Replies

“I’ll agree that the Reformation was an imperfect start.”

Its end is no better either: atheism, communism, hedonism, skepticism, utilitarianism, totalitarianism.
.............
Yeah I’ve seen catholics on other forums make this charge. While a satisfying charge to make—it doesn’t properly connect cause and effect. The cause for the ugly stuff above is a by product of the scientific revolution—which began in with the introduction of greek ideas by way of the Renaissance. The principal Greek idea here is that “Man is the Measure of all things.” This — taken to its logical conclusion — would include God. Naturally if you can measure God, then he is not God. If he is not God—then all the laws and structures related to him are built on fantasies. Therefor you get all the ugly stuff above. etc.

St Paul’s most spectacular failure was in his serman on Mars Hill in Athens to Greek Epicureans and Stoics. Why? because he tried to fit his words into the the architecture of Greek Philosophical thinking. Which began with the premise. “Man is the measure of all things.”

By contrast—Jewish/Christian theology begins with the premise that God is the measure of all things.

The shorthand here is that that philsophy is man centered bottoms up reasoning whereas theology is God Centered top down reasoning. Confuse the two and there’s hell to pay.

“Yeah I’ve seen catholics on other forums make this charge. While a satisfying charge to make—it doesn’t properly connect cause and effect.”

Ultimately it does. It’s just very difficult to document such cause and effect because you’re talking about ideological movements rather than simple events.

St Paul’s most spectacular failure was in his serman on Mars Hill in Athens to Greek Epicureans and Stoics. Why? because he tried to fit his words into the the architecture of Greek Philosophical thinking. Which began with the premise. “Man is the measure of all things.”
By contrast—Jewish/Christian theology begins with the premise that God is the measure of all things.

The shorthand here is that that philsophy is man centered bottoms up reasoning whereas theology is God Centered top down reasoning. Confuse the two and there’s hell to pay.

You conveniently leave out Jesus and, in particular, the generally agreed on theology that He is both God and man. If you take Jesus as your man-measure you are also taking God as your measure — or do you disagree with Jesus's assertion of he who has seen me has seen the Father? (John 14:9)

The principal Greek idea here is that “Man is the Measure of all things.”

I don't think the Greek greats, Plato and Aristotle, would have agreed with that proposition. Both of them, in importantly different ways, "need" a god -- ONE God -- to make their systems "work."

What is REALLY strongly different between their epistemology and ours is the idea of revelation.

it depends on which "reformation" we talk about. The Anglican one, as we see, was political. The Lutheran was somewhat political as was Calvinism, but both had more of a religious element than Anglicanism's start

But the ones that came after that redid EVERYTHING like Unitarianism etc. got even Luther's gall up. That point of discord for the point of discord led to cynicism in all aspects of Christianity imho