Brave Christian Worship

The world of the past has always demanded courage in comparison to today’s western standards. It is still required of people throughout the world, who don’t have the protection of the state, as we frequently see in the news.

But standing up for what one believed in on principle was something foreign to Greek and Roman society, which provided ample freedom of choice amongst the gods, and to begin with the Christians lived under the protection of the assumption that they were a Jewish sect and were exempt from sacrificial rites. The stories of martyrdom amongst the early Christians had to do more with no longer identifying with the Jews (or the Jews denouncing the Christians) and standing up to Roman law that required allegiance to the state and to Caesar by making a sacrifice to the emperor.

To begin with, Christians were split on their course of action. It was definitely a courageous act to abstain, knowing what kind of deaths were in store, and required of the victims a firm conviction. However, the Christian martyrdom for this reason was sporadic, although it took many lives. It took centuries to leave its mark on Roman society, so that sacrifices ceased, which eventually came as a result of Constantine, who personally abhorred sacrifice, removing the obligation to participate in them.

But courage has also been necessary for those who dissented from Church dogma, who had a different opinion than the teaching of the church, or who spread a teaching that hadn’t been authorized. This started at the same time as Constantine was cancelling sacrificing and was a surprise for those it struck. So, it has required courage to be a Christian, but it has required courage not to be as well.

Critics who see things from a modern nominalistic individualistic point of view often miss or disparage this positive aspect of the church as a source of courage to medieval Europeans.

Quite sure that Tillich was correct, and that the church gave solace to many people in very uncertain times. It appeared to them as something stable in the instability of life, it gave them hope in a time of uncertainty and its community was a source of solidarity. My question would be, whether the threat of nominalism was something that the simple people would have viewed as a threat to their faith? I am quite sure that the numerous conflicts, wars, droughts, floods, crop failures, sickness, and poverty, was more of a threat to medieval Christians than nominalism as a philosophical standing. The struggle with doubt and anxiety was connected to existential threats, and the church at that time will have contributed to overcome these fears.

By the time of the so-called Reformation, the church had already adopted many practices that Luther found to be un-biblical, especially the Indulgence (Latin indulgentia), referring to an act of grace regulated by the Church through which, according to Church teaching, temporal punishments for sins are remitted (but not the sins themselves forgiven). There were partial indulgences or plenary indulgences, which the faithful can obtain under conditions determined by the Church. Indulgences could also be granted to the deceased. The 95 Theses in short:

1: Since our Lord and Master Jesus Christ speaks “Repent” etc., He has willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance. (Matth. 4,17), he willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.
2: This word cannot be understood of penance as a sacrament - that is, of confession and satisfaction - administered by the priestly ministry.
3: It does not refer only to an internal penance, indeed such a penance would not be one at all if it did not outwardly effect some works for the mortification of the flesh.
4: Therefore, as long as the hatred of self - which is the true repentance of the heart - remains, the punishment remains, that is, until the entrance into the kingdom of heaven.
5-6: The Pope can only remit punishments which he himself has imposed.
7: God remits punishments only to those who submit to the Pope (God’s representative on earth).
8-9: The Church’s provisions on penance and the remission of punishments apply only to the living, not to the deceased.
10-13: Punishment may not be pronounced for the time after death.
14: The less faith in God, the greater the fear of death.
15-16: This fear alone marks purgatory as a place of purification before heaven and hell.
17-19: It is certain that the deceased in purgatory cannot change their relationship with God.
20-24: The preachers of indulgences are mistaken when they say, “Every punishment is remitted.”
25: The same power that the Pope has concerning Purgatory in general, every bishop and every pastor has in his sphere of work.
26-29: The Pope achieves purgatorial forgiveness through intercession, but the preachers of indulgences err when they promise forgiveness in exchange for money. Thus the income of the Church increases, but intercession depends solely on God’s will.
30-32: No one can obtain forgiveness with certainty through indulgences.
33-34: The Pope’s indulgence is not a gift from God in which people are reconciled with God, but only a forgiveness of punishments imposed by the Church.
35-40: No one can receive forgiveness without repentance; but those who truly repent are entitled to complete forgiveness - even without a paid indulgence.
41-44: Buying indulgences has nothing to do with charity, nor does it only partially exempt one from punishment. More important are good works of charity such as support for the poor or those in need.
45-49: Whoever does not help a needy person, but instead buys indulgences, incurs the wrath of God.
50-51: If the Pope knew the extortion methods of the indulgence preachers, he would not let St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome be built by them.
52-55: No salvation is to be expected on the basis of a letter of indulgence. It is wrong for a sermon to talk longer about indulgences than about God’s Word.
56-62: The treasure of the Church, out of which the Pope distributes indulgences, have not been sufficiently specified nor recognised among the people of Christ. But grace for the inner man works without the Pope through Jesus Christ. The true treasure of the Church is the Gospel of the glory and grace of God.
63-68: Indulgences are the net with which one now catches the wealth of the possessed.
69-74: Let the bishops and pastors watch the preachers of indulgences, lest they preach their own opinions instead of the papal ones.
71-74: Let him who speaks against the truth of apostolic indulgences be rejected and accursed. Rather, the Pope wants to hurl the ray of banishment against those who, under the pretext of indulgences, are bent on deception with regard to holy love and truth.
75-76: Indulgences cannot forgive grave sins, nor can they forgive minor sins.
77-78: The Pope can receive abilities from God just like the Apostle Simon Peter, as it is written in 1 Cor 12:1-11.
79-81: It is blasphemy to equate the indulgence cross with the Pope’s coat of arms in the churches with the cross of Jesus Christ. Those who preach such impudent sermons can endanger the Pope’s reputation, for example by asking pointed questions of the laity:
82: Why doesn’t the Pope clear out purgatory for everyone?
83: Why do funeral masses remain for the deceased when it is not permitted to pray for the ransomed?
84: Why can a godless person forgive sins in exchange for money?
85: Why are penitential statutes, which have been practically abolished, still redeemed with money?
86: Why doesn’t the rich Pope at least build St. Peter’s with his money?
87: What does the Pope remit to him who, through perfect contrition, has a right to complete remission of sins?
88: Why does he grant forgiveness to all the faithful only once a day and not a hundred times a day?
89: Why does the Pope cancel previous indulgences?
90-93: If indulgences were preached according to the Pope’s view, these objections would dissolve. Therefore, away with these false preachers of indulgences.
94-95: Christians should be encouraged to follow Jesus Christ and not be misled by indulgences.

This conflict brought further uncertainty, wrapped up, as it was in the rebellion of the peasants. In the late Middle Ages, the Latin term reformatio denoted a return to an idealised order of the past, but also reform measures. The rebellious peasants took up the traditional reformatio term in their struggle against the landowners and nobility, which finally came to mean the split of the protestant from the catholic church in Rome.

There were numerous other examples of Roman overbearing, such as the attack on people prior to Luther, who wanted to translate the Bible, but they are too many to cite here. Of course, the Roman church refers to the “church itself” and not to those presently administering in it and claims the church itself could never be guilty of the crimes of individuals. I think that the wars that caused so many deaths between the protestant and catholic church could, in themselves, give cause to the rise of nominalism.

I think my position is rather one of balance, in that I acknowledge the church as a source of courage, but also as a source of fear and superstition. In fact, it was often the lack of understanding of the rituals that led to the parody of satanism and superstition. The church was its own worse enemy at times, undermining the gentle spirituality of people like St. Francis, only later to accept his teachings. So it has been with many people who are accepted by the church today, but were suppressed to begin with. Celibacy has been compulsory for priests in the Latin Particular Church of the Roman Catholic Church only since 1073, despite the problems it has brought, not least in the modern age.
That is why the infallibility dogma of the Catholic Church, proclaimed by Pope Pius IX at the First Vatican Council as late as 18 July 1870, was an untimely slap in the face of reformers in the church.

As with all human institutions, to which I include the organised church, it is rife with contradiction. As long as this is accepted and actively combatted, and not rejected with doubled down dogmas, all is okay, but it has been rejected and people have suffered because of it. Not only recently has it been clear that due to the given authority of the church, those abused by priests, monks and nuns, despite the considerable health issues it has caused, have only come forth after decades. The same has applied throughout the centuries of church dominance.

That which calls itself the church has, in general, failed to embody the biblical vision of Christ. Divided into thousands of denominations, it has become like the fallen Tower of Babel speaking with a cacophony of conflicting voices. But the modern synthesis that came out of the Enlightenment is also fragmented as shown by the postmodern critiques. The way of the world today is nihilism. So I think what is needed to overcome the meaning crisis is a new vision of the perennial wisdom. But only a relatively few are finding it. The prevailing trend seems to be toward disillusion and fragmentation.

The church is a one-off thing, which can’t be copied. It has been ruined, at least in the West – I’m not sure about the Eastern Church. I get the feeling that I’m missing something there. I can’t at present see us forming anything similar, because, as you say, the world is full of conflicting voices. The special role of the church, despite all its faults, was that it unified many people for quite a long time under common values, until the schisms started taking place. Postmodernity has us confused and in pieces. A new nationalism contributes to that as well.

I do think that all the world’s religious traditions share metaphysical truths, and that all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has some common origin. Which is where we need to go if we want to achieve some kind of unity. The question is whether it is something internal in the body, or external in the world, or somewhere in between? The archetypes seem common to all societies in some way or other, at least that is how I read Jung. This is probably a result of experience, but how is it passed on? We all have basically different experiences with people but end up with similar dreams and truths.

In the end I think that a modernized “church” that is able to understand the diversity of traditions as different roads leading to a centre, where we can all gain from our diversity, instead of seeing each other as a danger to one’s own beliefs, is the only way ahead. It also means that we need to understand that none of us has the ultimate explanation, but each tradition is an attempt to gain direction based on their unique experience, and that direction is towards each other. If the message of reconciliation and compassion is at that centre, we have a chance.

I agree with all that Bob. I find myself outside of all formal churches. As I have said elsewhere, to me Christianity is a spirit to be lived in. It’s the spirit of Jesus. To practice Christianity is to live in the spirit of Jesus and to enact that spirit in the world. It is entered by accepting love and forgiveness toward yourself. It is a spirit of love and forgiveness toward everyone. No membership in an organization is required. No one is excluded.

As you say, it puts you right with yourself and then shows you people who are the same, and asks why you shouldn’t be right with them as well. The situations in which the church places people, the Catholic Church in its rejection of so much or the Evangelical in its militancy against so much, undermine that love and forgiveness and make it bravery to hold on to that spirit.

I think that the Christian spirit is something unifying, it reaches out to people, supports them, helps them, and loves unconditionally. If we could find a way to come together to embody and demonstrate that, we would be a lot closer to the Church of Christ.

Only if u don’t cherry pick the testaments and throw the bath water out with the baby.

What we’d rather do is attribute all the morality demonstrated in religious life\living to naturally evolved behaviors that can be explained in terms of what works to increase group survival, rather than to the dictates of some imagined creator that rules by divine providence (when he’s not wiping out entire civilizations).

In fact we’d venture to say that not only is any religious interpretion of all this as unnecessary as it is confused, but it is (or at least can be) also downright dangerous.

Here lemme explain. Take joe. Joe’s a great guy and he’s a Christian. But he’s not a great guy because he’s a Christian. Rather, sometimes great guys become Christian because a wide range of human behaviors and habits that facilitate strong, effective social interaction - general good will - is ‘reverse-attributed’ to the christianity practiced, and believed to be the origins of the disposition allowing that kind of behavior.

In other bad news, there is no more significance to calling yourself a Christian than there is to calling yourself a Bobbyian and copying what the guy named Bobby who lives down the hall does.

And wut I don’t understand is why - if you absolutely have to pick a god - u don’t pick Prometheus. He’s the indisputable badass of the whole fucking pantheon and prolly the most important one to man’s spiritualization of purpose. For one thing, his defiance characterizes better than anything else, man’s age of enlightenment and turning away from god. In a sense he’s the last god, because he banishes the gods by giving man fire and liberating them from the god’s tyranny. Bro there’s all kinds of critically important and empowering symbolism in that dude’s myth. Who even compares? He’s the ultima-archetype.

Find a promethean near u and b like him instead, Bob.

Whilst I agree that there have been too numerous ways in which religion and the church have failed, the way you are describing what you’d like to do is not working. The church is waning, but nothing is moving in to take its place. In fact, that is what has been seen to cause a meaning crisis with a moral vacuum resulting in mental health issues. Since the beginning of the enlightenment, we haven’t seen too many non-religious movements that have motivated people to join together in achieving higher moral goals, in fact were there any? Instead, there are new ideologies like wokeism causing even more division.

On the other hand, the church and diaconal social welfare policies have driven the building of hospitals, and care homes for the old and disabled at a time when it wasn’t profitable (especially in Germany, where I am). There are relatively new companies, like the Planetree Project that were doing good things in America, but people don’t seem to do things just because its good. Profit drives much of it today, whereas in the past it has been devotion.

The fact remains that these great guys may be attracted to an organisation gives ample space for “a wide range of human behaviours that facilitate strong, effective social action”. It would be good if they could find that space anywhere, but they usually can’t. I have known these great guys who have chosen non-Christian organisations and struggled with the profit orientation having priority over social action, even though the long-termed effect would be profitable.

Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock where an eagle daily tore at his liver, great.

He may have taught humans agriculture and all the arts of civilization and stole fire from the gods and gave it to them, but that doesn’t actually compete with the Sermon on the Mount.

There’s no cherry picking going on here. Nothing of history is being thrown out. There’s no denial of evolved behavior. Are you suggesting that there is no such thing as human freedom? Cuz on that point I’m going with the phenomena of freedom as experienced. In what system of values do you stand to make your judgment regarding all religious values are dangerous. The nihilism devoid of meaning that drives people to mass murder is rather dangerous too.

Who claimed that calling oneself a Christian results in being a great guy? No one here.

Just like with Christianity it depends on how the myth is interpreted. Fire can stand for technology. Technology has improved our lot as human beings in many ways. But humanity is also using it to destroy the planet. And the threat of nuclear war and outcome of technology hangs over us. So it’s no panacea. It needs to be encompassed by a higher vision of values if we are not to destroy ourselves with it. Where is that going to come from? Evolution? That process is too slow. If it comes it’ll have to be a matter of cultural evolution. And whether that can happen remains to be seen.

Incidentally, the interpretation which sees Jesus as a god walking on earth is an error. The story of the temptations of Jesus illustrates his true humanity. Serious temptation presupposes desire for that by which one is tempted. Like Adam and Eve, Jesus, as fully human, stood between innocence and guilt.

“Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock where an eagle daily tore at his liver, great.”

That’s because Zeus’s bitch ass got all mad because prom wuz teaching folks how to survive and shit.

“but that doesn’t actually compete with the Sermon on the Mount.”

You lost your mind dude prom would kick Moses’s ass any day.

In other words “My god can kick your god’s ass.” Brilliant argument! :wink: Incidentally the “Sermon on the Mount” was not a reference to Moses.

Actually, if you read the Bible … Elijah and Moses were the teachers of Jesus, Jesus even said it himself.

And who the fuck am I? The teacher of all of you.