. Until the Revolution, er, Vatican II.<br /><br />One of the stated aims of the "liturgical reform" at Vatican II was to pare down the historical hodgepodge of stuff into something more straightforward and accessible more closely resembling the practice of the early church. So they effectively banned the old order and came up with an entirely new order (novus ordo), sporting four "Eucharistic Prayers", several new options within each rite for other key parts of the Mass, a new lectionary of readings spread out over three years, and a new calendar.<br /><br />Wonderful -- a new hodgepodge crafted from an even wider spread of historical sources than the old hodgepodge that was supposed to be pared down! Oh well, it was the 1960s after all. I guess you gotta make allowances for that.<br /><br />One small item in this was relocating the Feast of St Monica to 27 August, the day before the feast of her son. There's a logic to that. And as far as the institution of Christ and fidelity to Scripture goes, you can celebrate the Feast of St Monica on 4 May, 27 August, any other day, or not at all.<br /><br />However, it's not the 1960s any more. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to learn or be taught that we honour St Monica not because of her physical motherhood of St Augustine but because of her example in the conversion of her pagan son, who went on to be one of the church's greatest saints, and that we do so on 4 May because in the religious order that looks to her son as their patron saint they had long celebrated Monica on 4 May, the day before they celebrated the conversion of her son their patron on 5 May.<br /><br />See? Takes one short paragraph tops, even for me.<br /><br />Sorry, Roman church dudes. There already was a liturgical reform. It was to pare down all right, but in view of what contradicts Scripture, not in view of our ideas of what makes something more "accessible" or a presumed purity of the Patristic era. It was to zealously guard and defend the worship of the church's existing order, not to invent a new one. It's called the Lutheran Reformation. You're a few centuries late to the party.<br /><br />If the Roman hierarchy and associated academics are going to busy themselves with something other than preaching Christ and him crucified, and along the way explain the history of this movement, let them put off the period clothes, get married and raise a family and learn something of real benefit to their fellow man, like heating and air conditioning repair.<br /><br />Yet, we and other Christian bodies now fall in line with them as if there had been no Reformation! The 1960s Roman novus ordo, with emendations and adaptations, is now the common property of pretty much all other heterodox Christian denominations with liturgical aspirations, rather than the traditional order of the Western Church.<br /><br />And "our beloved synod" falls into line too, even those parts of it trying to remain true to our Confessions in the Book of Concord, which say we retain the usual readings and our services are for the most part the same as before. Then we moan and groan and wonder why other parts of our beloved synod seem to be heading off on all sorts of tangents, or rather, variations on the tangent of chasing after the success in attracting numbers of the American suburban "evangelical" megachurches.<br /><br />We wonder how our people could be taken in by these false hopes and promises. Yet, why should our people not wonder why these are not also valid options that we can Lutheranise, when we set Lutheranised "options" modelled after 1960s Rome before them as confessional, side by side with our common catholic history -- this historical mass or that Vatican II For Lutherans mass, this historical lectionary or that Vatican II For Lutherans lectionary, this historical calendar or that Vatican II For Lutherans calendar.<br /><br />Why would they not listen to Willow Creek and Saddleback and Lakewood too with their false hopes and promises when we adopt and adapt the stinking filth of the Whore of Babylon as it toys with our catholic heritage? Having done that why would they not think it's all about options, personal preference, all OK? We let something in through the back door then wonder why it comes knocking at the front!<br /><br />Even in a small matter like when a saint's day is observed the whole rotten Roman mess in the church is revealed, and its adoption/adaptation by other church bodies!<br /><br />St Monica gave St Augustine physical birth, but her greatness for which we honour her is not her role in his physical but her role in his spiritual birth, his conversion, in this life. Therefore she is better honoured by leaving her day where it is for the reason it is there, and if you have to change something then finally insert the Conversion of St Augustine into the general Calendar, rather than moving her feast day from a day which does have inherent reference to her to the day before her son's feast on his date of death, which does not.<br /><br />Jacking around with the feast of St Monica is a small example but it's typical of a big issue. Once again, the calendar, lectionary and ordo of Vatican II all miss the mark, even of its own intended reform. They are the products not of the Christian church, but one denomination, and that headed by an office bearing the marks of Anti-Christ -- regardless of its current occupancy by a nice guy of Italian descent from Argentina -- and now are the common property of all heterodox liturgical churches in the West, utterly irrelevant to Christ's Church and therefore should be utterly irrelevant to Lutherans.<br /><br />Right along with Saddleback, Willow Creek and Lakewood, Rome no less than they offers "contemporary worship" whose forms derive from and express a content that is not ours and rejects ours, which content is derived from an agenda that is not ours and rejects ours, and therefore into which our content does not fit nor should we try to make it fit, and, when we do, we abandon that part of our mission which is to zealously guard and defend the mass, for the most part retaining the ceremonies previously in use, just as our Confessions state.Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-63925509932462720482021-08-20T11:00:00.000-05:002021-08-20T11:00:31.826-05:00On St Bernard, Sacred Heads, ATMs and Other Stuff. 20 August 2021.<p>Well here comes 19 August and our Commemorations list says it's the Feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux.</p>Thing is, the feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux is actually 20 August.<br /><br />Whyzat? That's the day he died, and traditionally, the date of a person's death, faith seeing it as the date they were born to eternity, is used as their feast day, if the date is known and not taken by a saint who already died that day or by something of more importance. You die on 20 August, your feast day is 20 August. Pretty simple. It's a Christian version and continuation of Yahrtzeit, meaning "time of year" in Yiddish, when relatives remember a family member on the date of their death.<br /><br />So what possessed the compilers of our Commemorations list to move it up one day? Hell if I know. I also do not know what possessed them to import several commemorations for Old Testament figures from the Eastern Orthodox calendar, but, they did and one of those is for Samuel on 20 August, so I guess they needed the day and had to boof Bernard. But to the day before, when he was still alive and not born unto eternity? Scholars. Oy.<br /><br />Anyway, Bernard has a pretty good rep among notable non-Catholics, including Martin Luther and John Calvin. Which is pretty amazing considering:<br /><br />1) He was a rip roaring kick-ass let's get serious about this Rule of St Benedict for monasteries type; in 1113, at age 23, he entered monastic life at the abbey at Citeaux, which was a reform movement of Benedictines founded on 21 March (the real feast of St Benedict) 1098, called the Cistercians from the Latin name of Citeaux, Cistercium, and was so into it that two years later he became abbot of a daughter abbey in 1115 at Claire Valee (Clear Valley), Latin clara vallis, later Clairvaux for short, hence his name.<br /><br />2) He chose the "right" pope when two were elected (hey, what if he got the Innocent/Anacletus thing wrong?).<br /><br />3) He saw one of his students, Bernardo da Pisa, elected Pope (Eugene III) largely on the basis of Bernardo's connexion to him, though he thought Bernardo too naive for the job, then used that naivete to function as a shadow pope.<br /><br />4) His student-now-pope proclaimed a Second Crusade in reaction to the County of Edessa, a state established by the First Crusade, getting its butt kicked by the Muslims, then he got Bernard to promote it, whereupon the two main takers, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, got their butts thoroughly kicked, which completely tarnished the rest of Bernard's life though he insisted the failure was due to the Crusaders being a bunch of sinners.<br /><br />5) At the Council of Troyes in 1129 he championed the Knights Templar, which secured their endorsement by the Roman Catholic Church and their transformation from a poor monastic military order, that provided security for those on pilgrimages to Jerusalem after it was retaken in 1099 in the First Crusade, into a multimillion dollar multinational banking and holding company, the world's first such company.<br /><br />6) In 1139 Pope Innocent II declared the Knights Templar could go anywhere and be exempt from all authority or taxation except the pope's.<br /><br />7) Bernard's pathological asceticism -- a redundancy, as all asceticism is pathological -- gave rise to one of the more extreme forms of Mariolatry; given the mediaeval misconception that milk was blood in processed form, and given the mediaeval custom among the upper classes that breastfeeding was done for them by others ("wetnurses"), the Madonna lactans, which is paintings of Mary/Madonna nursing Jesus, became an analogue to the blood of Christ, and Bernard is said to have been hit by a blast of milk as he prayed before a Madonna lactans, and was given either wisdom or cured or an eye infection, depending on to which legend one listens.<br /><br />8) His pathological asceticism -- a redundancy, as all asceticism, oh wait, we covered that -- also gave rise to the whole ideal of Christian knighthood, in particular his De laude novae militia (In praise of the new knighthood) of 1129, written for the first Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Hugues de Payens, which in turn gave rise to the late addition of Sir Galahad to the Arthurian legend, coming from the Old French so-called Vulgate Cycle, which then transformed the existing English legend into a quest for the Holy Grail by the celibate, ascetic, therefore "pure" knight, against the unworthiness of regular knights.<br /><br />He does, despite all that and more, show some signs of knowing it all comes down to faith in Christ and what he did for us. Well that can happen even in the RCC, and in all fairness I gotta say maybe old Bernard was one of those. And me being a Benedictine never-was, the only thing worse than a has-been, lemme tell ya a little reform wouldn't hurt those guys at all.<br /><br />Clairvaux was built on a tract of land known as a hangout for robbers, donated by Count Hugh of Champagne. Apparently the land is well suited to retreat from society, whether said retreat is one's own decision or society's. Since the French Revolution, Napoleon, etc, the abbey was abolished and made into a high security prison, which it still is. Hideout to monastery to prison, you know I want to have fun with that, but the utter ironic ridiculousness should be sufficiently obvious with no help from me. Clairvaux Prison is the current residence, since 2006, of Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez of Venezuela, whom you may know as "Carlos the Jackal".<br /><br />Bernard is best known among non-Catholics because the hymn "O Sacred Head" is attributed to him. Now, let me be clear, O Sacred Head -- which everybody knows God sings as O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden -- is among the greatest hymns ever written by anybody, any time, any where.<br /><br />Thing is, Bernard didn't have a damn thing to do with it.<br /><br />The text to the hymn comes from the last part of a long mediaeval poem called Salve mundi salutare (Hail, salvation of the world) which meditates on a number of Christ's body parts as he suffered on the Cross. The last part meditates on his head and is called Salve caput cruentatum. It dates from the 14th Century; Bernard lived in the first half of the 12th Century (1091-1153 to be exact).<br /><br />The tune is even later. It was written originally as a love song by Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612). When Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676), one of the great contributors to our magnificent Lutheran hymn heritage (no clowning around here, he was great and it is magnificent) translated Salve caput cruentatum into German as O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (the aforementioned version God now uses, OK that's clowning around) Hassler's love song got used as the tune (there is no textual reason for this parenthetical comment except to make three in one sentence and thus reflect the perfection of the Trinity; that's a monkish thing and I'm completely clowning around).<br /><br />So, Bernard had nothing to do with O Sacred Head, and all this "attributed to" stuff is just crap that should be dropped. What ought to be pointed out instead is that Salve mundi salutare, the source of O Sacred Head, was the basis for the first Lutheran oratorio, Membra Jesu nostri patientis sanctissima. Don't freak, I'll translate, it means "most holy members (as in limbs) of our suffering Jesus". It was composed by Dietrich Buxtehude in 1680.<br /><br />So what to make of this? Bernard had absolutely nothing to do with O Sacred Head, either as tune or text, and for that matter, being thoroughly Roman Catholic as we saw above, makes a hell of a lot better Roman Catholic saint than Lutheran commemoration. Rather than indulging in dressing up Catholic fantasies in a Lutheran version, just like some dress up megachurch fantasies in a Lutheran version, we make this of it: the power of the Gospel, well meditated on in O Sacred Head, is such that the hymn does not depend on or even need pious legends and myths about its earthly authorship. And that the power of the Gospel, of which Bernard showed some signs of being aware, is such that it can penetrate even the largely pagan accretions laid over it by the RCC, in which Bernard was deeply involved. Thank God for the Lutheran Reformation, that we no longer live in times like Bernard, where church and state alike were choked by these accretions, and the Gospel can be rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered in our churches openly.<br /><br />And hey, next time you write a cheque or use a debit card to draw money somewhere else on your bank deposits back home, rather than carry your stash with you and thus make yourself more attractive to thieves and robbers, thank the Knights Templar, who in 1150 created a system of letters of credit based on deposits that is the low tech forerunner of banking as we know it now!Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-11056416635517328742021-08-15T13:35:00.002-05:002021-08-15T13:35:17.200-05:00The Dormitory of Mary, 15 August 2021.<p>Yeah I know, it's the Dormition of Mary, aka the Assumption.</p>Dormition, dormitory -- all from the Latin for "to sleep". One of the dormitories where I went to university was called St Mary Hall, formally. It was just "Mary Hall" otherwise. Everyone went there whether they had a room there (I didn't) or friends there (I did) or not. Reason being, St Mary Cafeteria, or "Mary Caf" as we called it (the culture may include tendencies which may strike those unfamiliar with it as unduly familiar, even slightly irreverent). Thing is, it wasn't a cafeteria at all but an on-campus restaurant and gathering place.<br /><br />What's up with that? Mary Caf was not the regular school cafeteria where those with a meal plan ate, which being a rural campus not in any town was just about everyone. Rather, it was where one ordered burgers and fries and stuff like that on one's own time, and dime. So why is a restaurant called a cafeteria when it really isn't? Well, the regular cafeteria wasn't called a cafeteria either, but a refectory, so the word was available. And the restaurant did have trays and a line.<br /><br />Holy crap, what's a refectory? Comes from the Latin reficere, to restore, which gave rise to the word refectorium, a room where you get restored, ie eat. It's a monk thing, and being a Benedictine institution we were all about that. Now, in a real refectory, according to the Rule -- yeah I know, what's "the Rule", ok without modifiers that's the Rule of St Benedict for monasteries, geez do I have to explain everything? -- meals are eaten in silence, one guy reads from Scripture or writings of the saints (that's called lectio divina, or divine reading) and no meat from mammals except if you're sick.<br /><br />However, true to the very heart of the most venerable tradition, Benedictine in particular and Catholic in general, that's how it is but it ain't really like that. As more and more "feasts" came in to the church calendar, the meals got better, and, by the time it took four digits to write the year, aka 1000 AD, the obvious solution was to eat the other, better, food in another room, and keep up appearances in the refectory. So, not have your cake in one room, then eat it in another. Perfect.<br /><br />And in a student refectory, where the teaching monks ate too, as distinct from the monking refectory of the monkatorium itself, there ain't no lectio divina, and ain't much of anything done in silence either.<br /><br />So it don't get no more Benedictine than to have the refectory and Mary Caf, the official restoring room and the other one on the side. Hey, don't laugh, the Eastern Orthodox, as usual, amp it up even more. In their monkeries the refectory is called the Trapeza, always with at least one icon and sometimes a ruddy church unto itself, altar, iconostasis and all.<br /><br />And they got this Lifting of the Panagia to end the meal too. What in all monking monkery is a Panagia? It's the prosphoron from which you take a chunk in honour of the Theotokos. What the hell izzat? The former is the loaf used in the Eucharist, the latter is Mary. After the service, the refectorian (don't freak, it's the monk who runs the refectory) cuts a triangle out of it, cuts the rest in half, puts it on a tray, the boys go over to the refectory with the tray in the lead. Then after the meal there is a ceremony in which the refectorian says "Bless me, holy fathers, and pardon me a sinner" and the assembled holy fathers say "May God pardon and have mercy on you" (as if he had not already done so at Calvary, but I digress). Then he says echoing the liturgy "Great is the name" and the boys chime in with "of the Holy Trinity", then comes "O all-holy Mother of God help us" and the reply "At her prayers, O God, have mercy and save us" (as if he had not already ... oh well). Then accompanied by a dude with censer he offers it, then each, uh, holy father takes a piece between thumb and forefinger, runs it through the incense, and eats it.<br /><br />Now that's some serious monking. Judas H Priest OSB, we're a bunch of Bavarians, or at least the joint was founded by them. Hell, the closest we came to anything like that was to make sure you went back before they ran out for more of the good dark bread they bake. Closest I'm gonna come to any Lifting of the Panagia now is the lifting of the Panera. Besides, Panera's got wi-fi too I think -- for some digital lectio divina of course. I still don't like white bread, though, and will take a wheat or dark bread every time. Every time. And still call a dining room a refectory once in a while too. It's a spiritual thing of course.<br /><br />So we had our refectory and our "cafeteria" named for Mary. Later, the food service would open a more night oriented spot, Der Keller, which means the cellar or basement in German, in the cellar of the old main building, though it took a new food service director who was a Baptist from Alabama to come up with the idea. Now that's my kind of Baptist! Also my kind of refectorian. Hell, with the secular and ecclesiastical sides of the 1960s both raging, he was more German and Benedictine at heart than the German Benedictines.<br /><br />And Mary? Just as Gabriel said, full of grace, the Lord was with her; blessed is she among women and blessed is the fruit of her womb, Jesus. And if you're looking for an example, if your cost of discipleship is seeming a little high, there is no better example than her submission in faith to God, which she for all she knew at the time ran her the risk of execution as an adulteress, only to survive that only to see her son executed as a criminal. And if you're looking for direction, there is no better direction, rather than quasi-pious speculation about dormitions and assumptions, than she herself gave to those wanting her to sort things out one time at the wedding in Cana -- "Do whatever he tells you".Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-7819193072297948882021-07-24T19:40:00.000-05:002021-07-24T19:40:21.459-05:00A Visit From a Different St Nicholas - and Alexandra. 17 July 2021.<p>17 July 2018 was the 100th anniversary of the murder of Nicholas II, Emperor of all the Russias, with his wife, Alexandra Feodorovna, and their children in 1918 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Alexandra began life as Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, a Lutheran. She's actually the second German Lutheran princess to become Empress of all the Russias. The first was Catherine the Great, no less. The aftermath of both of them shapes events to this day that are much in the news. Here's the story, both of them.</p><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Chilling Legacy of These Murders.</span><br /><br />The brutality of these murders would in time to come be visited upon millions of Russians, as the regime which ordered and carried them out blossomed into a world power. We hear much about the six million victims of one group specifically targeted by Nazi Germany, yet that was only roughly half of the total number of the victims of Nazi Germany. And if relatively little is said about the other half, even less is said about the total number of Nazi victims, and even less yet about the even greater number murdered under our ally against Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia under Stalin.<br /><br />By the most conservative estimates, that number would be 4 million from direct repression and 6 million from the results of enforced economic theory, namely, collectivisation, for a total of 10 million. That is roughly equal to total estimates of Nazi victims, and nearly twice the number of their specifically targeted group. However more recently available material generally indicates a total of around 20 million, nearly twice by our ally of what Nazi Germany managed to attain in toto, and over three times the 6 million of their specifically targeted group.<br /><br />The Soviet Union itself passed into history on 26 December 1991. On 17 July 1998, the 80th anniversary of their murders, the bodies of Tsar Nicholas and Tsaritsa Alexandra and the three of their children then found were buried with state honours in the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul in St Petersburg. Why there? The city was founded 27 May 1703 by Tsar Peter the Great and named by him after his patron saint, St Peter. It was the capital of Russia until the Communist revolution, then it was known as Leningrad under the Soviet regime, and its name was restored in 1991. All Russian Emperors since Peter the Great are now buried there.<br /><br />At the burial, the then-president of post-Communist Russia, Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Federation, attended along with members of the House of Romanov, the Russian royal family. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia had declared them saints and martyrs in 1981. On 14 August 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church itself declared them saints, of a type called Passion Bearers. These are people who were killed but not specifically for their faith, and who met their deaths with Christian humility and dignity. This is not a judgement on his rule, rather universally regarded as weak and incompetent at best, but rather on the why and the manner of his death.<br /><br />On 16 June 2003 Russian bishops consecrated the "Church on the Blood" in Yekaterinburg, the city in which the Tsar and family were murdered in the Ipatiev House, on whose site the "Church on the Blood", whose full name is Church on Blood in Honour of All Saints Resplendent in the Russian Land, now stands. Seeing "Catherine" in the city's name? It's there, named at its founding 18 November 1723 after St Catherine, name saint of Catherine I (Yekaterina), Tsarina and wife of then ruling Tsar Peter I the Great, who died 8 February 1725, after which she became ruler like the next Peter and Catherine duo (III and II/the Great). That's right, Catherine the Great, who also began life as a German Lutheran princess. Lots of stuff comes full circle in the cycle that includes Nicholas and Alexandra.<br /><br />The regime which killed them has passed into history, but, there is still a Russian Orthodox Church, there is still a House of Romanov, and there is still a Russia -- The Russian Federation.<br /><br />About 70% of Russians count themselves Orthodox Christians, though few regularly participate in church. Of Orthodox churches, 95% are Russian Orthodox, the traditional Russian religion overall. There are Lutherans in Russia, in large part due to the open immigration policies of Catherine the Great, the first German Lutheran princess to end up Empress of Russia.<br /><br />So yeah, an Empress of Russia is actually a German Lutheran princess in origin. Happened twice actually, both times pretty big deals with effects that endure now. Here's the story.<br /><br /><strong>How a German Lutheran Princess Ends Up Empress of Russia. The Second Time.</strong><br /><strong></strong><br />Alexandra was born 6 June 1872 in Darmstadt in Das Großherzogtum Hessen und bei Rhein. Don't freak, I'll translate, it's The Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine. OK but where izzat? In west central modern Germany, that's where. Its biggest and probably best known city is Frankfurt, on more correctly Frankfurt am Main (that's pronounced like "mine" in English) which means Frankfurt on the Main. OK but what is the Main? It's a river, a major tributary of the Rhine (Rhein). Darmstadt was the seat of the grand dukes of the Grand Duchy, which is why Alexandra, as the daughter of the then-current ruling one, was born there. The current capital of the current German state of Hesse is Wiesbaden.<br /><br />Anyway, the baby girl was given her mother's name. So her mom's name was Alix? Well actually it was Alice, as in Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, a daughter of Queen Victoria. That's right, Queen Victoria was Alix' grandma. This we'll shortly see influenced both the beginning of her life and the end of it. Her childhood nickname was Alicky, which would become a favourite term of endearment with her husband Nicholas too. Alice was a remarkable woman, a huge fan of Florence Nightingale and worked to involve women in health care. Ironically she died pretty young, at age 35 in 1878 in Darmstadt, of diphtheria which was overtaking the whole ducal house.<br /><br />Alix died relatively young too, at 46, but her career as a noblewoman was not to be like her mother's. Alice was much loved in both her native and her married lands -- they lovingly put a Union Jack over her coffin at her funeral in Darmstadt -- but Alix was never accepted as really Russian by nearly everyone from peasants to royalty alike. The whole Russian thing with this German Lutheran princess, which would alter all subsequent history, started with her attraction to the heir to the Russian throne, Nicholas, and his to her.<br /><br />So how would they even meet, you know, German, Russian? You gotta understand that European nobility and royalty are mishpocha (don't freak, that's Yiddish for "extended family"). Nicholas and Alexandra are second cousins, and also third cousins, depending on which ancestral line you go through. They met in 1884 and it was mutual from the start, and when they met again in 1889 there was no denying it. Neither family wanted the match. Grandma (Queen Vic) wanted someone else for Alix, and Nicholas' dad Tsar Alexander III, was dead set against any German or Lutheran marrying into the royal family. But Alix stood up to Grandma, who actually kind of liked it that she did, and as Alexander's health declined he eventually gave in.<br /><br />They got engaged in Germany (Coburg, to be exact) in April 1894 and Alexander died on 1 November 1894. The Russians first saw their new empress-to-be (he became emperor on his father's death, she would become empress consort on marriage to him) as she came to St Petersburg with the family for the funeral. "She comes behind a coffin" was heard everywhere. Things were off to a bad start. She and Nicholas were married right after, on 26 November 1894. Alix at first was not too sure about having to become Russian Orthodox, but she eventually became an enthusiastic convert, and got a new name in the process, Alexandra Feodorovna. Then things went right straight to hell.<br /><br />During the coronation ceremonies a riot broke out when it seemed there wouldn't be enough to go around of the food provided for the public, and several thousand were killed in the stampede. The French had a gala ball scheduled in honour of the coronation. Nicholas and Alexandra were reluctant to attend given what had happened, but they were persuaded by court advisers to go through with it so as not to offend the French. Which ended up offending their own people, who took it as a sign that their royalty cared nothing about what happened to them. Then there's the matter of producing an heir. Alexandra was having daughters, and under court protocol of the time the heir must be male. Then when she finally had a son, he was born with haemophilia, a deadly disease for which there was no treatment at the time.<br /><br />And, haemophilia was known to be passed on in, guess what, Grandma's (that's Queen Vic) line, so she was further thought a disaster for having brought the "English disease" as some called it to the Russian line. Neither all her works of prayer and devotion, nor any available medical treatment, helped, and Alexandra became pretty much a recluse making sure her son had no injury. In time she turned to this itinerant Russian Orthodox "holy man" and healer, Rasputin, and guess what, her son got better, and Rasputin gained influence at the court.<br /><br />Rasputin was a supposed mystic, a type of religious lunacy. Yes, her son got better, but as usual a little science clears up all the "mystical" bullroar. The doctors attending her son were using a new drug widely thought at the time to be a new wonder drug. Aspirin. Yeah, aspirin. It actually is a pretty good mild analgesic (pain reliever) but it also, and this was not known at the time, is an anti-coagulant. Now, retarding the coagulation of the blood is exactly what you don't want to do in treating a haemophiliac! So of course when she turned away from medical treatment and followed Rasputin's advice her son got better -- she quit giving him an anti-coagulant, nothing mystical or spiritual about it.<br /><br />Rasputin's advice unfortunately began to extend to other matters too, and he supposedly had a revelation that Nicholas should go to the front -- the Great War, the War To End All Wars, which it didn't and is now just the first of "world wars" -- and personally take command of the military. This left Alexandra to run the internal affairs of state, for which she was completely unsuited by both training and temperament. So, all sorts of incompetent officials further made a mess of things. Between the shortages due to the war effort and the Russian Winter everyone was miserable and many thought Alexandra was actually sabotaging things, being German and all.<br /><br />Riots ensued, and the soldiers who were supposed to put down the rebellion joined it, and the next day, 13 March 1917, they established a provisional government called the Petrograd Soviet. No, not communists or the Soviet Union. Petrograd because this happened in St Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire, and soviet because that's the word for council in Russian. This is known as the February Revolution. Huh, you just said it was in March! Yeah, in our calendar now but in what is now called the Old Style calendar used there and then, it was February. The Tsar was told he must abdicate, and he did, first being kept with his family in the palace, then, for their safety the provisional government sent them to Siberia.<br /><br />Things changed. The provisional government was itself overthrown by the communists called Bolshevik (the word means "majority") under Vladimir Lenin on 7 November 1917 in the October Revolution (same deal about the calendars, it was 26 October in the Old Style calendar). Their promises of "peace, land and bread" attracted many. Alexander Kerensky, the major figure in the provisional government, was exiled and ended up living out his life in New York City. The royal family did not fare so well, and at 0215 on 17 July, Bolsheviks, having disarmed their guard, shot the entire royal family to death, then smashed the rib cages of the tsar and tsarina with bayonets, stripped the bodies, burned the clothes, and threw the bodies in a mine shaft 12 miles away, then the bodies were pulled out, their faces smashed, dismembered, burned with sulphuric acid, and reburied. There they remained until after the fall of the Soviet Union decades later.<br /><br />(A personal aside -- my French teacher as a kid in the 1950s was an old Russian woman who was a young woman in a family at court through all of this. They were among the exiles, and French being the language of the court, she earned a living as a translator in embassies and ended up in an apartment in her daughter's home. French lessons came with tea and all the decorum of her youth.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How a German Lutheran Princess Ends Up Empress of Russia. The First Time.</span><br /><br />Now there's a story too. Tsarina Alexandra wasn't the first German Lutheran noblewoman to end up Tsarina. Catherine the Great was originally the noble-born raised-Lutheran Sophie Friederike Auguste, nicknamed Figchen, or Little Frederica. Her father was the devout Lutheran Prince Christian August of Anhalt-Zerbst, who as a Prussian general was governor of Stettin, Pomerania, then part of Prussia, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. Her birth city (Stettin) is in a part of Pomerania that is now part of Poland and called Szczecin.<br /><br />Huh? How does Figchen end up Empress of Russia? Because her mother, Johanna, loved court intrigue and wanted it for her daughter, but she really ticked off Tsarina Elisabeth who threw her out of the country for spying for Prussia. The Big E liked Figchen though, and apparently liked the family, hell, she was going to marry Johanna's brother Karl but he died from smallpox before it could happen. Figchen ended up married to E's nephew and heir, Peter III, who was also Figchen's second cousin. But first she learned Russian, and on 28 June 1744 she converted to the Russian Orthodox Church -- against her father's orders, who went ballistic over it -- and was given the name Catherine. Then she marries Peter on 21 August 1745, and after Elisabeth died on 5 January 1762, Peter takes the throne.<br /><br />He didn't last long. He pulled Russia out of the Seven Years War -- remember that, left Mother England in huge debt, to pay for which they taxed the hell out of the American colonies who ended up revolting and becoming the United States -- got friendly with Prussia, admired the Western Europeans, tried to make the Russian Orthodox Church more Lutheran, and had a mistress for whom Catherine was afraid he would divorce her. So he pissed off everybody, and when he went to his paternal ancestral Schleswig-Holstein (the area from which my ancestors the Angles left for Mother England, but hey), Catherine with her lover (fair is fair I guess) staged a military coup and Peter was arrested 14 July 1762. He wasn't too upset really, he just asked for an estate and his mistress, also named Elisabeth.<br /><br />But three days later he was killed by one of the conspirators while in custody, though Figchen/Catherine does not seem to have been behind that part of things. So after Peter being Tsar for six months, his wife succeeds him. Some say she should have been Regent until her son, Paul, was old enough to become Tsar, but what the hell, the first Tsarina Catherine (Catherine the Great is technically Catherine II) succeeded her husband Peter I (aka the Great) in 1725, and anyway Catherine no longer Figchen ruled until she died, which was 17 November 1796, at which time George Washington was in his second term as President of the United States. Got all that? No wonder George didn't want anything resembling royalty here. (We got 'em now anyway, political dynasties, sports and entertainment celebrities and all.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why Eating Runzas Is a Spiritual and World-Historical Experience.</span><br /><br />And a damn good eating experience too.<br /><br />In 1762, the year she came to power, Catherine issued a manifesto inviting non-Jewish Europeans to settle in Russia and farm using more modern European methods. It got few results, French and English preferred to emigrate to America, and another manifesto with more benefits was issued in 1763, attracting Germans since they were allowed to maintain their language, religions and culture, and were exempt from military service. This last was particularly attractive to Mennonites, but many German Lutherans, Catholics and Reformed also came, settling along the Volga River, hence the name Volga Germans, or Wolgadeutsche.<br /><br />However these benefits, particularly the exemption from military service, were eroded and many Wolgadeutsche, especially the pacifist Mennonites, left for the midwestern United States, Canada, and South American places of German emigration. The midwestern US immigrants have given us people as different as US Senator Tom Daschle and and big-band leader Lawrence Welk. But most importantly, it has given us the Runza, a magnificent pocket sandwich of beef, onion and cabbage -- thank you Catherine!!<br /><br />In 1949 Alex Brening and his sister Sally Everett opened a drive-in in Lincoln NE offering food of Wolgadeutsche derivation, which has since expanded to a regional chain, including one close to Concordia-Seward (NE) as every grad of there knows. Besides the fantastic runza (get the cheese runza, Combo #2) they have one of the best burgers, fries and OR (get the half and half "frings") in the whole "fast food" industry, right up there with Five Guys. You can have a great meal, be a part of history back to Catherine the Great, proclaim your solidarity with ethnic self-determination and praise God for religious freedom as a Lutheran (or anything else) all at the same time! Makes me wanna go to the one a few blocks from me right now!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lutherans In Russia Now.</span><br /><br />Anyway, in this heavily Russian Orthodox land with notable German-born raised-Lutheran Tsarinas, there are Lutherans. Not a lot, but even so, not all in the same group (just like here). There is the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria in Russia, which is a member of the International Lutheran Council (founded 1993), as are we ("we" being LCMS). There's the Evangelical Lutheran Church - "Concord", a member of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference (founded 1996), whose American members are WELS and ELS. And there's the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia and Other States, a member of the thoroughly heterodox Lutheran-in-name-only Lutheran World Federation (founded 1947),whose American member is the similarly characterised ELCA, and to which the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria in Russia also belongs.<br /><br />Also there's the Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church. It began with a Siberian named Vsevolod Lytkin, who converted from Soviet era atheism to Lutheranism in Estonia, then part of the Soviet Union, at age 20 in 1987. In 1991 as the Soviet Union was passing into history Estonia became independent and Lytkin began missionary work back in Siberian, with support from our beloved synod (that's LCMS). In 2003 the result of his efforts, the Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church, became independent of the more liberal WLF-affiliated Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church. Pastor Lytkin now serves as the bishop of the SELC. While it is not affiliated with larger Lutheran bodies, in 2010 full recognition and fellowship was established between the SELC and LCMS.<br /><br />Kind of all comes full circle, huh? That's what's cool about history. It makes the circle clearer, sometimes even gives one a clue there is a circle, an interrelation, at all, amid all this stuff of life that otherwise seems like so much dust from the past. And it makes where we are now clearer, which is why I get into all this stuff.<br /><br /><b>Crimea.</b><br /><br />2014 was the 100th year since the start of the world war whose aftermath saw the end of the Russian Empire and rise of the Soviet Union (not to mention the end of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and pretty much the world as it had been known).<br /><br />2014 was also the 60th since year the Soviet Union under Khrushchev made Crimea part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. Huh? Isn't it just part of Ukraine, annexed by those bad Russians? No, it isn't. Crimea is a recent name for what for most of its history has been known as Tauris or Taurica.<br /><br />Its recorded history begins in the 5th Century BC, as a Greek colony named after the native Tauri. It came under Roman control from 47 BC to 340 AD. After that it passed among the Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Khazars and the Eastern Roman Empire (aka Byzantium). In 968 Vladimir the Great of Kiev brought most of it under his control. Well there you go, Kiev, in Ukraine, right? Wrong. In the Kievan Rus'; "Ukraine" means borderland or homeland. Borderland or homeland of what? The land of the Rus', that's what. There's been a Russian identity here for over a millennium; nothing started with Putin. It was here that Vladimir, after checking out Islam, Judaism and Roman Christianity, converted to Christianity in its Eastern Orthodox form from Byzantium, from which it passed to all of what is now Eastern Europe and Russia.<br /><br />Then in 1223 the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan, the "Golden Horde", as they swept through all of Asia and eastern Europe, changed everything everywhere, including here. Settled descendants formed what is called the Crimean Khanate, which lasted from 1449 to 1783 and was a vassal state to the Islamic Ottoman Empire based in what is now "Turkey". Then Catherine the Great, the first German Lutheran born Empress of all the Russias, won the Crimea back from the Ottoman Empire in 1783, and there is stayed until 1917, when the last Tsar was overthrown, with his wife the second German Lutheran born Empress of all the Russias.<br /><br />During the Russian civil war from 1917 - 1921 it was the scene of murderously bloody conflict as the Red Army (Boshevik) and the White Army (anti-Bolshevik) slugged it out. The Reds won and in 1921 it became part of the Soviet Union and stayed that way until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Huh? Didn't you say it was transferred in 1954? Yeah, and this is key -- the transfer was within the Soviet Union, from one of its 16 members (the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) to another (the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). The action was taken 19 February 1954 unilaterally by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (council, remember) of the Soviet Union following its passage 25 January 1954 by the Communist Party.<br /><br />This action violated Soviet law, specifically article 18 of its constitution which states any border change must have the approval of the member republic involved and no referendum was ever held, and article 33, which does not give the Presidium such power. So they changed the constitution after-the-fact a few days later. Yeah, illegal as hell under even Soviet law. So much for "territorial integrity". With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 its former component became an independent nation and just a year later the Crimean legislature voted for independence but Ukraine stopped any referendum from being held. When the armed regime change in Ukraine favoured by the EU to bring it under its orbit happened in 2014, a referendum was finally held and Crimea was restored to Russia itself 60 years after it had been illegally transferred by and within the Soviet Union.<br /><br />That's the stuff the "media" doesn't tell you.<br /><br />You wonder what a different world would be now had Alicky listened to Grandma or Nicholas listened to dad. Or, if Alicky had decided confessing Lutheran faith was more important than literally anything else.<div><br /></div><div>Nicholas and Alexandra's feast day follows the longstanding custom of using the date of earthly death, which is regarded as the day of birth into eternity, as the person's feast day, so it's 17 July.</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-5093395670648685872021-07-02T16:50:00.000-05:002021-07-02T16:50:11.524-05:00The Fourth Of July. 2021.<p>We did not actually declare independence from Mother England on the Fourth of July. What happened was, on the Fourth of July the Second Continental Congress approved a formal declaration explaining the Lee Resolution adopted on the Second of July which actually declared the independence. Here's the story.</p><span style="font-weight: bold;">I. Hostilities Break Out.</span><br /><br />When the Revolutionary War began in April 1775 in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, independence was a minority opinion, and not the goal of the fighting. Most here hoped to remain under the English Crown. The objection, rather, was to the acts of Parliament re the colonies, who were not represented in Parliament, especially those acts exacting taxes. OK, so why did Parliament want taxes from the colonies? The biggest reason was to pay the huge war debt from The Seven Years War. That had concluded twelve years earlier in Europe, with England and Prussia and other German states (there was no Germany in the modern sense) against France, Russia, Sweden, Austria, Saxony and later Spain.<br /><br />Our French and Indian War, which broke out in 1754, was actually a part of the Seven Years War, though the Seven Years War is dated from its European outbreak in 1756. It lasted another seven years until 1763, hence the name. Winston Churchill called it really the first world war, because hostilities happened not just in Europe or over just seven years, but in North America, India and West Africa in the combatants' colonies as well.. England won, more or less; things didn't change much in Europe per se, but England emerged the world's dominant colonial power.<br /><br />But it left Mother England in huge debt. To pay for the war debt, all kinds of taxes were enacted by Parliament, particularly to bring in revenue from the colonies. England saw it as the colonies' fair share of being fought for; but the colonies thought that since they were not represented in Parliament that body had no right to tax them. "No taxation without representation" was the cause. England was stingy with currency in the colonies anyway, and many took to using the Spanish currency the dolar from La Florida, now a state but then a Spanish colony South of us, which is why we have "dollars" to this day.<br /><br />The beef was with Parliament, not the Crown. Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and others, proposed something like what is now the British Commonwealth, preserving unity with the English Crown but leaving Parliament the legislative body for England only, elsewhere being under legislative bodies where they were represented. It was even hoped that the Crown would intervene with Parliament for the colonies.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">II. Tom Paine and Common Sense.</span><br /><br />But unfolding events did not go that way, and brought more and more over to the cause of independence even if remaining under the Crown would have been their preference. A major boost came on 10 January 1776, when Thomas Paine published a 48 page pamphlet called Common Sense. It was published anonymously, for obvious reasons, and royalties went to support General Washington's Continental Army. It was signed, By An Englishman, which he was, from Thetford, Norfolk. He emigrated on the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, and arrived in Philadelphia on 30 November 1774, too sick from the typhoid fever that plagued the ship to get off the boat without the assistance of Franklin's physician.<br /><br />In making the case for independence, Paine intentionally avoided the Enlightenment style, which used much philosophy from ancient Greece and Rome, and wrote more like a sermon, using Biblical references to make his case, so as to be understood by everyone, not just the educated. Now don't go thinking he was some sort of Christian founding father. Paine had no use for Christianity, be it Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, or for any other religion either. In later works he specifically rejected claims about Jesus as Son of God and Saviour as fabulous, literally, fables, nothing more than reworked sun worship, and advocated Deism, "by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues".<br /><br />"Then" and "now" refer to the first and second of the three separately written parts of his The Age of Reason; the quotation is from the second part. Paine and Common Sense though were not much on the minds of the Continental Congress, which was more concerned about how a declaration of independence would affect the war for it. For that matter John Adams thought Common Sense "a crapulous mass", which we now might express as a piece of, well you get the idea.<br /><br />Paine himself spent much time abroad, back in England, and eventually in France where he became part of the French Revolution too, but ran afoul of Robespierre, and was imprisoned 28 December 1793. He was scheduled to be guillotined, but the door to his cell was open to let a breeze in, and when his cell mates closed it the marking on the door faced inside. After the fall of Robespierre, 27 July 1794, he was released in November. He later became friendly with Napoleon, advising him on how to conquer England, Napoleon though a gold statue of Paine should be in every city everywhere, but, noting Napoleon's increasing dictatorship, Paine called Napoleon "the completest charlatan that ever existed".<br /><br />He did not return to the US until 1802, at the invitation of President Jefferson. His support of the French Revolution then Napoleon, his disdain for religion of any kind, his antagonism to George Washington, and his distinctly un-Federalist views made him deeply unpopular. When he died, 8 June 1809 at 72 in Greenwich Village New York, his obituary, originally in The New York Citizen and reprinted throughout the country, said he "lived long, did some good and much harm", and only six people came to his funeral.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">III. Independence.</span><br /><br />It went a little differently for our revolution. The Virginia Convention on 15 May 1776 instructed the Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress to propose to that body a declaration of independence. Richard Henry Lee, General Lee's great uncle, so proposed on 7 June 1776, hence the name Lee Resolution. It was seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts. Here is the text:<br /><br />"Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.<br /><br />That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.<br /><br />That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation."<br /><br />Not all of the colonial conventions had so instructed their delegates to vote for independence, so support was rallied and debate put off. Meanwhile, a Committee of Five was formed to draft a formal declaration. The five were, John Adams (Massachusetts), Roger Sherman (Connecticut), Robert Livingston (New York), Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania), Thomas Jefferson (Virginia). Jefferson was given the job of writing the draft by the other four, who reviewed it. The declaration was proposed to the Congress 28 June 1776.<br /><br />Congress approved the Lee Resolution on 2 July 1776. It was not unanimous. New York abstained from the vote, as their colonial convention had given them no instructions, which assent came on 9 July. Then on 4 July the Declaration of Lee's Resolution was approved, adding Lee's Resolution at the end. However, the delegates did not all sign it right then, most of them signing 2 August 1776! But the image of everybody signing endured and even the elderly Jefferson and Adams remembered it so, though it wasn't. Although John Adams thought 2 July would be Independence Day, from the outset 4 July has been celebrated as Independence Day.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">IV. The Declaration of Independence.</span><br /><br />In my humble opinion, The Declaration of Independence, explaining passage of the Lee Resolution, is one of the towering accomplishments of the mind of Man. Consider its famous words:<br /><br />We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,<br /><br />We now sometimes cynically say how could it be that someone who could write words like "all men are created equal" could also own slaves. We have it backwards. When the concept of democracy arose, in ancient Greece, there was nothing about all men are created equal to it. Democracy was a function of the free class, those with the leisure to devote to becoming informed enough to participate in democracy; those who work do not have this leisure and cannot and should not participate.<br /><br />Even by that great ancestor of our Constitution, the Magna Carta, in 1215, the first time ever that subjects forced concessions from a ruler and placed subject and ruler alike under law rather than the ruler's divine right to rule, there was nothing about all men are created equal to it. The subjects were themselves rulers - barons, the lowest ranking nobility, landholders who held their lands per baroniam, Latin for by barony. That was established by William the Conqueror (1066), a Norman who did not trust us native English and established the rank to ensure loyalty to him through sevitium debitum, service owed, generally a number of knights for the king.<br /><br />The wonder is not then that someone who wrote "all men are created equal" could also own slaves; the wonder is that someone who owned slaves as part of the warp and woof of his time and economy could also envision "all men are created equal". And no-one was more aware of the untenable tension between the two, and the untenable nature of slavery, than the man who wrote those words. It is no discredit to him that it would fall to later leaders to work out the implications he knew full well; it is to his credit that these words were even there for later leaders to work out.<br /><br />And while we're noting things, we may also note that equality of all men is not stated as just the way it is, or the way Man is. (Please remember, "Man" etc is a generic term here, includes male and female.) It says all men are created equal, which means there is a Creator, and that all men have rights not because that's just the way it is, but because all men have been endowed with certain rights by their Creator. It is because those rights are the endowment of their Creator and not the state that therefore they may not be taken away by the state, which is also why the function of government to secure, not grant, these rights. The Creator is essential to this, and is the source of this. That role is not diminished by our freedom to understand the Creator as we, not a government, or a government's state church, will. No Creator, no equality.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">V. The Celebration of Independence.</span><br /><br />The next year, 4 July 1777 -- the war was still on, btw, that didn't end until 1783 -- Bristol, Rhode Island, which had refused to supply the English army and got bombarded for it, fired off 13 cannon, one for each colony, at dawn and sunset to commemorate the first anniversary of the Declaration. The next year the British had taken Bristol, but in 1785, independence secured, Bristol established the Bristol Fourth of July Parade, the longest running Independence Day commemoration in the US.<br /><br />The country's largest Independence Day thing is Macy's Fireworks Spectacular, which began with the bicentennial year 1976. And cities throughout the country do much the same on a smaller scale, not to mention in streets and backyards all over.<br /><br />Maybe old John Adams wasn't so far off. The Fourth of July is indeed itself Independence Day, and has survived the lunacy of Day and Day (Observed) of the Uniform Holidays Bill of 1968, changing four Federal holidays from what they are to Mondays to create a three day week-end, a spirit which has infected the church calendar in modern revisions too. But I guess a Fourth of July and a Fourth of July (Observed) is too absurd for even the modern mind.<br /><br />But it is not at all uncommon in those years when the Fourth falls on a work-week day as we now know it, which was a long time coming in 1776, for fireworks etc to be done on the nearest week-end.<br /><br />And get this though -- on the third Fourth of July ever, in 1779, the Fourth fell on a Sunday, for which reason it was celebrated the next day, Monday. How about that -- the original Monday week-end was because of the Lord's Day, Sunday! Guess old Paine wasn't the main force here. At least then.<br /><br />Judas H Priest, now if the Fourth falls on a Sunday, as in 2021, we want Monday off, not because Sunday is a Lord's Day, a little Easter each week, but because we didn't get a three day week-end! Not to mention our churches making Saturday Sunday now too, so we can get church "out of the way", er, increase participation, as if most people don't get it out of the way by just not going, either day!<br /><br />Sunday is still Sunday, and the Fourth of July is still the Fourth of July. After independence was declared on 2 July, the next day John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail the following, though he thought it would be for the Second of July, the day independence was actually declared, but regardless, it stands as an enduring statement of what our commemoration of independence is all about, and that ain't three-day week-ends:<br /><br />"I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."<br /><br />Roger that. Happy Fourth Of July!Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-84690168143571698502021-06-25T12:11:00.000-05:002021-06-25T12:11:02.478-05:00The Augsburg Confession, 491 Years On, 25 June 2021.<p>I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.</p>So we say every Sunday. Well, a lot of us Lutherans mean to say that, but we say "Christian" instead of "catholic", though the word in the original, and we're supposed to be so big on what's in the original, is katholike, which means whole, complete, entire, universal. So does the cognate word in English, catholic. But, there's this very large and well-known church that uses the word in its name, and we wouldn't want to seem to be saying we believe in IT, now would we? And too, some of us say it on Saturday late afternoon as if we did mean IT, since we follow their new custom since Vatican II of Saturday Sunday services, so hey.<br /><br />Our essay is in nine short sections, detailing the drift of the post from a few days ago, "When In Rome ... ", on the challenges and dangers of presenting the faith of the Augsburg Confession in our time:<br /><br />I. The Lutheran "Worship Wars"<br />II. The Nature of Roman Catholic "liturgical reform"<br />III. So Why Did We Reform the Liturgy First, Not Them?<br />IV. The Nature of Lutheran Liturgical Reform<br />V. The Nature of Catholic Liturgical Reform - Trent<br />VI. The Nature of Catholic Liturgical Reform - Vatican II<br />VII. The Difference Between Catholic and Catholic Liturgical Reform<br />VIII. What's the Point of All This Catholic Stuff? We're Lutherans!<br />IX. Conclusion. Why Catholic Liturgical Reform Has No Place In Lutheran Liturgy<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I. The Lutheran "Worship Wars".</span><br /><br />Much is said these days about Lutheran church bodies abandoning classic Lutheran doctrine, and also doctrine in motion, otherwise known as liturgy, for things that supposedly will bring greater attendance and to which we can add Lutheran content. Why would one want to infuse a form that evolved as it did to omit the content one seeks to put back in, or think that any numbers gained thereby represent a gain for the Gospel rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered? It cannot be explained by anything but mistaking mission for marketing.<br /><br />But even where the adoption and adaptation of American "evangelical" worship, which we might call Willow Creek For Lutherans, is opposed, little if anything is said about how we have let in the back door what we try to keep out the front, in the adoption and adaptation of Roman Vatican II worship, which we might call Vatican II For Lutherans. And the unintended influence of the latter on the former, one way of dropping our worship for a Lutheranised other way opening the door to dropping our worship for yet other Lutheranised ways, goes largely unrecognised. And the damage continues from Vatican II For Lutherans and Willow Creek For Lutherans alike.<br /><br />On the face of it, one might indeed wonder whether there is not much a Lutheran can appreciate about the changes in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church since Vatican II. For example, using an Old Testament passage along with the Epistle and Gospel, praying the Canon out loud so the Verba are heard by the congregation, using the local language rather than Latin, for restoring intercessions and petitionary prayer of the people, and not in a fixed form but one that can be adapted to what is going on. Are those things so bad? Do they not return to an older and better tradition than what was set in the Tridentine Rite? While there is much that may be questionable about Vatican II liturgical reform, must we then ignore it altogether or not find in it good things we can use too? Let's look and see.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">II. The Nature of Roman Catholic "liturgical reform".</span><br /><br />It may, at first, seem so from a Lutheran standpoint. I don't, now, have any problem with the "blessings" mentioned. But a Catholic, which I once was, ought to have tons of pixels of reasons why those "blessings" are a few of the things that are neither necessary nor even desirable, and obscure other things that are necessary. But Catholics don't anymore. For example, the "silent canon". Used to be a good thing, as The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass reflected the life of Christ, wherein he taught first, then acted for our salvation. Therefore the first part of the mass is Scripture and preaching, verbal, but in the second the focus is the action, not the words, which are silent, let alone congregational "memorial acclamations", as in the novus ordo, which destroy the whole idea. The RCC taught something, then started teaching something else, but said nothing really changed; I still believed what they taught me before, so I left thinking the whole thing must be screwed up both before and after.<br /><br />That was then. It isn't now. When I first read the BOC along with Adult Information Class, I would see in my mind the implementation of what is said there in contrast to the implementation that I actually did see before me during and after Vatican II. WOW. Throw in Babylonian Captivity, and I'm on board!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">III. So Why Did We Reform the Liturgy First, Not Them?</span><br /><br />So here's the deal -- WE didn't get those blessings just listed from Vatican II, THEY did! So what to us then is their catching up? With the exception of the OT reading, which kind of jacks with Jerome's model of Torah/Haftorah from the synagogue lectionary to Gospel/Epistle, but adds on without destroying it, WE ALREADY HAD THEM, four hundred and some years before they started playing catch-up! And they sure as hell didn't produce the ESV.<br /><br />Our problem is when we DON'T use our version of the pre-V2, and for that matter pre-Trent, historic liturgy, and instead start to worship after their new ones. It's when we DON'T add an OT reading to the historic lectionary going back to Jerome, but instead use their new one which was a conscious intended break with that tradition and the preaching associated with it. It's when we rehash their stuff, or worse rehash our stuff in the manner that they rehash their stuff, either way no different than others of us rehash American "evangelicalism" and Willow Creek or stuff like that.<br /><br />So let 'em play catch-up. For THEM, not us. We don't need to start playing catch-up to their catch-up!<br /><br />In short, the things from Vatican II which we cheer, WE ALREADY HAVE and a Catholic should deplore, and if they are now cheering them and doing them, something changed, and it wasn't us.<br /><br />OK, well then that's a good thing, right? Well, again, from our point of view, yes. So, with all this good stuff happening, maybe we can even look at getting back to-gether, going "home to Rome", huh?<br /><br />Just a second though. Something doesn't quite add up. If Rome has this divinely instituted guarantee in the bishops in succession from the Apostles in communion with the successor to St Peter, the Pope, where the church will always conserve the true faith of Christ, and we don't, we deny it and live outside it, and we therefore aren't even church in the strict sense of the word, then how is it that we do all this stuff 400 some years before without this guarantee, and how is it, if it's such a good idea, that it was held up with the guys with the guarantee for 400 some years?<br /><br />Seems like it oughta be the other way around; it's the guys without the guarantee and all who oughta be catching up, so if there were changes here lately with them, they must have been a different sort of change than the sort of change we did centuries ago.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">IV. The Nature of Lutheran Liturgical Reform.</span><br /><br />And indeed it was. Which is our whole point here.<br /><br />What was our intent? Whether we achieved it or not is another matter; what was our intent? Our Book of Concord makes it clear again and again our intent was not to come up with anything new, but quite the opposite, to preserve what was already there.<br /><br />This is meant across the board; here, since the matters mentioned above are liturgical, let's look at how this works out liturgically. Just as we aim to teach no new doctrine, but the constant doctrine of the church pruned of later accretions, so also we seek no new order of worship, but the same order, corrected of abuses.<br /><br />From the Augsburg Confession:<br />1) in the Mass, nearly all the usual ceremonies are preserved, the only thing new being throwing in some German hymns among the sung Latin (ACXXIV)<br />2) and we stick to the example of the church, taken from Scripture and the Fathers, which is especially clear in that we retain the public ceremonies for the most part similar to those previously in use, only differing in the number of masses (ACXXIV),<br />3) and even though the observance of holy days, fasting days and the like has been the basis of outrageous distortions of forgiveness of sins by Christ's merit, nonetheless the value of good order in the church, when accompanied by proper teaching, leads us to retain the traditional order of readings in the church and the major holy days (ACXXVI).<br /><br />What is the intent here, what sort of change and by what means is confessed here? Is it to make our worship more authentic by remodelling it closer to that of the early church? Is it to make our worship more authentic by remodelling it taking into account other rites of earlier origin? Is it to make our worship more authentic by coming up with a new set of readings to offer more Scripture especially more moral teaching and less miracle stories? Is it to make our worship more authentic by offering options throughout the same rite, to make our worship more authentic by regarding abuses and distortions along the way as invalidating the way itself and the rite developed along the way? Is it to then, part stepping back in history, part stepping across in other rites, and part creating new things altogether, to step forward with a grand pastiche of a new order of mass, new lectionary, new calendar, to show we have gone beyond the abuses and distortions of the past and are now ready to address the future?<br /><br />Nothing of the sort! In fact, the opposite of the sort! It was to accept and preserve the constant liturgy of the church, right along with the faith it expresses, pruned of excesses and accretions. It was not to do something new, or something new made by jumping back centuries to earlier, presumably purer, times.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">V. The Nature of Catholic Liturgical Reform - Trent.</span><br /><br />We ought remember too, that when the Augsburg Confession was presented in 1530, the Tridentine Rite, as it is called now, was 40 years in the future, and when the Book of Concord was complete in 1580, it was only 10 years old. The "Tridentine Rite" was precisely Rome's effort to both address the legitimate concerns of the Reformation and at the same time guard against its doctrinal errors from Rome's point of view, establishing one norm to effect both aims for the Western Church as a whole, and allowing other rites to be observed locally or by religious orders only if they were no less than two hundred years old, which is to say, before 1370, the Tridentine Rite being promulgated in 1570, and therefore untainted by the Reformation.<br /><br />The 1570 typical edition would have five revisions: 1604 by Pope Clement VIII, who had also revised Jerome's Vulgate (Latin) Bible and the two needed harmonising; 1634 by Pope Urban VIII; 1884 by Pope Leo XIII; 1920 by Pope Benedict XV, mostly making official the work of the late Pius X; 1962 by Pope John XXIII, mostly making official the work of the late Pius XII.<br /><br />Revised typical editions don't just happen out of the blue. They codify and formalise specific papally mandated changes made in the years before. For example, when I was an altar boy, the 1920 typical edition was in force, but Pius XII had made extensive revisions to the Holy Week liturgy binding in 1955, which were controversial then. I remember older people grousing about this new stuff that changed what Holy Week was even like. They remain controversial now, in the larger context that some advocates of the Tridentine Rite do not accept the 1962 edition which incorporated them, and/or John XXIII's later revisions to the edition, but none advocate the original 1570 edition as some sort of purity. Rome insists upon the 1962 edition where the Tridentine Rite is allowed.<br /><br />The point is, when we speak of how we've "always worshipped", nobody, absolutely nobody, takes that to mean that nothing ever changed, any where, any time, and never will -- it has, it does, and it will, change not being the question, but rather what kind of change and change into what.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">VI. The Nature of Catholic Liturgical Reform - Vatican II.</span><br /><br />The Tridentine Rite was replaced entirely by the novus ordo missae, the New Order of Mass, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 and coming out in 1970. It too did not just happen, bam, but was a codification, a finalising and formalising, of things introduced prior to it, this time during and after the Second Vatican Council. The new rite was a NEW rite, with a new calendar, a new series of readings over three years replacing the one that stood and grew for about 1500 years, and unlike anything before it in the same rite, different options for doing one thing such as confession and absolution, not to mention four different eucharistic prayers for the heart of the mass itself.<br /><br />The old rite was not declared invalid, but replaced, with certain exceptions granted for its use. The motu proprio of 2007, Summorum pontificum, did not change that at all, but rather made simpler the conditions for exceptions. And then went one better -- while the novus ordo remains the lex orandi, the rule of prayer, for the church, now, in addition to the new multiform lex orandi, the 1962 edition of the Tridentine Rite will be considered an other-than-ordinary (the word extraordinary meant literally) expression of that same lex orandi! All the same thing, of course -- implying too, one must recognise the novus ordo as the normal use of the Roman Rite to use the Tridentine Rite as its extraordinary use, which does not in the least address the entire reason why some Catholics from the get-go continued with the Tridentine Rite, namely, that the new order was false to prior orders.<br /><br />Thus, if it is true that for Catholics the new mass was a great step forward, and continued steps forward consist in being faithful to the new mass rather than endless departures from it in its supposed "spirit", then the previous rite is at best an unneeded step and at worst a step backward from that reform, and if it is true that for Catholics the new mass was the step backward, indeed a step away, from the true mass, then this requires an acceptance of the invalid new rite as valid.<br /><br />So, change everywhere. Indeed. But again, change is not the issue. The issue is, what kind of change and change into what.<br /><br />The fact is, the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, no less than those of Trent, proceed from a basis completely different than, and completely foreign to, the liturgical reforms of the Lutheran Reformation. Yes, there are points of similarity in the results, certainly. There are large areas of similarity across the board. But the totality, and the underlying agenda, are an entirely different effort than ours, and in fact utterly hostile to the very thing our reform set out to reform and pass on.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">VII. The Difference Between Catholic and Catholic Liturgical Reform.</span><br /><br />The late Neuhaus, in his writings about his conversion to the post-conciliar RCC, expresses better than anything I have read in some time the utter disgust and rejection of the traditional Catholic Church by the Catholic Church put in its place at Vatican II. All very politely expressed, so Neuhaus doesn't even recognise it in himself as he expresses it! An entirely new church, containing nothing of anything before it, which it clearly despises. Borrowing from Maritain, yet another who constructed, like Newman, his partly Protestant partly pagan "Catholic Church" to address his own needs, the violent caricature that mindset offers of anything before Vatican II is as much the actual church before the Vatican II as the "spirit" of Vatican II is Vatican II, and is utterly obscene in its gross falseness (again, unintended and unrecognised) and in its disconnect from the Catholic Church (and again, unintended and unrecognised) that is more radical than anything in the entire range of the "Reformation".<br /><br />Just as there is a "spirit" of Vatican II and Vatican II itself, there was a "spirit" of Trent and Trent itself too. Then, as now, this confusion of the two is seen in primarily two places, one being popular piety, where things are done thinking they are based in the real thing whereas they are based in the grossest of misunderstood caricatures of it, the other being the actions of priests and bishops who do essentially the same thing but with far greater implications due to their position.<br /><br />How utterly ironic that, as the post-conciliar RCC attempts to address the confusion of Vatican II with the "spirit" thereof by some sort of "reform of the reform", the real Vatican II itself is based on a confusion of Trent with the "spirit" thereof.<br /><br />The things which, as a Lutheran now thank God, I am happy to see seem to indicate the RCC is in the early stages of catching up with where the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church has been for some centuries now, and are largely the same things which, as a Catholic, indicate the RCC is in the final stages of becoming a Protestant church but with the pope at the top, as my dad, a 1941 RCC convert, used to put it.<br /><br />Newman, Bouyer, Maritain, on and on, Protestants all, constructed a "Catholic Church" intellectually that allowed them to remain essentially Protestant but with the external validity supplied by the institutional RCC church, which at Vatican II was crystallised and codified and made official by the institutional RCC church itself. These theologians were collectively called the Nouvelle Theologie, the New Theology, and in the decades leading up to Vatican II were repeatedly warned against by popes up to and including the last pre-conciliar pope, Pius XII.<br /><br />de Lubac in 1946 was forbidden to publish by the Catholic Church; de Lubac was a peritus (theological expert and adviser) at the Council and was made a cardinal by John Paul II.<br />Chenu's book Le Saulchoir was put on the Index of Forbidden Books by Pius XII; Chenu was a peritus at the Council.<br />Urs von Balthasar in 1950 was banned from teaching by the Catholic Church; JPII named him a cardinal.<br />Congar was banned from teaching or publishing by the Catholic Church; after the Council, JPII, greatly influenced by him, made him a cardinal.<br /><br />Chenu and Congar, along with Rahner, Schillebeeckx and Kueng, were part of the founding of the journal Concilium, begun in 1965 during the Council as a scholarly journal of the thought behind the reform. Urs von Balthasar and de Lubac, along with Bouyer, Walter Kasper and Joseph Ratzinger, were part of the founding of the journal Communio, founded after the Council in 1972 thinking Concilium though on the right direction had gone too far.<br /><br />The direction was not the issue; it is the same for both, the question being only how far it goes. The more conservative answer is Vatican II Catholicism as officially taught by the hierarchy collectively and the post-conciliar popes, the more liberal answer being the "spirit" of Vatican II, the "excesses" etc. from which the conservatives think a "reform of the reform" will deliver that church.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">VIII. What's the Point of All This Catholic Stuff? We're Lutherans!</span><br /><br />All of them, along with Rahner, Kueng, Schillebeeckx, Bouyer, Gilson, and Danielou, were the Nouvelle Theologie, warned against not by name but by description by Pius XII in Humani generis (1950). And three years earlier, in Mediator Dei, Pius XII specifically rejected a liturgical archaeology, as he called it, as a model for liturgical change, as if there were no organic development of liturgy by the Holy Spirit, and as if validity were to come from scholars uncovering earlier therefore purer or better sources which become current models.<br /><br />All of that is dissent, and was recognised as such by the Catholic Church prior to Vatican II. That has one kind of consequences within the Roman Catholic Church, which amount to this: what is now normative Catholicism was prior to Vatican II dissent from Catholicism. A more conservative version of that dissent won, and now maintains supremacy over the more liberal version of the same dissent. The direction of Mediator Dei and Humani generis was left in the dust.<br /><br />As Lutherans we may note indeed that liturgical reform at Trent specifically sought to remove any taint of the Reformation. But we must also -- and this is the point of going through all this "Catholic stuff" -- note that the liturgical reform at Vatican II absolutely did not accept Lutheran ideas expressed in our Confessions, but rather proceeded on a basis of "liturgical archaeology" that is foreign to both our Confessions and the Roman Catholic Church, a basis which rejects the common element of organic growth accepting and treasuring its results.<br /><br />Sasse wrote in We Confess the Sacraments (Concordia 1985, the particular passage quoted on the late Pastor McCain's excellent blog Cyberbrethren for 18 June 2010) that if the right relationship of liturgy and dogma can be known in Rome, as seen in Mediator Dei, then how much moreso among us who also make the right understanding of the Gospel a criteria of liturgy.<br /><br />IOW, what was lacking in Mediator Dei and in the liturgical reforms of Trent is the same thing that was lacking that led to the Lutheran Reformation, namely, a right understanding of the Gospel. At Trent, steps were taken to ensure that no taint of what were, in their minds, our incorrect and novel understanding of the Gospel would influence the liturgy, but the organic growth process itself rather than liturgical archaeology was not in dispute, just Rome's stranglehold on the process as well as on the catholic church itself.<br /><br />What was lacking in Vatican II and its novus ordo is the common element not in dispute between us and Rome, the participation in that organic process, accepting what has been handed on to us rather than recreating it based on liturgical archaeology of a Romantic ideal of a lost pure Apostolic or Patristic age. In so doing, as the banned theologians of one decade became the conciliar theological experts (periti) and Cardinals of the next, Rome in no way came closer to us with a right understanding of the Gospel as a criteria of liturgy, but in fact turned its back on the right relationship of dogma however understood and liturgy that was not in dispute at the Lutheran Reformation.<br /><br />Yet we, "we" being LCMS, not only just Lutherans in general, follow right after them, "them" being now not just Rome but the other liturgical church bodies, such as the Anglican Communion, the ECUSA and ELCA here, and the EKD in the "old country", all of them predictably doctrinally heterodox too, in either or both of adopting and adapting Rome's novus ordo liturgy, including its lectionary and calendar, and applying the principles of liturgical archaeology to our own liturgical past.<br /><br />And so we place the results on an equal basis with the historic liturgy, then wonder why others wonder why yet other things, or no liturgy at all, cannot also be placed on that equal footing!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">IX. Conclusion. Why Catholic Liturgical Reform Has No Place In Lutheran Liturgy.</span><br /><br />What is important for us Lutherans about that is this: both Trent and Vatican II resulted in new Roman missals, but neither effort sought what our reforms seek and therefore neither are the models to which we turn and neither produce a lex orandi consistent with our lex credendi. In the novus ordo, while on the surface it may seem to move closer to our reforms, we see an order of service that resulted from entirely different ideas and objectives than our reforms, ideas and objectives which in fact are contradictory to ours and reject their entire basis. Ours seek to retain the usual ceremonies except where contraindicated by the Gospel, theirs seek to replace the usual ceremonies with new ones based on the concepts of Nouvelle Theologie.<br /><br />The fruit of their effort has nothing to contribute to ours, and, in seeking to "Lutheranise" this manner of worship we are no less attempting to make Lutheran a kind of worship based on a kind of belief that is not ours, attempting to make a lex orandi from something based on a lex credendi that is not ours, than those who go to Willow Creek et al seek to "Lutheranise" a content and a lex orandi also derived from a belief and a lex credendi that is not ours.<br /><br />If the latter has become popular and in many eyes not only permissible but desirable, why should that surprise us when we have done the same thing in the former, since either way the result is "contemporary worship" rather than the conservation of the ongoing liturgy of the church?<br /><br />Concilium, Communio, Nowayio!<br /><br />Textual Note: This is a revision of my post "On being catholic, on being Catholic" from 18 March 2009. Understanding the nature of "catholic" as distinct from "Catholic" seems more urgent than ever on this anniversary of the presentation of our most fundamental confession.Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-8556549386772050212021-06-22T11:10:00.000-05:002021-06-22T11:10:37.750-05:00When In Rome ... 2021.<p>do as the Romans do. Yeah, yeah, a common phrase, whyrya posting about that?</p>Here's why. Three reasons.<br /><br />1. Guess what? This often heard and used phrase actually first came from a resolution to a controversy over proper observances in the Christian church. Yeah, really, it comes from the "worship wars" but hardly anyone even knows that.<br />2. It's only half of what was originally said, and once the other half is known, it puts a whole different meaning to both the first half and to the whole.<br />3. The whole matter leads nicely into the upcoming post on the commemoration of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession later this month, giving important lessons on confessing that confession now.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">About "Saint" Ambrose, the Guy Who Said It.</span><br /><br />Here's the deal on the origin of the saying. The guy who first said it was "Saint" Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. Ambrose lived from about 337 AD or a little later until 4 April 397. He was born in Augusta Treverorum, Praefectura Praetorio Galliarum. What in the hell is that, and where?<br /><br />OK, Augusta Treverorum is still around. That is its Roman name. These days it's called Trier. It's in Germany.<br /><br />So what's a Praefectura Praetorio Galliarum? A prefecture (praefectura) was one of four large administrative areas set up in the Roman Empire on the death of Constantine the Great on 22 May in 337, the same year Ambrose was likely born. So a prefecture is the highest unit under the Empire itself, and it is governed by a prefect (praefectus). Galliarum means "of the Gauls", and the Praetorian Prefecture of Gaul included basically what is now England, France, the western part of Germany, Spain, and Mauritania in Africa. What's this Praetorio thing? A Praetorian Prefect (Praefectus praetorio) was originally the commander of the Praetorian Guard, an elite military special forces unit that guarded the Emperor, but Constantine disbanded the Guard, and the adjective "praetorian" was then applied to the four prefects who as it were guarded the four prefectures of the Empire for the Emperor.<br /><br />OK, takes care of Praefectura Praetorio Galliarum, it's the Praetorian Prefecture of Gaul. And Ambrose's father was the Praetorian Prefect of the Praetorian Prefecture of Gaul. One of the four top officers of the Empire. A major player. Which is also why Ambrose was born in Trier -- that was the capital of the prefecture, and also by that time an Imperial residence in the West and a functional capital of the Western Roman Empire rather than Rome itself.<br /><br />I gotta digress here a minute. I've been to a hell of a lot of places, but Trier is absolutely the most captivating, enchanting and wonderful place of them all, and maybe one day again I will have dinner outside the Porta Nigra, the "Black Gate", the only surviving of the four gates the Romans built to guard each side of the city, against most likely some of my ancestors before we moved to England. I have never felt like I felt in Trier anywhere else, and that was fifty years ago as of 2019.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Governor Of The Imperial Diocese of Milan Becomes Its "Bishop".</span><br /><br />Well back to the story. Ambrose's father was a Roman bigwig and Ambrose was sent to Rome for his education. He rose through the governmental and political ranks to become what we would call a Governor-general, but they called vicarius, vicar, meaning representative. A vicar represented the Praetorian Prefect who in turn represented the Emperor, in this case to the diocese of Milan. Hey, aren't diocese run by bishops? No they're not originally, and the church had nothing to do with them. A diocese is an administrative unit of the Roman Empire as set up by Diocletian. Hey, diocese, Diocletian -- yeah, he named his new units "diocese" after himself. And Milan was also by then the official capital of the Empire.<br /><br />The same Diocletian, ruling from Milan, in July 285 had split the unwieldy Empire in two, to try to hold it-together, and set up a system where each half would have its "Augustus" and its "Caesar", a system called the Tetrarchy. Diocletian was the last Emperor of an undivided Roman Empire. He designated Nicomedia, in modern Turkey, as the Eastern capital in 286, and in 293 designated Milan, then called Mediolanum, which had been a functional capital as was Trier, the official Western capital.<br /><br />Diocletian became the Augustus in the East with his fellow general officer Maximian as the Augustus in the West. The Romans themselves weren't real happy with the Empire no longer seated at Rome btw. (Short aside: I've been to Milan and Rome too and beautiful as they are, give me Trier any day.) Diocletian then became the only Roman Emperor ever to retire from office, on 1 May 305. Whereupon the Tetrarchy fell apart amid the schemes of Maximian's kid Maxentius and a guy named Constantine. Diocletian, racked with despair at this and illness, died on 3 December 311, possibly by suicide.<br /><br />Ambrose was the Governor-general of the diocese of Milan for a couple years when in 374 the "bishop", the head religious figure of the diocese, a guy named Auxentius and an Arian Christian, died, and a great uproar ensued over whether the next "bishop" would be an Arian or a Trinitarian Christian. When Governor Ambrose intervened to calm things down, everybody said Hey, YOU be the bishop. He fled but the guy hiding him got a letter from the Emperor (Gratian) saying it was OK for Ambrose to be "bishop" so he was turned in.<br /><br />Little problem here though. Ambrose was not only not clergy, not trained in the faith, he wasn't even baptised. But hey, not a problem when the Empire says OK. Within a week he was baptised, ordained, and made bishop. I'm not making this up! And we bitch about SMP being a fast track! You think that's wild, hey, six years later the "Catholic Church" was defined by the co-Emperors (Gratian again, Valentinian II and Theodosius), and became the state religion for the whole Roman Empire on 27 February 380 with the Edict of Thessalonica, and out of that came a state church so entrenched that it's still around over 1500 years after the state whose religion it was, the Roman empire, collapsed in the West (476) and over 500 years after it collapsed in the East (1453).<br /><br />Yup, the RC and the EO. Who still maintain the name for their administrative units (diocese) that they had when their "bishops" were the chief religious figures of the Imperial units the diocese.<br /><br />So here's Ambrose, from an imperial residence and functional Roman capital in Trier, "bishop" in Milan, the official Western capital of the Roman Empire since Emperor Diocletian made it so in 293, and guess what, he gets the holder of the most prestigious professorship in the world of its time, guy named Augustine from Carthage who got the gig in Milan, as a convert and baptises him in 387, seven years on into the "Catholic Church"!<br /><br />I ain't getting into Augustine's career here, that's covered in other posts in the Past Elder Blogoral Calendar, "Augustine and Happy Birthday, Western Catholic Church" revised and posted each year for 6 September, and Section VIII of "Eastern Church/Empire, Western Church Empire" revised and posted each year on 16 January, founding day of the Roman Empire. The point here is, he ends up in this new state religion, basically morphing the neoPlatonism dominant in philosophy at the time into Christianity, then goes back to North Africa and ends up as, you guessed it, "bishop" in Roman Imperial diocese of Hippo Regius (now Annaba, Algeria).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How the Phrase Came About.</span><br /><br />So here it is. Amid all the turmoil of the age -- which again, I ain't getting into here, it's in those same posts just mentioned -- there's a controversy about what are the correct days on which to fast. None, if you ask me. Anyway, fasting was done on different days in different places, so Augustine asks Ambrose for his advice on settling the matter.<br /><br />Well, Ambrose was known to be, as we put it in SEPs for call candidates now, flexible in his worship preferences. So he writes to Augustine: "When I'm in Rome I fast on Saturdays (the local Roman custom) and when I'm in Milan I don't. Follow the custom where you are."<br /><br />Anyway his advice eventually crystallised as a proverb in mediaeval Latin as si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi. OK OK, I'll translate -- if you are in Rome, live in the Roman way; if you are elsewhere, live as they do there. Which has come into English, though only the first half of it, as "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".<br /><br />So there, now you can impress the hell out of people at your next cocktail party, fund raiser, reception, winkel, or whatever the case may be. But that was not my point in going through all this stuff. The reason I bother with, and bother you with, this kind of stuff at all, both in this post and all the others on this blog, is what does it show us about things now.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Guess What? We Ain't In Rome!</span><br /><br />So what does the advice of Ambrose to Augustine about the correct days to fast show us about things now?<br /><br />As we saw, our modern English descendant of that advice leaves out half of it. It's not just when in Rome do as the Romans do, but also, when someplace else do as they do there. Which means, the Roman church way does not have to be imposed on anywhere else, and also, how they do it in other places is just as fine too and does not have to be imposed on Rome.<br /><br />What does this mean? Or for our non-Lutheran readers, what does that mean? (If you're a non-Lutheran reader and don't get the joke here, don't worry, just having fun with the usual English rendering of the phrase "Was ist das?" which Luther puts before each explanation of things in his Small Catechism.)<br /><br />Several things to note. First is what Ambrose is NOT telling him to do. Ambrose is not telling Augustine to chose anything at all, but to stick with existing customs in the places they are found. Ambrose is also not telling him to come up with a new and better custom. He is also not telling him to decide which is right and impose one place's custom on another. And, most important to note, he is also not telling him hey, why not put a synthesis or pastiche to-gether from both customs and maybe something new too, thus presenting the wider rich heritage to everyone everywhere.<br /><br />IOW, he is not telling him to act in any of the ways our "liturgical movement" scholars, or is it liturgical movement "scholars", do in coming up with liturgical service books, but quite the opposite.<br /><br />Second: What are the right days to fast is not a question on the same level as for example what is the right way to celebrate the Divine Service. The controversy addressed by "when in Rome ..." was about when to have fasting days, not whether to have fasting days or what they are. Fasting days per se were not in question, just when to do them, so when in Rome do them when they are done there and when someplace else do them when they are done there.<br /><br />IOW, "Christian Freedom" does not mean "Do What You Want" and "adiaphora" is not Greek for "whatever". There's two quite different kinds of differences. Some differences in practice do not alter what is practiced, for example, fasting on this day or fasting on that day does not change what fasting is. But, some differences do reflect a difference in what is being practiced, for example, differences in what is said at and around the consecration of the bread and wine at communion services reflect differences as to what exactly is happening -- is it an action we do or an action Christ does, is this actually his body and blood or rather a symbol or memorial of it, etc. Ambrose is not referring to differences as to what is done, just differences of how or when. Everything is not ok.<br /><br />The validity of Lutheran liturgical reform included both kinds of difference, that Rome does not have to authorise and control liturgy and impose its way throughout the church and ceremonies may be different in different places, as well as difference with Rome as to the nature of what is happening. That was a major issue in the Reformation, and it is important not to confuse these two very different kinds of differences. How or When is one thing, What is quite another.<br /><br />Yet now, having established that, and, our forefathers in LCMS having come to the US to escape a government imposed synthesis of Lutheran worship with Reformed (Calvinist) worship that reflects a different understanding of what worship even is, what do we do since then? We turn around and impose both Roman and other worship on ourselves, that's what. We escape the forced Prussian Union of Lutheran with other German Protestant worship, then here seek to combine Lutheran and other American Protestant worship ourselves. And when we are not doing that, we seek to combine Lutheran worship with Rome's latest, the novus ordo of Vatican II. All of such efforts are false to Ambrose's advice!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi.</span><br /><br />Do as the Romans do when in Rome. We are not in Rome any more than we are in Willow Creek. Walther knew this, and in his day founded LCMS in 1847 with like minded pastors to counter Lutheran efforts in his time to recast Lutheran worship with what were then called "new measures" drawn from churches with big attendance, taking forms that supposedly better address people now, as evidenced by bigger attendance, and endowing them with Lutheran content, ignoring that those forms are as they are precisely so as not to express the beliefs we have about worship.<br /><br />Now, over a century later, so many in LCMS fall for the same siren call of the new measures of our time, trying to adopt them, in hopes of getting the numbers the churches from which they are taken get, and imbue them with a Lutheran content. Then so many others try to counter that with a tradition that is no tradition at all but simply taking another non-Lutheran new measure of our time, the novus ordo of Vatican II, and making it our own, joining the bandwagon of liturgical heterodox churches whose common property such adaptations have become.<div><br /></div><div>These two trends appear to be different but are in fact the same thing in different form, differences not in How or When but What, even as we try in C21 as they did in C19 to make a What fit a content for which it was not made.<br /><br />Neither trying to adopt and adapt new measures of "evangelical" worship nor the new measures of Vatican II remain true to Ambrose's advice, not to mention to what our Confessions say -- "nearly all the usual ceremonies are also preserved", "we keep many traditions that are leading to good order (1Cor. 14:40) in the Church, such as the order of Scripture lessons in the Mass and the chief holy days." Not revised, not adapted, not to be recast as soon as Rome makes a move, not to locate ourselves within developments in the wider Christian community, but to PRESERVE, to KEEP, except only that which, not that is not found in the Gospel, but that contradicts the Gospel.<br /><br />In these two equal but opposite departures from the basis of our liturgical reform we find the greatest challenge, which is not external but internal, to the presentation of the faith of the Augsburg Confession now.<br /><br />This is a prolegomenon, an introduction, and after the post for the Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, we shall take this up in more detail in the post for the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession.<br /><br />Si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi. We are not in Rome, we are elsewhere, let us live like where, and who, we are.</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-2460605732916606212021-06-05T16:34:00.001-05:002021-06-05T17:08:00.378-05:00St Boniface, OSB. 5 June 2021.<p>Or, How an Englishman became the patron saint of Germany, and how a Benedictine monk set in motion what would lead to the Lutheran Reformation. An essay for his festival day.</p>What a guy! For starters, the patron saint of Germany is an Englishman. Now how did that happen? Here's the story, starting with what an Englishman is anyway. Then, how the Boniface story lead, and had to lead, to a reformation.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What's an Englishman?</span><br /><br />Well, Winfred -- that's his real name -- was born to a wealthy family (funny how that happens a lot in what become "great" saints) in Wessex around 672 or so. What's Wessex? We English love contractions for stuff; Wessex is a contraction for West Saxons. Great geographic Judas, isn't Saxony in Germany? Yeah, it is. We English are basically a German people, with lots of Roman stuff mixed in from before, and a bunch of stuff mixed in from later, largely French. Although the main kind of French, Normans, are basically German too.<br /> <br />So are the Vikings, who were always raiding and conquering stuff. Those Vikings were probably looking for some decent food, understandable if you've ever had lutefisk, torsk or other Scandinavian food. Unfortunately our food isn't that great either, which is probably why the coastal raids were so fierce -- they were ticked, came all this way and the food is still crap, so they trashed the place.<br /><br />Anyway, a bunch of us German types came in about the time the Romans were losing their grip and the original peoples were losing what was left of their grip too. So, you had Wessex, the Kingdom of the West Saxons in the western modern United Kingdom, Sussex, the Kingdom of the South Saxons, and Essex, the Kingdom of the East Saxons. Essex is just South of East Anglia, which is where my people came to from Anglia, in modern Schleswig-Holstein, a state in modern Germany. Hey, we were invited, the locals were having trouble holding off the Scots after the Romans left, so they asked us to move in.<br /><br />Just for the record, there's seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and eventually they became a united Kingdom of England. "England" comes from us, it's a contraction of Angle-land. Told you we love contracting stuff. The seven kingdoms are: Wessex; Sussex; Essex; East Anglia; Mercia (they were some bad dudes, but I ain't getting into that now); Northumbria (that's where the Venerable Bede is from); Kent. Collectively, they are traditionally called the Heptarchy.<div><br /></div><div>Wessex as a political entity ceased to exist with the Norman Conquest in 1066, but it and the other names continue to be used as general terms of reference and in noble titles. Southwest modern England. One of the most active and visible members of the current royal family is Sophie, Countess of Wessex. She is the wife of Queen Elizabeth II's youngest son Prince Edward, and a champion of care for the disabled, preventing disease and equal treatment of women.</div><div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Missionaries Are Coming!</span><br /><br />Anyway, here's Winfrid in Wessex. Against his father's wishes, he takes off to a Benedictine monkatorium -- one extreme to another. In 716 he sets out to convert the Frisians, since his language, which we now call Old English, wasn't all that different than theirs. OK, what's Frisia? Well, it's die deutsche Bucht. Oh for the cat's sake, what is THAT? Well, it means the German Bay, or cove or bight; it's the German coastal area on the southeast corner of the North Sea.<br /><br />Trouble is, there was a war on between Charles Martel and the King of Frisia, so Winfrid and his company went back home. They came back though. This time he had the support and protection of Charles Martel. Whozat, came up twice now? Well, Charles Martel, Latin name Carolus Martellus or Charles the Hammer, Karl Martell in German, was King of the Franks. Well, in effect he was king; he himself never assumed the title "king" and turned down the Roman title "consul" from the Pope too, sticking with the Latin title dux (duke, leader, a military role) et (and) princeps (prince, a ruling role) of the Franks.<br /><br />The war with Frisia was part of his larger effect of pretty much setting the course for all later European history. Amid his conquests in Europe (Bavarians, Saxons, Frisians etc) itself, he also held off the Islamic invasion of Europe (you didn't think that sort of stuff was anything new did you?) after 21 years of nobody else being able to do it, at the Battle of Tours in 732. There, with no cavalry against arguably the finest military in the world at the time, the Umayyad Caliphate (Sunnis, hq Damascus), he defeated them with such decisiveness that he got the nickname "Hammer".<br /><br />This all consolidated with his son Pippin and grandson Charlemagne, aka Carolus Magnus, aka Karl der Grosse, whose Carolingian Empire would become the Holy Roman Empire (Imperium Romanum Sacrum, or das heiliges römisches Reich) with the blessings of the bishops of Rome, some of them in turn put there by the empire, call it a symbiotic relationship, which lasted from 962 until 1806 (we'll get to that in a bit here). Wanna spice it up at your next let's-impress-each-other cocktail party? Call France West Francia and Germany East Francia, which is pretty much what they are to this day.<br /><br />Anyway, the object of the game involving Winfrid (in case you thought we forgot about the subject of the post!) was for the Christian Carolingians to conquer the non-Christian Saxons, which of course meant making them Christian too. Now just a bleeding minute, didn't we just go over Saxons being in England? Yes we did, but, two things. For one, some of them stayed home, and for another, it's often hard telling in accounts from those times whether "Saxon" means literally people from Sachsen or is a reference to Germans generally.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Winfrid Takes On Thor.</span><br /><br />So, in 723, under royal and military protection, a famous thing happened. Winfrid -- who was not yet known by his Benedictine (everybody who's anybody is a Benedictine, you know that) name Boniface, from the Latin Bonifacius, meaning well-made -- thinking of Elijah in the Bible story, goes up to a sacred tree, near Fritzlar in the modern German state of Hesse, that was a major religious site to Thor in the native German religion, and chops the bleeder down, saying if Thor were real he could strike him dead.<br /><br />Which didn't happen, and the story is that on seeing that, all these Germans, from outside the former Roman Imperial boundaries, became Christian. Then the next year (724) he builds a chapel from wood from the oak. Then he set up a bishop -- guess you didn't need a papal appointment -- and established a Benedictine monastery in Fritzlar, and its first abbot, Wigbert, built a cathedral on the site of Boniface's chapel on the site of Thor's Oak. The bishop died and it became part of the bishopric of Mainz, which is the current name of the old Roman Imperial provincial capital called Moguntiaticum.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Thor Loses Big Time, Boniface Becomes First Of Germans Via The "Pope".</span><br /><br />There had been bishops in Moguntiaticum since Crescens around 80AD, although the first one with any verifiable record is Marinus in 343. But when Boniface, by now an "archbishop" becomes bishop in 745, the place really took off. Boniface made several (three, I think) trips to Rome and was granted the pallium (we'll get to what that is in the next paragraph). The archbishops of Mainz became the Primas Germaniae, First of the Germans, the Pope's legatus natus (representative by virtue of his office) north of the Alps.<br /><br />Holy crap what's a pallium then? It's a wool scarf worn by the pope as a symbol of his supposed authority, which the popes later also gave to some regional bishops to show their support of, and support from, papal authority. Silly enough, but these things were sold and the right to wear them brought in millions to the papal fortune, and that's serious business! So Pope Gregory II in 732 gives Boniface the pallium and also authority over what is now Germany, whereupon Charles Martel started setting up bishoprics all over with Boniface over them. Pope, king, what the hell, all "apostolic succession", right? Boniface himself said he couldn't have done it without the military and political power of Charles Martel. He said it to Daniel of Winchester, but Godfrey was there by institutional memory and told me about the whole thing, plus it's in all the history books if that isn't good enough for you.<br /><br />But there was still these frigging Frisians, who still weren't converted. Bloody coastal areas anyway. So in 754 he sets out to get them after all, but they weren't so hot to be gotten, and he ended up getting killed. His remains were taken to Utrecht, and then to Fulda, where Boniface's disciple Sturm -- hey, didn't he have a brother named Drang (if you're laughing, a special welcome to Past Elder) -- started a Benedictine monastery on 12 March 744, which lasted until Napoleon shut it down in 1802, in what we call in German -- are you ready for this -- Reichsdeputationshauptschluss.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What Is THAT?</span><br /><br />Relax, that's just the nickname! Its real name is Hauptschluss der ausserordentlichen Reichsdeputation, howzat, which means the Main Conclusion of the Extraordinary Imperial Delegation, which was the last thing the Reichstag of the Holy Roman Empire really did, on 25 February 1803, before the HRE ended in 1806. Basically, caved to Napoleon and secularised religious stuff.<br /><br />If you're thinking continuity, or hermeneutics thereof, forget it. Fulda started up again as an episcopal see, meaning a bishopric, in 1829. The German Catholic bishops still have their conferences there, but this is not the old Fulda. Likewise, the current Catholic Diocese of Mainz is not the old Archbishopric of Mainz; the latter ended and the new one began in 1802 too and they ain't the Kurfuerstentum Mainz no more either. Who the hell were they? One of the seven guys who elected Holy Roman Emperors, that's who.<br /><br />For the record, the other six electors besides the Prince-Archbishop of Mainz were 1) the Prince-Archbishop of Trier (man I love Trier, Judas Priest even Constantine was there, that's where he ditched his wife and married another, whom he later had killed along with their son, in a power deal as part of becoming "the Great" and "Equal of the Apostles", the whole bleeding Empire was run from there at times, I haven't been able to get that utterly captivating city out of my mind since I was there in 1969, man I love Trier), 2) the Prince-Archbishop of Köln (Cologne, couldn't understand bupkis of the local dialect there), 3) the King of Bohemia (a Habsburg since 1526, think Austria), 4) the Count Palatine of the Rhine (always a Wittlesbach, the royal family of Bavaria, yay!, whose money started the Benedictine place in Minnesota where I, well, I don't know exactly what the hell I did there), 5) the Duke of Saxony (a Wettin since 1423) and 6) the Margrave of Brandenburg (a Hohenzollern since 1415, think Prussia).<br /><br /><b>Thor Continues!</b><br /><b><br /></b>Old Boniface didn't totally get rid of the Thor, or in German, Donner, thing. The sacred oak may be gone, but we still have his day, Thor's Day, or Thursday -- we English love contractions. In German it's Donnerstag, same thing. And, the 2011 movie "Thor" was a box office smash hit as was the sequel "Thor: The Dark World" in 2013, and a third one, "Thor: Ragnarok", was released in the US on 3 November 2017, to the highest critical acclaim and biggest box office receipts of all three!<br /><br />Holy crap, what's a Ragnarok? BIG stuff, eschatology, which is the big English word derived from the Greek words meaning "study of the last stuff". In both the Poetic and the Prose Eddas (we'll get to Holy crap what's an Edda later) the end of the present age is described as a huge war resulting in the deaths of major gods, Odin and Thor among them, all sorts of natural disasters resulting in a worldwide flood, after which the surviving gods get to-gether and the earth is repopulated by the surviving human couple, whose names in English are Lift, from the Norse word for "life" so that's the female, and Lifthrasir, which means "lover of life". Twilight of the Gods! Yep, the Old Norse source along with the somewhat parallel Middle High German Nibelungenlied of Wagner's great work.<br /><br />The movies are not a movie version of the Eddas, and "Thor" while based on the character in Germanic mythology is a character created by Stan Lee and his younger brother Larry (who still uses the original family name Lieber) as a superhero for Marvel Comics. No worries, Wagner took a lot of liberties with the story too. Thor became a character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and appears in other movies and media based on Marvel characters, such as the Avengers series.</div><div><br /></div><div>A fourth Thor movie, and the 29th in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor: Love and Thunder, just finished filming four days ago as of this feast of St Boniface, and is set for release in the US on 6 May 2022.<br /><br /><b>OK now, Holy Crap What's an Edda?</b><br /><br />The Eddas are two works written in Iceland in the 1200s (13th Century) though its material is much older, from the Viking Age (793 - 1066 AD), and is our main source of Norse mythology. One is the Prose Edda, which was written by Snorri Sturluson about 1220, and for some time was just Edda, the only known Edda though scholars speculated there must be an older, or at least another, Edda with the stuff old Snorri quoted.<br /><br />There is, and it was discovered in 1643, by Brynjolfur Sveinsson, Bishop of Skalholt, as he was collecting manuscripts for the King of Denmark and Norway, who ruled Iceland and to whom it was given, hence its name Codex Regius, Latin for "King's Book". It was kept in Copenhagen and just relatively recently returned to Iceland, on 21 April 1971. Iceland had become Lutheran in 1540 by order of the King of Denmark, so these guys were Lutheran.<br /><br />Well sort of. Just like old Winfrid and the Germans above, there's nothing apostolic about Iceland becoming Lutheran, just yet another example of the sort of thing that has as much if not more to do with the triumph of the state via its established church than anything else, and the modern Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland like all the Nordic and Germanic state churches depart significantly from historic Lutheran teaching and practice.<br /><br />At least we got Norse sources out of the deal. It's really quite ironic that the Boniface bringing the faith to the Germans thing with its Thor episode and the Lutheran Iceland being the source for us knowing about Thor both are examples of the same thing, the faith as a tool of the state.<br /><br />Why the word "edda" for these sources? Nobody knows. There's at least five credible theories for the origin of the word. These days, the later-discovered Edda is often called the Elder or the Poetic Edda, since it's in alliterative verse and supposedly older, and Snorri's Edda is often called the Younger or the Prose Edda. Its prologue says the Nordic gods were actually Trojans who escaped after the fall of Troy and were taken as gods by the locals in the Germanic lands to which they fled because of their superior technology, and then by a process called euhemerism, stories about actual remarkable people grow, get developed and exaggerated as they are retold, and there's your myths.<br /><br /><b>Euhemerism, How Many More Words You Got I Never Heard Of?</b><br /><br />It's from Euhemerus, who was active at the court of the King of Macedon (or Macedonia if you like) about 300 BC. He did not originate this theory but was its main articulator. His magnum opus Sacred History (Hiera Anagraphe) is itself lost, however many ancient authors quoted him, sometimes at great length, and from these surviving works we have a pretty good picture of his work. Euhemerism is distinct from apotheosis in that it happens culturally over a period of time rather than by decree of an institutional authority about a particular person, like the Senate declaring Julius Caesar divine on 1 January 42 BC.<br /><br />Why even bring that up, isn't this about Boniface? One: These days "nobody" can be bothered about such stuff and because of this we think ideas like religion being a human invention to explain stuff we can't yet explain represent some sort of enlightened modern view, when in fact such ideas are as old as the ones they seek to replace and have been around since the ancient Greeks themselves, if you happen to hear of Euhemerus or Protagoras from some non-PC non-academic source like Past Elder or an academic who hasn't been yet run out of contemporary academia.<br /><br />Two: Euhemerism does not of itself invalidate all religion. Early Christian apologists like the convert Clement of Alexandria, the convert Cyprian, Eusebius, Tertullian, and Augustine all used it, well expressed in the statement of Isidore, Quos pagani deos asserunt homines olim fuisse produntur (Those whom the pagans assert as gods were produced as humans, Etymologiae, De diis gentium) to distinguish Christianity as a revelation from the existing mythologies.<br /><br />In fact, the Bible itself uses it! St Peter in his second letter (epistle, chapter one verse 16, in the combined chapter and versification first used in 1560 by the Geneva Bible and pretty much universal since then), says the Apostles were not following nor concocting stories but reporting what they had personally seen. Yet what they had seen becomes functionally just such a story for the state, as we saw above in Boniface and the Thor stories.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion.</span><br /><br />Oh yeah, Boniface. His body is still there in the Fulda cathedral. Before we get all misty about the "Apostle to the Germans" and all, we should remember that the spread of Christianity through the Apostles took no such course as the one described above. Demonstrating that was the whole point in describing the above. The Apostles' course was anything but the increase of the state church right along with the increase of the state to which it belonged. The above is not a story of the triumph of the Gospel, because as Boniface himself said, it would hardly have been possible without the triumph of the state. To get misty about some triumph of the Gospel one must also get misty about the triumph of the, specifically that, state. And its prince-bishops. And the "pope" of Rome, who still bears the title of the chief priest of the pagan Roman Imperial religion, pontifex maximus, a title held by the Roman Emperor until Emperor Gratian renounced it in favour of the "bishop" of Rome in 382.<br /><br />The head of state no longer carries that title, the church of Christ knows neither such a title nor regional versions. The spread of Christianity brought with it the same things that would later make the Reformation necessary. As the church had become deformed, so it would need to be reformed. And so it was. While we might, and should, admire the zeal, Christianity should never be spread in this way, and the Christianity that is spread in this way is a deformed Christianity that will eventually need to be reformed.<br /><br />Thanks be to God that it was. This deformed Christianity came about where, 800 some years later, it would be reformed, bringing the good Boniface brought that we celebrate to-day back to its true nature. Or rather, IS being so reformed. The Lutheran Reformation is a process, not a past historical fact. It's now 500 years and counting since the Lutheran Reformation began. The authentic Gospel of Christ and his Church is for all people, not just us Germanic types. And ironically to-day it's as needed by some church bodies with "Lutheran" in their names as it is by those state churches now without their state, the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.<br /><br /><b>PS</b><br /><br />Hey, after you wow 'em with the East/West Francia thing, hit 'em with why you must see "Thor" movies on a Thursday!</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-82572811507067200042021-05-29T16:32:00.000-05:002021-05-29T16:32:48.541-05:00Memorial Day Is Not All Saints Day Or Veterans Day, 2021.<p>Nor is it Armed Forces Day, which we just had. It isn't even Memorial Day any more, really. And, it wasn't to start with, either! Huh??</p>So where did it come from? Unlike many holidays, there is no centuries-old background here. The background there is will help not only understanding Memorial Day for what it is and isn't, but understanding our secular holidays as a whole, and provide some real eye-openers on the political scene.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Original Memorial Day.</span><br /><br />On 5 May 1868 General John A Logan, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, designated 30 May 1868 "for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion". Not only for that, but also to "renew our pledge to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon the Nation's gratitude—the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan". The designation was for 1868 only, but it expressed "the hope that it will be kept up from year to year, while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades".<br /><br />That's how "Memorial Day" came to be. For Civil War veterans as long as one still lives, for all to remember those who died in that war. What does this mean?<br /><br />The above words, from the proclamation itself, General Orders No.11 from G.A.R. headquarters, make it clear that the reference is to the Civil War. So who is Logan and what is the G.A.R.?<br /><br />The G.A.R. was not a unit in the Civil War. It was a group founded 6 April 1866 by Benjamin F Stephenson MD in Decatur IL for veterans of the U.S. Army who had served in the Civil War. He himself had served as surgeon of the 14<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">th</span> Illinois Infantry with the rank of Major. The unit was a regiment with the Union Army of the Tennessee, not to be confused with the Confederate Army of Tennessee, and the former was named for the river, the latter for the state. He served for a three year term ending 24 June 1864, after which he returned to Springfield IL, the state capital, to resume medical practice.<br /><br />Among the notable commanding officers of the Army of the Tennessee are its first, Ulysses S Grant, and its second, William T Sherman, who arranged for John A Logan to be its fifth and last after the war was actually over. There's a story there. The third commander, James B McPherson, was killed in action 22 July 1864 during the Battle of Atlanta, and Logan temporarily replaced him, but command went to another, Oliver O Howard from the Army of the Cumberland. Howard, like Sherman, was West Point; Logan wasn't. However, Sherman arranged for Logan to become commander so he could lead the army in the Grand Review to kind of make up for being passed over. It disbanded 1 August 1865.<br /><br />And what was the Grand Review? An event on 23 and 24 May 1865, whose full name is Grand Review of the Armies, in Washington DC to celebrate the end of the war. On 23 May, Major General George Meade of the Army of the Potomac, who had won over General Lee at Gettysburg, led about 80,000 of its men in a six hour parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, and the following day Sherman led about 65,000 men combined from the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Georgia in another six hour parade, Howard riding with Sherman and Logan leading the Army of the Tennessee.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Logan and Post Civil War Presidential Politics.</span><br /><br />General Logan served as a 2<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">nd</span> Lieutenant with the 1st Illinois Infantry during the Mexican-American War -- during which he learned to speak Spanish -- graduated in law from the University of Louisville in 1851, practiced law and rose in a political career from county clerk to the Illinois state house of representatives and was serving as a member of the US House of Representatives, Democrat from Illinois, at the outset of the war. He was a volunteer at Bull Run, or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Manassas</span>, after which he resigned his congressional seat and organised the 31st Illinois Volunteers, with the rank of Colonel. After the war he switched parties, was a Representative and then Senator from Illinois, and ran as the Vice Presidential candidate on the Republican ticket with James G Blaine in the election of 1884, which lost to Democrat Grover Cleveland.<br /><br />There's another story. Cleveland, whose Civil War service was paying a Polish immigrant to serve in his place when he was drafted -- legal under the Conscription Act of 1863 -- was a classic liberal, "liberal" being quite unrelated to what the term means now as "Democrat". He opposed taxes, supported the gold standard and lowering the tariffs imposed on imports meant to protect domestic products, worked for reduction and limitation of government, and opposed government intervention in the welfare of individuals.<br /><br />Here's something that is quite telling in view of the events of 2020/21. In vetoing a measure to provide a "bail out" for Texas farmers ruined by drought, Cleveland said the veto was " to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood".<br /><br />Not a lot of that kind of talk from Democrats lately.<br /><br />The election was hard fought. The Democrats accused Blaine of influencing legislation to benefit railroads whose bonds he owned, which was long denied until letters were discovered making it a little harder to deny, some of them ending "Burn this letter", which in turn gave rise to the campaign slogan "Blaine, Blaine, James G Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine". The Republicans in turn tried to sully Cleveland's image when a woman named him the father of her illegitimate child, and Cleveland admitted he did pay her child support. She however was known to have, so to speak, played the field, including with Cleveland's law partner, for whom the child was named, and while Cleveland himself actually did not know who the father was, being the only bachelor among the possibilities, took responsibility, leading to the campaign slogan "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?"<br /><br />And you thought politics only got rough and dirty lately! It gets worse. Blaine, whose mother was Irish Catholic, was hoping for support from that community, not typically known for supporting Republicans, but then one of Blaine's supporters denounced the Democrats as the party of "Rum, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Romanism</span>, and Rebellion" (the party of Lincoln not being popular in the South) which lost him a ton of votes in swing states to Cleveland, who won the popular vote by less than 1%, though being swing states the electoral college vote was decisive. After Cleveland won, the slogan was turned around to "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa, gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!".<br /><br />It gets worse yet. In 1888 he was renominated and ran again, and the Republicans ran Benjamin Harrison, Republican Senator from Indiana, against him instead of Logan -- oh yeah, Logan, we'll get back to him -- for high tariffs and big government -- yes, you read it right, that was the Republican position, big government -- and while Cleveland did not win all the swing states as before, what did him in was, guess what, vote fraud by the Republicans in, guess where, Indiana, where Cleveland narrowly lost, however, it gave Harrison the electoral votes to win although he lost the national popular vote. And you thought politics only got rough and dirty lately!<br /><br />Cleveland came back though. Harrison's high tariffs, his big budgets (he was the first President to have a billion dollar budget, yes Republicans for a big budget), his support for backing currency with silver as well as gold -- which was a problem because silver wasn't worth as much as its legal gold equivalent, so taxpayers paid in silver, cheap money to "help the poor", but the government's creditors required payment in gold -- all of this sent the economy right straight to hell. With the Republicans losing supporters of free silver to the new Populist Party, Cleveland was elected President again in 1892. He thus became the only President (so far) to serve non-continuous terms.<br /><br />BTW, he therefore is the only president to have two coins in the Presidential Dollar series. But you likely will never see the second one. The series stopped production for circulation in 2011 since they were little used in circulation, and beginning with Chester Alan Arthur, the president just before Cleveland, were issued in limited numbers for collectors, not general circulation. The series then ended in 2016 after the Ronald Reagan dollar, the last president eligible ("eligible" means the president has been dead for at least two years when the coin would be issued) under the series. Since then, in 2018, the first President Bush died. It would take an Act of Congress, literally, to resume the series, which is not likely.<br /><br />Oh yeah, Logan. Had the Blaine/Logan ticket won, he would have died in office. He died 26 December 1886. Staunchly Republican, he became Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1868 and continued in that position until 1871 when he became a US Senator. He was always active in veteran's affairs, and public education -- the non West Pointer. A GAR endorsement was essential to winning a Republican nomination for President for decades. The GAR also was influential in the establishment of Old Soldiers' Homes, which became the basis for the present US Department of Veterans Affairs. At its peak in 1890, the GAR had 490,000 members, but, realising numbers must eventually decline, in 1881 the GAR founded the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">SUVCW</span>) to eventually carry on.<br /><br />And so they did: the last encampment, as national meetings were called, was in 1949, and the last surviving member, named Albert <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Woolson</span>, died 2 August 1956 at age 109, it was thought, though census records now indicate 106. There's a story there too. He was from New York state. His father was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh and taken to a military hospital in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Windom</span>, Minnesota, where he and his mother moved, though his father later died of his wounds. Whereupon Albert enlisted in Company C of the 1st Minnesota Heavy Artillery Regiment as a drummer, which is not just for parades and stuff like now. Then, as for centuries before, there was no motorised transport, and drummers were key in both setting marching pace and boosting morale during combat. Albert enlisted 10 October 1864 just months before the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">war's</span> end and the unit did not see action. He returned to Minnesota, lived out his life as a carpenter, and died in Duluth.<br /><br />General Eisenhower, President at the time, said of his passing "The American people have lost the last personal link with the Union Army ... His passing brings sorrow to the hearts of all of us who cherished the memory of the brave men on both sides of the War Between the States". The recognition of both sides was not new; at the first Memorial Day graves from both sides were decorated.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Modern Memorial Day Evolves.</span><br /><br />With his death, the GAR ceased to exist. Memorial Day did not. More or less. The original name was Decoration Day, from the original proclamation for the decorating of veterans' graves of the Civil War, which also, in 1868, envisioned its existence until the last survivor was gone, which was 1956, 88 years later. It's expanded a bit. After World War One, it had become a Federal holiday observed on the original date, 30 May, and was expanded to included the decoration of the graves of all who died in any US military engagement. The alternate name for Decoration Day, Memorial Day, was first used in 1882, 14 years after the first one. After World War Two, which gave many more to be remembered and whose graves to be decorated, the unofficial name became the more commonly used name, and was made the official name in 1967, 99 years after the first one.<br /><br />The following year, the Uniform Holidays Bill changed its observance along with Veterans' Day (11 November, on which this blog also posts annually) and Washington's Birthday (22 February) to create three three-day-long weekends to take effect in 1971. Thing is, none of these observances had been instituted to give people a three-day week-end, with an extra day off and cook-outs and sports and big sales at the stores, but to remember as a nation particular people and things.<br /><br />Washington's Birthday was established in 1879 to commemorate the commander of the Continental Army in the war for independence and the unanimous choice of the Electoral College to be the first President, a unifying figure for the new nation and model for its future Presidents, often called "the father of his country", on his, well, birthday, 22 February in 1732. Well, sort of; that's how we date it now. When he was born records give the date as 11 February 1731. The Julian Calendar and Annunciation style numbering of years, which began on 25 March, was in use in the British Empire when he was born. The British Calendar Act of 1750 made the change to the Gregorian calendar and beginning years with 1 January effective in 1752. So, day dates were moved forward 11 days, and those between 1 January and 25 March moved forward one year. 11 February 1731 thus becomes 22 February 1732. Exactly the same day, just two different calendar numbering systems, unless you're an April Fool (you can read more about that on this blog's post for New Years and the Annunciation). <div><br /></div><div>Veterans Day is now called that to commemorate all veterans, and was originally to commemorate the armistice which ended World War One starting on the 11<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">th</span> hour of the 11<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">th</span> day of the 11<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">th</span> month, 11 November (you can read more about that on this blog's Veterans Day post). Decoration Day was chosen to commemorate Civil War dead on 30 May precisely because that date is not connected with any particular battle or other event of the Civil War, not because the flowers are in full bloom as some (a past President for example) have said (you can read more about that on this blog's Memorial Day post, oh wait, you already are).<br /><br />The dates mean something, closing up shop for a particular commemoration of a particular something on a particular date, not an opportunity to take the 3rd Monday in February, the 4<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">th</span> Monday of October, and the last Monday in May off from work to do other things, or stay at work to boost business from big sales attracting those off work. The outcry over this loss of the meaning of the day, and acquiring meanings unrelated to it, was enough that Veterans Day was moved back to its original date in 1978, but with the provision that if that date fell on a Sunday it could be observed the following Monday, or if on a Saturday either on that Saturday or the Friday before.<br /><br />In the 1980s advertisers began the push to boost sales on the new day for Washington's Birthday as "Presidents Day" including Lincoln whose birthday is 12 February. So now we have Washington's Birthday, which is still the official name of the holiday, not on Washington's birthday, not altogether about Washington, not generally known under its actual name but an advertising nickname, and not really about presidents either but time off work and buying stuff.<br /><br />As to Memorial Day, it is for no other purpose than to take time from our normal pursuits to commemorate those who gave their lives in the armed forces of this country that we might have the freedom to go about those pursuits. It's not for the dead per <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">se</span> -- the church provides that with All Saints Day on 1 November, and other religions have similar observances for the dead -- and not for living veterans and current service members, both of which groups have their own commemorations, which have posts on this blog, and certainly not to provide a three day kick off for Summer.<div><br /></div><div>Memorial Day is for those who died in uniform. Armed Forces Day is for those who are in uniform. Veterans Day is for those who were in uniform. Memorials for the dead follow one's personal religious or individual choices, not Memorial Day.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion.</span><br /><br />For us Lutherans, and for all others, their sacrifice has given us a country where we need not wrestle with local, regional and national governments to hold our beliefs, or to have our services in the only place where services are going to be, the state church, or at least be tolerated by it. We are free to form our churches according to our understanding of God, as are others according to their understandings, as are others who choose not to participate in any understanding. Nor do we need to re-create here church structure that emerged in the old countries where that was not the case and church officials were state officials too. What an incredibly precious gift.<br /><br />The VFW noted in its Memorial Day statement of 2002: "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">public's</span> nonchalant observance of Memorial Day." Efforts continue to return Memorial Day to its original date of observance.<br /><br />But we can return the observance itself to what it is, as General Logan said, to commemorate those who have died defending their country, AND to renew our pledge to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon the Nation's gratitude—the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan.</div></div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-70531679540534769572021-05-22T18:34:00.000-05:002021-05-22T18:34:49.841-05:00Pentecost / Shavuot / Pfingstfest. 23 May 2021.<p>So why does the "birthday of the church" have the Greek prefix for fifty in it?<br /><br />Because Pentecost wasn't originally the "birthday of the church", but something else, that's why, which is also why the account of Pentecost in Acts speaks of it as something already there. Just as Passover was transformed into the Eucharist, Pentecost was about to be transformed too. Here's the deal.<br /><br />What was already there is an observance commanded by God in the Law of Moses which is to be held fifty days after the second day of Passover, with each day formally counted. The name for this feast in the Bible is Shavout, which means "weeks" in Hebrew, so it is called the Festival of Weeks in English, but when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, since that's what most Jews spoke at the time (that's the Septuagint, the version of the OT the NT quotes), it was called Pentecost, meaning fifty days, the length of the count from Passover.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Original Pentecost In The Law Of Moses.</span><br /><br />The counting is called the Counting of the Omer. What's an omer? Omer are the sheaves of a harvested crop. During the days of the physical Temple, the priests would offer newly harvested barley on the second day of Passover, which represents the start of the seven-week harvest season. Which is why Pentecost is also called the Feast of Weeks. In the Law, Shavuot is called Hag ha-Katzir, the Holiday of Harvest's End.<br /><br />Ah, so we have a harvest festival, taking its place among the various harvest festivals in world culture and religion. Well, yes and no. Yes, it's another harvest festival, another instance of a human cause for celebrating a human milestone, the end of the harvest, particularly in a pre-industrial society. But there's something a little different about this one.<br /><br />The Talmud (what's a Talmud? -- ancient rabbinical writings; for more, look it up, Wikipedia is linked at the bottom of the sidebar) says it was on the 6th of Sivan (a month in the Jewish lunar calendar) that God gave the Ten Words, better known among Gentiles as the Ten Commandments, which is why that is the first night of Shavuot. Consequently, a popular observance has been an all night Bible study at home or in the synagogue, breaking for the morning service, called shakharit, the ancestor of our, well, morning service called Matins. This all-nighter is called tikkun.<br /><br />Traditionally only dairy foods are eaten on Shavuot, and while no-one knows why for sure, the thinking is that on the first Shavuot they had slaughtered all these animals for food but after the Law was given it turned out they were not kosher so they only ate dairy foods.<br /><br />In the liturgy of the synagogue, the readings for the service for the first day of Shavuot are: Torah portion Exodus 19:1 - 20:23 and Numbers 28:26-31; haftorah Ezechiel 1:1-28 and 3:12. In case you're a little rusty, this is the Exodus account (actually the first of two Exodus accounts, the other being Chapter 34, and there's another account in Deuteronomy) of the giving of the Law, specifically the Ten Words, and Ezechiel's account of the chariot of fire -- you know, the flying saucer.<br /><br />This is the feast that Acts 2:1 (in the Epistle for Pentecost, which even the Vatican II three year lectionary couldn't overturn) refers to when it speaks of Pentecost arriving, and why there were men from all over everywhere in Jerusalem for it. It's to celebrate the giving of the Law, the reception of which is the whole reason why there was a Passover and a deliverance, the most important event in Judaism. And like Passover just had been, it was about to be transformed!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Original Pentecost Transformed!</span><br /><br />For God himself had become Man in Jesus Christ, suffered the condemnation for our sins in his death, and then rose again. Now, if this were all to the story, why didn't he just stick around, proof positive that he had risen? If the whole point were "All you need is Jesus", "I am saved because Jesus died for my sins and rose again", "Jesus first, as long as you believe that the rest isn't that important", then what would make that point better, what would make that point more irrefutable, than if he had stayed right here, so you could see him, talk to him face to face, hear him teach, and say to those who don't believe "Look, there he is right there, doing pretty well at age roughly 2000, go ask him yourself".<br /><br />But it didn't happen that way, because that is not the whole point and not all to the story. Just as the Passover and exodus from bondage in Egypt had been not for its own sake but in order to gather with God so he could give his people his Law, so the Passover of the full paschal lamb Jesus had been not for its own sake but in order to gather with God so he could give his people his Spirit! Just as God had commanded the counting of the Omer, the fifty days connecting Pesach, aka Pascha, and Shavuoth, Pentecost, so now God himself counts the Omer from the Pascha of the Lamb he provided, his Son, to the Shavouth or Pentecost so that on the very day where his people once celebrated only the giving of the Law, they still celebrate that and added to it is the giving of the Spirit!<br /><br />And what happened as a result of that? The Apostles were men who knew all you need is Jesus, men who knew for a physical fact that Jesus had died and risen again, men who knew Jesus is first. They had all that, but on that basis alone were scared and afraid and huddled around each other in the comfort of others who had all that too, tending to their prayers and the internal matters of their little band. "All that" is not all, and not sufficient, neither for the Apostles nor for us. The rest came on this day of celebrating the giving of the Law -- they gave the Law, and only then the Gospel, as they were no longer scared and afraid. Not only that, each one there heard it in his own language, addressed directly to him!<br /><br />And what did the people do after this amazing event? Everybody just up and believed? No. They did the same as the Apostles had done when the women told them the tomb was empty and he had risen. They did NOT believe them. Some thought this is just a foolish wishful story, others sought to figure out what this means, others thought they're just crazy, probably drunk, out of their minds. That's what happened first. That's what STILL happens when people hear the mighty works of God told to them -- when WE hear the mighty works of God told to US. Some form of the same three reactions: 1) it's a really nice story stemming from our deepest wishes; 2) let's talk about this and dialogue as to what it all means; 3) those guys are crazy.<br /><br />That's what happened first. The amazing event wasn't the amazing event. It wasn't and isn't about the languages. After the languages was nothing but unbelief. The rest didn't happen until something else happened, and THAT'S the amazing event and the big deal about Pentecost.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Biggest Sign and Wonder Of Pentecost.</span><br /><br />Peter then stood with his brothers in the Office of Holy Ministry and laid it right out for them, clean and clear. He said this is what Joel and David had spoken about, Jesus delivered by the plan of God to us, whom we in our sinfulness abandoned the Law and in turn delivered him to the power and law of the world to be killed, Jesus delivered by the power of God from the power of death and our sinfulness which inflicted that on him, Jesus risen again and now placed on the throne of David at the right hand of God, Jesus having been given the promise of the Spirit so that now you see and hear this: Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.<br /><br />That's the Law. And when they heard the Law, given now for the first time in its fulfillment on this day of celebrating the giving of the Law long ago, they were cut to the heart. People by nature want a religion of works, stuff they can do to make it all right, stuff they can do to feel OK with God, with each other, and within themselves. And the world offers all sorts of versions of that. Some of them go by the name Christianity. And the feelings and purpose they impart are utterly false.<br /><br />God himself has shown us in the Law exactly the stuff he wants us to do, and we showed ourselves absolutely incapable of it by our own reason and strength, even in a scenario where there are but two people and one commandment, even when a people is called and set apart to do the full Mosaic Law and be an example to the nations who are only expected to keep seven of the laws, and this to the extent that we handed his prophets and finally the One he sent over to the power of our own ideas and law to be killed, and still reject their message to this day.<br /><br />So much for a religion of works. We can't do it even when God himself shows us exactly how, no matter how hard we try in purpose driven living or to attain our best life now. What's worse, just like those on this Pentecost, and just like those delivered from Egypt in the first one, we don't get it even when the mighty works of God are directly addressed to us even with wondrous signs, preferring instead to think it over or think they're just nuts!<br /><br />Pentecost came to-gether not in the signs and wonders, which can still leave us in unbelief, but when Peter and his brothers in the Office of Holy Ministry laid it out clean and clear. It still does. It was then, when Peter had given the Law in its horrible consequences, that they, we, thought not about what it all means, not let's think this over, not maybe there's some good ideas here, not maybe these guys are nuts, but instead were cut to the heart by the fruitlessness of their, our, own reason and strength, and asked Peter and his brothers, Men and brethren, what shall we do? It was then and only then that he could tell them the Good News, the Gospel.<br /><br /><span style="color: #cc0000;">Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.</span><br /><span style="color: #cc0000;"></span><br />What happened then? Same thing that happens now. They that gladly received his word were baptised, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Holy Ghost Church.</span><br /><br />Guess what! There's an emerging church all right. Not just lately, not out of some marketing scheme supposedly crafted to the taste of the times, but ever since the outpouring of the Spirit on that Pentecost whose historical happening we celebrate every feast of Pentecost.<br /><br />We may not be in Jerusalem, the Temple is not physically there to go to in one accord, and Peter and the other Apostles are not personally our preachers. And it makes not the slightest difference. The taste of our or any time has no taste for the Gospel and it is worthless to pander to it thinking that will produce a taste for the Gospel. That will produce only what it always produces -- a religion of works, stuff to do to catch the God buzz in a quest after one's own feeling better, on the surface all about Jesus or God but really all about me, or, a lot of discussion about what it all means, or, a rejection of it as wishful thinking at best and lunacy at worst.<br /><br />What produces a taste for the Gospel is the Law. That's why the Spirit was given to proclaim the Gospel on the feast celebrating the giving of the Law! And we have the reality of Pentecost before us no less than they. Huh? The Temple is in ruins and Peter and the Apostles are gone. So how's that, how is Pentecost not just another thing you read in a book that supposedly comes from God, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.<br /><br />Because the true Temple Jesus has been raised again on the third day, and has taken his place with the Father, and has sent his Spirit as he promised. And that Spirit speaks the same message to us now as it did that day in unbroken continuity and succession, which is not that Peter and the Apostles are still physically here, not that other men are still here in a succession of corporate hierarchy, not in those who produce signs and wonders or miracles of church growth and attendance in his name, but in that the clean and clear laying out of Law and Gospel as was heard that Pentecost continues to be heard in the faithful preaching of Law and Gospel properly distinguished, by those in the Office of Holy Ministry unto the ends of the earth despite sin, the world and the gates of hell itself.<br /><br />And when this happens, the same thing follows as did then. Those who receive this proclamation of Law and Gospel are baptised, they continue steadfastly in the Apostles' teaching handed on in the church, especially in those books upon which the church has said you can absolutely rely as the inspired word of God without error, the Bible, and in preaching by those called to do so of that Word, they continue steadfastly in fellowship and community and gathering with each other, they continue steadfastly in the breaking of the bread, the mass, the church's liturgy, wherein Jesus was only fully discerned for who and what he is even when he was bodily here for forty days after he rose, and they continue steadfastly in prayer.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion.</span><br /><br />That is the gift of the Holy Ghost, and every bit of it is as available here and now as it was on that day we read about in Acts, in the Epistle or Christian haftorah for Pentecost, every bit of what was pointed to in Ezechiel's chariot of fire we read about in the original Pentecost haftorah. Pentecost comes to-gether, despite all our vain and sinful efforts to make it happen in some other way more to our liking, the same now as then as ever. Accept no substitute! There is no substitute, even if it claims his name or produces signs and wonders and warm feelings in his name, as true and false teachers and even Satan himself alike can do!<br /><br />Pentecost is about the one thing they cannot produce and only the true Spirit of God can. As the Little Catechism explains:<br /><br />I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Christian church; the communion of Saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.<br /><br />Amen.<br /><br />What does this mean? I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith; in which Christian church He daily and richly forgives all sins to me and all believers, and will at the Last Day raise up me and all the dead, and give unto me and all believers in Christ eternal life.<br /><br />This is most certainly true.</p>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-54357074811909253542021-05-15T17:34:00.000-05:002021-05-15T17:34:29.344-05:00Armed Forces Week and Day, May 2021.<p>This blog posts annually about Veterans Day, which celebrates all veterans of service in the U.S. military whether living or dead, and Memorial Day, which celebrates those who died while in that service. Therefore, it also posts about the day for those currently serving. Neither Veterans Day nor Memorial Day is about those currently serving in the armed forces -- that is the purpose of Armed Forces Day, and, it's actually not a day but a full week, beginning the second Saturday in May and ending the third Sunday in May, with Armed Forces Day itself the third Saturday in May.</p>Originally, each branch of the military held its own day, and weren't branches of a unified military either. After World War Two, the US armed forces were unified in a new, single branch of government, the Department of Defense. Armed Forces Day was created to reflect that change, which was announced on 31 August 1949 and celebrated for the first time on 20 May 1950.<br /><br />Some information on the original separate days will help toward one of the goals of Armed Forces Day, a better understanding by the general public of the armed forces.<br /><br /><i style="font-weight: bold;">Army Day</i><span style="font-weight: bold;">. 6 April.</span> The first Army Day was 1 May 1928. The day was chosen to offset the Communist Worker's Day also on 1 May. The next year it was changed to 6 April, the date of the US entry into World War One, and stayed there. The military history of the United States begins with colonial militias of citizen-soldiers originally working with the British military, which later became state militias and since 1903 the National Guard, with some units on state status and some also reserve units of the United States Army. The Army itself began on 14 June 1775, when the Continental Congress formed the Continental Army. It disbanded in 1783 after the Treaty of Paris formally ended the Revolutionary War, and was re-created by Congress as the United States Army on 14 June 1784.<br /><br /><i style="font-weight: bold;">Navy Day</i><span style="font-weight: bold;">. 27 October.</span> First celebrated in 1922. 27 October was chosen because it is both the birth date of Theodore Roosevelt, who was a very strong voice as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and the date in 1775 when a committee of the Continental Congress issued a report to begin a navy with the purchase of ships from merchant lines. The Navy considers 13 October 1775, the date of the Continental Congress resolution to form that committee, its inception, though there was no naval force after the Revolutionary War other than the Revenue Cutter Service, now the Coast Guard, until 1794 when, to defend against pirates, Congress mandated building six frigates. They were launched in 1797, one of which, the USS Constitution, is still a frigate in the United States Navy.<br /><br /><i style="font-weight: bold;">Air Force Day</i><span style="font-weight: bold;">. 1 August. </span>This day was established in 1947 when the Air Force was still part of the Army, as the recently concluded world war had demonstrated air as an essential frontier to be protected. The date comes from the date of the establishment of the first unit of what would become the Air Force, the Aeronautical Division in the Office of the Chief Signal Officer of the Army, in 1907. The Air Force became a separate branch on 18 September 1947.<br /><br /><i style="font-weight: bold;">Marine Corps Day</i><span style="font-weight: bold;">. 10 November.</span> The Marine Corps was established by Congress on 11 July 1798 to serve under the Department of the Navy. Marine Corps Day was celebrated on 11 July by the Corps from its first birthday in 1799 until 1921. The date was changed in 1921 to 10 November to reflect the original establishment of the Marine Corps on 10 November 1775 to assist the navy during the Revolutionary War, after which the Corps was disbanded. The Marine Corps still observes this day, while participating in Armed Forces Day as well.<br /><br /><i style="font-weight: bold;">Coast Guard Day</i><span style="font-weight: bold;">. 4 August.</span> On that day in 1790 the Treasury Department under Alexander Hamilton established the Revenue Cutter Service, to enforce the first US tariff laws. The Revenue Cutter Service has been in service ever since, becoming the Coast Guard on its merger with the Lifesaving Service in 1915. The day is still observed in the Coast Guard, which also participates in Armed Forces Day. The Coast Guard is unique among the military's five armed services in that it is both military and law enforcement; in 1967 it was transferred from Treasury to the then new Department of Transportation, then on 25 February 2003 it was transferred again to then recently created Department of Homeland Security, but as before, at the direction of the President, or by Congress in declaration of war, it can be transferred to the Navy under the Department of Defense.<br /><br />What's this got to do with the Lutheran faith? Among the many other benefits, our armed forces have secured a country where we are free to form our congregations and church bodies, and not, unlike the countries from which many of our ancestors came, have to fight over what will be the church funded by the state or fight to be allowed to be part of the state church.<br /><br />President Truman's Proclamation of the first Armed Forces Day states a goal that has become more telling as the years have passed:<br /><br />"Armed Forces Day, Saturday, May 20, 1950, marks the first combined demonstration by America's defense team of its progress, under the National Security Act, towards the goal of readiness for any eventuality. It is the first parade of preparedness by the unified forces of our land, sea, and air defense."Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-89405194575522582352021-05-01T15:31:00.000-05:002021-05-01T15:31:16.638-05:00May Day, May Day! 1 May 2021<p>If you know why I just said "May Day" twice instead of thrice, good on you! I'll explain it shortly for the others, but perhaps you will find the rest of the post entertaining nonetheless.</p>So it's May first, or 1 May, to put it correctly. Did you make someone a May Basket and leave it to-day? Huh? Judas H Priest in the archives, more musty stuff from Past Elder? Whatever am I talking about? The first of May has a long history of varying significance. Here's the deal on that.<br /><br /><b>Distress signal.</b><br /><br />OK, maybe you've heard "May Day" as a distress signal in the movies. So why "May Day" for a distress signal, did something really bad happen on 1 May once? No. The expression originated from the legendary Croydon Airport in London, which closed 30 September 1959. It was the first airport to begin what is now called air traffic control, in 1921. A senior radio officer named Frederick Stanley Mockford was asked to come up with something understood by all concerned to indicate distress, a grave or immanent danger needing immediate help.<br /><br />It was to be a spoken radio equivalent to the radiotelegraphic SOS in effect since 1 July 1908; the telephonic 9-1-1 was decades away. Since at that time most of the traffic was between Croydon and the also legendary Le Bourget airport in Paris (that's where Charles Lindbergh would land in 1927, and is still open, business jets only), Mockford chose the French phrase "Venez m'aider", Come to my aid. "May Day" is an English corruption of the French phrase.<br /><br />Now, when given as a distress call it is said three times, to avoid confusion, since the conditions under which it is given are likely fairly confused already. Therefore, to honour the practice, I said it only twice since this is not a distress call.<br /><br /><b>Floralia.</b><br /><br />The original May Day was a Roman (as in Republic, not Empire or Church, though it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between those two) festival of Flora, goddess of flowers. The word flora is still the botanical term for plants, and is the basis of the word for flower in Latin derived languages, such as the Spanish flor. Floralia, the feast, happened on IV Kalends of May, which is between what we call 27 April to 3 May, and was associated with springtime, new life, fertility, end of Winter, all that good stuff.<div><br /></div><div>It was a pretty big blow-out, and an official one too, paid for by the government and supervised by elected government officials called aediles. Cicero had a hand in the 69 BC event. There were two kinds of aediles, patrician (from the descendants of the patres, the fathers) and plebian (from the plebs, the regular folks). The plebian aediles (aediles plebis) were the original ones, and were in charge of the Floralia. It started with theatrical events (ludi scaenici) and ended with competitions and spectacles. Suetonius says the Floralia in 68 AD had an elephant walking a tightrope. Of course this was under Emperor Galba, the first emperor in the notorious Year of the Four Emperors, so hey. Juvenal says prostitutes would dance naked and put on mock gladiator fights. Romans were good at blow-outs. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's important to notice that this was primarily a plebian festival, for regular folks, free citizens but not patricians.<br /><br />Others also had Spring-is-here-hooray goings-on. Now on to them. <br /><br /><b>Walpurga Day (and Night).</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Our good friends the Germans had Walpurgisnacht, Walpurgis Night. What in all flying Judas is that? Well the custom was pretty common among Germanic types, like the Vikings, and included bonfires to keep away pesky spirits and celebrate the return of light etc. Ain't got nuttin to do with the name though. Here's the story on that.<b><br /></b><br />Walpurga was an English girl from Devon, the southwestern tip of Mother England named for the Dumnonii, the Briton tribe living in the area when the Romans showed up in 43 AD, including present-day Devon and Cornwall. Around 741 AD she went with her uncle Boniface and some other English guys from Devon to evangelise the German people, who were not Christian then. English as spoken in Devon at the time was Germanic (this is well before the Norman Conquest changed everything) so they would be understood. She was Benedictine (of course). Her dad had stuck her in the Benedictine convent at Wimborne Abbey at age 11 so he and her two brothers could go off on one of those blasted pilgrimages to the "Holy Land", for which dad is known as St Richard the Pilgrim.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wimborne Abbey is still there, sort of, the original women's nunnery was trashed by the Danes in 1013, rebuilt by the Normans in C12, the rest was appropriated by the "Church of England" when that was invented and it's now a tourist attraction and local parish church. Church of England, of course. </div><div><br />Due to her education, Walpurga was able to write an account of their travels, making her the first known female author, English or German. Her brothers had founded a Benedictine monkery for men and women both in Heidenheim, in Bavaria, of which she eventually became abbess. She died there on 25 February 777, or 779 depending on who's counting, which following the usual practice was and still is in some places her feast day. </div><div><br /></div><div>However, on 1 May, she was canonised a saint by Pope Adrian II in 870, and also on 1 May 870 her remains were dug up and moved -- this is known by the more elegant phrase "translation of the relics" -- from Heidenheim to Eichstätt, which gave rise to a Benedictine abbey which is still there. As the Christianisation of Europe proceeded, 1 May became her feast day in many places, and the coming of longer sunlight days became associated with her feast day, so that the bonfires and the clergy of the indigenous religion -- aka witches, pejoratively -- had to scatter with the coming of St Walpurga's Day, May Day. Hence Walpurgis Night, the eve of her feast, the night before as their last big blow out. No word on special flights to Blocksberg (the Brocken) for those whose brooms are in the shop.<br /><br /><b>Beltane.</b><br /><br />Another related celebration is the Celtic Beltane. That's one of the four big Celtic feasts, and with Samhain, around 1 November at Winter comes on, the two most important. 1 May is about midway between the Spring equinox and Summer solstice, when the herds are led back to the fields, bonfires are built to protect against the faeries, thought to be particularly active at this time, feasts prepared, often with people jumping over the bonfires. So, build a bonfire, dance around the May pole -- now there's a phallic fertility symbol for you. </div><div><br /></div><div>BTW, related to the sacred tree thing of pre-Christian Germanic types, Boniface (Walpurga's uncle, remember, and btw whose baptismal name was Winifred) supposedly cut down Thor's Sacred Oak in 723 but we still have Thor's Day, Thursday, or Donnerstag, his German name being Donner. Or, make a May basket of sweets, but instead of for Flora or the faeries leave it on somebody's doorstep anonymously, maybe for your own choice to be Queen of the May.<br /><br /><b>Maia and Mary crowning.</b><br /><br />Who's Maia? "May" comes from Maius in Latin, and is actually named from the Greek fertility goddess Maia, or Maia Maiestas in Latin, and in Roman traditional religion the first and fifteenth of the month were her holy days. 1 May was the date of her festival as the Bona Dea (the good goddess), the goddess of fertility and growth, which likely gave rise to the word maiores, elders ie those who have grown. Some of which practices survives in some Catholic circles as May crowing, where a crown is put on a statue of Mary, who has the whole month of May dedicated to her. Not sure what Miriam (Mary) the mother of Jesus would think of being a reconstituted Maia, but it probably ain't good. Do whatever he tells you, she said (John2:5), and he didn't say bupkis about nuttin like this.</div><div><br /><b>International Worker's Day.</b><br /><br />Alternatively, May Day is also International Worker's Day. This celebrates the victories of the labour movement, especially the recognition of the eight-hour workday. The date was chosen by the Second International, an association of socialist and labour movements, in 1889. Why 1 May? To commemorate the executions of some of the participants in a strike for the eight hour day on 4 May 1886 at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Hey, didn't I say 4 May, not 1 May? Yes I did. However this particular strike was one of many throughout the land, as the eight-hour workday was supposed to become standard 1 May 1886 and that is when strikes in support of it began. On 4 May at the Chicago one, someone tossed a bomb at the police line -- this is the origin of the phrase "bomb throwing anarchist" -- and it is unknown how many actually died. Among the four eventually executed by hanging for the incident, none was the "bomb throwing anarchist".</div><div><br /></div><div>In Communist countries May Day was celebrated with parades of workers and military. In post-Communist countries, as well as many others, the day functions much as Labor Day does in the US.<br /><br /><b>Feast of St Joseph the Worker.</b><br /><br />The Roman Catholic Church reconstituted that too (they do that a lot with stuff). To counter International Worker's Day, in 1955 along with his (in)famous revisions of the Holy Week liturgy, Pope Pius XII abolished the feast of St Joseph as patron of the universal church, established in 1870 by Pope Pius IX for the Wednesday of the second week after Easter, and created a feast of St Joseph the Worker to be celebrated on 1 May, also thereby boofing the feast of Saints Philip and James from that date.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Conclusion.</b><br /><br />All that said, why not make a little basket of sweets for your sweetheart and give it to her as a surprise. If you go jumping over any bonfires, watch your butt. And, if you go to an eight-hour workday, remember that the eight-hour workday didn't happen because the forces of the market efficiently and beneficiently produced it, but because some people worked damned hard to bring it about in the marketplace despite its forces.</div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36100279.post-23975410184881749942021-04-21T13:41:00.000-05:002021-04-21T13:41:21.222-05:0021 April. The Founding of the City. 2774/2021.<p>Huh? What city?</p>Well, when you use the definite article ("the") with "city" you know it can only mean one thing, Rome. Rome evolved a character that is the background of what we know to-day, yet then traded it for an un-Roman empire and its later church. There's something we can learn from that so we don't do the same. Here's the story.<br /><br /><b>First Rome. Kingdom, Republic, Empire.</b><br /><br />Marcus Terentius Varro (no relation, though Roman naming practice would indicate there is), who lived from 116 to 27 BC, right at the time the Roman Republic was transitioning to the Roman Empire, calculated what in the modern calendar we now date as 21 April 753 BC as the date of the founding of Rome. Varro was an incredible scholar, one of the most remarkable anytime anywhere, and wrote extensively on pretty much everything, though only one work survives complete and only a few survive in fragments.<br /><br />His one surviving complete work is Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres, meaning On Things Agricultural in Three Books. (See "rustic" in there?) Among many other duties, he owned a large farm near Reate (modern Rieti, in central Italy), which was a central point in the Roman road linking Rome to the Adriatic Sea on the other side of what is now Italy. That road was called the Via Salaria, meaning Salt Road, a major trade route beginning with the pre-Roman Sabines gathering salt from the River Tiber, which was a huge factor in the founding of Rome, hence Varro's connexion to it.<br /><br />Roman improvements to the Via Salaria survive to this day in rural areas where the destruction after the Fall of Rome by the Germanic barbarians wasn't so severe. The Via Salaria had a role in the introduction of Christianity to Rome, which is covered in the "22 February. The Confession of St Peter. On Chairs Too" post on this blog, so you can read about that there.<br /><br />But I can't let Varro go without mentioning that this incredible genius, for example, with no technology to detail it, by sheer observation and deduction therefrom, anticipated modern epidemiology and microbiology by noticing the disease coming from hanging around swamps and marches, warning against it and positing the existence of organisms not visible to the eye that enter the body and cause the disease. His Disciplinarum libri IX (Disciplines in Nine Books), though itself now lost, we know from other ancient sources was the model for the encyclopaedia as we know it, and, the basis from which that pillar of education, the Seven Liberal Arts, derives, which is also treated elsewhere on this blog, on the post "Readin', Writin' and Absolute Multitude" for 25 February each year, the founding date of my alma mater The University of Iowa. Helluva guy. We use stuff that comes from him every day and hardly know of him. Rome, always Rome.<br /><br />We use stuff every day that comes from Rome and hardly know of that either. Rome itself went through three distinct stages, namely kingdom, republic and empire, from 753 BC to 476 AD. That's 1,229 years! And though the western part of the Empire containing Rome itself fell in 476, the eastern part of the Empire continued until 1453. That's another 997 years for a total of 2226 years! And, what took itself as a reconstitution of the Roman Empire lasted until 1806. That's another 353 years, for a total of 2579 years! Over two and one half millennia!!<br /><br />At its founding Rome was a kingdom. This was from 753 to 509 BC, 244 years; there were seven kings. Kingship was elected by a senate, not hereditary, but, the king was absolute in all areas; he was chief lawgiver, chief executive, chief judge, chief priest. Then the kingdom was abolished for a system of elected executive officials, laws made not by direct popular vote but by elected representatives, a separation of powers, and a constitution. Sound familiar? This was from 509 to 27 BC, 482 years.<br /><br />Eventually though, the success of the Republic was also its downfall. This is where we have something to learn. Conflict between the Patricians, descendants of the founding fathers ("patres", hence "patrician") and their families from the Kingdom, and the Plebeians, everyone outside that class ("plebs", Latin for "common people") grew worse. The "Conflict of the Orders", though it saw the Plebeians attain the political rights originally held by the Patricians only, also saw the emergence of an unofficial aristocracy of plebeians who did well financially with the successes of the Republic, so the general situation of most people did not change, and increasingly though they had political rights they were not inclined to use them, but rather looked to a strong executive who would give them stuff as the answer. Maybe that sounds familiar too, now.<br /><br />Thus did a provision for a dictator, originally meant as a provision for a limited time to get through a period of a specific crisis, become a dictator for life in Julius Caesar and eventually a reversion to a supreme ruler, an emperor, in his adopted son, Octavian, in 27 BC, though the institutions of the Republic, most notably the Senate, still existed. Outwardly a republic, but really a dictatorial empire. All too familiar. How this outwardly one thing inwardly another changed the church is covered elsewhere on this blog, on the post for 16 January "Eastern Church/Empire, Western Church/Empire". Here, it's about what we can learn from the true essence of Rome, which figures so heavily in our own founding, and how Rome discarded it for something quite different, to help us not do the same thing in increasingly similar circumstances in our own time socially.<br /><br />The Roman Empire lasted from 27 BC to 476 AD, 503 years. Sort of. By 476, there was one Roman Empire, but it was divided into two parts, eastern and western, with twelve administrative units called dioceses. This was done by Diocletian, the son of a slave who became emperor, in 285 to solve the crisis of the enormous instability in the huge empire that arose in the third century (which historians call, oddly enough, the Crisis of the Third Century). The western part, which includes the city itself, collapsed in 476. The eastern part did not. That's the "sort of".<br /><br /><b>Second Rome.</b><br /><br />The eastern part was later called the Byzantine Empire since it was Greek speaking, but they themselves used no such term, and saw themselves as the Roman Empire, period; they continued Roman traditions and considered themselves Romans. They tried to maintain order in the fallen West by exarchs (Latin vicarius, vicar in English), one in Ravenna from 584 until the Lombards (north Germanic types who took over most of what is now Italy) killed the last one in 751, and one in Carthage, from 590 until destroyed by the Umayyad Caliphate in 698. The loss of the riches of Carthage and of Egypt in the Exarchate of Africa was a severe blow, and a much greater threat in the rise of Islam emerged, which having already conquered most of what we now call the Middle East, now had their sights on Constantinople, the capital. Islamic conquest was stopped in the eighth century, but later this reversed with the Battle of Manzikert in modern Turkey in 1071, resulting in steady decline to the point where the Roman Empire called upon the Roman Empire for help in 1095.<br /><br />Huh? Howzat, were there two Roman Empires? Well yeah, sort of. Oh great, another sort of. Well, history is full of them, and they have a lot to do with how our present is. Here's what happened. Rome's problems weren't only the internal social ones mentioned above. Externally, there was the threat from the Germanic barbarians beyond Roman borders, which resulted in two sacks of Rome, one in 410 by the Visigoths commanded by Alaric, the other in 455 by the Vandals under Genseric. Finally, Odoacer, the Scirian (the Scirii were East Germanic types) leader, deposed the last western Roman emperor, Romulus (what an irony, same name as Rome's legendary founder after whom the city was named) on 4 September 476. And the Senate went along with it! Even so he professed to be under the eastern emperor, Zeno, but he wasn't impressed and sent the Ostrogoth king Theodoric to conquer him, which he did. Theodoric invited Odoacer to a reconciliation banquet, at which he killed him on 15 March 493, then set about restoring the lost glory of Rome. And that's the real story of Dietrich von Bern. (Lutherans, if you're not laughing, check your Large Catechism for God's sake.)<br /><br />What's not to be missed here is this: though Rome as a political reality was gone, and though none of these guys were Romans, and, though these non-Romans were the destroyers of Rome as a political entity, and, though they were Arians, a version of Christianity opposed to the one the empire had defined, they nonetheless appealed to either or both the surviving eastern part of the Roman Empire and/or the cultural legacy of the western part and the Empire as a whole for legitimacy!<br /><br />The reconstituting of western Rome proceeded further with Charles Martel (Karl Martell, Carolus Martellus), King of the Franks. Franks? More Germanic types, known to the Romans before things fell apart, the only Germanic group that was not Arian, many had served in the Roman army all the way back to Julius Caesar. Legends with written documents from as early as the seventh century attribute their origin to the losing forces of King Priam at Troy, the same origin as Virgil, on commission from Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, in the Aeneid attributed to, guess who, the Romans!<br /><br />External to the south was the rise of Islam; the Umayyad Caliphate had conquered its way across northern Africa and up the Iberian peninsula into what is now the middle of France. This was halted and its reversal begun on 10 October 732 at the Battle of Tours (aka Poitiers), when Charles, leading united forces against a vastly superior force, in one of the most stunning military achievements ever, so soundly defeated the forces of the Caliphate that he got his nickname The Hammer (martellus in Latin) and set the stage for the reconstruction of some sort of unified order in Europe.<br /><br />This came to fruition in Charles' grandson, also named Charles, who further consolidated his rule in the lands of the old western Empire, and on 25 December (yes, Christmas Day) 800 AD was crowned Emperor of the Romans, Imperator Augustus, by the last surviving authority of imperial Rome, the bishop of Rome, at the time Leo III, at St Peter's Basilica (not the one there now, the one built by Constantine that was there before) in Rome. For such accomplishments, the first unified ruler in Europe in over three hundred years, he is called Pater Europae, the Father of Europe, and also Charles the Great, Carolus Magnus, or Charlemagne.<br /><br />Oh OK, you're talking about the Holy Roman Empire, right? Well, sort of. Great, another sort of. Well, history is ... like we said above. The "Holy Roman Empire" didn't see itself as the Holy Roman Empire. That term didn't even arise until the thirteenth century, by which time the "Holy Roman Empire" had been around some four hundred years.<br /><br />From the start, in 800, it was simply the Roman Empire, period, reconstituted, a translatio imperii, transfer of rule in Latin, from ancient Rome with the same legitimacy. But the eastern part of the Roman Empire thought it was still the Roman Empire, and didn't think much of these former "barbarians" thinking they had reinstituted the Roman Empire, not just the western half but the whole thing. At the time the eastern claimant to being the Roman Empire was ruled by Irene, as regent for her son who was too young to assume rule. For a time she thought of marrying Charlemagne, who was eligible at the time, but the idea never came to anything.<br /><br />So there's the "sort of", two entities each considering itself the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire (the eastern half that survived) called upon the Roman Empire (the western half revived) in 1095 for help against Islamic conquest. Thus began what are called the Crusades (though they weren't called that until well after the last one).<br /><br />Interesting to note that the appeal was not from one Roman Emperor to the other. It was from Alexios I, Roman Emperor as in the one in the east, but not to the "other" Roman emperor Henry IV, the "holy" Roman emperor at the time; rather, the appeal was to the bishop of Rome, that last surviving authority of the Rome that fell, which at the time was Pope Urban II.<br /><br />The Roman Empire as in the so-called Byzantine Empire, fell to Islamic conquest on 29 May 1453 with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, who claimed both the sultanate (secular) and caliphate (religious). The Roman Empire as in the so-called Holy Roman Empire would last from 25 December 800 to 6 August 1806, following defeat by Napoleon at Austerlitz. That's just over a millennium!<br /><br />So there's your total of over two and one-half millennia, i.e. (which stands for id est, that is, in Latin, more Roman stuff we use) over 2,500 years, of political entities derived from and based on Rome. OK that's impressive but it's over, right? Wrong. Enter the "Third Rome".<br /><br /><b>Third Rome? Three of Them.</b><div><b><br /></b></div><div>First candidate.<br /><br />There's a third Rome? Yeah, sort of. Great, another sort of. Actually, there's several of them. Well, history is ... getting the idea? When Sultan of Islam Mehmed II successfully led the conquest of Constantinople (he was only 21 at the time btw!), he proclaimed himself Caesar of Rome, Qayser-i Rum, since the western empire was long gone and he had possession of the capital of the eastern, Constantinople the new Rome (as in city). And, it was supported by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the state church in the eastern empire, with Mehmed installing the Christian Patriarch and the Patriarch crowning the Islamic emperor. Even what would have been the heirs of the last "Byzantine" Emperor, Constantine XI (his deceased brother's sons, since he left no heir), served Mehmed and attained high office in that service. Mehmed was intent on there being a third Rome, the first being pagan, the second Christian and the third Islamic.<br /><br />He had his sights set on conquering the west including the city of Rome but died before carrying it out, and though the title wasn't used much after him the concept was. The Ottoman Empire lasted until 1 November 1922, not even a century ago at this writing, when, having been on the losing side of World War I and having lost much Middle Eastern territory to the winning side, a revolution led by Mustafa Kemal (aka Ataturk) abolished the sultanate and threw out the ruling Osmans as traitors, literally, the last sultan, Mehmed VI, leaving the country on 17 November that year.<br /><br />The man who would be Sultan of Islam if it still existed is Harun Osman. He became the 46th head of the House of Osman on 18 January 2021, on the death of his brother, Dundar Ali Osman, who had become head of the House of Osman on the death of his predecessor 6 January 2017. Though male Osman family members were allowed to return to Turkey in 1974, he remained in Damascus, Syria, his birthplace, then in 2017 he was evacuated by order of President Erdogan of Turkey and lived in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople. President Erdogan also telephoned Harun Osman, who lives in Istanbul, to offer condolences to the Osman family on the death of Dundar Ali Osman. <div><br /></div><div>All of which is part of a noticeable shift for Turkey under Erdogan, which seeks to re-establish the influence of Turkey in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire. This has caused some discomfort in the West as a shift away from it. Dundar's predecessor, Bayezid Osman, was the first to be born outside of Turkey and after the end of the Empire, lived in the United States and even served in the US Army. After some hesitation, the caliphate was abolished by Turkey on 3 March 1924. Turkey as we just noted remains much in the news these days, as do efforts to re-establish a caliphate. BTW "Islam" in all this is Sunni Islam, not to be confused with Shiite Islam, which has entirely different ideas about succession of authority in Islam.</div><div><br /></div><div>Second candidate.<br /><br />Also following the fall of Constantinople and the end of the surviving eastern part of the Roman Empire, some Eastern Orthodox, the state church of that empire, took refuge in Russia, which was also Orthodox since St Vladimir, aka Vladimir the Great, Grand Prince of Kiev, in 988, and the idea spread that Moscow, itself and as the main city of the land, was the new, third Rome. This took a big uptick when Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow (no Tsars yet), married the niece of Constantine XI, the last eastern Roman emperor. Thing is, succession by line of descent is a later idea, and was not the established norm for Rome. The claim rests more really on the continuance of the Orthodox Christian faith of the "Byzantine" Empire. Ivan began to use the title Tsar, which is the expression in Russian of, guess what, Caesar. Sometimes it's written Czar, in which the derivation is even clearer.<br /><br />This became the formal title of Russian emperors, lasting until 1917 with Nicholas II, overthrown and executed by the Communists. Though it's not the only case of it, it's significant in this case that the double eagle symbol of the "Byzantine" Roman Empire (Rome itself used a single eagle) was adopted in the coat of arms of the Russian Empire, was continued in the coat of arms of the short-lived Russian Republic, and only discontinued with the aberration of Russian history that was the Soviet Union.<br /><br />Hey wait a minute, ain't Kiev in Ukraine? Yes, but sort of. Ukraine is actually The Ukraine, why, because the word "Ukraine" means "borderland". Borderland of what? The Russias, that's what. Why the plural, ain't it just Russia? Sort of. The word "Russia" comes from Rus', and describes a people and the broad area in which they lived, not a country per se. Hence, the Kievan Rus'. That's why the czars were called Czar of all the Russias -- all the present lands of the Rus'. The Ukraine is The Borderland of that. Western European countries have been trying to bring the borderland under their sphere of influence for centuries, a fact not lost on the current president of Russia.<br /><br />Speaking of which, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation was formed. Take a look at the coat of arms adopted by the Russian Federation in 1993. Know what's at the top? The double-headed eagle, the basics going right back to Ivan III. Moscow, the Third Rome.<br /><br />Not to mention, Moscow is built on seven hills, just like Constantinople before it and Rome before it. Wild, huh?</div><div><br /></div><div>Third candidate.<br /><br />The concept of a third Rome was also prominent in the formation of modern Italy as a unified state from the many historic small states on the peninsula. This was to be a third Rome, as in, the first one of emperors, the second one of popes, and a third one of the people, as the name of the movement expresses, Resorgimento, cognate with our resurgence, a rebirth or revival, which also included dominance of the Mediterranean area. The first big step was the establishment of a unified kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861 when Victor Emmanuel, of the House of Savoy and King of Sardinia, became King of Italy, as the Kingdom of Sardinia, which controlled much of the Italian peninsula, became the Kingdom of Italy and the capital ended up in Rome. This movement changed, not in essentials but in intensity, with the king's appointment of Benito Mussolini as prime minister in 1922. With this, a new political movement emerged called fascism and the stage was set for the cataclysm we now call World War II.<br /><br /><b>Fascism. What It Is, What It Isn't, Why It's Un-Roman.</b><br /><br />Fascism. Now, the word is mostly used as a pejorative, to put down anyone advocating government action with which you don't agree. But it arises right here. Fascism is a modern term; it originates with Mussolini's 1932 essay "The Doctrine of Fascism". (He actually only wrote part of it but it all appeared under his name.) What we now call World War I was in its time called The War To End All Wars. It didn't, but it did end a social order that had evolved over millennia, on a scale unprecedented in human history. Fascism addresses that situation. The term has been associated with the right wing of the political spectrum since World War II, but actually Fascism opposes all wings of the political spectrum, right and left, as relics of the past inadequate to the new modern situation. It views the right as backward and the left as destructive, and cares nothing for how it is classified since it sees all those classifications as variable. The future it believes belongs to authority, which alone can manage human life, therefore, no human value exists or develops outside of or apart from the state since the state alone can comprehensively nurture all aspects of human life.<br /><br />This would indeed be the Resurgence, a strong unified nation out of a broken set of pieces after the war, with the strength and unity coming from strong government, a re-surgence of the Roman Empire. The Fascists gained control in several localities and eventually did the famous March on Rome, so powerful that in 1922 the king thought it better to appoint the Fascist leader prime minister than risk the bloodshed that would follow if he didn't.<br /><br />This in turn inspired a young man, also a WWI veteran, north of the Alps in his desire to effect a strong united Germany following the defeat and loss of the German Empire. Adolf Hitler directly modelled his first attempt to take power in Germany after Benito Mussolini, the next year, 1923. That attempt failed, but eventually he succeeded. Since for a strong unified nation there can be only one political party and since there is only one movement that is right, the leader of that party once in office is the official leader of the state. Mussolini's designation in 1922 as The Leader, Il Duce in Italian, from the Latin dux, meaning leader, was the direct model for Hitler's designation in 1934 of himself as The Leader, der Führer in German. The model being Julius Caesar, who precipitated the evolution of Rome from a republic to an empire, and Octavian, aka Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.<br /><br />The term "fascism" comes from, guess what, a Roman thing, the fasces lictoriae. OK OK I'll translate. Fasces means bundles. Lictoriae means of the lictors. Great, what's that? Fasces is plural, the singular is fascis, bundle. Bundle of what? Rods, usually birch, bound by a red leather strip, with an axe in the middle with its blade sticking out, a symbol of the authority of any level of Roman magistrate; lictors are the guys who carry them before the magistrate. These were used throughout the entire history of Rome, from the Kingdom on.<br /><br />Oh wow so WWII is the legacy of Rome in modern times? That's a hell of a thing to ascribe to something you seem to think is good, there, Past Elder. Yeah it would be, if that were what I am doing. I'm not. The convulsions of mid C20 happened because these guys forgot something about the fasces, and the fasces expresses what the movement named after them forgot, or more accurately overlooked, about Rome. Which is, within the Pomerium, the axe is removed from the fasces. What does this mean? (Lutherans should ask this of everything.) Pomerium is a Latin contraction of post moerium, meaning, behind the wall; it's the original area of Rome as ploughed out and demarcated by Romulus on, guess when, 21 April.<br /><br />It means that in the heart of the city, the axe, a sign of ultimate power even over life and death, therefore a sign of absolute authority, <i>was not allowed</i>. The idea being, power has its limits, and at the core of things, power rests with the people through their elected representatives, not a Leader. That's what a republic is, literally, res publica, "a public thing" in Latin. This principle is what is the essence of Rome. It was well served by its sixth king, Servius Tullius, who besides preserving the nation militarily also extended power to all classes, which had as its outcome his assassination in 535 BC by his own daughter, Tullia, and son-in-law Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. When the latter became the seventh king, outrage at this tragic crime (that's what it was called, tragicum scelus) led to not only his ouster as king but ouster of the kingdom itself as unRoman. The Republic was established and the office of king abolished and split between two officials, called consules, singular consul, so power never was totally held by any one man. No Leader.<br /><br />It didn't last. So what happened? The Republic did allow for a dictator -- from the Latin for "to speak", one whose word becomes law -- to be appointed, for a limited time to address a specific crisis. Oh well there's the problem, then, huh? Well, sort of, again. This actually worked quite well for some time, and when the guy who changed it, Julius Caesar, came along, it hadn't been used for 120 years. He gave it a new form, with no time limit. Sulla, the guy who last had it, kept it for about a year, then retired. Which set the stage for Gaius Julius Caesar to bring back the regular dictatorship, then have it extended to one year, then renewed annually, and finally being named dictator perpetuo, dictator in perpetuity.<br /><br />Which shortly morphed into an emperor, the first being Julius Caesar's adopted son, known as Caesar Augustus, and of course with that, though many of the institutions of the Republic continued, the Republic was no more, an empire took its place, with an absolute leader at the head. So Rome devolved into an essentially unRoman entity, and it is that entity which generally comes to mind when one says "Rome", the Roman Empire.<br /><br />The legacy, that which influenced and was incorporated into later times, of the Roman Empire is immense. Our language, both its vocabulary and how it is written, our calendar, units of measure, basics of law, technology spanning many fields, such as medicine, architecture, civic planning, agriculture, weaponry and engineering, to name a few. And of course, science and philosophy, as Rome absorbed ancient Greece and other cultures, bearing new fruit and passing them on to us. Most of that, however, happened <i>before</i> the Empire. And that's the key. Rome itself, or more accurately, many within Rome itself, knew this transition was happening even as it happened.<br /><br />Nero (15 December 37 - 9 June 68), became the 5th emperor at age 17 on 13 October 54. He was militarily successful for the new empire, and public spending, as well as on himself, was massively increased. He was The Leader. He was quite popular with the lower classes but not so much with the upper classes whose taxes paid for all this. This led to his overthrow and reported suicide in 68, which led to massive political instability, four emperors in one year, and to disbelief among commoners that he was really dead but would at some point return, and return to power and start giving away stuff again (Nero Redivivus).<br /><br />Around 100 AD, about 30 years after Nero's death, which is about 125 years after the Roman Republic ended on 16 January 27 BC when the Senate proclaimed Octavian with the new title Caesar Augustus, Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) decried this change in the Roman nature in his Satire X, in the famous phrase "panem et circenses", bread and circuses. The Romans had traded the dignity and freedoms of the Roman Republic for the Empire, based on who would give them stuff ("food and entertainment") for free, i.e., paid for with someone else's money via the government.<br /><br />Bread and circuses, meaning food and entertainment. It's from this that the country in The Hunger Games is called Panem; circuses comes from the circles within which public entertainment was staged. <span class="text Matt-16-20">No surprise that later in the same Satire Juvenal says rather than the wrong, or wrongly exaggerated, desires expected from one's own efforts or appropriated from the efforts of others, such as power and wealth, one should desire mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a sound body. And no surprise he warns in another Satire (VI, to be exact) of the dangers of a government so powerful. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? -- who guards the guards themselves, or, who watches the watchers?</span><br /><span class="text Matt-16-20"><span class="footnote-text"></span></span><br /><span class="text Matt-16-20">And that's the great question. Power. Power by whom over whom and for what purpose. In a word, society, Latin again, societas, how do we form and organise our associations, literally, with each other.</span><br /><span class="text Matt-16-20"><span class="footnote-text"></span></span><br /><span class="text Matt-16-20">Plato thought the guardians will be their own guardians against abuse and corruption by what is called the "noble lie" in politics and the "pious fiction" in religion. That is, a myth of a religious or political (or both) nature told by an elite that doesn't actually believe it but uses it for the purpose of establishing or maintaining the greater good. Yeah well, sounds good but doesn't work out that way. So what is the greater good, and how is that established or maintained? The only constant among Man's various answers to that is an elite in power, so we're right back to power by whom over whom and for what purpose. Societas, how, why, and for what purpose do we associate ourselves?</span><br /><span class="text Matt-16-20"><br /></span><span class="text Matt-16-20"><b>Another Third Rome?</b></span><br /><br />After the constitutional convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what type of government had been worked out in the closed proceedings. He replied: A republic -- if you can keep it. Franklin knew where this comes from, and he knew how it was lost. All the essential features of a republic come from Rome, as in the Roman Republic. A constitution (Rome's was not written like ours, it used precedent, and that is still a feature in our legal system), regular elections, term limits, quorums to do business, veto, impeachment, filibuster, the "power of the purse", separation of powers so that power does not concentrate in one office or office holder -- all of this comes to us from Rome.<br /><br />The Roman Republic, that is. Rome blew it. It traded the Republic for an Empire. While that Empire contributed much to life as we know it now, most of that comes from the Republic, and some of it, particularly when it comes to authority, does not, but both the good and the bad influences everything. Another third Rome is not a country, but a culture. Again: Our languages, both its vocabulary and how it is written, our calendar, units of measure, basics of law, technology spanning many fields, such as medicine, architecture, civic planning, agriculture, weaponry and engineering, to name a few, and of course, science and philosophy.<br /><br />Will we keep it? Will it be mens sana in corpore sano or panem et circenses, a sound mind in a sound body or bread (food) and circuses (entertainment)? Will we get carried away by exaggerated desires for the fruits of our labours and/or fruits appropriated from the labour of others, and turn to a guardian who will deliver them to us? What has been passed to us from and through Rome is an astounding heritage that has yielded an even more astounding harvest of knowledge, with more to come.<br /><br />Senatus populusque romanus. SPQR. Sums it all up. Well, if you know what it means it does, so in case you don't, here it is -- it's Latin for The Roman Senate and People. It's the classic inscription put on coins, and public documents and buildings. "People" in this usage means government as a whole; the people, as represented in their assemblies. A free and sovereign people, the root of authority. This came into use, as one might expect, after the Kingdom with the Republic. And it continued after the Republic into the Empire, but no longer meant what it said, and was discontinued after Constantine. The outer form was there but the inner content was not, the assemblies really being a rubber stamp for the will of the emperor, as the embodiment of the people and therefore of their will. Which could happen as an unofficial aristocracy based on wealth, acquired or inherited, emerged and the people in general began to look to it for the solution to their problems rather than to themselves. </div><div><br /></div><div>That's the trade. Sound minds and bodies of free and sovereign people traded for food and entertainment provided by an authoritarian guardian.<br /><br />Outwardly a republic but really a dictatorial empire. Let's not make the trade of being a free and sovereign people of sound minds and bodies for an authoritarian guardian who is our provider. Learn from Rome, the eternal city.<br /><br />21 April 2774 ab urbe condita, from the city having been founded.</div></div>Past Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.com0