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To: steelhead_trout
Capitalism is not a product of Roman Catholicism. It has 2 parents, Calvinists and non-Christians....

You are correct to say that Capitalism is not a product of the Catholic Church, but crediting the wisdom of Capitalism to Calvinists and non-Christians alone simply reveals that you must not be very familiar with the Parable of Talents, as told by Jesus Christ.

Otherwise, you'd have more of an appreciation for what a generous Capitalist the Heavenly Father is. Jesus Christ makes quite the case for the time value of money.

Calvinists (and quite a number of Catholics and non-Christians) have been blessed throughout history by the application of the wisdom of Capitalism as illustrated by Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand."

FReegards!

 photo million-vet-march.jpg

74 posted on 11/27/2013 6:25:44 PM PST by Agamemnon (Darwinism is the glue that holds liberalism together)
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To: Agamemnon

“crediting the wisdom of Capitalism to Calvinists and non-Christians alone simply reveals that you must not be very familiar with the Parable of Talents, as told by Jesus Christ.”


Oh, I’ve heard that parable many times. But the biblical scholar William R. Herzog II has an interesting take on that parable. In his interpretation, the image of the absentee landlord, who reaps where he didn’t sow, is taken literally. On Herzog’s reading, the third servant is a “whistle-blower” who has “unmasked the ‘joy of the master’ for what it is, the profits of exploitation squandered in wasteful excess.” He is punished for speaking the truth, not for failing to make a profit. For Herzog, the point of the parable is the need to act in solidarity when confronting injustice.


77 posted on 11/27/2013 7:19:51 PM PST by steelhead_trout (MYOB)
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To: Agamemnon

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness

[21] ...For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succsession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start out of the ruins of that heathen power.

[22] The language also which they use (both in the churches and in theirpublic acts) being Latin, which is not commonly used by any nationnow in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Roman language?

[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.

Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.
Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.

[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.

[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness

Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6. 12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12. 26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid., 9. 34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air";[Ephesians, 2. 2] and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world":[John, 16. 11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness." For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.


89 posted on 11/28/2013 9:22:36 AM PST by Sir Francis Dashwood ("Arjuna, why have you have dropped your bow???")
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