#incorrectly called egalitarian

[secretariatess]

"Feminism failed me because now I have to work a nine to five job and I'd rather be a stay at home wife."

Or maybe we've fostered toxic work cultures that have created a "grass is greener on the other side" situation, or maybe we push our children so fast and hard into a career path without slowing it down to ensure our kids know of all their options instead of diving headfirst into a path they might not care about and thus leading to resentment of their work, or maybe we're getting lazier and lazier generations who feel like they shouldn't have to put in a standard amount of work and being a stay at home wife sounds like a dodge of responsibility, an easier route . . . .

. . . and on top of that, maybe we've romanticized the 1950s and the "traditional household" that we've decided to ignore that the culture was forced in order to get women back into domestic labor after running America while the men were at war so that men could get their jobs back, and have forgotten the commonality of domestic abuse and how ads would brazenly joke about it while victims felt like they had to keep quiet in order to maintain the image of a happy family as well as the alarming rate at which women were taking "mommy's little helpers" to help them with their lifestyles, and we've disconnected the fact that the 50s was followed by the wildness of the 60s and 70s as well as feminist movement wave which maybe indicates that the 50s was not the happy little decade in which men and women were in their "correct gender roles" and trying to replicate that era could possibly be a big mistake . . . .

Maybe the issue we have with feminism gaining women the right to work wasn't that it got us the right to work, but rather that it played into the idea that men and their traits are the standard of being human, and in order for a woman to be successful she has to display those traits instead of taking traits of women and standing on those as women's strengths and arguing for how work can be better when women and men use their feminine and masculine traits together because we're both human, and masculine traits are not better than feminine ones, and vice versa.

Maybe the problem faced by those who actually want to work stay at home lives are not hindered by feminism, but rather a failing economy caused by a government for a multitude of reasons, and not because the government created feminism to get women working to tax them too.

Maybe the problem here isn't people going against gender roles, but rather a multitude of many other factors, and it's a lot simpler to fight and blame the other gender.

I have many criticisms of feminism, particularly modern feminism. But feminism in general won women many victories over the decades, and there are a lot of things we women can do now that our female ancestors would have died to have. History might not be as sexist as we remember it, but sometimes I think we forget how unkind it was to women. Wishing feminism didn't come about or make the advances it did might be a little ignorant of the problems it saw women face and sought to correct.

Maybe it's not our "biology" to follow traditional gender roles, and we must return to that.

Maybe there's something we keep hopping over that recognizes men and women as individual humans first, with different skills, strengths, ambitions, and goals.

#I used to like listening to conservative speakers #but every time they brought up conversation about gender #it seem to revolve around men being the leading providers and women the following homemaker #and they keep pulling examples of women being unhappy with their work #and stay at home moms echoing their sentiment #I don't have an issue with stay at home moms #I have an issue when it's pushed as what women were really made for #and things like men were made to lead #no #women were made with varying strengths and talents (including strength in leadership) just as men were #which lends them to be able to pursue different things and not just homemaking #I don't think we really have anyone who has a balanced take on genders anymore because we have to have one extreme or the other #matriarchy or patriarchy #and the fighting of the two for a hierarchy creates a confused jumble of a mess #incorrectly called egalitarian #As someone who considers herself conservative in more ways than one #I'm done with the conservative take on gender roles #there's no balance #there's no consideration for other factors

[margridarnauds]

Rip idk if I accidentally sent my last ask too early or it it got deleted before I sent it but anywho,, if you’re still bored and wanting to talk about Celtic lore, I’d love to here about grainne ni mhaille or Brigid of tuatha de danann? Alternately, what’s one of your fav stories?

I was in the middle of typing up a response and apparently SOMETHING happened to it because it totally disappeared on me. 

ANYWAY, 

I can talk about both of them, to different degrees. 

Gráinne was one of my first Irish research interests (Thank you The Pirate Queen, you…..interesting piece of media). That being said, I am VERY rusty when it comes to her, the main takeaway that I have being a very visceral reaction to the words “Anne Chambers” because…..suffice it to say….I have Things to say about her scholarship and the occasional sloppiness thereof, but I don’t think I brought my copy of her book on Gráinne with me, the school library is closed, and I generally don’t like to utterly eviscerate something without having it on hand. But I can say that her treatment of Donal O’Flaherty was bad, based purely off of wish fulfillment and her own attachment to Richard Burke, and that my personal reading of their marriage, which I will admit is just a READING, is that Donal and Gráinne actually had a fairly egalitarian marriage. 

Think of it. 

Gráinne, if we believe the legends, and the legends of her early life are very in keeping with what we know of her adult life, was truculent enough that she cut her hair short just to get on a ship. She was defiant, spirited, and ruthless to the core. (The woobification and victimization of Gráinne is something that is ANOTHER post, given that I feel like it does her a MASSIVE DISSERVICE). Donal….would have HAD to have known what he was getting into. And Donal was TÁNAISTE OF THE O’FLAHERTY SEPT. And, as I’ve discussed….that was not necessarily something he got just because his daddy was chieftain. That was something that was AGREED on. He was not a weak man, he was not a coward, and his cognomen was Donal AN CHOGAIDH, Donal OF THE BATTLES. But he seems to have fought his wars on land, Gráinne on sea. Together, they would have been one badass pair. In terms of NAMING, look at the names of their children. Owen - Same name as Gráinne’s father. Murrough - A common O’Flaherty name. And Margaret - Said by some sources to be the same name as Gráinne’s mother. And what was the name of Owen’s son? Donal. Now, there could be a NUMBER of reasons for this naming pattern, it could be nothing. But, what I believe at least is that it shows a certain level of cooperation between the two of them. I am NOT claiming it was a great love story, but I am claiming that what little evidence there is (and there can only be so much), indicates a certain level of respect, especially given that Gráinne, in general, was not the sort to tolerate fools. 

Chambers also claimed, incorrectly, that Donal killed his nephew, but a quick reading of the sources would have shown that it was his cousin, ALSO named Donal who did it. The patrynomics don’t lie on that one; it was Donal mac Ruari, “Donal of the Boats”, not Donal an Chogaidh who did it. 

But. Gráinne. I love talking Donal, but this is about Gráinne. 

Something that I feel really does get underplayed, probably in service of making her a Perfect Feminist Heroine™ (I am a feminist, don’t get me wrong! But my idea of feminism centers around the idea that women can be as fundamentally flawed as men, they can have the same quirks, the same corruption, and they do not have to be perfect, long suffering, soft, or forever victimized) IS that ruthlessness and pragmatism that really underlines her character. People play up her attacking her son Murrough as some kind of righteous fury against him for talking to the English while conveniently forgetting that Gráinne herself spent most of her life alternatively appeasing and attacking the English. She was not a Nationalist, she wasn’t a patriot. She was, however, a survivor, as were MANY of the Irish nobility at this time. Another example of a survivor from this period was Iníon Dubh, probably one of my favorite women in Irish history (though she herself was Scottish by birth), who did try to bargain with the English for the life of her son Hugh Roe by giving over some Spanish survivors of the Armada to English authorities. People (CHAMBERS) try to pin Murrough with the worst faults of his father, but I honestly think that, at his heart, he was more his mother’s son than perhaps even she would be willing to admit. 

(Also like. The entire thing with Risdeárd an Iarainn? I have read the marriage tracts, I have a friend who does law stuff. None of us can think of ANYTHING in the Brehon laws that would allow for a “Marriage” like the one described. Only thing I can think of that’s SIMILAR is the Teltown marriages. Acting like it’s a common Brehon law thing gives it a veneer of legitimacy that I strongly doubt. The oral tradition COULD be lying to us, I’m willing to say that there might be gaps in our understanding of a law, or Gráinne could have actually done it without….how shall we put this…..the usual degree of sanctity and security that we tend to assume, given that what the law said on marriage could be very different to marriage in reality. Tl;dr: She MIGHT have catfished him. Or. The 16th century Irish equivalent. But like. Catfished where you’re actually married and have a kid with one another. Or the story could be a complete fabrication, like I FIRMLY believe Hugh de Lacy’s story was. Who knows?) 

Anyway, as payment for listening to that rant, have some of Sir Richard Bingham Whining, right from the horse’s as-mouth. I of course meant. Mouth. 

I could read this all day. Cry, Bingham, cry harder. 

Don’t think too hard about the fact that one day I might actually be in charge of a classroom, please. 

Brigid I can hopefully talk about less, to some extent, given that we know comparatively little about her. Throughout this, I’m generally going to be calling her Bríg, since I’m talking about her in a mythological context and that is what she is called in Cath Maige Tuired (which is my all time favorite, baby text, answering the third part of your question), though she is called Brigit in Cormac’s Glossary. 

So…what do we know about Bríg? Very little. But she is also an endlessly discussed figure, with the evidence being pored over again. And again. And again. A lot of the arguments have been discussed by Mark Williams in Ireland’s Immortals, the curious fact that, she is described in UNUSUALLY specific terms in Cormac’s Glossary, being described as a patroness of smiths, doctors, and poets, and there being three sisters named Brigit, one for each function. 

At the same time, however, she only really appears in one saga, the aforementioned Cath Maige Tuired, where her role is purely to keen over her son, Ruadan, that she had via her relationship (past or present, it’s kind of left ambiguous) with the former king of the Tuatha dé, Bres. It is a genuinely poignant, heartwrenching scene, a kind of rare moment of pure humanity in a text often saturated with descriptions of blood and gore and sex of literal superhuman proportions. And in all of this, a woman grieves for her son, inventing keening and giving us a reminder of the HUMAN element of war, the mothers, the wives, the women who are left to grieve in the middle of the fighting. Which, in a text that tends to be fairly misogynistic and skeptical of women’s voices, is actually intriguing. (Bríg is also associated with a lot of DARK SHIT in this section as well, such as night whistling, which is absolutely fascinating to me given that we tend to think of her as this kind of healing, sunshine and rainbows figure and this shows a distinctively different look at her.) There is also a Dinshenchas story, Loch N-Oirbsen that mentions her inventing keening for the loss of Mac Gréine, which COULD (underline COULD) indicate that the story might have pre-dated CMT, replacing the figure of her brother with her son. Or possibly vice versa; CMT influenced quite a bit of the mythological literature. 

I believe that it was Elizabeth Gray in her “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure” who pointed out that Bríg’s situation in-text is reminiscent of what many women would have dealt with during the period, their hearts torn between their fathers and, perhaps, more to the point, their fathers’ peoples, and the husbands and sons they had with the Norsemen. (Though I have…..certain doubts as to whether we should take it for granted that Bríg was WITH Bres at the time of Ruadan’s death, and all things considered, I do also question whether the entire episode was an afterthought, given that Ruadan doesn’t appear in ANY of the other lists of Bres’ children, nor is the story of his death represented in the Dindshenchas, indicating a certain lack of popularity. Nor do I believe it turns up in the early modern redaction of CMT).

This episode is one that I don’t really talk about all that much, mainly because people tend to treat it as a way of slamming Bres, or using Bríg’s grief as a battering ram against Bres, and that is something that, as the unofficial president of the Bres Fan Club….obviously rankles me. Just a bit, and is honestly one of the key reasons why I generally don’t discuss Bríg. Suffice it to say, like with Gráinne and Donal, I don’t really believe that that relationship was quite as unbalanced as people might interpret it, not the least because, in Cath Maige Tuired, a key trait of Bres’ is his dependence on the women of his life, especially his mother. Which….could create an AWKWARD situation, yes, but definitely doesn’t lend itself to the image of Bres being a tyrant at home as well as politically. 

 If they did split apart, it would be more because of Bres’ actions as king, such as his attempt at executing her father or the general treatment of poets under his reign, which, as a patroness of the poets (IF we assume that there is continuity between her appearance in Cormac and CMT, which is not inherently a given; assuming continuity in Irish Mythology is always a tricky subject because individual scribes often went their own way with this sort of thing) she would presumably be opposed to. But, of course. This isn’t really expanded on, Bríg is MASSIVELY underused in this text, and all that I really have are speculation (on an academic level) and headcanons (on a non-academic level.) 

In terms of the connection with the Catholic saint of the same name………..many people have come up with ideas, I don’t believe it’s something that will ever get resolved. I do think that many things we TEND to label as definitively part of the goddess’ traits tend to be overstated, however, with some of them being found in other Saint’s Lives, or having a similar event in the Bible, which, to an ecclesiastical audience, would be familiar. I feel like it can be very easy to get overzealous in that, because of course it’s a very, very natural thing to want something solid for someone who we KNOW was very important, yet have very little real info on. In some redactions of Lebor Gabála Érenn, Bríg is described as the mother of the Trí Dé Dána, “The Three Gods of Skill,” Tuirill, Brian, and Cet, with Bres as the father. These three are notoriously elusive and difficult to pin down, not the least because they tend to be merged with Brian, Iuachar, and Iucharba, the Sons of Tuireann, but John Carey, in his article “Myth and Mythography in Cath Maige Turied” has suggested that, given Bríg’s identification as a patron of poets, her mothering of these three “Gods of Skill,” and the close connection she has to Bres and, through him, to figures like Ogma that the whole lot of them + The Dagda, Elatha, etc. are part of a “Pantheon of Skill,” which is essentially a cluster of gods renowned by the literary elite. So, there is that. She was definitely an important figure, given……Brigantia. 

While I do not like drawing straight lines between Gaulish figures - Welsh figures - Irish figures, I will say that it seems like, at the very least, they share a common linguistic root. It does seem, judging from Caesar’s description of the Gaulish “Minerva” as being a patron of crafts, and given Bríg’s penchant for multiple crafts, that that is the figure being described, or at least someone who followed similar lines (This was argued by Proinsias Mac Cana in Celtic Mythology, pg. 34), since doubtless things would be different across geographical boundaries. (Welsh and Irish Mythology, despite having certain similarities, are distinct, I can’t imagine how much different Gaulish Mythology would be, if any of it had survived.) Something I do find interesting is that, while Mac Cana notes the Gaulish Minerva as a figure beloved by the lower class in particular, the Bríg we see in the Irish tradition is very associated with the upper class, the men of skill. But, then again, all of these written works would have been commissioned and written by and for that same elite, so it might not be that surprising at all. The oral tradition might have been very different, and perhaps the saint reflects that more. Or perhaps not. 

In terms of the connection with the Catholic saint of the same name………..many people have come up with ideas, I don’t believe it’s something that will ever get resolved. If you can get your hands on Mark Williams’ Ireland’s Immortals, I think you’ll find that most of what I say re: this topic (and….a lot of topics in general) will be echoed in there. I do think that many things we TEND to label as definitively part of the goddess’ traits tend to be overstated, however, with some of them being found in other Saint’s Lives, or having a similar event in the Bible, which, to an ecclesiastical audience, would be familiar. I feel like it can be very easy to get overzealous in that, because of course it’s a very, very natural thing to want something solid for someone who we KNOW was very important, yet have very little real info on. 

In terms of what I believe her function was….as hesitant as I am to apply a function to ANY member of the Tuatha dé, given how tenuous the evidence is and how it can kind of miss the forest for the trees in terms of literary analysis, I believe the bulk of the evidence, such as it is, rests on her association with the crafts, specifically as found in Cormac’s Glossary, with all the limitations thereof. I won’t say “No, you can’t worship her like that” to a modern pagan, I wouldn’t WANT to, because my relationship with these figures is not the same as a religious relationship. That is NOT my place. And that, if we are to take them as religious instead of literary figures, they might very well appear to different people in different ways. That being said, on an academic level, I do believe, at present, with the understanding that my views can definitely change and I am not infallible, that there is little to no evidence to suggest that she was a fire goddess, a goddess of spring, a fertility goddess, or a sovereignty goddess. The association with keening, outcry, etc., seems to also be more solid, so there COULD have been some association in there. Generally speaking, my main focus isn’t so much what a figure WAS so much as what was done with them afterwards. 

…For what was meant to be a quick note, that was very long. And tragically, I had no memes pre-prepared for this one, so I went back a month on a friend in the department’s Facebook and found this.

 I am willing to talk CMT if anyone WANTS to hear me talk about it, since it is my all time favorite myth, as well as….ANYTHING else, both the stuff I’ve discussed in this and anything else relating to the field, but I think that for this particular post, I’ll cut you free, with the hope if not the confidence that at least 1/3 of what I’ve written is vaguely coherent. 

#irish mythology #celtic mythology #gráinne ní mháille #grace o'malley #long post #localbeeking

[silver-and-ivory]

three questions about calling reps in the US:

-is it important to write your own script about a given issue rather than relying on some advocacy’s group’s script?

This article would have you believe it is so but is infuriatingly vague:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/what-calling-congress-achieves

> Likewise, phone calls that hew to scripts from advocacy organizations usually get downgraded, especially if the caller seems ill-informed about the issue. Such calls also tend to annoy staffers. “You could tell when you walked in the office by how the staff was responding that they were getting the same call over and over,” Josiah Bonner, a former Republican congressman from Alabama, said.

-is there added benefit to calling your reps multiple times (e.g. every day) about a particular issue, or is that useless as this other random post seems to imply?

https://medium.com/@emilyellsworth/how-do-you-know-if-youre-calling-congress-too-often-8449f9037916

> You should call whenever you have something new to say. That’s it. If you want to call about a cabinet appointment vote and then the next day you’d like to talk about the Affordable Care Act, it’s okay to call again. It’s not necessary to call multiple days in a row with the same message. It’s also not necessary to make multiple calls to different offices and also send an email — one message, one office, one call.

-what are the benefits of particular mediums of contacting reps?

from new yorker article I don’t quite trust:

>As it turns out, some less egalitarian offices do discriminate, but not in the direction you might expect. According to a 2015 C.M.F. survey of almost two hundred senior congressional staffers, when it comes to influencing a lawmaker’s opinion, personalized e-mails, personalized letters, and editorials in local newspapers all beat out the telephone.

>In normal times, then—which is to say, in the times we don’t currently live in—calling your members of Congress is not an intrinsically superior way to get them to listen. But what makes a particular type of message effective depends largely on what you are trying to achieve. For mass protests, such as those that have been happening recently, phone calls are a better way of contacting lawmakers, not because they get taken more seriously but because they take up more time—thereby occupying staff, obstructing business as usual, and attracting media attention. E-mails get the message through but are comparatively swift and easy for staffers to process, while conventional mail is at a disadvantage when speed matters, since, in addition to the time spent in transit, anything sent to Congress is temporarily held for testing and decontamination, to protect employees from mail bombs and toxins. Afterward, most constituent mail is scanned and forwarded to congressional offices as an electronic image. In other words, your letter will not arrive overnight, and it will not arrive with those grains of Iowa wheat or eau de constituent you put in it. But, once it shows up, it will be taken at least as seriously as a call.

>Other messages that staffers tend to disregard include tweets and Facebook posts (less out of dismissiveness than because of the difficulty of determining if they come from constituents), online petitions (because they require so little effort that they aren’t seen as meaningful), comments submitted through apps like Countable, and mass e-mails that originate from the Web sites of advocacy groups. (These last have a particularly bad reputation. According to the C.M.F., almost half of staffers believe, incorrectly, that they are sent without the constituent’s knowledge.)

[flagafrica]

Flags of African Countries

African Nation Flags Western Sahara which is a questioned area lying North Africa and also is provided by Morocco. In addition to the details concerning the flags of Africa you can also find details regarding all nations of Africa. With each flag a map is shown of the country with the area of the country in Africa. 

The 54 independent sovereign nations in Africa along with the international organization called African Union or AU within the African continent have a particular flag.

The fact that the black race did not have a flag was considered by Garvey, as well as he stated this, it was a mark of the political impotence of the black race," Hill explains.

The South African flag consists of equivalent sized horizontal lines with red top and blue bottom.

The Flags of Africa are symbols or symbols of the African countries that are the importance of each specific country.

As well as it was the Irish battle for self-reliance that Hill states "unofficially offered Garvey a great deal of the political vocabulary of his motion."

Business fell short and he was apprehended and also deported back to Jamaica however not before he appointed a pan-Africa flag and also showed it off to representatives of 25 African countries.Marshall suggests that he might have incorrectly recognized these as the Ethiopian colours.Numerous African nations spent a big part of their background as European nests, which component of their history has left its mark on the flags of Africa. Some countries in Africa chose to maintain some of the shades or signs from their colonial flags after they gained their self-reliance following the 2nd globe battle. A few parts of Africa have actually also been selected to maintain their association with European governments in the contemporary era, and those areas also often tend to make use of flags that preserve a clear web link to the countries of Europe. 

Guinea Flag

Like various other European colonies on Africa's Atlantic coastline, it stemmed en masse of  European trading enclaves, otherwise Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and English. By the middle of the nineteenth century the Gold Coastline and also its hinterland had come under British sovereignty as well as were consolidated as a crown swarm. Considering its existence, a number of African countries have taken on the shades as a sign of sovereignty as well as unity.It has additionally been adopted by several Black organizations that continue the fight in the direction of justice as well as liberation for Black people.Lost Flag of New Africa is the initial job by Peter Williams (b. 1952 Nyack, NY) to go into the Davis Gallery's collections. In 1993, the Arrangement Council presented a new constitution to the nation. In 1994 it was introduced that an egalitarian political election would be held for the very first time. It was intended to be a flag to choose from as Frederick Brownell presented a flag to South Africa for use in the April 27, 1994 elections. This election was the initially comprehensive national election in the country. Nelson Mandela won the political election as well as became the initial black head of state of South Africa. 

And we thought it worth a few minutes to commemorate a flag developed virtually a century back for black Americans. Traveling to Africa to uncover how flags can engage students, advertise international awareness, build mathematics abilities, as well as enhance algebra/geometry concepts. Innovation highlighted will include Google Slides, Google Sheets Pixel Art, Desmos, GeoGebra, and CNC Machining. As you've discovered in this short article, Africa is a continent whose nations have a lengthy as well as commonly unstable history. 

What is Africa's color?

Black: for the people whose existence as a nation, though not a nation-state, is affirmed by the existence of the flag; Green: the abundant and vibrant natural wealth of Africa, the Motherland. Since its existence, a number of African nations have adopted the colors as a symbol of sovereignty and unity.

FEN Discovering is part of Sandbox Networks, a digital learning company that operates education products and services for the 21st century.The Flags of Africa is a variation on the flag made use of prior to african flags presumed control and also relabelled the country Zaire. Learn more about the globe with our collection of local and also country maps. Surf millions of top quality stock pictures, pictures, and also videos. The flag was formally embraced in 1962 the year Uganda gained independence from colonial rule.

#flags of africa

[architectnews]

"Architects need to stand in vocal opposition to the government's segregated toilet proposals"

The UK government's consultation on desegregated toilets is a direct attack on trans rights, says the United Voices of the World – Section of Architectural Workers union.

The government's current consultation on toilets, entitled Toilet provision for men and women: call for evidence, places the provision of "gender-neutral" desegregated facilities and the safety of trans and gender non-conforming people who rely on them, under threat.

This consultation is dog-whistle politics, motivated not by improving access to public toilets, but in suppressing the rights of trans and gender non-conforming people. From the government's pitiful reform of the Gender Recognition Act in 2020, to the recent high court ruling to restrict children under 16 from accessing "puberty-blocking" drugs, it is yet another attack in the on-going culture war that seeks to dehumanise and remove trans people from public life.

The consultation, which people can respond to until this Friday 26 February, seeks to change guidance, and even insert new terms into the building regulations that would enforce a clear steer towards facilities segregated by binary "sex" categories.

It further seeks to reconsider "the ratio of female toilet spaces needed, versus the number for men" and pushes for the use of "gender-specific language" in washroom signage to avoid so-called "public confusion".

Desegregated toilets are known to offer numerous benefits

The era of architects reshaping cities in the hopes of achieving an egalitarian utopia is long gone, if indeed it ever existed, but designers still have the power to prioritise the needs of often-overlooked people. Architects need to use their voices and stand in vocal opposition to the government's segregated toilet proposals.

Desegregated toilets are known to offer numerous benefits – they introduce parity into waiting times for all genders, make toilet trips easier for carers or those accompanying dependents, are cheaper, and use space more efficiently. They have proven particularly successful in schools where they can help to reduce bullying.

In 2017 UK LGBT rights charity Stonewall found that 48 per cent of trans people don't feel comfortable using public toilets due to fear of discrimination or harassment. A huge benefit of desegregated toilets is that they can greatly reduce the risks of verbal harassment, intimidation and physical assault transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming people often face in "single-sex" facilities.

The government consultation, says that it's aim is to "ensure that everyone is fairly served", but it's framing and baseless claims that "male-only/female-only spaces" are being "replaced with gender-neutral toilets" expose its disingenuous foundations.

The government claims that desegregated facilities place women at a "significant disadvantage" and make them "feel less comfortable" leave little question as to who its authors do and do not consider "women". The experiences of women who are trans or gender non conforming, who often face hostility, scrutiny and physical aggression in segregated public toilets, are completely disregarded.

Trans men, non-binary and intersex people who experience menstruation, pregnancy or menopause are similarly ignored in the government's proposals, as the consultation frames these "sanitary needs" as phenomena specific to women only.

The consultation also fails to consider the experiences of those who are discriminated against because they are incorrectly perceived to be trans- including butch/lesbian women; gender non conforming and intersex people; and black women, due to racist ideas about femininity. It is a failure of the Equality Act not to protect these people's need for safe access to toilet facilities.

At this crucial moment, UVW-SAW calls on allies in the architectural profession to use their voices

A concerned coalition of architectural academics based at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Goldsmiths Centre for Research Architecture, including Ben Campkin, Ged Ribas Goody, Lo Marshall, and Barbara Penner, summarised the consultation as so:

"The government's consultation is based on false premises of binary gender and biological essentialism, which do not reflect the actual diversity of bodies and experiences. It disregards the needs of certain users, including trans, intersex and gender non-conforming people, who are especially vulnerable to harassment and violence in public facilities. It raises the question: why should toilets continue to be divided by gender at all, given that users' needs are known to be shaped by many factors (age, health, ability, gender, caring responsibilities, race, religion, sex and sexual orientation)?"

At this crucial moment, UVW-SAW calls on allies in the architectural profession to use their voices. The government call for evidence states they will listen to relevant stakeholders with "technical knowledge of building regulations".

After years of designing desegregated multi-user facilities, architects know that there are a host of both practical and rights-based reasons that legislation must remain flexible here. Support for desegregated multi-user toilet facilities results as much from their ability to create an inclusive environment as their practical benefits.

Tightening regulations in this area would make the architect's task harder. Through good design, of lobby spaces in particular, perceived negative aspects can often be overcome.

Some of the UK's most prominent practices claim allyship to the LGBTQ+ community. Now is the time to follow up on those commitments

Enhanced privacy can be achieved with a shift from urinals to cubicles, and by specifying full height cubicle doors. Improved safety is simple to implement with a communal handwashing area that can be well observed from circulation spaces, providing greater transparency and preventing opportunities for bullying and harassment.

Building Regulations have never before enforced segregated facilities. Today's Approved Document G for England simply asks for, "Sanitary conveniences of the appropriate type for the sex and age of the persons using the building".

This wording is just open enough to allow for diverse applications, including some religious contexts that require segregated toilets, but there is already an outdated presumption towards segregated facilities embedded into regulations and guidance. We simply cannot risk the introduction of new, tighter regulations.

The ARB and RIBA code of conducts ask that we "treat everyone fairly" and not discriminate because of "gender reassignment", "sex", or "sexual orientation". Year after year, some of the UK's most prominent practices display the LGBTQ+ Pride flag in June, claiming allyship to the LGBTQ+ community. Now is the time to follow up on those commitments.

Architectural workers must stand in solidarity with trans and gender non-conforming people in opposition to this attack on the basic human right of trans and gender non-conforming people to use the bathroom with their dignity and safety intact.

UVW-SAW is a union for architectural workers in the UK.

Image courtesy of  The Gender Spectrum Collection.

The post "Architects need to stand in vocal opposition to the government's segregated toilet proposals" appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

[gravitascivics]

FEDERATION’S REQUISITES

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

To this point, this blog has, in its account of the different obstacles facing civics teachers, described in broad strokes a number of deficient conditions. They are the dysfunctional aspects of the nation’s political culture, the challenge of immaturity among students, and the less than optimal state of civics education.  With this posting, the blog shifts to the landscape of the political culture itself.  

Or in other words, the blog will now look at the social environmental factors that define the nation’s politics of the day.  Rightly so, the nation has cast its main attention – beyond the pandemic – on the divisive nature currently holding sway.  That divisiveness affects just about every aspect of social life – reportedly, it is even affecting family relationships – and definitely poses an obstacle to civics teachers doing their jobs.  

The aim here is to analyze this challenge and provide various insights as to its nature and suggests what teachers and other educators should do in relation to the challenge.  To be clear, what is being addressed is the polarized politics hanging over government in its attempts to issue policies.  And those affected policies seem to include just about all the possible areas in which government has a role.  

That extends to whether masks should be mandated, to what should be taught in schools, to defining who this nation’s antagonistic foes abroad are.  All of these up to the present were not controversial and summoned broad agreement across parties and other social/political divisions.

         And, as with the rest of this blog, commentary or evaluation will be offered against the stated criteria that federation theory holds, what that theory sees as beneficial, functional, and moral.  To reiterate, that would be curricular content that promotes communal, collaborative, and caring dispositions within the citizenry. As such, the specific challenge for this review is to point out and explain how the dominance of the natural rights construct has found such aims to be misplaced and worthy of being ignored.

         And what is it about the natural rights view that makes it so problematic in terms of federal beliefs?  David Brooks, in his most recent book, provides vivid imagery of what this problematic thinking generates.  In describing the nation’s tribalism, one of the dysfunctional conditions he identifies, he writes,

Psychologists say the hardest thing to cure is the patient’s attempt to self-cure.  People who are left naked [in a self-centered society] and alone by radical individualism do what their genes and the ancient history of their species tell them to do.  They revert to tribe.  Individualism, taken too far, leads to tribalism.[1]

The main point this blog has made in terms of the natural rights view is that it promotes an extreme individualism.    

For advocates of federation theory or views one can associate with it, this is not just a matter of aesthetics or taste.  The dismissal of such concerns for community, collaboration, and care for others – or a lack of it – incorrectly instructs what the US Constitution sets forth. It, the Constitution, established a republic based on the very communal commitment toward a polity made up of voluntary partnering – through the mechanism of a sacred compact – that unified both the people of the United States and the states of the United States.

The Latin word for this sort of leaguing is foedus – the Latin word from which federalism is derived and meaning covenant (the religious version of a compact).[2]  Now, Brooks writes of this sort of leaguing as the product of a love commitment.  That can be toward another person, as in marriage, an ideal, a place, a country.  Can a nation be based on the assumption its citizens hold to such a love?  In this, this writer questions the level of emotion Brooks ascribes to such a commitment, but the point is made.  Citizenship defined by a compact-al agreement calls for a lot.

         Should such an alignment rely on people’s natural tendencies?  Unlike with natural rights, as just indicated, which does rely heavily on natural proclivities, federation theory relies on them in part, but not totally. Yes, humans naturally want community, but are easily convinced to seek other goals and/or to define community in a highly parochial manner.[3]  

Hence, to maintain what the founding fathers established, subsequent generations have needed to proactively promote that compact of unity.  And to do so, they have needed to socialize the populous to instill those values, attitudes, beliefs, and civic modes of behavior that promote this sense of partnership – it just doesn’t happen naturally.  

And it has become somewhat obvious, that the more recent generations have not sufficiently socialized the incoming generations so that they are disposed to meet this obligation or commitment – not to the degree the Constitution proscribes. Instead, by adopting the natural rights view, they find policies aimed at furthering this sort of commitment as encroachments on individual prerogatives.

To be further clear, what is being referred to here, by using derivatives of the word federalism, is not the structural arrangement of the states and central government of the US.  Yes, federalism calls for a non-central arrangement of government.  That, by its nature, does include, some central entity and more local entities while withholding complete sovereignty from anyone level of governance.  But what is of more importance, is the necessary rationales for such an arrangement.  

As stated earlier in this blog, “… those processes [refer] to modes of political behavior that furthers a federated citizenry which include[s] healthy doses of social capital and civic humanism.”[4]  And such qualities presuppose a viable communal society in which its members are disposed to collaborate and cooperate in their pursuits of common endeavors broadly defined.  This is what Elazar calls a federal union’s processes.

And however one defines the terms, one can readily see that current levels of polarized politics – or tribalism, as some refer to what is going on – stands smack in the way of a people holding the necessary binding values and attitudes to pull off this active level of engagement. To what extent is that?  Just visualize one holding a partnership in any aggregate effort such as in a marriage or a business.  It would not be based on some transaction or set of transactions, but on commitments.  How much indifference or nonchalance would such an endeavor sustain?  Not much.  

And that can go for a national unions as well. Look around; is this nation on a dangerous path to disunity?  It almost happened before – admittedly for other reasons – and was saved by a bloody civil war.  And this writer believes that part of this current story – one mostly ignored – is how the nation’s civics education program is failing to instill – or more inoffensively stated, to encourage – the necessary disposed emotions and beliefs.

He cannot see how true solutions to this polarization – in the long term – can be achieved without addressing the shortcomings of the nation’s civics education program.  One should remember that one cannot count on natural tendencies or rational calculations; it has to depend on its citizens learning how to be committed to others and on its people holding the necessary values, attitudes, skills, and knowledge to pull it off.  And according to Brooks, such unions depend on love.

[1] David Brooks, The Second Mountain:  The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, NY:  Random House), 34.

[2] Daniel J. Elazar, “Federal Models of (Civil) Authority,” Journal of Church and State, 33, 2 (March 1, 1991), 231-254.

[3] Cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker writes of this and entails the practical realities resource scarcities have on this evolutionary trait.  See Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1997).

[4] A political landscape that first promotes social capital, a la Robert D. Putnam, does so by encouraging an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.  It promotes civic humanism, as described by Isaac Kramnick, by encouraging among the citizenry that each citizen be a political actor who realizes his/her fulfilment is attained through participation in public life and a concern with public good above selfish ends.

#political culture #federation theory #natural rights view #David Brooks #Daniel J. Elazar #Robert D. Putnam #Isaac Kramnick #civics education #social studies

[itsfinancethings]

New story in Politics from Time: By Embroiling the Postal Service in Controversy and Shaking Americans’ Confidence in Mail Voting, Trump Wins

At home in Kentucky in mid-August, Mitch McConnell didn’t sound the slightest bit concerned. “The Postal Service is going to be just fine,” the Senate majority leader drawled, echoing the soothing talking points of other Republicans: the Trump Administration was just reforming a 228-year-old institution, and President Donald Trump’s new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, was making it more efficient. The same day, Trump described the situation in his own, half-joking way: “I want to make the post office great again, O.K.?”

But the lighthearted talk just highlighted the spreading national panic that had triggered it: less than 80 days before a presidential election that will rely more heavily on voting by mail than any previous race in U.S. history, the great machinery of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) seemed to be sputtering to a halt. The “operational pivot” DeJoy announced in July, which included restrictions on staff overtime and transportation costs, produced a backlog of undelivered mail, according to postal union representatives. The Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledged that prescription drugs mailed to veterans via USPS had been delayed by an average of almost 25% over the past year. Small businesses, which rely on the affordability of USPS rates, began facing angry customers whose packages were lost in distribution centers for weeks.

At the end of July, the Postal Service itself sounded the alarm, sending warning letters to 46 states, including the electoral battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, alerting them that the USPS might not be able to meet their election deadlines. In all, more than 159 million registered voters live in the 40 states that received the most urgent warnings, according to the Washington Post.

Panicked constituents papered the door of DeJoy’s D.C. apartment building with fake ballots reading, Save THE post office, Save our democracy; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called lawmakers back for an emergency session to vote on a bill to protect the USPS; and Democratic Senator Gary Peters launched an investigation into DeJoy’s operational changes. “It’s a level of concern I haven’t seen in the past,” says Melissa Rakestraw, a mail carrier in Illinois.

Erin Schaff—The New York Times/ReduxPostmaster General DeJoy visits Capitol Hill in August

DeJoy, who spent more than three decades running New Breed Logistics, a national supply-chain services provider with 7,000 employees, seemed blindsided by the fallout. The Postal Service has lost money for years, thanks to the rise of the Internet, perennial mismanagement and heavy-handed but ineffective government interventions. The point of his reform agenda, which included reassigning or displacing 23 veteran postal executives, was to cut costs and increase “performance for the election and upcoming peak season,” he wrote in an internal memo obtained by CNN. The slowdowns and backlogs, he said, were “unintended consequences.”

But outsiders spotted a pattern. Behind the daily chaos, Trump’s presidency has one abiding characteristic: using the vast power and reach of the U.S. government to serve Trump’s own political ends. He has repeatedly explained executive actions by pointing to the political benefit they bring him, and a steady parade of his top advisers have offered detailed examples after leaving the Administration in exasperation. Trump tried to turn the Department of Homeland Security “into a tool used for his political benefit,” said the agency’s former chief of staff, by, for example, ordering officials to close stretches of the border in Democraticled California rather than GOP-led Arizona and Texas. The President pleaded with the leader of China to make trade decisions that would bolster Trump’s relationship with crucial farm-state voters ahead of the 2020 election, according to former National Security Adviser John Bolton. And of course, Trump was impeached eight months ago in part for allegedly withholding military aid from Ukraine until the country investigated Trump’s political rivals. The list goes on.

If there were any doubts about the Administration’s motives for the so-called reform of the Postal Service, the President himself seemed to put them to rest. In an Aug. 13 interview with Fox Business, the President said he was blocking Democrats’ proposed $25 billion for the USPS and $3.5 billion for additional election resources because that outlay would help the Postal Service handle a surge in mail voting this year. “They need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said. “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”

Less than a week later, DeJoy announced the suspension of much of his reform agenda until after the election to “avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.” But the damage may already have been done.

Whatever happens to the USPS in coming months, Trump benefits from having cast doubt on the USPS and mail voting and from having unleashed a specter of impropriety over the core exercise of democracy. When Americans lose faith in the electoral process, voter turnout slumps, and if Trump supporters don’t believe their votes were fairly counted, they’re less likely to accept an outcome in which he does not win.

Most Americans love the Postal Service, and rely on it, regardless of their politics. More than 90% view the agency favorably, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center poll. George Washington himself saw a national postal network as an amplifier of democratic ideals and that egalitarianism continues today: FedEx and UPS pin a premium on letters destined thousands of miles away, while a letter mailed by USPS anywhere within the country costs just 55¢.

But as the Post Office has faced new challenges over the years, lawmakers of both parties have advocated for reform. In 1970, after more than 150,000 postal workers went on strike, halting the delivery of vital mail, the Democraticled Congress oversaw a reorganization of the USPS, demoting the Postmaster General from the Cabinet and, crucially, cutting off taxpayer support: the Postal Service as we know it today funds itself from its own sales.

Michael A. McCoy—Getty ImagesAmericans worried that delivery delays might impact mail voting protested outside DeJoy’s D.C. apartment this month

With the rise of the Internet, those sales have plummeted. In 2001, the USPS moved more than 103.7 billion pieces of first-class mail; in 2019, the number was almost half that, at 55 billion. Rising fuel prices and trucking costs and an uptick in the number of packages have exacerbated the problem.

In 2006, Congress again went after the Postal Service, this time passing a bipartisan bill–it was approved by unanimous consent in the Senate–mandating that the USPS pre-fund health benefits for its retirees and invest those funds in government bonds, which offer dismal returns. It is a requirement that no other entity, public or private, must meet, and it costs the USPS more than $5 billion per year–roughly 7% of its total operating costs. The requirement is responsible for a large portion of the agency’s annual shortfall, according to its financial reports. Last year, USPS tallied $79.9 billion in expenditures and finished the year with $11 billion in outstanding debt.

The parties have long been divided over how to fix these deficits. For decades, Democrats accused Republicans of sabotaging the Postal Service in an effort to privatize it. Republicans denied the charge and defended their reform efforts by pointing, not incorrectly, at the USPS’s hemorrhaging balance sheets. But then came the Trump Administration, with its tendency to say the quiet part out loud. In 2018, the White House suggested for the USPS a “future conversion from a government agency into a privately held corporation.”

Over the past five months, this relatively obscure policy fight was transformed into a democracy-defining battle. In April, the USPS asked Congress for $75 billion to help it weather the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. When stores shuttered, the Postal Service saw first-class mail, its most profitable product, decline, while the volume of packages–the most labor-intensive to deliver–surged, as Americans increasingly shopped online. Democrats are pushing for more USPS funding in their latest relief bill, but the White House has so far resisted. (In late July, the Treasury Department authorized the agency to borrow up to $10 billion under strict conditions.)

In May, DeJoy’s appointment to the top Postal job seemed to confirm Democrats’ worst fears–that what had been an ideological push to privatize the Postal Service had morphed into an effort to swing the election for Trump. DeJoy “has deliberately enacted policies to sabotage the Postal Service to serve only one person, President Trump,” said Representative Gerald Connolly of Virginia, whose House subcommittee oversees the USPS.

Democratic lawmakers had no say in the appointment of DeJoy, who donated more than $1.1 million to the Trump Victory campaign fund from August 2016 to February 2020. Under normal circumstances, the USPS’s Board of Governors, which appoints the Postmaster General, is bipartisan: Presidents name each of the nine Senate-confirmed members to seven-year terms. But Senate Republicans blocked Obama’s nominees, allowing Trump to inherit an empty board, which he happily filled with like minds.

Unable to prevent DeJoy’s rise, congressional Democrats helplessly pointed at his apparent conflicts of interest. At the time he was appointed Postmaster General, the GOP megadonor held at least $30 million worth of stock in a supply chain company that contracts with the USPS, raising questions of whether he is violating ethics rules that prevent officials from participating in government matters affecting their personal finances. DeJoy also holds stock options that allow him to purchase Amazon shares at a below-market rate. As Amazon increases the proportion of packages it delivers itself–and toys with the idea of delivering non-Amazon parcels, too–the retail giant is quickly becoming a direct USPS competitor.

DeJoy’s announcement on Aug. 18 that he would suspend much of his reform agenda until after the election may seem like a win for Democrats. In the coming weeks, DeJoy will be hauled in front of both the House and Senate for hearings, and a congressional investigation into this summer’s events is ongoing. But the politics aren’t so simple.

DeJoy’s reversal left a host of unanswered questions. What would happen to the dozens of mail-sorting machines and drop boxes that have already been hauled off? When will workers’ overtime be approved? Will postal workers be able to take more than one trip per day? Will states have to buy more expensive postage to circumvent delays? Without proactive moves to safeguard mail delivery, hundreds of thousands of ballots may still end up in the trash. In 32 states, ballots must arrive by Election Day, according to an analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures. During this year’s primaries, at least 65,000 mailed ballots were discarded for various reasons, according to NPR. While that represents only about 1% of the ballots in most states, according to the NPR analysis, tiny margins matter: in 2016, Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, each by margins of less than 1%, but that was enough to claim 46 electoral votes–and the presidency.

The best-case scenario for the agency is that Congress gives it emergency funding, public scrutiny persists and DeJoy makes good on his promise to “deliver the nation’s election mail on time.” But that can’t undo what’s been done.

By discrediting the Postal Service and mail voting, Trump has already tainted the election results, whatever they may be. According to an Axios-Ipsos poll in August, 47% of voters supporting Vice President Joe Biden said they planned to vote by mail, compared with just 11% of Trump supporters. If that disparity holds true in November, the fallout could be bad for both parties. Older and rural voters, who have in the past relied on mail ballots and tend to support Republicans, may be discouraged from voting at all. Trump could also appear to be ahead on election night among in-person voters, only to be overtaken as disproportionately Democratic mailed ballots are slowly counted–days and weeks later.

It’s not hard to imagine the damage that a hung election, like the 2000 Bush-Gore debacle, could exact in the era of Trump-fueled disinformation. Democracy, after all, is not unlike flying in Peter Pan’s world; if you stop believing in it, it ceases to work.

–With reporting by ALANA ABRAMSON

from Blogger https://ift.tt/34gWgmx via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

[hellojulie1971]

The collapse of the Roman Empire and its attendant governmental authority, economic structure, and societal order resulted in an end to civilization in Europe. Currency was no longer minted or regulated and became worthless. The ships and carts of commerce stopped carrying food and supplies. Unchecked lawlessness put travelers and isolated families at risk. Those who dared to travel were no longer in a stream of travelers; they were alone. The demise of travel further isolated communities because without commerce and without news the outside world practically and psychologically ceased to exist. People of means were suddenly without, and for the first time were poor, hungry, helpless, and frightened. Europeans gathered into defensive clusters of tribes, villages, and towns, and several families often lived in one communal home. Because there was almost no travel, it was very rare to see a stranger, and strangers were distrusted and unwelcome. People who did travel were frightened when they saw another person because crime was so rampant. And the fear was not just of bands of outlaws. In lean times those who were cold and hungry sometimes murdered traveling strangers, cooked and ate their flesh, wore their clothes, and saved any food and goods for later use – nothing was wasted. (Because of verses like Lk 18:20 we know the murder they committed was a sin, and because of verses like Jn 6:51-58 we know the cannibalism wasn’t. Even so, cannibalism has always been repugnant – as it was to Christ’s disciples in Jn 6:59-61,66.) The isolation of communities caused names to be less important because in small communities there is no confusion as to whom you are referring when you say Peter, or Jesus, or Barjesus (son of Jesus – Ac 13:6), or Arthur, or MacArthur (son of Arthur), or Will, or Willson, or Richard, or Richardson, or Abbas, or Barabbas (son of Abbas). Often people were simply known as Blondie, Red, Redbeard, or Skinny. If there might be some confusion about whom you were speaking it was common to add specificity by saying Jesus of Nazareth, Richard the Lion-hearted, Herod the Great, Pepin the Short, Henry the Eighth, and Philip the Fair. Even the villages people lived in often had no names because without travel a name wasn’t necessary. If a man got lost in the woods it was common for him to never return: If he happened to stumble upon another settlement those people couldn’t help him because his, “My village has a burned tree at the top of a hill” meant nothing to them. And even if his village was called Philipsburg, the people of the settlement knew neither Philip nor his burg. So he spent the rest of his life there. When larger populations made a second name (or “last” name) necessary, these were often just the man’s occupation: Miller, Wheeler, Tailor, Smith, Cooper, Farmer, Shepherd, Fuller. But people were very casual about their names because ego – self – was not yet a big deal. For example, even the educated German who in the late 16th century founded a munitions dynasty variously wrote his own name as Krupp, Krupe, Kripp, and, of course, Krapp. In addition to the casual informality about names and their spellings, people in the old days were often referred to by other names (for unknown reasons) and by nicknames – all to the great consternation of historians and Bible students. Lacking understanding about oldtime names and their spellings has sometimes led ignorant Christians to assume they have found an error in the Bible when they think some name is incorrect. Widespread poverty caused function and necessity to have greater importance. Therefore, even prosperous peasants’ homes had but one room. Everyone who lived there, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters and their spouses and children, slept in and/or on the one bed (Lk 11:7), which was usually on the floor and of varying sizes and material. Privacy was neither a Biblical requirement nor a necessity. So when a man and his wife engaged in sexual activity it was variously applauded or ignored by all according to the mood. In cold and inclement weather all shared the chamber pot in the corner. During the warm months, especially when working, these European Christians often went naked (Jn 21:7; Dt 24:12,13), just as people had throughout history. Clothes, because they were hard to get, expensive to buy, and time-consuming to make, were a luxury (Dt 24:13,17) prudently reserved for winter use. Therefore when people dressed and undressed indoors in winter there was neither a perceived need nor a moral requirement for privacy curtains or dressing rooms; these people were not sinning against God. In lean years of famine many had to sell their clothes (Lk 22:36) and faced the prospect of no clothing even in winter. Bathing was a luxury and was done outside in public with no shame (2 Sa 11:2). There was no plumbing. During the warm months after a hard day of labor it was routine for the families of the community, often leading the family cow, to gather at the river or lake to drink, bathe, and relax in the cool, quiet twilight. Except when harvests were bad every meal was washed down with wine in southern Europe, and with beer in northern Europe – by adults and children. These Christians were not sinning against God. Before philosophy exalted ego/self and equality, the people in society viewed themselves the same way the old conservative, agrarian, philosophy-rejecting, democracy-hating Spartans did – as figurative members of a larger body whose duty was to further the welfare of the body. These European Christians had several bodies: The church, the family, and the community. Self and what self wanted, therefore, was always subordinated to the welfare of the church, the family, and the community. An example of this pre-Enlightened viewpoint can be found in the old cathedrals of Europe, many of which required three to four centuries to build. Even though these cathedrals are marvels of architecture and construction, nothing is known about the individuals who designed and built them because those people were not thought to have done anything extraordinary. Why? Because they were just doing their duty like everyone else in society. The man who designed the cathedral had done nothing nobler than the man who weeded the family vegetable garden or the woman who drew water from the well. There is no nobler deed than the performance of one’s duty. One of the ironies of today’s egalitarianism is that it has given various duties unequal stature: In direct violation of 1 Co 12:20-26 ditch diggers are laughed at because they are not rocket scientists. At the same time the collapse of the Roman Empire was causing chaos in Europe, the Roman Catholic Church – also known as the Western Church – was using the teachings of Augustine to maintain and strengthen its tenuous control of the western churches. Control means communication, and in those days communication required travel. The bishop of Rome (more commonly addressed in later years as “the pope”) communicated with his bishops in various European locales by sending them messages via couriers. Couriers had a difficult and dangerous job; there was no law enforcement and they had no maps. The couriers delivered more than mail; they were welcome sources of news about the outside world. By telling eager bishops what was happening in the Eastern Church in Constantinople, and what deal the pope made with the barbarians to keep them from sacking Rome again, and all the juicy tidbits of gossip, the couriers helped establish Rome as the hub of western Christianity. And when the local bishops, in turn, sent their own couriers to neighboring villages that had priests under their control, that flow of information helped the villages regard the bishop as their hub. With this fragile infrastructure the Catholic Church maintained a semblance of order, something that grew in direct proportion to papal power. As the infrastructure developed and branched out from the papacy and the bishoprics, the people in those bishoprics began to demonstrate the same kind of geographic loyalty (later called nationalism) their ancestors exhibited when the political rivalry between Rome and Constantinople caused a similar geographic polarization in Christianity. Therefore, as the papacy increased its control over Europe it also restored the societal order that had collapsed with the Roman Empire. With order came politics and the bishoprics began to gel into nations. With the nations came law and order and the return of commerce. The period of social chaos between the social order and prosperity of the Roman Empire and the later formation of nations in Europe is called the Dark Ages. Protestants generally blame the Dark Ages on the Roman Catholic Church because it reached the zenith of its power from about the 12th to the 16th centuries, power that began to fade when the Protestant Reformation caused a return of Bible-oriented Christianity. However, the Dark Ages was actually caused by the collapse of the Roman Empire, something that happened before the Catholic Church existed. When viewed from a superficial perspective it can be properly argued that the Roman Catholic Church was the savior of Europe and was the instrument that restored the order and prosperity of the Roman Empire. But when viewed from a Biblical perspective the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for something far worse than Protestants realize. She infected Christianity with philosophy and thereby caused Christians to incorrectly but fervently believe the advents of the Age of Reason and of democracy were – because they are products of the “Natural Laws” God supposedly programmed into our minds – results of the revival of Biblical Christianity caused by Protestant reform. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH The chaos in society resulted in different men and various groups vying with each other for political power. The papacy was just one of these groups. When the army of a rival faction surrounded Rome and threatened the papacy, Pope Stephen II in 754 made the long and dangerous journey to France where he consecrated and crowned Pepin the Short (father of Charlemagne) as king of the Franks. Now that Pepin had what he wanted – a throne legitimized by “Apostolic authority” – he and his army followed Pope Stephen back to Rome and drove the threatening army away. When the Vatican crowned people as kings it used an impressive “Christian” ceremony. The pope ignored both the fact that the New Testament specifically commands Christians to submit to and obey governors, and that it provides no guidelines for Christian governance of society. The New Testament limits itself to addressing administrative and disciplinary functions of the church itself. Therefore the Vatican went into the Old Testament, borrowed from the accounts of David and Solomon, and arranged coronation ceremonies that seemed official and Scriptural. Just as the Vatican acquired real estate for itself in Rome that did not fall under the jurisdiction of Italy, it acquired real estate all over Europe for churches, rectories, monasteries, schools, seminaries, etc. It quickly grew into the wealthiest, most powerful, most educated, and most corrupt institution in Europe. Eventually the life of almost every European from birth to burial was shaped and governed by Roman clergy. Most people, including the highest-ranking priests, were ignorant of the Scriptures and therefore of necessity had no alternative but to “serve” God by doing what was right and good in accordance with their carnal Reason. That Christianity survived at all is a tribute to God and His Bible; its survival certainly had nothing to do with medieval “Christianity.” While it is true that many in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church were ignorant of the Scriptures, that is not to say they were poorly educated. On the contrary, theirs were easily some of the best minds in Europe. They were mentally far, far above the masses. That, combined with their extreme wealth and power, insulated and isolated them from normal society, which resulted in their living dual lives. In public they were variously pious, aloof, arrogant, humble, and magisterial as situations warranted. In private they simply did whatever they wanted. They got drunk, they stayed up all night, they slept around the clock, they tinkered, they read, they hunted, they hosted huge parties, they murdered people, they traveled, etc. And, like most men in history with great power and authority (such as David and Solomon), they possessed huge sexual appetites that were – for the good men of history – difficult to control, and – for the bad – something to be indulged. These clerics simply did anything and everything…and they did it with impunity. The upper echelons of the Roman Catholic hierarchy were an elite group; they were above the law. They would burn common people at the stake for voicing heresies and then retire to the drawing room with a group of their peers to seriously discuss the very heresies for which they executed others. They circulated books, manuscripts, and papers among themselves that concerned philosophy, heresy, government, religion, sexual practices, the economy, trade, foreign religions, etc. They were minds, strong minds that examined, discussed, and became intrigued with a topic – only to become bored with it later. Because they had strong minds and walked on an intellectual plane, they could handle principles, concepts, and ideas, including those associated with heresies. But the common people lacked those mental abilities. If a commoner learned about a heresy he couldn’t control himself; he invariably opened his stupid mouth and spread the leaven to others like him in society where it often took root because the masses were incapable of mentally dealing with and properly analyzing principles and doctrines. Throughout most of history the 1 Co 12:20-26 view of humanity was accepted: People are not equal. They are different members of the body of society who have different abilities and different jobs. This produced mutual respect as long as each person did his duty. It was the duty of the heads, the men who ruled, to do the thinking. As philosophy took root it convinced people that all men are equal and that even the opinions of the stupid and the ignorant were to be respected. That is why the Catholic hierarchy began to fear the common masses and to control them by censoring certain material the masses couldn’t handle. And that is why Copernicus did not get into trouble for publishing his theory that the earth orbits the sun (something we still have not been able to prove in the 21st century, which would contribute to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and his Special Theory of Relativity); he got in trouble for publishing it in the vernacular so the commoners could read it. He was burned at the stake. Leonardo da Vinci also challenged existing “truths”, but he not only did not publish his works, he wrote them backwards to keep them from prying eyes. Leonardo lived to a ripe old age. Erasmus published parallel texts of the Bible, but he did it in Latin and Greek so only scholars could read them. William Tyndale, on the other hand, published the New Testament in the vernacular and was executed. Pope Gregory I (mentioned on page H6-2) in intellectual circles maintained that the three Christian virtues (faith, hope, and charity) should be combined with the four “Natural virtues” of the Greek philosophers (wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice). But pagan philosophy still had centuries to go before it was made a legitimate part of Christianity, so it wasn’t until the 14th century that the two groups were combined into the seven “cardinal virtues.” This slow and reluctant acceptance of pagan doctrines was also responsible for the late acceptance in Christian circles of “morality.” The Greeks said Nature’s god had programmed Natural Laws into Nature. Man, part of Nature, was given Reason to unlock these Natural Laws. The Natural Laws pertaining to society in general were called Moral Laws, or Morality. And when morality, the instinctive but vague knowledge of good and evil, is studied it results in rules of conduct, which are called “Ethics.” Pope Gregory I is not generally regarded as a “Rationalist” – one who uses the Reason espoused by philosophy. However, as a fan of Augustine he was certainly a forerunner of a growing movement of clerics and scholars in the Catholic Church who were called Christian Rationalists. CHRISTIAN RATIONALISTS One of the humanistic Catholic scholars who worked with and helped develop our modern value system of morality and ethics was Peter Abelard (1079-1142), a monk who’d been castrated as a penalty for his sexual escapades. A devotee of Greek philosophy, he founded the University of Paris, which would become noted for its fervent support of Reason. He taught university students and fellow monks, “Think for yourself. For I have learned something different from my Arab masters – to use Reason as a guide. You however, taken captive by authority, are merely led by a halter.” (He said “Arab masters” because the writings of Greek philosophers had largely been destroyed by Vandalism. Then when the Arabs conquered Alexandria they preserved – through their Arab translations of the Greek, much of the fundamentals of philosophy.) Notice Abelard’s statement only has seeming value when viewed with the carnal gut reaction of “self-evidence.” In other words, he was a sophist who relied on “common knowledge” for right and wrong rather than on any real and authoritative source. Abelard wrote two books that were important as building blocks for Western civilization in which he said all authority should be subject (!) to Reasoned questioning. That was a huge and very bold step for mankind – not to mention eunuchs. As a result of Abelard’s boldness he became a leading spokesman for the “New Thinkers” and was the most conspicuous scholar in Europe. His writings, including his Know Thyself, clearly showed that much of Christianity contained intellectual problems and inconsistencies when subjected to Reason. He wrote about passages in the Bible that were “obvious errors” because the very fact that they offended humanistic Reason showed the passages to be inconsistent with God’s Natural Law. Abelard’s work furthered a subtle trend growing in Christian ranks:  Pagan ways were no longer shunned and were no longer unmentionables. For example, Abelard openly advocated using both Christian values and pagan morals – as long as the two were not allowed to be confused with each other. He thought it should be taught that morals and ethics contained certain principles of Christianity, but only in those cases believed to be consistent with philosophic Reason. In this way he believed Western society could be improved in practical ways without compromising Christian doctrine. Understandably, Abelard was more popular with those scholars within the church who placed greater value on Reason than on faith in written revelation. (Many Christians would have ended the previous sentence with the word faith. But because “faith” has come to mean different things that did not come from the Bible – and is therefore not the Biblical faith that pleases God – I prefer to include words like written revelation in order to make it clear what real faith is based upon.) Intellectuals like Abelard who agreed with philosophy were a minority that conservatives derisively called “Rationalists” because they used secular humanism/Reason to point out “problems” in the Bible that offended Reason – such as miracles. Conservative scholars such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) warned that Christian Rationalism would grow and eventually become a problem. He said Rationalism was a subtle danger because any so-called “neutral” pursuit of knowledge, such as secular scholarship, Christian Rationalism, and science, is not neutral; it is actively pagan and contrary to the lordship of Christ and the glory of God. We’ll see why Bernard was correct in a few minutes. Pagan concepts like morality and ethics would continue to make slow inroads into Christianity. René Descartes (1596-1650) for example, became a popular proponent of morality by merely repeating earlier theories. Morality, he taught, is the result of conforming to the Law of Human Reason programmed into all men. Morality and ethical behavior, therefore, can be learned by man’s introspective study of himself and his proper place in Nature. Not everybody was happy with the increasing trend to consider morality as a worthy part of Christian society. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the author of Gulliver’s Travels, said, “The system of morality to be gathered from the writings of ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.” But Swift was in the minority. He and those who shared his view were considered boring and old fashioned, and were outnumbered by people like Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a German philosopher who is still considered a superstar. Kant’s 1781 work, Critique of Pure Reason, advocated the use of secular Reason. In Critique he said he was filled with “ever-increasing wonder and awe” every time he reflected on “the moral law within me.” His works – which are extremely complex – really only build on the writings of Descartes and Locke. Yes, to us today the teachings of the Big Names are anticlimactic and somewhat of a disappointment because of their childish simplicity, naïveté, sophistry, and complete lack of any reliable and authoritative foundation. But back then the fact that these ideas were radical and daring challenges to the authority structure that had existed since God made the angels and Adam made them exciting, heady stuff. One last example to show how much pagan philosophy became an accepted part of Christianity: We turn to Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the book that made the name Webster synonymous with dictionary. Before we look at some of his definitions let’s note that many verses in Scripture – such as 1 Th 5:23, He 4:12, and Mt 10:28 – show that the body (mortal body), soul (intellect), and spirit (immortal body) are different. But ignoring the Bible by making soul and spirit the same thing was becoming popular because it tended to support Augustine’s doctrine that the soul is immortal, and all men having immortality would put them in contact with the Kingdom of God, which “proved” all men – Christians and the unregenerate – really were given Reason as a way to know Truth without the Bible just like the ancient Greeks said. In other words, just as the Greeks had used Natural Law/Reason to formulate the theory of the immortality of all human souls, Christians not only did the same thing, they went further by using Reason to discredit verses like 1 Co 2:14; Ro 8:7,8; Ec 3:18,19. Let’s see what Webster – popular with Christians merely because he references Scripture in his dictionary – has to say (emphasis added): “SPIRIT: The soul of man; the intelligent, immaterial and immortal part of human beings: See SOUL.” “SOUL: The spiritual, rational, and immortal substance in man which distinguishes him from brutes; that part of man which enables him to think and reason, and which renders him a subject of moral government. The immortality of the soul is a fundamental article of the Christian system.” We find no Scripture. We find that soul and spirit are not separate entities like God said. We find that the soul cannot die like God said it could. And we find that the human soul is tuned into “moral” rules by its ability to use Reason. Why did Christians begin saying Reason differentiates men from beasts? Because they needed to defend the traditional doctrine of the immortality of the soul that they inherited from the Greeks and Saint Augustine against the Bible: The Bible says God gave animals souls and the breath of life, which made it look like there really was no difference between men and animals. And that meant, 1) animals having souls and the breath of life meant they, too, had immortal souls, or 2) all souls are mortal and man gets immortality only from the second (spirit) body of the new birth. The pagan Greek theory of Reason came to the rescue: Reason seemed like a perfect “proof” that unregenerate men and beasts were not the same like the Bible says they are, and for centuries it was accepted that man was different from beasts…and Christians “only” had to ignore a few verses of Scripture. By the time Webster wrote his dictionary Reason had become a “Christian” concept. Did Webster learn about morality and Reason from the Bible – or from philosophy? Let’s see what Webster has to say about moral: “MORAL: 1) The word moral is applicable to actions that are good or evil…and has reference to the law of God as the standard by which their character is to be determined. The word however may be applied to actions which affect only…a person’s own happiness. 3) Supported by the evidence of Reason…founded on experience… 7) In general, moral denotes something which respects the conduct of men…as social beings whose actions have a bearing on each other’s Rights and Happiness, and are therefore right or wrong. Moral sense is an innate or Natural sense of right and wrong; an instinctive perception of right and wrong…independent of…the knowledge of any positive [real] rule or law [like the Bible]. But the existence of any such moral sense is [now] very much doubted.” Notice (as we address the last part first) he does a pretty good job quoting the pagan party line before admitting that Moral Law/Natural Law was by 1828 generally known to be just another Greek myth. The problem is the non-existent Natural Law foundation of morality no longer matters! Why? Because Webster accurately shows that by 1828 morality was unquestioningly incorporated into Christianity! I say again, by 1828 no Scripture was required because the carnal self evidence of Reason was – and is – blindly accepted as Christian. Read the definition of MORAL again and carefully notice it comes right out and says Christians and pagans do not need the Bible because the Prime Mover wants mankind to utilize the [forbidden] fruit of the tree of the knowledge of [rather than discerning] good and evil. (Read that sentence again and substitute Satan for Prime Mover.) Now notice that Webster’s definitions of MORAL are actually deceitful because the average ignorant Christian will assume Webster’s use of “the law of God” has to do with the Bible when it is really a reference to the mythical Laws of Nature, which were derived by Reason and assumed to be more dependably consistent than the Bible because the Bible might be wrong but Reason and Natural Law were direct conduits to the Prime Mover itself. I applaud Webster’s integrity for including in his dictionary the fact that morality might not even exist. However, three things are true: First, in 1828 morality wasn’t the only facet of Western civilization in danger of toppling. Natural Law itself, which was the key link between pagan philosophy and Christianity, was increasingly recognized as something that never existed. That meant the foundational principles and doctrines of Western civilization and its cherished institutions, like its democratic forms of government, its laws, and modern Christianity, which were derived from Nature’s Laws, were based on a lie. Second, the Christians like Webster who participated in the Natural Law debate were in a distinct minority in Christianity. Most Christians in 1828 were no different from Dark Age Christians and 21st century Christians – incapable of understanding and dealing with the Biblical importance of words, principles, ideologies, and doctrines. Because they had not studied the Bible to shew themselves approved unto God, they tried to hide the fact that they were shameful workmen who could neither rightly divide the word nor put two intelligent sentences back-to-back in a discussion about doctrine. They tried to hide their inexcusable ignorance of Scripture by scurrying around with wide eyes and horrified tones as they babbled about Satanic New Age symbols on product labels, black helicopters, social security numbers, and all manner of pointless trivia having no meaning or relevance when viewed from the perspective of eternity – or even from just a few years later. Therefore, Christians who recognized the horrifying implications of the Natural Law hoax were without remedy because they were not only a minority among Christians, they were in a democratic country run by the majority. Third, even though Webster wrote that admission/warning in his definition of moral, take a look at his definition of ethics: “ETHICS: [The results of] the science of moral philosophy, which teaches men their duty and the reasons of it.” His definition is a fairly good one but where is the warning that, because ethics is based on morality and morality is based on Natural Law, it’s all a joke? Look at Webster’s definition of “Law of nature”: “Law of nature, is a rule of conduct arising out of the natural relations of human beings established by the Creator, and existing prior to any positive precept [such as the Bible]. Thus it is a law of nature, that one man should not injure another, and murder and fraud would [still] be crimes, independent of [even without] any prohibition from a supreme power [rules from God].” It was believed the Law of Nature was programmed into us by whatever supreme being or prime mover might be out there so we could know the truth about religion, and could know right and wrong via Reason (which incorrectly caused Ro 1:18-32 to be applied to all men – even the unregenerate). The Bible, therefore, was only true in those parts that agreed with Reason. And the parts in Scripture that depended on faith may or may not be true. The important point here is to note that Webster believed the Laws of Nature were designed by God to teach His rules to us even without the Bible! If Webster was right, I am wrong. And if Webster was right, the fact that most Christians do not know the Bible very well is perfectly OK – because we don’t need it! Was I correct when I said the laws of Western civilization are based on Natural Law and not the Bible? Well, let’s again consult Noah Webster, our Rationalist founding father and ardent supporter of George Washington: “Law of nations, the rules that regulate the mutual intercourse of nations or states. These rules depend on natural law, or the principles of justice that spring from the social state; or they are founded on customs, compacts, treaties, leagues and agreements between independent communities.” Webster correctly states that Natural Law comes from the “social state” and is the source of the laws of nations. How then did your preacher get the idea that the government of the United States of America and its laws are founded upon “Scripture” or “Biblical principles”? He got that idea because he is as careless studying history as he is studying the Bible – he honestly doesn’t know that when our founding fathers said stuff about our government and its laws being based on God’s truth, Biblical principles, Christianity, etc., they only said that because their acute ignorance/unbelief concerning the Scriptures caused them to foolishly accept the philosophy that anything that was self-evident was only self evident because the “supreme being” programmed His truth into us. The founding fathers thought they were founding a government based on truth – that meant the government was based on the principles of the Koran, or the Bible, or the teachings of Buddha, or whatever religion ended up being the true one. Since many of the founding fathers were Christians they therefore Naturally assumed that because they based the government of this nation on Natural Law they were glorifying God in accordance with whatever parts of the Bible turned out to be true. There was no conspiracy: Just like God’s people in the Old Testament often angered Him by doing what they honestly thought would be right and pleasing in His sight, the founding fathers screwed up by letting the philosophy the Bible warns us about convince them that the carnal mind was programmed by God to be a substitute for His Holy Bible. To find an example of this we need look no further than our old buddy, Noah Webster. He has already told us the Law of Nature, and its derivative – morality, and morality’s derivative – ethics, do not come from the Bible. Now carefully read his definition of moral law (as opposed to his earlier definition of moral) and do what your preacher should have done – pay attention to what he doesn’t say as well as what he does say: “Moral law, a law which prescribes to men their religious and social duties, in other words, their duties to God and to each other. The moral law is summarily contained in the decalogue or ten commandments, written by the finger of God on two tables of stone, and delivered to Moses on mount Sinai. Ex. xx.” See what I mean? He doesn’t say Moral Law comes from or is based on the Bible or the Ten Commandments. No, he turns it the other way around and says the Ten Commandments are but a brief summary of, or based on, the Moral Law. In other words Webster – like all other Christian Rationalists – believed Moral Law, or Natural Law, to be the foundation upon which God based the Ten Commandments and the Bible. Now you know why so many Christians think the U.S. Constitution is divinely inspired: Just like the Ten Commandments are God’s holy truth because they are based on the Moral Laws of Nature, anything that is also based on the Moral Laws of Nature – such as the Constitution – has a status and importance equal to that of the Ten Commandments. (To see an example showing 21st-century Americans still think the Constitution is divinely inspired, read the formal campaign statement on page D24-8 of a Christian politician while he was running for President.) Now let’s see why St. Bernard of Clairvaux was correct when he predicted Christian Rationalism’s blending of Reason with Scripture would cause problems: Once again we find our old Christian Rationalist friend, Noah Webster, is a good example. Webster said the Ten Commandments contained Moral Law. That means the Ten Commandments are not authoritative because they were written by the finger of God, but because they were based upon or in agreement with the Moral Laws of Nature that God supposedly set up. That means if God had written commandments that did not contain or were not based upon the Moral Laws of Nature, those commandments would be revealed by Reason to be violations of the Laws of Nature, which would make them contrary to the truths programmed into Nature and Reason by the true supreme being.  And that would mean the god who wrote the ten commandments with his own finger was a fake who should have subordinated himself to the rules established by the true God revealed by Reason. Rationalists would use this type of “Webster Reason” to discredit Jesus Christ because His miracles violated the true god’s Natural Laws. What the philosophy of the Christian Rationalists also meant was any laws created by man that were revealed by Reason to be self-evident, were actually in accordance with Nature’s true God and therefore should become international laws that were binding for all men. But that’s not all. The fact that Nature’s God programmed human Reason to reveal His universal and eternal Natural Laws meant all men really were God’s children, really did all have immortal souls, and really should have governments over them ruling in accordance with the Natural truths He established. Reason could now be used to subdue and unite the world – while thinking we were fulfilling God’s commission to Adam to subdue the world! In summation: The acceptance of Reason as part of Christianity by “Christian Rationalists” like Noah Webster took the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and made it good! Because this topic is so important I want you to now – with Webster’s definitions in mind – reread the first two paragraphs under “The Kingdom Divided” on page H1-1. You need to understand the fact that over the centuries Christians changed the definition of carnality by making it deal primarily with sexual lust, and they used the mythical idea that the “Prime Mover” programmed its “Laws of Nature” and “Reason” into us so we could logically base right and wrong in our lives upon self-evidence. By so doing, our forefathers made the true and evil meaning of carnality actually become a good and necessary part of modern Christianity. It is only because we no longer know what carnality is that we are able to view carnal fruit like Freedom, Independence, and Democracy as good. Let’s continue to follow history and see how clairvoyant St. Bernard of Clairvaux was when he said Rationalism would paganize Christianity. IDEOLOGICAL WARFARE The Roman Catholic Church had grown so large and powerful it could now use warfare to promote its doctrines, spread its influence, and defend itself from any threat. Therefore in 1095 the Vatican launched the holy wars known as Crusades, or as the Muslims call them, Jihads, which would continue for two bloody centuries. Obviously, if the Vatican could draw upon the resources of European nations for such large armies, those nations were once again established, secure, orderly, and wealthy enough to support commerce. The Crusades also revived an interest in philosophical Reason. Therefore the Crusades effectively mark the end of the Dark Ages portion of the Middle Ages. The terms Dark Ages and Middle Ages are used by historians to mark the low tide of Reason: The classical age of the pagan Greeks and Romans was “good” because it was an age of Reason. And the modern age of Enlightened Western civilization is “good” because it is another age of Reason. But in the middle of those two ages there was a “bad” period when Christians rejected Reason – called the Middle Ages (400-1300 A.D.). The more specific term, Dark Ages, refers to the first part of the Middle Ages (400-1000) before the Crusades rekindled interest in the Reason of the Greek philosophers. Again, the Middle Ages are the years between the Hellenized civilization of the Roman Empire and the Hellenized civilization of Europe. European commerce with foreign nations had already resumed by the time of the Crusades, but the Crusades stimulated international trade because when common soldiers returned to their homes with foreign goods their friends and neighbors developed an appetite for those goods. As commerce increased, so too did academic intercourse. Western scholars were able to obtain more Arabic – and to a lesser extent Hebrew – translations of Greek philosophical works. These turned out to be wonderful sources of pure philosophic leaven, and Western scholars realized most of the traditional sources of philosophic thought that they’d studied for centuries had been edited and diluted by old-fashioned Christian scholars who, offended by and suspicious of pagan philosophy, removed the parts they thought were too radical and dangerous. Today it is difficult to appreciate just how radical and offensive philosophy was. After all, in just a few pages we have easily covered material it took European Christians centuries to digest. There are two reasons philosophy took so long to work its way into the fabric of the lives of Western Christians: First, philosophy truly was radical to people in general and Christians in particular who had, since time began, lived under authority. People simply were not supposed to think or act on their own unless they were an authority and had that prerogative. And even Christian authorities who had no earthly authority over them – like King David – were still required to check with God before doing anything to ensure they didn’t offend Him. Christians simply understood how arrogantly evil it was to do something without proper authority, to step out of line, to leave your place in society, to be a foot that acted without consulting the head. Second, philosophy remained an academic pursuit within the exclusive and carefully protected domain of scholars…until it began to be passed on to the unthinking masses – most notably and dramatically by Martin Luther. Scholars were careful with Reason because they had the mental capacity to realize how truly revolutionary it was to the fundamental structure of society. Lacking that mental ability to deal with concepts and principles, the masses would respond to Reason by “knowing” on a gut level it was right and good because it “felt” so Naturally self-evident. Yes, Christian scholars were titillated by philosophy and enjoyed flirting with and occasionally being seduced by its charms. But they knew it was very dangerous. That is why people like Ambrose and Augustine, even while subtly using philosophy in their works, were careful to publicly condemn it. Other Christian Rationalists, afraid to go directly to pagan philosophy to justify their Reason, cloaked their works in sheep’s clothing by quoting, drawing on, and building upon the leavened works of “Saint Augustine”, “the church fathers”, “early Christian thinkers”, etc. The Vatican used more than the Crusades to fight its ideological warfare. It created the Office of the Inquisition, an office administered by Dominican friars, to deal with heresy and heretics. A Spaniard, Dominic Guzman, started the Dominican order of friars. He is famous among Roman Catholics because when the Virgin Mary invented the rosary, she gave the first one she made to him. Just how many she made is unknown but it is known she kept at least one for herself because the Catholic teaching says when Mary showed up seven centuries later and revealed herself to three small peasant children in Fatima, Portugal, she was going from bead to bead praying “Hail Marys” to herself. Why she didn’t hand out more rosaries on this occasion is unknown. When she returned to heaven she kept the rosary she’d been using, presumably to keep track of her prayers to herself so she could continue worshipping herself by asking herself to pray for herself – a sinner – now and at the hour of her death! If Catholic doctrine is taken seriously by any Catholics they must wonder, when their priest tells them to “say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys” as penance for their sins, if Mary is still alive to hear them or if she is dead and busily answering her own prayers to herself to pray for herself when she died. (When I poke fun at the idiocies of other “faiths” I am following Elijah’s example in 1 Ki 18:27.) The Dominican Order was originally established in accordance with St. Augustine’s teachings, but when he became a scholastic and doctrinal embarrassment the order was reorganized in accordance with the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. The order was established to take care of heretics in general – and the Cathari in particular. In the early 11th century a large group of Christians who were not Roman Catholics and who were openly opposed to the doctrines of the Western Church appeared on the Vatican’s Most Wanted list. These Christians called themselves Cathari, which means “the pure.” They lived in southern France and in pockets in the mountainous regions of northern Italy. The Vatican controlled most of Europe, including northern France. But southern France, because it was largely populated by Cathari, was not under the political or religious control of Rome. The Vatican wanted to control all of Europe, and the Cathari were in the way. Because there was a large population of Cathari in Albi, France, the Cathari are often called Albigenses. The Cathari believed the Catholic Church was the Whore of Revelation 17. They rejected Catholic doctrine and all of what Rome called “sacraments.” They preached only the Bible, believing the church should not be part of the world and should not base its doctrines upon the theories of the unregenerate. Therefore they rejected as unscriptural Aristotle’s teaching that “Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul” so all men can instinctively know the Laws God programmed into Nature (page H5-3), and they rejected the Catholic Church’s acceptance of the pagan theory that the souls of the unregenerate have everlasting life. That pagan foundation also resulted in other Roman Catholic “Natural Law doctrines” such as, “At the bar of God’s justice, a man will not be judged by anything but his own conscience.” The Cathari believed immortality was available to the souls of men only through the Biblical new birth, and that God’s truth is available only through His word. They believed the Natural, carnal, physical old man is instinctively evil and Naturally opposed to God. This Natural human evil manifested itself in man’s tendency to be independent of God, which is rebellion against His Headship. This meant all philosophy was evil rebellion, and a monk in a monastery contemplating Self in order to learn about God was wasting both his time and the offerings of faithful Catholics. It is hard to be definite about the doctrines of the Cathari because so little of what they believed has survived. They are almost universally labeled as heretics by secular and religious historians for four reasons: First, what we know of their beliefs about the nature of good (walking in the Spirit) and evil (walking in the flesh) is from sketchy and vague information that can easily be misinterpreted as Dualism, which is itself vague and ill-defined. Second, modernists love Natural Reason and dislike those who don’t. Third, since most of Europe was Roman Catholic, Catholicism is often thought of as the standard by which Christianity is judged: all others are “heretics.” Fourth, little is known about low-profile Christian groups like the Cathari, the Paulicians, the Bogomils, and the Wends or Sorbs (who were, interestingly enough, of Slavic and Saxon origin: see pages D24-1 and D27-12). These groups fellowshipped with each other and rejected the authority and orthodoxy of the powerful Church of Rome. When the Catholic Inquisition exterminated them it even burned their books and literature. Nothing has survived. Therefore, the same enemies who massacred them wrote all of the “history” about them, and the information must be viewed as anti-Cathari propaganda intended to make the extreme and shocking measures taken to kill them appear justified. (For documentation of the atrocities committed see Fox’s Book of Christian Martyrs and van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror.) In fact, because the Cathari and the other groups were so numerous and occupied such a large area across southern Europe, and because their beliefs were considered to be so threatening to Catholic doctrine, four large-scale military Crusades were launched against them – just like the ones sent to the Holy Land, and with the same material and spiritual incentives to do a thorough job. Millions were slaughtered during this Christian holocaust. By 1200 the surviving Cathari were so few in number the mop-up work was left to the Inquisition. By 1400 they were completely exterminated. Secular history always stresses the economic importance of the Crusades because they increased trade between east and west. And secular history views the military results of the Crusades to be inconsequential because the permanent acquisition of dominion over the Holy Land failed. But the doctrinal effects of the Crusades on Christianity were lasting and had two great consequences: First, the Biblical teaching of the mortality of the unregenerate soul was exterminated along with the Cathari; and second, all resistance of any consequence to the universal spread of Romish Rational Christianity was killed. Since then Natural Reason has become a part of Christian life, and the immortality of the pagan soul has never been seriously questioned. When Dante wrote The Divine Comedy around 1315, the Crusades against the Cathari, together with the Inquisition’s teaching that anyone who denied the immortality of pagan souls was a heretic, were well known to European society. Dante agreed with the forerunner of Rationalist Christians, Justin (page H5-6), about the fate of certain pagans. It may be that Dante was also influenced by the uproar over the Cathari and how crucial the Roman Church said the immortality of pagan souls was, because in Divine Comedy Dante had God refuse to put the pagan philosophers who originated the theory of the immortality of the unregenerate soul in hell – He rewarded them by putting them in Limbo instead! But those people who did not adopt the pagan doctrine were assigned to the deepest parts of hell. By the time the Crusades began, philosophy was widely accepted among scholars and was beginning to infect society as people started to think and act on their own – albeit in relatively minor displays of rebellion. Marriage is a good example. Originally, marriage was not a “sacrament” because marriage was not complicated – a man gave his daughter to another man to be his wife. A supper or other celebration was held to announce the union so no one would think the woman was sinning when she slept with her husband, and so all would know she now had the authority to act in her husband’s name. But over the years the Catholic Church assumed more and more control over various aspects of life. Rome ignored what the Bible said and declared marriage to be not only a “sacrament” by which the married received “sanctifying grace”, but also, since the Western Church was God’s agent and dispenser of His sanctifying grace on earth, a Roman Catholic priest had to be at the wedding or it didn’t count. Oh, the families could still announce and celebrate the union at a marriage supper if they wanted, but the Church had to be  involved. And that had been the way Catholics performed weddings for centuries – with a priest. But now some Catholics were beginning to return to the original way of marrying – without a priest, and then have the marriage recorded by a village clerk to make it a matter of public record. The Vatican responded by telling people any alternatives to church weddings, such as a marriage supper or the use of a justice of the peace to certify that a wedding had taken place, were not the sacrament of matrimony, did not convey sanctifying grace, and were heresy. When people continued to ignore the Vatican and use private ceremonies, the Office of the Inquisition was instructed to add non-church weddings to its list of heresies. The Inquisition did almost as thorough a job dealing with marriage as it did with the immortality of the soul issue because today many people – even Protestants – think the only valid union is one that is presided over by a preacher. And that is how church weddings and the immortality of the pagan soul became traditional doctrines in Christianity. ALBERTUS MAGNUS At the same time the Vatican was using the Inquisition to control the pewsters, it had to contend with increasing division in the Catholic hierarchy. Liberals wanted more Reason in Christianity and conservatives wanted less. There did not seem to be any easy solution and as a result Vatican policy on the matter was erratic. The problem facing the Vatican was real. On its face this was just another academic squabble among the intellectual elite. But underneath was a nagging fear shared by conservatives and many liberals: What would happen to society and to the Church if the mindless masses had their Reason unleashed? And then a shocking incident in England seemed to indicate their fears about liberating the masses were well founded, and that the order of the whole world might be turned upside down. In 1215 English barons, unhappy with King John, forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which would eventually become one of the “sacred documents” in democratic history. This document gave them “rights” and took away the king’s prerogative to arbitrarily put people in jail. (This incident would, several hundred years later, be interpreted by liberal antiquarians as an ancient Natural Law “proof” that kings are supposed to be subject to the people and to laws made by the people.) The pope was shocked that subjects could be so rebellious against authority; it just didn’t happen: This was an era when every child learned submission and self-control by getting his face slapped if he dared to sass his mother. Stop and think for a minute: If the Magna Carta rebellion does not seem like that big of a deal to you, you need to remember that all authority is of God. Would you sass Him or try to force Him to grant you His prerogatives? The pope properly released King John from honoring the highly illegal and unchristian Magna Carta. As a person, King John was despicable. He was a liar who betrayed both his father when he was king, and his brother, Richard the Lion-hearted, when he was king. And John did not improve when he became king. He was a treacherous and cruel hypocrite motivated only by greed. Biblically speaking, however, none of that matters as far as his subjects were concerned – if they were Christians. [No, I don’t think they were Christians. Neither do I think the other Roman Catholics mentioned in this book were Christians – no matter how I word things when writing about them. Neither do I think the Roman Catholic Church is a true Christian organization. But this is a textbook and we are in classroom learning from history what is Biblical behavior and what is not. And not a lot of material is available about the tiny groups of real Christians – because they quietly lived submissive lives. So, let’s get back to work.] Following the Magna Carta rebellion another Englishman, Roger Bacon (1214-1294), a Franciscan monk and student of philosophy, taught at Oxford University (a popular English center for learning Greek philosophy) that the secular Reason espoused by Greek philosophy was a gift of God to be used for the betterment of mankind. (Today when Christians defend their carnal – and often ignorant – opinions with, “Well, God gave us brains and I think He expects us to use them”, they don’t realize they have merely restated Roger Bacon’s rehash of pagan philosophy in a more immature way.) Bacon was part of a group of liberal, pro-philosophy Roman Catholics that was growing in size and influence at the same time that antiphilosophy Christians like the Cathari were being systematically hunted down and exterminated. He was one of those who kept the Vatican busy administering discipline because he was always picking quarrels with conservative academics whose views differed from his. Bacon is most noted for his work helping to develop methods of scientific observation and is called the Admirable Doctor. But his influence pales in comparison with his Italian contemporary, Albertus Magnus. Saint Albertus Magnus (1200-1280) was a Dominican bishop and teacher of philosophy at the radical University of Paris. (France was popular with militant Christian Rationalists, and the University of Paris was a major Temple of Reason.) Albertus would become the Catholic patron saint of all scientists by papal decree because of all he did for philosophy. He is the only scholar of his age to be called “the Great.” Albertus, as a member of the Dominican Order whose responsibility it was to exterminate heretics who rejected the pagan Greek doctrine of the immortality of all unregenerate souls, wrote several major works defending the doctrine. Christian intellectuals of the time were grappling with the issue not so much because of the ongoing, high profile extermination of the Cathari, but because of the influence of a Spanish-Arab scholar named Averroes (1126-1198), who was a noted translator of Aristotle’s works. Although Averroes was dead, his works were becoming available in Europe and were greatly admired by – and very influential among – both Jewish and Christian scholars. A noted philosopher who exalted Reason, Averroes correctly pointed out that all arguments for the immortality of the pagan soul – whether made by pagans like the Greek philosophers or Christians like Augustine – were based on specious reasoning, and therefore the true, unbiased position of philosophy had to be that the soul was – just as unbiased scientific observation revealed it to be – mortal. His point was so obviously right, Christian scholars found themselves in the embarrassing position of having to admit not only that their great Saint Augustine had based his doctrinal conclusions on faulty Reason, but also that Christian scholars for almost eight hundred years had blindly accepted Augustine’s position as a foundational Christian doctrine. The implications were enormous.  If the Bible says the unregenerate souls of humans are not immortal – just like the souls of animals are not immortal, and previously discredited verses like Ec 3:18,19 and Mt 15:26 had been literally correct all along, the first problem for the Roman Catholic Church was its daily slaughter of the innocent and doctrinally-correct Cathari. The second problem was more far-reaching: The Catholic Church had relied on the doctrine of the immortality of pagan souls to justify a daisy chain of other doctrines: 1) Pagans are just as much children of God as Christians; 2) therefore pagans must be required to live by the Bible; 3) if they don’t they will go to hell; 4) therefore Rome must continue to conquer pagan lands in order to convert hell-bound pagans and to establish Christian government. If the Cathari were right it meant instead of being so obsessed with compassing sea and land to make one more proselyte, the Catholic Church should have spent more time and energy training up its pewsters in the way of the Bible so they could avoid the common pitfalls the Bible says are so habitual among God’s people. The Roman Catholic hierarchy reacted the same way most Christians today would react. Instead of humbly pausing to Scripturally analyze a doctrine that had been fumbled by pagan philosophers whose great Reason was so tuned into God’s truth that even He wouldn’t throw them into hell, a doctrine that had been botched – or ignored – by every great Christian mind for eight hundred years (with the possible exception of Christians like the Cathari), the Vatican became stubbornly defensive and, suddenly unable to rely on the old “common knowledge” that pagan souls have everlasting life, resorted to sophistry. If it admitted it had been wrong for so many centuries and allowed doubt to exist about the immortality of pagan souls, people might respond by having doubts about the validity and purpose of the Catholic Church itself – and even begin to doubt immortality and the existence of the spiritual realm. Using that specious, issue-dodging justification, the Vatican, knowing it didn’t know if it was right or wrong about the doctrine but figuring there was too much at stake, began looking for one of its best minds to step forward and establish the validity of the doctrine once and for all. At the same time, the Vatican decided to continue killing Cathari rather than impartially confer with them about the doctrine. The man chosen to champion the pagan/Catholic doctrine was Albertus Magnus, Dominican defender of Augustinian doctrine. As Albertus began to look into the immortality issue he found out why no one – pagan or Christian – had been able to prove the doctrine: It wasn’t in the Bible! Any “Scriptural” defense, therefore, had to be built upon verses whose interpretation depended on assumptions – assumptions now called into question. The Bible turned out to be useless as a defense because it repeatedly said human souls die in the same way Christians now believe animal souls die, and the Bible repeatedly said the unregenerate were in fact no different from animals because they both die. Therefore, if Albertus argued that verses in the Bible like Josh 11:11; Ps 89:48; Jb 12:10/Re 16:3; and Ezek 18:20 were really only talking about mortal, physical bodies – and not mortal souls as was literally written – he would make things worse because such an argument would lead to the obvious conclusion that pagans and animals both have everlasting souls – and thereby force the Vatican to start exterminating any Christians who believed the souls of unsaved beasts were mortal! And that would mean the animals in the manger were there worshipping the newborn Saviour in order to save their immortal souls from hell! Albertus was in quite a pickle. With nothing Scriptural to go on, Albertus had to do what others before him had done – ignore what the Bible actually said and use sophistry to build a case. Because he and all the other Christian scholars he consulted were unable to come up with anything definitive that wouldn’t blatantly contradict the Bible, Albertus’ first treatise was unsatisfactory, which caused him to ultimately write a series of defenses – all lame. He used the old two-step routine so familiar to debaters; he maintained that some truths in life are revealed by the Scriptures, and other truths not mentioned in Scripture are revealed by Reason. Even though the immortality of the unregenerate soul was supported by neither the Scriptures nor by Reason alone, he argued, it was supported by the two of them when used together – just as a bridge needs both pillars to support it. And then he danced back and forth from one to the other, leaving the one without having established anything but acting as if he had when he turned to the other. His attempt to verify the immortality of the unregenerate soul was his biggest failure as a philosopher and theologian. Knowing he was able to establish nothing, Albertus the Great, without being too obvious about it in his defense, retreated from both Scripture and philosophy and said the faithful could safely rely on the doctrines of their Holy Mother Church. Today’s Christians are unable to do any better than Albertus, so this huge and important topic is absent from works on Christian doctrine. In other words, just as Christians – before Averroes opened his big mouth and shouted “The emperor has no clothes!” – ignored Bible study and trusted that their sincere, godly, dead heroes of the faith were doctrinally correct, today’s preachers and pewsters are doing the same thing by blindly relying on the validity of the traditions of the elders. Today’s encyclopedias, however, with no religious axe to grind, are not afraid to openly state that the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul is not supported by either Testament of the Bible, but came to Christianity from the Greek philosophers. (Go look it up in your encyclopedia. Britannica’s Micropædia has it under “soul”; and in the Macropædia under “Christianity” find the section “Christian thought and doctrine”, and in the subsection “Christian Philosophy” read the part called “History of Christian philosophy.”) The pagan origin of the doctrine is not a mystery. I say again, it is very well known. But it is an unmentionable because it reveals that our spiritual leaders and preachers have been for many centuries ignorant and/or shallow in their understanding of the Bible, or have been hypocrites who knew better but were too weak and selfish to stand up and preach correct doctrine. As a result, all Protestant denominations that inherited the doctrine from Rome have Logically built the same doctrinal daisy chain the Roman Catholic Church did upon the Platonic/Augustinian foundation. If the souls of the unsaved do not have everlasting life, much of the evangelical emphasis of the church, which is based on saving the pagans from spending their “everlasting lives” in the lake of fire, will turn out to be wasted. And it would mean the reason the Lord issued the Great Commission (Mk 16:15) was for some reason other than the traditional belief that He wanted to keep the unsaved from going to hell when they died (Mt 10:5; 15:22-26). And it would explain the question that has plagued Christians since Augustine: How could God so callously ignore the fact that multiple millions of Gentiles (with “immortal” souls) were pouring into hell all during the Old Testament period, blatantly expose that callousness in the verses we just looked at, and not bother to issue the Great Commission until after His resurrection?! When the false doctrine of the immortality of unregenerate human-but-not-animal souls made converting the unsaved the major purpose of the church (“the main thing is soul-winning”), preachers began to place more emphasis on the importance of their pewsters’ bringing unsaved visitors to church than on the pewsters learning the Bible. And since the unsaved are not and cannot be subject to the laws of God (Ro 8:7) because God’s truth is spiritually discerned (1 Co 2:14; Jn 3:3,6), preachers found that the word of God had less effect on carnal pagans than did emotion. So evangelistic preaching lowered its aim from the head to the gut. That’s why you hear so many dramatic, heart-wrenching, and heart-warming stories from the pulpit aimed at the unsaved – emotion has an appeal the Bible cannot match! Preachers found that their born again but carnal Christian congregations also enjoyed soap opera stories more than they did Scripture, and at home their pewsters had more interest in reading novels (“Christian fiction”) than in reading God’s Book. And guess what today’s preachers discern from that telling fact: Nothing! Anyway, some denominations built upon the false doctrine of the immortality of the unregenerate soul in a different way. They correctly wondered what good it was to get everlasting life from the new birth if we all already have everlasting life. And they wondered why the Bible says we get everlasting life only from Christ if in fact even the unsaved pagans have everlasting souls. So they changed the definition of everlasting life from life without end to “living in heaven rather than living in hell.” Therefore they claim salvation no longer means a mortal person is birthed by the Spirit of God into spiritual immortality, it means the never-ending life he “already has” will be spent in heaven. Again, because they thought the Greek philosophers were right about everybody already having immortal life, these denominations redefined the word “everlasting” to mean God would never punish the iniquity of saints by changing His children’s home address from heaven to hell like He did with His beloved Lucifer. They say Lucifer’s being kicked out of God’s household means even though Lucifer was immortal and had spirit life he never had “everlasting” life because God knew this son of His was a “professor” not a “possessor.” Thus was the false doctrine the Roman Catholic Church launched four Crusades to defend used as the foundation for the false doctrine of “eternal security”. But I don’t want to go into doctrine in depth here in the historical section, so let’s press on. One of Albertus Magnus’ main agendas was to lobby for the official combining of Greek philosophy and Christianity. This would not just bring liberals and conservatives together, it would also allow philosophy to free the mind while Christianity prevented the social chaos and decadence that many scholars feared would result if Reason ever did become public property. Albertus believed religion should be kept out of all topics except itself – in accordance with the rules of philosophy. In other words, because philosophy’s Reason was believed to be a reliable road to truth, it would be a helpful addition to Christianity because it would expose superstition and error in the Bible; but because Christianity and the Bible were uncertain roads, they should not be allowed to affect the reliable road of philosophy. Because he lived at a time when the Vatican wasn’t ready to completely sell out to philosophy, Albertus just missed becoming the Third Pillar of Western Civilization. However, just as the First Pillar, Alexander the Great, learned philosophy at the feet of Aristotle, and just as the Second Pillar, Augustine, learned philosophy at the feet of the Eight-Day Wonder, Ambrose, so, too, did the Third Pillar of Western Civilization, Thomas Aquinas, learn philosophy at the feet of Albertus Magnus – and Aquinas was Albertus’ greatest contribution to civilization.

http://allchristiansarewelcome.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-dark-ages.html

#SEO #Local SEO training

[itamarbdor]

Tefillin Our connection to Hashem

Tefillin are a set of black leather boxes that contain Hebrew parchment scrolls. Jewish men wear it on their arm and head during weekday morning prayer. A set of Tefillin includes the box, the strap, and the scrolls. Tefillin are among the most powerful mitzvahs in the Torah. It reminds the wearer that they should harness their actions, intellect, and emotions to the service of G‑d.

Tefillin are available in different sizes. Prices can vary significantly based on differences in quality. Tefillin are divided into three different categories based on the quality of the leather boxes. The simplest Tefillin are called Tefillin Peshutim. It’s made from two pieces of leather.

Those that are made from a thick piece of leather are known as Tefillin Gassot. This is the most expensive and durable type of Tefillin. You can also find a pair of Tefillin that is made from a thin piece of leather. It is called Tefillin Dakkot.

Male Jews after the age of 13 years have to lay a pair of Tefillin. Although women are usually exempted from the duty, some early codifiers allowed them, women, to do it as well. Some females kept the ceremony in medieval Germany and France. Today, both men and women choose to wear a pair of Tefillin. Wearing of Tefillin remains a male-only responsibility in the Orthodox movement. In egalitarian movements, women may do it as an obligation. For instance, girls in SAR High School are allowed to wrap Tefillin during morning prayers or Shacharit.

There are some exemptions as well. Those suffering from stomach-trouble or in pain and can’t focus their mind is exempt from wrapping Tefillin. A bridegroom on his wedding-day and mourners during the first day of their mourning period are also exempt. Those who are studying Law, as well as dealers and scribes of Tefillin, are exempt too if their work can’t be postponed.

About the mitzvah of Tefillin

This mitzvah is said to be equivalent to the whole Torah and is one of the three mitzvot which constitute an “OT” – a sign. A Sign of the special connection between the Jewish people and God. (The other two mitzvahs that are considered a “sign” are circumcision and Shabbat).

The first encounter with tefillin takes place by the age of 13, the bar mitzvah, unlike other mitzvot which taught to children from an early age. According to Jewish law, this mitzvah takes place during the daytime and not at night, on a weekday and not on Shabbat and holidays, when women are exempt from having to participate in this mitzvah.

What is Tefillin?

Tefillin is made out of two black leather boxes, containing a leather sheet, on which are written four passages from the Torah (also called “the four parshiot”). There are two main methods regarding the order of the parshiot in it – the Rashi method and the Rabbeinu Tam method. Most people buy Rashi ones. Each of the leather boxes containing the four parshiot connected to black leather straps. This mitzvah divided into two parts: The part of the hand (shel yad) and The part of the head (shel Rosh).

How to put on Tefillin?

tefillin shel rosh

First, wear the tefillin of the hand (shel yad) and then the tefillin of the head (shel Rosh). The hand tefillin are placed on the weak hand – usually the left hand. If a person is right-handed, he will put it on his left arm, and if he is left-handed, he will place the tefillin on his right arm. (a left-handed person needs to pay attention when buying a Tefillin that it indeed meant for left-handed people.

It usually is mentioned in the product description). The head tefillin must be placed just ABOVE the natural hairline, precisely in the middle. After you put them on your arm, and before you tie the straps, you should say the blessing of putting on Tefillin. Immediately after placing the part of the hand, the part of the head should be set without interruption between them. When you say the blessing, also aim for the head part (shel Rosh).

Why are they painted black?

The answer can found in the verses of Shema Yisrael, one of the central prayers recited during tefillin. At Shma Yisroel we proclaim that the Creator of the world is the One and Only: The Lord our God is One! The leather sheet inside the tefillin boxes also contains the verses of the Shema. Black color has a unique feature: it is absolute. Other colors cannot overcome it. This unique trait of black color symbolizes the perfect unity of God, a complete and total unity.

From the words of the Lubavitcher Rebbe about the tefillin

“In the midst of every human being there is a constant struggle between reason and emotion, and when the mind becomes powerless, and emotion dominates without straining, the results will be tragic. The tefillin of the head are worn on the head, the seat of the intellect, while those of the hand are placed on the left hand, facing the heart. The message: to harness the mind and emotion together with their main place of residence – the arm and the head – to the work of the Creator. “

How Are Tefillin Made?

There are hundreds of detailed rules that govern the manufacturing processes of the parchment scrolls and the boxes. The Tefillin were either cubical or cylindrical in the earlier Talmudic times, but the cylindrical form became outdated later on. Today, the boxes should be made from one piece of animal hide that is kosher and creates a base with an upper box to contain the scrolls. These boxes are made at different quality levels.

Tefillin Gassot

Peshutim is the most basic form, and it’s crafted from several pieces of parchment to create the head Tefillin’s inner walls. Dakkot is the higher quality Tefillin, and it’s made from a thin piece of leather. The most durable option is called Gassot, and it is made from one piece of hiding. Leather straps that are black in color pass secure the Tefillin onto the wearer’s body. The Hebrew letter shin is molded on both sides of the head Tefillin. The texts should be written with ink that is halachically acceptable. The parchment used should be halachically acceptable as well. The letters should be written in order. Any error invalidates the text.

A sofer, a specially trained scribe, uses a quill pen to inscribe the scrolls in black ink. He needs to purify himself in the ritual bath or mikvah before he starts working on the scrolls. The parchment, straps, and boxes are made from a kosher animal. Each of the Tefillin boxes contains 1594 letters, which are personally written by the scribe. If one letter is incorrectly written or missing or an extra letter was written, the Tefillin are invalid.

Four passages from the Torah are inscribed on the scrolls. These passages include Kadesh, VeHayah Ki Yeviacha, The Shema and VeHayah Im Shamoa. The arm Tefillin has a single chamber, with all the passages written on one scroll. The head Tefillin has 4 chambers, with the passages written on 4 different scrolls. There’s also a raised Hebrew letter shin on each side of the head Tefillin. 

The scrolls are placed in small leather boxes that have been painted black and pressed into seamlessly geometrical shapes and smooth planes. The upper portion of the boxes is a perfect cube. The lower part is flatter and wider than the upper portion. It also has a slit through where the strap is threaded and knotted.  

The straps are painted black on one side. The arm Tefillin has a small loop that can be adjusted. The head Tefillin’s loop is large and fixed. The arm Tefillin’s knot is in the shape of the Hebrew letter “yud,” while the head strap is knotted in the shape of “daled.”

Jewish males over 13 years old should fulfill the mitzvah of Tefillin by wearing it anytime during the day. They recite a blessing and read the Shema prayer. Tefillin are traditionally worn during weekday morning prayers. It’s not worn on major Jewish holidays and Shabbat.

The head Tefillin are worn on the head like a crown. The box rests above the hairline in the center of the wearer’s forehead. The arm Tefillin are strapped either onto the right or left arm, with the box resting against the heart. The rest of the strap is wound around the arm 7 times.

Why Jewish Men Wear Tefillin

Mitzvah comes from the root word tzavta, which translates to the connection. A mitzvah establishes a bond between man and G-d. Tefillin can be considered as the ultimate mitzvah. One of the boxes is placed on the head, teaching a man to dedicate themselves to the service of G‑d in everything that they do, think and feel. The other box rests against the heart, the base of emotions.

How to Purchase Tefillin

Tallit and Tefillin together

A lot of effort and effort goes into making Tefillin, so expect the prices to be quite high. The raw materials are also expensive. Tefillin usually cost between $300 and $1,000. If you find one below this price range, you should be wary because it is most likely not authentic.

It’s also important to know which pair is right for you. Tefillin Gassot is the most expensive, but it is exceptionally durable and easier to repair than the other types. While Tefillin Peshutim is the most affordable option, it’s also the lowest quality. Consider your budget when buying a pair of Tefillin. Get the best one that you can afford. You can still accomplish the mitzvah of Tefillin with even the cheapest pair, but make sure that they are kosher.

After identifying the right pair for you, it is time to find a reputable source of Tefillin. If you don’t have any idea where to look, you can contact your local rabbi for some advice. Before you buy a pair of Tefillin, you have to discuss some matters with the source. Ask which nusach or custom they follow. Chabad, Ashkenaz, and Sefard are the standard customs. Different customs will affect the style of the Hebrew letters inscribed on the scroll and the way the straps are knotted. You should also consider your dominant arm when choosing a pair of Tefillin. Since the arm Tefillin’s box is placed on the less dominant arm, your choice will affect where the knot will be secured in the strap.

You should also know how to take care of your Tefillin. The ink on the scroll can fade or crack due to changes in weather or temperature. The leather of the straps and boxes can become damaged or warped over time. Avoiding hard knocks can help prevent most damage to the straps and boxes. Don’t rub the leather unnecessarily. You can also store your Tefillin in wood or plastic outer covers to protect it when it’s not being used. The cover should fit the box because if they don’t, they won’t be able to protect your Tefillin.

Don’t leave your Tefillin in the car for long periods. It should be stored at room temperature. You should also minimize its exposure to moisture to prevent discoloration. Have your Tefillin checked at least twice every seven years by a skilled scribe to make sure that the scrolls are still kosher. If the Tefillin hit something or fell, you should have it checked by a scribe immediately. Tefillin that are not used daily or lower quality ones should be checked often.

Purchasing Q & A

Tefillin Sephardic

If you have small old Tefillin at home from your grandfather or father, should you check it before use?

Tefillin that haven’t been used regularly should be examined. Even if the Tefillin were kosher before, their kashrut had expired a long time ago. This is why it is essential to check them because there’s a high possibility that the moment the Tefillin are opened, they won’t be in the best shape.  

Why are the benefits of housings crafted from behaima gassa?

Housings crafted from behaima gassa are more durable and superior halachically. The housing’s thickness is about 0.2 inches, and due to this thickness, any damage or dent can be fixed. Housings crafted of behaima daka have to be changed even if they only have a slight damage. No matter how small damage is, it is irreparable. Housings made from leather of behaima daka are also halachically inferior.

Why should your computer check a new parshiyot and how can you make ensure that this process has been done?

A computer check ensures that there’s no missing, invalid or extra letter on the scroll. Each computer test provides a photo and printout of a portion of the handwriting. If the source did not provide proof of this process, you should be wary because the source may not have conducted a computer check.

There are several “brands” in Israel, but is it better to buy from them?

Not all “brands” provide a high-quality product. Sometimes, a “brand name” serves an excuse for them to set higher prices for their products due to expensive advertising costs. The “brand name” is usually on the housing or boxes. These “brands” buy the parshiyot or portions from different sofrim or scribes. However, they don’t know all of these scribes personally. You have to purchase from a source that provides reliable professional and personal attention for their products. They should be able to tell you which scribe wrote the parshiyot. Reliable established manufacturers should produce the housings that they buy.

Why is a pair of Tefillin costly?

The cost of the Tefillin is affected by two factors – the written parshiyot and the housing. The parashiyot is the most significant part of the Tefillin. It can take 2 days or longer to write the parshiyot. Writing also requires great proficiency. The housings of the Tefillin are made from leather sourced from the hide of a special kosher animal. The hide is softened, folded or bended to create the housings. This is a lengthy process that can take months. Thicker leather or Behaima Gassa improves the Tefillin and increases its price. Tefillin made from thinner leather, or behaima daka is cheap, but its quality is poor.

What does parshiyot mehudarot mean? What level is considered superior?

You have to know the difference between the artistic writing at the “printing” level and superior writing on the halachic level. It is also important to consider the sofer’s unique attributes and devotion. This is where the costs of Tefillin increase. You should think carefully and decide if it is worth investing in it. There are mitzvah halachic rulings that can’t be seen by the public. You can look at the costs of parshiyot and rate them from 1 to 10. The lower levels might be barely kosher. When identifying the Tefillin’s level of superiority, you should consider the halachic aspect or write according to religious laws or halachot. Never compromise on the quality of your Tefillin.

Can Tefillin be delivered through the mail?

Tefillin can be sent through the mail, but it should be labeled as fragile and wrapped in protective layers. Since the Tefillin are a sacred object, they should get special attention.

Is it better to purchase Tefillin boxes crafted from behaima daka at first and then upgrade to superior boxes once he grows up?

Yes, it is. Some parents think that their child will forget his pair of Tefillin somewhere, so they buy a cheaper one at first. They believe that it is a waste of money to purchase the expensive ones because their child will lose it. You should write your phone number and your child’s name on the boxes that contain the Tefillin or on the Tefillin container or bag. This way, the Tefillin can be returned if your child loses it. Your child can learn to improve the good deeds or mitzvoth when he turns 13. In Israel, man can learn to enhance the mitzvoth during their army service. Never compromise on the cost of the parshiyot.

Is a computer test enough?

What you need to realize is that a computer test is not enough. While the computer is an excellent tool for identifying what is extra or missing, other defects need personal examination by a certified proofreader. In other words, the parshiyot should undergo proofreading by a qualified proofreader. A computer test is not needed during subsequently scheduled checkups because it is unlikely that the letters have vanished with time.

What’s the difference between housings made from behaima daka and housings crafted from a behaima daka?

Housings crafted from behaima daka are called superior plain, while housings made of behaima daka are called plain or simple. The housings or boxes called superior plain are not of genuinely superior quality, except when being compared to the usual “plain.” The plain options are not recommended as they are extremely inferior. This is because they are made of raw materials, which are composed of many extremely thin pieces of leather glued together. These options are borderline kosher.

Is there a commandment to own a pair of Tefillin? Is it okay to use borrowed Tefillin to fulfill the mitzvah?

You can still fulfill the mitzvah using a pair of borrowed Tefillin. There’s nothing wrong with using borrowed Tefillin, provided that they properly fit on your head. You can use borrowed Tefillin even regularly. The Tefillin used can belong to any person, but the placement of the boxes and the fit should be correct. Through mitzvah, you are signing or indicating your connection with the more in-depth contents of the text in the Tefillin.

Do you need to settle for carelessly written parshiyot when buying housing made of behaima daka?

Since the “market” wishes for a cheaper package, they provide a complete package that contains inferior parshiyot. Remember that the parshiyot is the important component of the Tefillin. If it’s economically feasible, try to invest in superior parshiyot.

When should you check the pair of Tefilin?

Most halachic authorities or poskim say that if a pair of Tefillin has been checked correctly, there’s no need to check again provided that it comes with a kashrut certification. If the Tefillin are used often and the paint shows no external signs of swelling, which could be a sign of the harsh effects of humidity or the sun, you can depend on the earlier examination. The test itself can damage the ink and the housings.

If the corners of the boxes or straps are showing signs of damage or the external paint has peeled, you should get the Tefillin fixed. However, repairing the outside of the Tefillin doesn’t involve any form of interference with the inside of the boxes. This is applicable after the Tefillin have gone through proper preliminary tests. Boxes with noticeable damage on the corners should be fixed as well. The perfect square shape of the boxes will be affected if the corners are worn out.

How do large families handle the expenses involved in bar mitzvah?

Bar mitzvah involves a catered meal in an extravagant hall, an impressive ceremony and the Tefillin. Some families spend a significant amount of money on the child’s bar mitzvah. There’s no halachic ruling which requires a person to have an expensive ceremony. They are not even obligated to purchase a pair of Tefillin. They only need to “lay” Tefillin. A simple celebration of bar mitzvah includes a family gathering, some light refreshment, and Torah reading.  The primary concern of families is getting a set of Tefillin. The bar mitzvah will wear the Tefillin for the rest of his life.

When should you replace the leather straps?

It’s important to know when to replace the leather straps. The width of the straps should be at least 0.4 inches. Even a small tear will make the straps invalid. If the damage is at the tip of the straps on an extra length on the arm Tefillin, there’s no problem. However, the entire strap should be changed if the tear is found at other places. If the whole strap of the head Tefillin is intact, you can relax because it is kosher.  If some of the ink has rubbed off, the damaged parts should be re-colored. You can buy a suitable felt marker to fix this damage. A new set of straps is not expensive.

If you purchase kosher for your house, should you get the super kosher tefillin?

Wearing Tefillin is a critical mitzvah. It’s observed every day on most days of the year. The boxes of the Tefillin are made of a thin kosher animal skin that is non-repairable. You will be obliged to purchase newer boxes or housings even if only a short period has passed. The parshiyot inside the boxes are the heart of the Tefillin. Cheap parshiyot are written hastily and carelessly that sometimes, it is hard to recognize the shape of the letters.

If you have the opportunity and enough money, it is best that you purchase higher quality parshiyot and cheaper housings. Although there are several levels of superior kosher or kashrut mehuderet, it is best that you get no less than the basic mehuderet level. Some people buy Tefillin after considering the splendor of the writing or the character of the sofer. The Tefillin should be halachically sound at the beginning. The Tefillin’s long life and durability will be enough to compensate for the cost.

Can you move parshiyot from old boxes to new ones?

You can move parshiyot from old boxes to new ones. If you have a pair of Tefillin, there’s a good chance that the parshiyot have appropriately been preserved and can use again when transferred to new boxes.

Do you need to get the parshiyot from the head and arm from the same sofer?

You don’t need to get the parshiyot from the head and arm from the same sofer. If you want to buy the parshiyot from a different scribe, you are free to do so.

Why is it common to lay Tefillin during morning prayers or Shacharit?

The time allotment of Tefillin is all day, but most people lay Tefillin during morning prayers or Shacharit. If you don’t have a pair of Tefillin during morning prayers, you can pray or daven without them. You can lay Tefillin at another point during the day.

When should you start laying the Tefillin?

The responsibility to lay Tefillin starts at the age of 13 and 1 day. Different customs are observed in the community. Some boys wait for the Torah obligation and the big day, while others lay Tefillin 2 or 3 months before becoming bar mitzvah.

What if the sewing thread has torn in some parts? Can you continue to lay Tefillin with a blessing or bracha?

If the sewing thread is torn in 3 places, you can’t make a bracha. You can still make a bracha if the sewing thread is ripped in fewer places.

Where should you place the arm Tefillin?

You should put the arm Tefillin on your non-dominant hand. The box is placed at the height of your heart.

Where should you place the head Tefillin?

You should not place the head Tefillin between the eyes or on the forehead. Don’t rest the Tefillin anywhere else. It should be placed above the front hairline above your eyes.

What if there’s a kosher sticker at the bottom of the box for the head Tefillin?

The kosher sticker is placed during the production of the boxes. It confirms that the box for the head is superior quality kosher. However, you should keep in mind that this sticker doesn’t have anything to do with the parashiyot quality. You have to remove the sticker before using the box.

Why is there no sticker on the box of the arm Tefillin?

The arm Tefillin doesn’t have a sticker because it is quite simple to produce and there’s no chance of fraud.

When you wear the Tefillin, you will be connecting to and fulfilling the will of G‑d. You have to remind yourself to become a better person and that you are doing something that your ancestors did. Moreover, you are improving the chances that your descendants will want to do it as well. The straps connect you to past, present, and future and G-d.

Different Types:

TEFILLIN DAKKOT – FROM GOAT/SHEEP’S SKIN:

Those are considered good Tefillin and are less pricey, but aren’t considered as preferable as the next kind.

TEFILLIN GASSOT – FROM CATTLE SKIN:

Those are more expensive and are considered superior to Tefillin Dakot, according to Halacha.

TEFILLIN GASSOT – FROM CATTLE SKIN – MEHUDAR:

These Tefillin are made from cattle skin as well but created with more “hidoorim” than the regular Tefillin Gassot. Considered to be the best of the best, they are also the most sturdy and expensive ones.

#Jewish Life #Judaica

[epacer]

CALmatters

California’s New Education Superintendent Has 8-Year Plan to Increase School Spending

With bucks and boots on the ground from California teachers’ unions, Bay Area Democratic Assemblyman Tony Thurmond declared victory last week as California’s new superintendent of public instruction, an outcome that essentially endorses the labor-backed education establishment in the state.

Thurmond, who had lagged in early returns, had a margin of nearly 2 points when he tweeted, 11 days into California’s notoriously slow-motion vote count, that Marshall Tuck, a fellow Democrat and former Los Angeles executive of charter schools and educational nonprofits, had called to concede the race to him.

“I want to thank the voters of California for electing me to serve the 6 million students of California,” Thurmond, who overrode Tuck’s broader-based appeal with decisive margins in the state’s coastal and urban counties, said in a statement.

“I ran for superintendent of public instruction to deliver to all Californians the promise that public education delivered to me—that all students, no matter their background and no matter their challenges, can succeed with a great public education.”

Tuck addressed his apparent defeat in a letter to supporters.

“As you can imagine,” Tuck reportedly wrote, “the disappointment has crept in there in a pretty big way more recently as it was becoming clear to me that I wasn’t going to get a job that I wanted and that I thought I would be really good at.”

The apparent victory—some 2 million ballots still remain to be counted—marked a high-profile setback for wealthy supporters of education reform in California’s sprawling system of public schools. The defeat was Tuck’s second competitive loss in a row to a candidate endorsed by the powerful California Teachers Association. In 2014, he lost the school chief post to Tom Torlakson, who, like Thurmond,  was backed by the teachers’ unions.

For pro-charter donors, the outcome was the dispiriting second half of a 2018 double-header: In addition to the tens of millions they injected into the school chief race, which generated an estimated $60 million in combined campaign spending, the wealthy school reform cadre also threw $25 million during the primary into an unsuccessful attempt to get Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villargoisa elected governor.

Villaraigosa, who this month joined the Washington lobbying firm Mercury, where he plans to work in strategic communications, ended up losing to Republican John Cox and the ultimate winner, Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, who also was supported by labor.

Eric Heins, president of the California Teachers Association, said Saturday that Thurmond’s win “sent a loud message to the billionaires and corporate special interests who spent nearly $40 million trying to buy the state superintendent’s office: Our public schools are not for sale!”

Tuck actually was ahead of Thurmond by more than 10 percentage points on election night, but his lead dwindled as counties began to tally the millions of ballots submitted late or by mail, a cohort that typically skews left.

By Monday—six days after the first wave of results—Thurmond had gained his first lead of the race, which was virtually in a 50-50 dead heat, by 3,503 votes. He never trailed again.

Practically speaking, the transition from Torlakson to Thurmond is unlikely to create much immediate impact in California’s K-12 school system. The superintendent of public instruction is mostly a bully pulpit in this state, with a largely administrative function and little rulemaking authority.

While charter school advocates had hoped Tuck could be a high-profile pitchman for their argument that charter schools might be better positioned to lift low-income students, the lion’s share of education policy in California is decided by the governor, Legislature and State Board of Education. The state superintendent oversees the state Department of Education that’s responsible for enforcing policies.

Thurmond also supports Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent overhaul of the state’s education policies, which Torlakson backed and Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom has pledged to build on. His one suggestion on the state funding formula, which pumps extra money into schools with more disadvantaged students, has been to make state spending more transparent.

During the campaign, he stopped short of saying he would continue Torlakson’s controversial policy of allowing schools to use the Local Control Funding Formula to give across-the-board pay raises to teachers, but neither did he say he would rescind Torlakson’s guidance, as Tuck did.

Thurmond argued instead that the key to raising achievement in the state with the largest concentration of students in poverty is simply to invest more overall in the existing public education system. His experience as a legislator, he said, would help with that.

Thurmond said he will use the office to advance an ambitious eight-year plan to significantly boost the state’s spending on public schools and raise California from the bottom tier to the top of state education spending rankings. Such a distinction would require tens of billions of dollars in new state funding. In an interview with CALmatters, he also said he would not be beholden to any particular special interest.

“We talked to voters across the state and told them what this election means for each of us: it means giving every kid the opportunity to succeed in the 21st century, not just the ones that show the most potential,” Thurmond said.

“It means funding our public schools at the level they deserve, not pouring money into our jails in prisons. It means providing mental health treatment for kids, not arming them with guns.”

In interviews and on the campaign trial, Thurmond said his reasons for running for state superintendent were personal. Thurmond spent most of his childhood without either of his parents. Raised by his grandmother on food stamps and other government assistance, he pointed to public education as being the “great equalizer” that led him out of poverty.

A former social worker and school board member, Thurmond said he plans to be a vocal advocate for the state’s most disadvantaged students. Throughout his campaign, he sought to establish himself as the “traditional” Democrat in the race.

In TV commercials, he said he’d push back on school privatization moves by President Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, who, unlike California school reformers, have sought to open the door to for-profit charter schools.

Thurmond also argued that his relationships and expertise at the Legislature would make him a powerful lobbyist for his agenda, which includes bolstering bilingual education and mental care services for students. He points to nearly two dozen education-related bills he introduced in the Assembly as examples.

It remains unclear whether Thurmond can bridge the divide between charter supporters and teachers unions, who for years now have waged a polarizing and bitter battle over the direction of the state’s public-school system. The race grabbed national attention in part because of similarly intense debates over charter schools and reform efforts in other states.

And the philosophical fight over charter schools is an intense one with competing “goods,” pitting the egalitarian ideals of organized labor and public education against pragmatic efforts, mostly in cities, to raise the quality of chronically low-performing public schools.

The state superintendent race drew more than $61 million in campaign spending, according to California Target Book estimates. It also included several attack ads from both sides that were either misleading or untruthful, according to Politifact.

One ad from Thurmond supporters incorrectly implied that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a Republican, supported Tuck’s campaign. A separate TV attack ad and campaign mailer by EdVoice, an advocacy group that supports charter schools and Tuck’s campaign, falsely claimed that Thurmond was sued by the ACLU while serving as a school board member. That drew a sharp response from the ACLU, which took offense to the mailers because it contained the nonprofit’s acronyms in large letters and did not prominently display who was behind the ad.

Both Tuck and Thurmond downplayed the notion that their race was a proxy for the charter school debate. Both insisted  voters cared more about issues such as education funding and whether teachers should be paid more money to work in tough schools.

And by most measures, Thurmond and Tuck, both Democrats, were more alike than different. Both supported Brown’s education policy overhaul and higher state funding. Both promised to prioritize the needs of the state’s most disadvantaged students. Both support efforts to boost early childhood education offerings. And politically, both vowed to be vocal and visible.

But the charter issue, over which the state superintendent has little direct authority, nonetheless was the one that excited their backers. Tuck said he supported nonprofit charter schools though also favored more transparency measures, such as closing down failing charters faster. He also used his experience as CEO of the Green Dot charter network as an example of a model that helped improve sagging student achievement.

Thurmond had said he favored a “pause” on the growth of charters in California while the state examines the long-term impact they’ve had so far on its public education system. The assemblyman also said he supported more charter-school oversight and sympathized with school districts that had taken financial hits after losing students to charter schools. *Reposted article from the Times of SD by Ricardo Cano of November 22, 2018

[clubofinfo]

Expert: People like me are not good for big business, like for animal business, medicine business and for many other businesses.  That’s why they are discriminating and censoring us. — Nasim Najafi Aghdam discussing YouTube She claimed to have detested it, issuing fiery calls on her social media outlets, and asserting that this creature was demonic in its effort to limit talent, expression and the profits of others.  Nasim Najafi Aghdam of San Diego spoke with a steely confidence that certitude brings, a self-perceived clarity of thought on such topics as veganism, the right to protest and animal rights. “For me,” she stridently told the San Diego Union-Tribune at a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals protest in 2009 outside Camp Pendleton, “animal rights equals human rights.”  In Iran, she came to be known as Green Nasim, commanding a certain degree of social media heft. On Tuesday, that mind of screened clarity manifested itself in a shooting spree at YouTube headquarters.  Three were wounded, with the sole death being Aghdam, who took her life after the bloody spray.  On Wednesday, San Bruno’s police chief Ed Barberini claimed rather laconically that the suspect was expressing her anger at “the policies and practices of YouTube.” Prior to that, a point confirmed by a Mountain View police representative, Aghdam had been found sleeping in a car on Tuesday morning.  “Our officers made contact with the woman after the licence plate of her vehicle matched that of a missing person out of Southern California.  The woman confirmed her identity to us and answered subsequent questions.”  Nothing, according to the officers conducting the interview, suggested future intentions. The attack showed no evident discrimination. There were no set agendas against specific employees, nor was it even clear at first instance whether those wounded were, in fact, employees.  What the alleged shooter seemed to see was a ruthless target in the abstract, a brutal tech giant that had betrayed its mission.  Aghdam’s father, Ismail Aghdam, warned police that she might well be paying the technology company a visit, so disgruntled was she. Her personal website spoke of there being “no equal growth opportunity on YouTube or any other video sharing site”. Growth would only take place “if they want you to.”  That particular point was stimulated by a change in YouTube policies requiring that individual channels have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 “watch hours” over the previous twelve months before qualifying to run advertisements.  One of Aghdam’s channels sported 1,579 subscribers, but in failing to meet the other threshold requirements, the account was demonetised. Other restrictions were also the subject of Aghdam’s opprobrium, who attempted over time to build up the image of the technology company as an arbitrary censor.  One video she posted received an age restriction. She railed against those “new close-minded YouTube employees [who] got control of my Farsi YouTube last year in 2016 & began filtering my videos to reduce views & suppress & discourage [sic] me from making videos!”  The result of imposing such a limit precluded the video from receiving moneys. So we return to that same problem: the digital frontier, far from flat in its egalitarian access, is vertical, hierarchical in its hold.  Power only devolved to the mass community of users in an artificial sense, giving that charming impression that the plebs controlled the production and creation of content. Community standards are always cited, but these are ultimately set and determined by the particular provider, cajoled in parts, reviled in others.  In YouTube’s case, such policies zero in on vulgar language, violence or disturbing imagery, nudity and sexually suggestive content, or videos portraying harmful or dangerous activities. YouTube, as a provider of content generated by individual users, has found itself in a brutal middle, harried by a range of groups keen to limit or advance particular platforms.  The morally righteous and surveillance-minded take issue with its permissiveness, seeking controls over such content as “hate speech”; other individuals find it unduly controlling, limiting engagement, debate and speech. Last year, its “restricted mode” setting designed to permit libraries, schools and parents filter out content deemed inappropriate to children invariably screened other sources.  The videos of gay pop duo Tegan and Sara, fell foul of the provision. Vlogger Calum McSwiggan’s video featuring his coming out display to his grandmother also became the object of digital filtering, while Rowan Ellis would suggest a “bias somewhere within that process of equating LGBT+ with ‘not family friendly’.” YouTube’s initial response contained a steadfast denial. “The intention of Restricted Mode is to filter out mature content for the tiny subset of users who want a more limited experience.  LGBTQ+ videos are available on Restricted Mode, but videos that discuss more sensitive issues may not be.” Experiments by various users testing this claim suggested otherwise. It its subsequent and hurried note was the tone of a servant to numerous lords, seeking to placate and improve upon previous erring.  “We recognise that some videos are incorrectly labelled by our automated system and we realise it’s very important to get this right.  We’re working hard to make some improvements.” These provide cold comforts to those recipients of bullet wounds, and certainly did nothing to calm the disturbed an impassioned Aghdam, self-proclaimed as “the first Persian female vegan bodybuilder.”  But again, where the gun is a logical extension of frustrated rights and social impotence, furious redress has come to be an almost reasonable, if predictable expectation. http://clubof.info/

[itsfinancethings]

At home in Kentucky in mid-August, Mitch McConnell didn’t sound the slightest bit concerned. “The Postal Service is going to be just fine,” the Senate majority leader drawled, echoing the soothing talking points of other Republicans: the Trump Administration was just reforming a 228-year-old institution, and President Donald Trump’s new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, was making it more efficient. The same day, Trump described the situation in his own, half-joking way: “I want to make the post office great again, O.K.?”

But the lighthearted talk just highlighted the spreading national panic that had triggered it: less than 80 days before a presidential election that will rely more heavily on voting by mail than any previous race in U.S. history, the great machinery of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) seemed to be sputtering to a halt. The “operational pivot” DeJoy announced in July, which included restrictions on staff overtime and transportation costs, produced a backlog of undelivered mail, according to postal union representatives. The Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledged that prescription drugs mailed to veterans via USPS had been delayed by an average of almost 25% over the past year. Small businesses, which rely on the affordability of USPS rates, began facing angry customers whose packages were lost in distribution centers for weeks.

At the end of July, the Postal Service itself sounded the alarm, sending warning letters to 46 states, including the electoral battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, alerting them that the USPS might not be able to meet their election deadlines. In all, more than 159 million registered voters live in the 40 states that received the most urgent warnings, according to the Washington Post.

Panicked constituents papered the door of DeJoy’s D.C. apartment building with fake ballots reading, Save THE post office, Save our democracy; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called lawmakers back for an emergency session to vote on a bill to protect the USPS; and Democratic Senator Gary Peters launched an investigation into DeJoy’s operational changes. “It’s a level of concern I haven’t seen in the past,” says Melissa Rakestraw, a mail carrier in Illinois.

Erin Schaff—The New York Times/ReduxPostmaster General DeJoy visits Capitol Hill in August

DeJoy, who spent more than three decades running New Breed Logistics, a national supply-chain services provider with 7,000 employees, seemed blindsided by the fallout. The Postal Service has lost money for years, thanks to the rise of the Internet, perennial mismanagement and heavy-handed but ineffective government interventions. The point of his reform agenda, which included reassigning or displacing 23 veteran postal executives, was to cut costs and increase “performance for the election and upcoming peak season,” he wrote in an internal memo obtained by CNN. The slowdowns and backlogs, he said, were “unintended consequences.”

But outsiders spotted a pattern. Behind the daily chaos, Trump’s presidency has one abiding characteristic: using the vast power and reach of the U.S. government to serve Trump’s own political ends. He has repeatedly explained executive actions by pointing to the political benefit they bring him, and a steady parade of his top advisers have offered detailed examples after leaving the Administration in exasperation. Trump tried to turn the Department of Homeland Security “into a tool used for his political benefit,” said the agency’s former chief of staff, by, for example, ordering officials to close stretches of the border in Democraticled California rather than GOP-led Arizona and Texas. The President pleaded with the leader of China to make trade decisions that would bolster Trump’s relationship with crucial farm-state voters ahead of the 2020 election, according to former National Security Adviser John Bolton. And of course, Trump was impeached eight months ago in part for allegedly withholding military aid from Ukraine until the country investigated Trump’s political rivals. The list goes on.

If there were any doubts about the Administration’s motives for the so-called reform of the Postal Service, the President himself seemed to put them to rest. In an Aug. 13 interview with Fox Business, the President said he was blocking Democrats’ proposed $25 billion for the USPS and $3.5 billion for additional election resources because that outlay would help the Postal Service handle a surge in mail voting this year. “They need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said. “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”

Less than a week later, DeJoy announced the suspension of much of his reform agenda until after the election to “avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.” But the damage may already have been done.

Whatever happens to the USPS in coming months, Trump benefits from having cast doubt on the USPS and mail voting and from having unleashed a specter of impropriety over the core exercise of democracy. When Americans lose faith in the electoral process, voter turnout slumps, and if Trump supporters don’t believe their votes were fairly counted, they’re less likely to accept an outcome in which he does not win.

Most Americans love the Postal Service, and rely on it, regardless of their politics. More than 90% view the agency favorably, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center poll. George Washington himself saw a national postal network as an amplifier of democratic ideals and that egalitarianism continues today: FedEx and UPS pin a premium on letters destined thousands of miles away, while a letter mailed by USPS anywhere within the country costs just 55¢.

But as the Post Office has faced new challenges over the years, lawmakers of both parties have advocated for reform. In 1970, after more than 150,000 postal workers went on strike, halting the delivery of vital mail, the Democraticled Congress oversaw a reorganization of the USPS, demoting the Postmaster General from the Cabinet and, crucially, cutting off taxpayer support: the Postal Service as we know it today funds itself from its own sales.

Michael A. McCoy—Getty ImagesAmericans worried that delivery delays might impact mail voting protested outside DeJoy’s D.C. apartment this month

With the rise of the Internet, those sales have plummeted. In 2001, the USPS moved more than 103.7 billion pieces of first-class mail; in 2019, the number was almost half that, at 55 billion. Rising fuel prices and trucking costs and an uptick in the number of packages have exacerbated the problem.

In 2006, Congress again went after the Postal Service, this time passing a bipartisan bill–it was approved by unanimous consent in the Senate–mandating that the USPS pre-fund health benefits for its retirees and invest those funds in government bonds, which offer dismal returns. It is a requirement that no other entity, public or private, must meet, and it costs the USPS more than $5 billion per year–roughly 7% of its total operating costs. The requirement is responsible for a large portion of the agency’s annual shortfall, according to its financial reports. Last year, USPS tallied $79.9 billion in expenditures and finished the year with $11 billion in outstanding debt.

The parties have long been divided over how to fix these deficits. For decades, Democrats accused Republicans of sabotaging the Postal Service in an effort to privatize it. Republicans denied the charge and defended their reform efforts by pointing, not incorrectly, at the USPS’s hemorrhaging balance sheets. But then came the Trump Administration, with its tendency to say the quiet part out loud. In 2018, the White House suggested for the USPS a “future conversion from a government agency into a privately held corporation.”

Over the past five months, this relatively obscure policy fight was transformed into a democracy-defining battle. In April, the USPS asked Congress for $75 billion to help it weather the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. When stores shuttered, the Postal Service saw first-class mail, its most profitable product, decline, while the volume of packages–the most labor-intensive to deliver–surged, as Americans increasingly shopped online. Democrats are pushing for more USPS funding in their latest relief bill, but the White House has so far resisted. (In late July, the Treasury Department authorized the agency to borrow up to $10 billion under strict conditions.)

In May, DeJoy’s appointment to the top Postal job seemed to confirm Democrats’ worst fears–that what had been an ideological push to privatize the Postal Service had morphed into an effort to swing the election for Trump. DeJoy “has deliberately enacted policies to sabotage the Postal Service to serve only one person, President Trump,” said Representative Gerald Connolly of Virginia, whose House subcommittee oversees the USPS.

Democratic lawmakers had no say in the appointment of DeJoy, who donated more than $1.1 million to the Trump Victory campaign fund from August 2016 to February 2020. Under normal circumstances, the USPS’s Board of Governors, which appoints the Postmaster General, is bipartisan: Presidents name each of the nine Senate-confirmed members to seven-year terms. But Senate Republicans blocked Obama’s nominees, allowing Trump to inherit an empty board, which he happily filled with like minds.

Unable to prevent DeJoy’s rise, congressional Democrats helplessly pointed at his apparent conflicts of interest. At the time he was appointed Postmaster General, the GOP megadonor held at least $30 million worth of stock in a supply chain company that contracts with the USPS, raising questions of whether he is violating ethics rules that prevent officials from participating in government matters affecting their personal finances. DeJoy also holds stock options that allow him to purchase Amazon shares at a below-market rate. As Amazon increases the proportion of packages it delivers itself–and toys with the idea of delivering non-Amazon parcels, too–the retail giant is quickly becoming a direct USPS competitor.

DeJoy’s announcement on Aug. 18 that he would suspend much of his reform agenda until after the election may seem like a win for Democrats. In the coming weeks, DeJoy will be hauled in front of both the House and Senate for hearings, and a congressional investigation into this summer’s events is ongoing. But the politics aren’t so simple.

DeJoy’s reversal left a host of unanswered questions. What would happen to the dozens of mail-sorting machines and drop boxes that have already been hauled off? When will workers’ overtime be approved? Will postal workers be able to take more than one trip per day? Will states have to buy more expensive postage to circumvent delays? Without proactive moves to safeguard mail delivery, hundreds of thousands of ballots may still end up in the trash. In 32 states, ballots must arrive by Election Day, according to an analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures. During this year’s primaries, at least 65,000 mailed ballots were discarded for various reasons, according to NPR. While that represents only about 1% of the ballots in most states, according to the NPR analysis, tiny margins matter: in 2016, Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, each by margins of less than 1%, but that was enough to claim 46 electoral votes–and the presidency.

The best-case scenario for the agency is that Congress gives it emergency funding, public scrutiny persists and DeJoy makes good on his promise to “deliver the nation’s election mail on time.” But that can’t undo what’s been done.

By discrediting the Postal Service and mail voting, Trump has already tainted the election results, whatever they may be. According to an Axios-Ipsos poll in August, 47% of voters supporting Vice President Joe Biden said they planned to vote by mail, compared with just 11% of Trump supporters. If that disparity holds true in November, the fallout could be bad for both parties. Older and rural voters, who have in the past relied on mail ballots and tend to support Republicans, may be discouraged from voting at all. Trump could also appear to be ahead on election night among in-person voters, only to be overtaken as disproportionately Democratic mailed ballots are slowly counted–days and weeks later.

It’s not hard to imagine the damage that a hung election, like the 2000 Bush-Gore debacle, could exact in the era of Trump-fueled disinformation. Democracy, after all, is not unlike flying in Peter Pan’s world; if you stop believing in it, it ceases to work.

–With reporting by ALANA ABRAMSON

#IFTTT #Blogger

[hellojulie1971]

THE DARK AGES

The collapse of the Roman Empire and its attendant governmental authority, economic structure, and societal order resulted in an end to civilization in Europe. Currency was no longer minted or regulated and became worthless. The ships and carts of commerce stopped carrying food and supplies. Unchecked lawlessness put travelers and isolated families at risk. Those who dared to travel were no longer in a stream of travelers; they were alone. The demise of travel further isolated communities because without commerce and without news the outside world practically and psychologically ceased to exist. People of means were suddenly without, and for the first time were poor, hungry, helpless, and frightened. Europeans gathered into defensive clusters of tribes, villages, and towns, and several families often lived in one communal home. Because there was almost no travel, it was very rare to see a stranger, and strangers were distrusted and unwelcome. People who did travel were frightened when they saw another person because crime was so rampant. And the fear was not just of bands of outlaws. In lean times those who were cold and hungry sometimes murdered traveling strangers, cooked and ate their flesh, wore their clothes, and saved any food and goods for later use – nothing was wasted. (Because of verses like Lk 18:20 we know the murder they committed was a sin, and because of verses like Jn 6:51-58 we know the cannibalism wasn’t. Even so, cannibalism has always been repugnant – as it was to Christ’s disciples in Jn 6:59-61,66.) The isolation of communities caused names to be less important because in small communities there is no confusion as to whom you are referring when you say Peter, or Jesus, or Barjesus (son of Jesus – Ac 13:6), or Arthur, or MacArthur (son of Arthur), or Will, or Willson, or Richard, or Richardson, or Abbas, or Barabbas (son of Abbas). Often people were simply known as Blondie, Red, Redbeard, or Skinny. If there might be some confusion about whom you were speaking it was common to add specificity by saying Jesus of Nazareth, Richard the Lion-hearted, Herod the Great, Pepin the Short, Henry the Eighth, and Philip the Fair. Even the villages people lived in often had no names because without travel a name wasn’t necessary. If a man got lost in the woods it was common for him to never return: If he happened to stumble upon another settlement those people couldn’t help him because his, “My village has a burned tree at the top of a hill” meant nothing to them. And even if his village was called Philipsburg, the people of the settlement knew neither Philip nor his burg. So he spent the rest of his life there. When larger populations made a second name (or “last” name) necessary, these were often just the man’s occupation: Miller, Wheeler, Tailor, Smith, Cooper, Farmer, Shepherd, Fuller. But people were very casual about their names because ego – self – was not yet a big deal. For example, even the educated German who in the late 16th century founded a munitions dynasty variously wrote his own name as Krupp, Krupe, Kripp, and, of course, Krapp. In addition to the casual informality about names and their spellings, people in the old days were often referred to by other names (for unknown reasons) and by nicknames – all to the great consternation of historians and Bible students. Lacking understanding about oldtime names and their spellings has sometimes led ignorant Christians to assume they have found an error in the Bible when they think some name is incorrect. Widespread poverty caused function and necessity to have greater importance. Therefore, even prosperous peasants’ homes had but one room. Everyone who lived there, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters and their spouses and children, slept in and/or on the one bed (Lk 11:7), which was usually on the floor and of varying sizes and material. Privacy was neither a Biblical requirement nor a necessity. So when a man and his wife engaged in sexual activity it was variously applauded or ignored by all according to the mood. In cold and inclement weather all shared the chamber pot in the corner. During the warm months, especially when working, these European Christians often went naked (Jn 21:7; Dt 24:12,13), just as people had throughout history. Clothes, because they were hard to get, expensive to buy, and time-consuming to make, were a luxury (Dt 24:13,17) prudently reserved for winter use. Therefore when people dressed and undressed indoors in winter there was neither a perceived need nor a moral requirement for privacy curtains or dressing rooms; these people were not sinning against God. In lean years of famine many had to sell their clothes (Lk 22:36) and faced the prospect of no clothing even in winter. Bathing was a luxury and was done outside in public with no shame (2 Sa 11:2). There was no plumbing. During the warm months after a hard day of labor it was routine for the families of the community, often leading the family cow, to gather at the river or lake to drink, bathe, and relax in the cool, quiet twilight. Except when harvests were bad every meal was washed down with wine in southern Europe, and with beer in northern Europe – by adults and children. These Christians were not sinning against God. Before philosophy exalted ego/self and equality, the people in society viewed themselves the same way the old conservative, agrarian, philosophy-rejecting, democracy-hating Spartans did – as figurative members of a larger body whose duty was to further the welfare of the body. These European Christians had several bodies: The church, the family, and the community. Self and what self wanted, therefore, was always subordinated to the welfare of the church, the family, and the community. An example of this pre-Enlightened viewpoint can be found in the old cathedrals of Europe, many of which required three to four centuries to build. Even though these cathedrals are marvels of architecture and construction, nothing is known about the individuals who designed and built them because those people were not thought to have done anything extraordinary. Why? Because they were just doing their duty like everyone else in society. The man who designed the cathedral had done nothing nobler than the man who weeded the family vegetable garden or the woman who drew water from the well. There is no nobler deed than the performance of one’s duty. One of the ironies of today’s egalitarianism is that it has given various duties unequal stature: In direct violation of 1 Co 12:20-26 ditch diggers are laughed at because they are not rocket scientists. At the same time the collapse of the Roman Empire was causing chaos in Europe, the Roman Catholic Church – also known as the Western Church – was using the teachings of Augustine to maintain and strengthen its tenuous control of the western churches. Control means communication, and in those days communication required travel. The bishop of Rome (more commonly addressed in later years as “the pope”) communicated with his bishops in various European locales by sending them messages via couriers. Couriers had a difficult and dangerous job; there was no law enforcement and they had no maps. The couriers delivered more than mail; they were welcome sources of news about the outside world. By telling eager bishops what was happening in the Eastern Church in Constantinople, and what deal the pope made with the barbarians to keep them from sacking Rome again, and all the juicy tidbits of gossip, the couriers helped establish Rome as the hub of western Christianity. And when the local bishops, in turn, sent their own couriers to neighboring villages that had priests under their control, that flow of information helped the villages regard the bishop as their hub. With this fragile infrastructure the Catholic Church maintained a semblance of order, something that grew in direct proportion to papal power. As the infrastructure developed and branched out from the papacy and the bishoprics, the people in those bishoprics began to demonstrate the same kind of geographic loyalty (later called nationalism) their ancestors exhibited when the political rivalry between Rome and Constantinople caused a similar geographic polarization in Christianity. Therefore, as the papacy increased its control over Europe it also restored the societal order that had collapsed with the Roman Empire. With order came politics and the bishoprics began to gel into nations. With the nations came law and order and the return of commerce. The period of social chaos between the social order and prosperity of the Roman Empire and the later formation of nations in Europe is called the Dark Ages. Protestants generally blame the Dark Ages on the Roman Catholic Church because it reached the zenith of its power from about the 12th to the 16th centuries, power that began to fade when the Protestant Reformation caused a return of Bible-oriented Christianity. However, the Dark Ages was actually caused by the collapse of the Roman Empire, something that happened before the Catholic Church existed. When viewed from a superficial perspective it can be properly argued that the Roman Catholic Church was the savior of Europe and was the instrument that restored the order and prosperity of the Roman Empire. But when viewed from a Biblical perspective the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for something far worse than Protestants realize. She infected Christianity with philosophy and thereby caused Christians to incorrectly but fervently believe the advents of the Age of Reason and of democracy were – because they are products of the “Natural Laws” God supposedly programmed into our minds – results of the revival of Biblical Christianity caused by Protestant reform. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH The chaos in society resulted in different men and various groups vying with each other for political power. The papacy was just one of these groups. When the army of a rival faction surrounded Rome and threatened the papacy, Pope Stephen II in 754 made the long and dangerous journey to France where he consecrated and crowned Pepin the Short (father of Charlemagne) as king of the Franks. Now that Pepin had what he wanted – a throne legitimized by “Apostolic authority” – he and his army followed Pope Stephen back to Rome and drove the threatening army away. When the Vatican crowned people as kings it used an impressive “Christian” ceremony. The pope ignored both the fact that the New Testament specifically commands Christians to submit to and obey governors, and that it provides no guidelines for Christian governance of society. The New Testament limits itself to addressing administrative and disciplinary functions of the church itself. Therefore the Vatican went into the Old Testament, borrowed from the accounts of David and Solomon, and arranged coronation ceremonies that seemed official and Scriptural. Just as the Vatican acquired real estate for itself in Rome that did not fall under the jurisdiction of Italy, it acquired real estate all over Europe for churches, rectories, monasteries, schools, seminaries, etc. It quickly grew into the wealthiest, most powerful, most educated, and most corrupt institution in Europe. Eventually the life of almost every European from birth to burial was shaped and governed by Roman clergy. Most people, including the highest-ranking priests, were ignorant of the Scriptures and therefore of necessity had no alternative but to “serve” God by doing what was right and good in accordance with their carnal Reason. That Christianity survived at all is a tribute to God and His Bible; its survival certainly had nothing to do with medieval “Christianity.” While it is true that many in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church were ignorant of the Scriptures, that is not to say they were poorly educated. On the contrary, theirs were easily some of the best minds in Europe. They were mentally far, far above the masses. That, combined with their extreme wealth and power, insulated and isolated them from normal society, which resulted in their living dual lives. In public they were variously pious, aloof, arrogant, humble, and magisterial as situations warranted. In private they simply did whatever they wanted. They got drunk, they stayed up all night, they slept around the clock, they tinkered, they read, they hunted, they hosted huge parties, they murdered people, they traveled, etc. And, like most men in history with great power and authority (such as David and Solomon), they possessed huge sexual appetites that were – for the good men of history – difficult to control, and – for the bad – something to be indulged. These clerics simply did anything and everything…and they did it with impunity. The upper echelons of the Roman Catholic hierarchy were an elite group; they were above the law. They would burn common people at the stake for voicing heresies and then retire to the drawing room with a group of their peers to seriously discuss the very heresies for which they executed others. They circulated books, manuscripts, and papers among themselves that concerned philosophy, heresy, government, religion, sexual practices, the economy, trade, foreign religions, etc. They were minds, strong minds that examined, discussed, and became intrigued with a topic – only to become bored with it later. Because they had strong minds and walked on an intellectual plane, they could handle principles, concepts, and ideas, including those associated with heresies. But the common people lacked those mental abilities. If a commoner learned about a heresy he couldn’t control himself; he invariably opened his stupid mouth and spread the leaven to others like him in society where it often took root because the masses were incapable of mentally dealing with and properly analyzing principles and doctrines. Throughout most of history the 1 Co 12:20-26 view of humanity was accepted: People are not equal. They are different members of the body of society who have different abilities and different jobs. This produced mutual respect as long as each person did his duty. It was the duty of the heads, the men who ruled, to do the thinking. As philosophy took root it convinced people that all men are equal and that even the opinions of the stupid and the ignorant were to be respected. That is why the Catholic hierarchy began to fear the common masses and to control them by censoring certain material the masses couldn’t handle. And that is why Copernicus did not get into trouble for publishing his theory that the earth orbits the sun (something we still have not been able to prove in the 21st century, which would contribute to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and his Special Theory of Relativity); he got in trouble for publishing it in the vernacular so the commoners could read it. He was burned at the stake. Leonardo da Vinci also challenged existing “truths”, but he not only did not publish his works, he wrote them backwards to keep them from prying eyes. Leonardo lived to a ripe old age. Erasmus published parallel texts of the Bible, but he did it in Latin and Greek so only scholars could read them. William Tyndale, on the other hand, published the New Testament in the vernacular and was executed. Pope Gregory I (mentioned on page H6-2) in intellectual circles maintained that the three Christian virtues (faith, hope, and charity) should be combined with the four “Natural virtues” of the Greek philosophers (wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice). But pagan philosophy still had centuries to go before it was made a legitimate part of Christianity, so it wasn’t until the 14th century that the two groups were combined into the seven “cardinal virtues.” This slow and reluctant acceptance of pagan doctrines was also responsible for the late acceptance in Christian circles of “morality.” The Greeks said Nature’s god had programmed Natural Laws into Nature. Man, part of Nature, was given Reason to unlock these Natural Laws. The Natural Laws pertaining to society in general were called Moral Laws, or Morality. And when morality, the instinctive but vague knowledge of good and evil, is studied it results in rules of conduct, which are called “Ethics.” Pope Gregory I is not generally regarded as a “Rationalist” – one who uses the Reason espoused by philosophy. However, as a fan of Augustine he was certainly a forerunner of a growing movement of clerics and scholars in the Catholic Church who were called Christian Rationalists. CHRISTIAN RATIONALISTS One of the humanistic Catholic scholars who worked with and helped develop our modern value system of morality and ethics was Peter Abelard (1079-1142), a monk who’d been castrated as a penalty for his sexual escapades. A devotee of Greek philosophy, he founded the University of Paris, which would become noted for its fervent support of Reason. He taught university students and fellow monks, “Think for yourself. For I have learned something different from my Arab masters – to use Reason as a guide. You however, taken captive by authority, are merely led by a halter.” (He said “Arab masters” because the writings of Greek philosophers had largely been destroyed by Vandalism. Then when the Arabs conquered Alexandria they preserved – through their Arab translations of the Greek, much of the fundamentals of philosophy.) Notice Abelard’s statement only has seeming value when viewed with the carnal gut reaction of “self-evidence.” In other words, he was a sophist who relied on “common knowledge” for right and wrong rather than on any real and authoritative source. Abelard wrote two books that were important as building blocks for Western civilization in which he said all authority should be subject (!) to Reasoned questioning. That was a huge and very bold step for mankind – not to mention eunuchs. As a result of Abelard’s boldness he became a leading spokesman for the “New Thinkers” and was the most conspicuous scholar in Europe. His writings, including his Know Thyself, clearly showed that much of Christianity contained intellectual problems and inconsistencies when subjected to Reason. He wrote about passages in the Bible that were “obvious errors” because the very fact that they offended humanistic Reason showed the passages to be inconsistent with God’s Natural Law. Abelard’s work furthered a subtle trend growing in Christian ranks:  Pagan ways were no longer shunned and were no longer unmentionables. For example, Abelard openly advocated using both Christian values and pagan morals – as long as the two were not allowed to be confused with each other. He thought it should be taught that morals and ethics contained certain principles of Christianity, but only in those cases believed to be consistent with philosophic Reason. In this way he believed Western society could be improved in practical ways without compromising Christian doctrine. Understandably, Abelard was more popular with those scholars within the church who placed greater value on Reason than on faith in written revelation. (Many Christians would have ended the previous sentence with the word faith. But because “faith” has come to mean different things that did not come from the Bible – and is therefore not the Biblical faith that pleases God – I prefer to include words like written revelation in order to make it clear what real faith is based upon.) Intellectuals like Abelard who agreed with philosophy were a minority that conservatives derisively called “Rationalists” because they used secular humanism/Reason to point out “problems” in the Bible that offended Reason – such as miracles. Conservative scholars such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) warned that Christian Rationalism would grow and eventually become a problem. He said Rationalism was a subtle danger because any so-called “neutral” pursuit of knowledge, such as secular scholarship, Christian Rationalism, and science, is not neutral; it is actively pagan and contrary to the lordship of Christ and the glory of God. We’ll see why Bernard was correct in a few minutes. Pagan concepts like morality and ethics would continue to make slow inroads into Christianity. René Descartes (1596-1650) for example, became a popular proponent of morality by merely repeating earlier theories. Morality, he taught, is the result of conforming to the Law of Human Reason programmed into all men. Morality and ethical behavior, therefore, can be learned by man’s introspective study of himself and his proper place in Nature. Not everybody was happy with the increasing trend to consider morality as a worthy part of Christian society. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the author of Gulliver’s Travels, said, “The system of morality to be gathered from the writings of ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.” But Swift was in the minority. He and those who shared his view were considered boring and old fashioned, and were outnumbered by people like Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a German philosopher who is still considered a superstar. Kant’s 1781 work, Critique of Pure Reason, advocated the use of secular Reason. In Critique he said he was filled with “ever-increasing wonder and awe” every time he reflected on “the moral law within me.” His works – which are extremely complex – really only build on the writings of Descartes and Locke. Yes, to us today the teachings of the Big Names are anticlimactic and somewhat of a disappointment because of their childish simplicity, naïveté, sophistry, and complete lack of any reliable and authoritative foundation. But back then the fact that these ideas were radical and daring challenges to the authority structure that had existed since God made the angels and Adam made them exciting, heady stuff. One last example to show how much pagan philosophy became an accepted part of Christianity: We turn to Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the book that made the name Webster synonymous with dictionary. Before we look at some of his definitions let’s note that many verses in Scripture – such as 1 Th 5:23, He 4:12, and Mt 10:28 – show that the body (mortal body), soul (intellect), and spirit (immortal body) are different. But ignoring the Bible by making soul and spirit the same thing was becoming popular because it tended to support Augustine’s doctrine that the soul is immortal, and all men having immortality would put them in contact with the Kingdom of God, which “proved” all men – Christians and the unregenerate – really were given Reason as a way to know Truth without the Bible just like the ancient Greeks said. In other words, just as the Greeks had used Natural Law/Reason to formulate the theory of the immortality of all human souls, Christians not only did the same thing, they went further by using Reason to discredit verses like 1 Co 2:14; Ro 8:7,8; Ec 3:18,19. Let’s see what Webster – popular with Christians merely because he references Scripture in his dictionary – has to say (emphasis added): “SPIRIT: The soul of man; the intelligent, immaterial and immortal part of human beings: See SOUL.” “SOUL: The spiritual, rational, and immortal substance in man which distinguishes him from brutes; that part of man which enables him to think and reason, and which renders him a subject of moral government. The immortality of the soul is a fundamental article of the Christian system.” We find no Scripture. We find that soul and spirit are not separate entities like God said. We find that the soul cannot die like God said it could. And we find that the human soul is tuned into “moral” rules by its ability to use Reason. Why did Christians begin saying Reason differentiates men from beasts? Because they needed to defend the traditional doctrine of the immortality of the soul that they inherited from the Greeks and Saint Augustine against the Bible: The Bible says God gave animals souls and the breath of life, which made it look like there really was no difference between men and animals. And that meant, 1) animals having souls and the breath of life meant they, too, had immortal souls, or 2) all souls are mortal and man gets immortality only from the second (spirit) body of the new birth. The pagan Greek theory of Reason came to the rescue: Reason seemed like a perfect “proof” that unregenerate men and beasts were not the same like the Bible says they are, and for centuries it was accepted that man was different from beasts…and Christians “only” had to ignore a few verses of Scripture. By the time Webster wrote his dictionary Reason had become a “Christian” concept. Did Webster learn about morality and Reason from the Bible – or from philosophy? Let’s see what Webster has to say about moral: “MORAL: 1) The word moral is applicable to actions that are good or evil…and has reference to the law of God as the standard by which their character is to be determined. The word however may be applied to actions which affect only…a person’s own happiness. 3) Supported by the evidence of Reason…founded on experience… 7) In general, moral denotes something which respects the conduct of men…as social beings whose actions have a bearing on each other’s Rights and Happiness, and are therefore right or wrong. Moral sense is an innate or Natural sense of right and wrong; an instinctive perception of right and wrong…independent of…the knowledge of any positive [real] rule or law [like the Bible]. But the existence of any such moral sense is [now] very much doubted.” Notice (as we address the last part first) he does a pretty good job quoting the pagan party line before admitting that Moral Law/Natural Law was by 1828 generally known to be just another Greek myth. The problem is the non-existent Natural Law foundation of morality no longer matters! Why? Because Webster accurately shows that by 1828 morality was unquestioningly incorporated into Christianity! I say again, by 1828 no Scripture was required because the carnal self evidence of Reason was – and is – blindly accepted as Christian. Read the definition of MORAL again and carefully notice it comes right out and says Christians and pagans do not need the Bible because the Prime Mover wants mankind to utilize the [forbidden] fruit of the tree of the knowledge of [rather than discerning] good and evil. (Read that sentence again and substitute Satan for Prime Mover.) Now notice that Webster’s definitions of MORAL are actually deceitful because the average ignorant Christian will assume Webster’s use of “the law of God” has to do with the Bible when it is really a reference to the mythical Laws of Nature, which were derived by Reason and assumed to be more dependably consistent than the Bible because the Bible might be wrong but Reason and Natural Law were direct conduits to the Prime Mover itself. I applaud Webster’s integrity for including in his dictionary the fact that morality might not even exist. However, three things are true: First, in 1828 morality wasn’t the only facet of Western civilization in danger of toppling. Natural Law itself, which was the key link between pagan philosophy and Christianity, was increasingly recognized as something that never existed. That meant the foundational principles and doctrines of Western civilization and its cherished institutions, like its democratic forms of government, its laws, and modern Christianity, which were derived from Nature’s Laws, were based on a lie. Second, the Christians like Webster who participated in the Natural Law debate were in a distinct minority in Christianity. Most Christians in 1828 were no different from Dark Age Christians and 21st century Christians – incapable of understanding and dealing with the Biblical importance of words, principles, ideologies, and doctrines. Because they had not studied the Bible to shew themselves approved unto God, they tried to hide the fact that they were shameful workmen who could neither rightly divide the word nor put two intelligent sentences back-to-back in a discussion about doctrine. They tried to hide their inexcusable ignorance of Scripture by scurrying around with wide eyes and horrified tones as they babbled about Satanic New Age symbols on product labels, black helicopters, social security numbers, and all manner of pointless trivia having no meaning or relevance when viewed from the perspective of eternity – or even from just a few years later. Therefore, Christians who recognized the horrifying implications of the Natural Law hoax were without remedy because they were not only a minority among Christians, they were in a democratic country run by the majority. Third, even though Webster wrote that admission/warning in his definition of moral, take a look at his definition of ethics: “ETHICS: [The results of] the science of moral philosophy, which teaches men their duty and the reasons of it.” His definition is a fairly good one but where is the warning that, because ethics is based on morality and morality is based on Natural Law, it’s all a joke? Look at Webster’s definition of “Law of nature”: “Law of nature, is a rule of conduct arising out of the natural relations of human beings established by the Creator, and existing prior to any positive precept [such as the Bible]. Thus it is a law of nature, that one man should not injure another, and murder and fraud would [still] be crimes, independent of [even without] any prohibition from a supreme power [rules from God].” It was believed the Law of Nature was programmed into us by whatever supreme being or prime mover might be out there so we could know the truth about religion, and could know right and wrong via Reason (which incorrectly caused Ro 1:18-32 to be applied to all men – even the unregenerate). The Bible, therefore, was only true in those parts that agreed with Reason. And the parts in Scripture that depended on faith may or may not be true. The important point here is to note that Webster believed the Laws of Nature were designed by God to teach His rules to us even without the Bible! If Webster was right, I am wrong. And if Webster was right, the fact that most Christians do not know the Bible very well is perfectly OK – because we don’t need it! Was I correct when I said the laws of Western civilization are based on Natural Law and not the Bible? Well, let’s again consult Noah Webster, our Rationalist founding father and ardent supporter of George Washington: “Law of nations, the rules that regulate the mutual intercourse of nations or states. These rules depend on natural law, or the principles of justice that spring from the social state; or they are founded on customs, compacts, treaties, leagues and agreements between independent communities.” Webster correctly states that Natural Law comes from the “social state” and is the source of the laws of nations. How then did your preacher get the idea that the government of the United States of America and its laws are founded upon “Scripture” or “Biblical principles”? He got that idea because he is as careless studying history as he is studying the Bible – he honestly doesn’t know that when our founding fathers said stuff about our government and its laws being based on God’s truth, Biblical principles, Christianity, etc., they only said that because their acute ignorance/unbelief concerning the Scriptures caused them to foolishly accept the philosophy that anything that was self-evident was only self evident because the “supreme being” programmed His truth into us. The founding fathers thought they were founding a government based on truth – that meant the government was based on the principles of the Koran, or the Bible, or the teachings of Buddha, or whatever religion ended up being the true one. Since many of the founding fathers were Christians they therefore Naturally assumed that because they based the government of this nation on Natural Law they were glorifying God in accordance with whatever parts of the Bible turned out to be true. There was no conspiracy: Just like God’s people in the Old Testament often angered Him by doing what they honestly thought would be right and pleasing in His sight, the founding fathers screwed up by letting the philosophy the Bible warns us about convince them that the carnal mind was programmed by God to be a substitute for His Holy Bible. To find an example of this we need look no further than our old buddy, Noah Webster. He has already told us the Law of Nature, and its derivative – morality, and morality’s derivative – ethics, do not come from the Bible. Now carefully read his definition of moral law (as opposed to his earlier definition of moral) and do what your preacher should have done – pay attention to what he doesn’t say as well as what he does say: “Moral law, a law which prescribes to men their religious and social duties, in other words, their duties to God and to each other. The moral law is summarily contained in the decalogue or ten commandments, written by the finger of God on two tables of stone, and delivered to Moses on mount Sinai. Ex. xx.” See what I mean? He doesn’t say Moral Law comes from or is based on the Bible or the Ten Commandments. No, he turns it the other way around and says the Ten Commandments are but a brief summary of, or based on, the Moral Law. In other words Webster – like all other Christian Rationalists – believed Moral Law, or Natural Law, to be the foundation upon which God based the Ten Commandments and the Bible. Now you know why so many Christians think the U.S. Constitution is divinely inspired: Just like the Ten Commandments are God’s holy truth because they are based on the Moral Laws of Nature, anything that is also based on the Moral Laws of Nature – such as the Constitution – has a status and importance equal to that of the Ten Commandments. (To see an example showing 21st-century Americans still think the Constitution is divinely inspired, read the formal campaign statement on page D24-8 of a Christian politician while he was running for President.) Now let’s see why St. Bernard of Clairvaux was correct when he predicted Christian Rationalism’s blending of Reason with Scripture would cause problems: Once again we find our old Christian Rationalist friend, Noah Webster, is a good example. Webster said the Ten Commandments contained Moral Law. That means the Ten Commandments are not authoritative because they were written by the finger of God, but because they were based upon or in agreement with the Moral Laws of Nature that God supposedly set up. That means if God had written commandments that did not contain or were not based upon the Moral Laws of Nature, those commandments would be revealed by Reason to be violations of the Laws of Nature, which would make them contrary to the truths programmed into Nature and Reason by the true supreme being.  And that would mean the god who wrote the ten commandments with his own finger was a fake who should have subordinated himself to the rules established by the true God revealed by Reason. Rationalists would use this type of “Webster Reason” to discredit Jesus Christ because His miracles violated the true god’s Natural Laws. What the philosophy of the Christian Rationalists also meant was any laws created by man that were revealed by Reason to be self-evident, were actually in accordance with Nature’s true God and therefore should become international laws that were binding for all men. But that’s not all. The fact that Nature’s God programmed human Reason to reveal His universal and eternal Natural Laws meant all men really were God’s children, really did all have immortal souls, and really should have governments over them ruling in accordance with the Natural truths He established. Reason could now be used to subdue and unite the world – while thinking we were fulfilling God’s commission to Adam to subdue the world! In summation: The acceptance of Reason as part of Christianity by “Christian Rationalists” like Noah Webster took the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and made it good! Because this topic is so important I want you to now – with Webster’s definitions in mind – reread the first two paragraphs under “The Kingdom Divided” on page H1-1. You need to understand the fact that over the centuries Christians changed the definition of carnality by making it deal primarily with sexual lust, and they used the mythical idea that the “Prime Mover” programmed its “Laws of Nature” and “Reason” into us so we could logically base right and wrong in our lives upon self-evidence. By so doing, our forefathers made the true and evil meaning of carnality actually become a good and necessary part of modern Christianity. It is only because we no longer know what carnality is that we are able to view carnal fruit like Freedom, Independence, and Democracy as good. Let’s continue to follow history and see how clairvoyant St. Bernard of Clairvaux was when he said Rationalism would paganize Christianity. IDEOLOGICAL WARFARE The Roman Catholic Church had grown so large and powerful it could now use warfare to promote its doctrines, spread its influence, and defend itself from any threat. Therefore in 1095 the Vatican launched the holy wars known as Crusades, or as the Muslims call them, Jihads, which would continue for two bloody centuries. Obviously, if the Vatican could draw upon the resources of European nations for such large armies, those nations were once again established, secure, orderly, and wealthy enough to support commerce. The Crusades also revived an interest in philosophical Reason. Therefore the Crusades effectively mark the end of the Dark Ages portion of the Middle Ages. The terms Dark Ages and Middle Ages are used by historians to mark the low tide of Reason: The classical age of the pagan Greeks and Romans was “good” because it was an age of Reason. And the modern age of Enlightened Western civilization is “good” because it is another age of Reason. But in the middle of those two ages there was a “bad” period when Christians rejected Reason – called the Middle Ages (400-1300 A.D.). The more specific term, Dark Ages, refers to the first part of the Middle Ages (400-1000) before the Crusades rekindled interest in the Reason of the Greek philosophers. Again, the Middle Ages are the years between the Hellenized civilization of the Roman Empire and the Hellenized civilization of Europe. European commerce with foreign nations had already resumed by the time of the Crusades, but the Crusades stimulated international trade because when common soldiers returned to their homes with foreign goods their friends and neighbors developed an appetite for those goods. As commerce increased, so too did academic intercourse. Western scholars were able to obtain more Arabic – and to a lesser extent Hebrew – translations of Greek philosophical works. These turned out to be wonderful sources of pure philosophic leaven, and Western scholars realized most of the traditional sources of philosophic thought that they’d studied for centuries had been edited and diluted by old-fashioned Christian scholars who, offended by and suspicious of pagan philosophy, removed the parts they thought were too radical and dangerous. Today it is difficult to appreciate just how radical and offensive philosophy was. After all, in just a few pages we have easily covered material it took European Christians centuries to digest. There are two reasons philosophy took so long to work its way into the fabric of the lives of Western Christians: First, philosophy truly was radical to people in general and Christians in particular who had, since time began, lived under authority. People simply were not supposed to think or act on their own unless they were an authority and had that prerogative. And even Christian authorities who had no earthly authority over them – like King David – were still required to check with God before doing anything to ensure they didn’t offend Him. Christians simply understood how arrogantly evil it was to do something without proper authority, to step out of line, to leave your place in society, to be a foot that acted without consulting the head. Second, philosophy remained an academic pursuit within the exclusive and carefully protected domain of scholars…until it began to be passed on to the unthinking masses – most notably and dramatically by Martin Luther. Scholars were careful with Reason because they had the mental capacity to realize how truly revolutionary it was to the fundamental structure of society. Lacking that mental ability to deal with concepts and principles, the masses would respond to Reason by “knowing” on a gut level it was right and good because it “felt” so Naturally self-evident. Yes, Christian scholars were titillated by philosophy and enjoyed flirting with and occasionally being seduced by its charms. But they knew it was very dangerous. That is why people like Ambrose and Augustine, even while subtly using philosophy in their works, were careful to publicly condemn it. Other Christian Rationalists, afraid to go directly to pagan philosophy to justify their Reason, cloaked their works in sheep’s clothing by quoting, drawing on, and building upon the leavened works of “Saint Augustine”, “the church fathers”, “early Christian thinkers”, etc. The Vatican used more than the Crusades to fight its ideological warfare. It created the Office of the Inquisition, an office administered by Dominican friars, to deal with heresy and heretics. A Spaniard, Dominic Guzman, started the Dominican order of friars. He is famous among Roman Catholics because when the Virgin Mary invented the rosary, she gave the first one she made to him. Just how many she made is unknown but it is known she kept at least one for herself because the Catholic teaching says when Mary showed up seven centuries later and revealed herself to three small peasant children in Fatima, Portugal, she was going from bead to bead praying “Hail Marys” to herself. Why she didn’t hand out more rosaries on this occasion is unknown. When she returned to heaven she kept the rosary she’d been using, presumably to keep track of her prayers to herself so she could continue worshipping herself by asking herself to pray for herself – a sinner – now and at the hour of her death! If Catholic doctrine is taken seriously by any Catholics they must wonder, when their priest tells them to “say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys” as penance for their sins, if Mary is still alive to hear them or if she is dead and busily answering her own prayers to herself to pray for herself when she died. (When I poke fun at the idiocies of other “faiths” I am following Elijah’s example in 1 Ki 18:27.) The Dominican Order was originally established in accordance with St. Augustine’s teachings, but when he became a scholastic and doctrinal embarrassment the order was reorganized in accordance with the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. The order was established to take care of heretics in general – and the Cathari in particular. In the early 11th century a large group of Christians who were not Roman Catholics and who were openly opposed to the doctrines of the Western Church appeared on the Vatican’s Most Wanted list. These Christians called themselves Cathari, which means “the pure.” They lived in southern France and in pockets in the mountainous regions of northern Italy. The Vatican controlled most of Europe, including northern France. But southern France, because it was largely populated by Cathari, was not under the political or religious control of Rome. The Vatican wanted to control all of Europe, and the Cathari were in the way. Because there was a large population of Cathari in Albi, France, the Cathari are often called Albigenses. The Cathari believed the Catholic Church was the Whore of Revelation 17. They rejected Catholic doctrine and all of what Rome called “sacraments.” They preached only the Bible, believing the church should not be part of the world and should not base its doctrines upon the theories of the unregenerate. Therefore they rejected as unscriptural Aristotle’s teaching that “Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul” so all men can instinctively know the Laws God programmed into Nature (page H5-3), and they rejected the Catholic Church’s acceptance of the pagan theory that the souls of the unregenerate have everlasting life. That pagan foundation also resulted in other Roman Catholic “Natural Law doctrines” such as, “At the bar of God’s justice, a man will not be judged by anything but his own conscience.” The Cathari believed immortality was available to the souls of men only through the Biblical new birth, and that God’s truth is available only through His word. They believed the Natural, carnal, physical old man is instinctively evil and Naturally opposed to God. This Natural human evil manifested itself in man’s tendency to be independent of God, which is rebellion against His Headship. This meant all philosophy was evil rebellion, and a monk in a monastery contemplating Self in order to learn about God was wasting both his time and the offerings of faithful Catholics. It is hard to be definite about the doctrines of the Cathari because so little of what they believed has survived. They are almost universally labeled as heretics by secular and religious historians for four reasons: First, what we know of their beliefs about the nature of good (walking in the Spirit) and evil (walking in the flesh) is from sketchy and vague information that can easily be misinterpreted as Dualism, which is itself vague and ill-defined. Second, modernists love Natural Reason and dislike those who don’t. Third, since most of Europe was Roman Catholic, Catholicism is often thought of as the standard by which Christianity is judged: all others are “heretics.” Fourth, little is known about low-profile Christian groups like the Cathari, the Paulicians, the Bogomils, and the Wends or Sorbs (who were, interestingly enough, of Slavic and Saxon origin: see pages D24-1 and D27-12). These groups fellowshipped with each other and rejected the authority and orthodoxy of the powerful Church of Rome. When the Catholic Inquisition exterminated them it even burned their books and literature. Nothing has survived. Therefore, the same enemies who massacred them wrote all of the “history” about them, and the information must be viewed as anti-Cathari propaganda intended to make the extreme and shocking measures taken to kill them appear justified. (For documentation of the atrocities committed see Fox’s Book of Christian Martyrs and van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror.) In fact, because the Cathari and the other groups were so numerous and occupied such a large area across southern Europe, and because their beliefs were considered to be so threatening to Catholic doctrine, four large-scale military Crusades were launched against them – just like the ones sent to the Holy Land, and with the same material and spiritual incentives to do a thorough job. Millions were slaughtered during this Christian holocaust. By 1200 the surviving Cathari were so few in number the mop-up work was left to the Inquisition. By 1400 they were completely exterminated. Secular history always stresses the economic importance of the Crusades because they increased trade between east and west. And secular history views the military results of the Crusades to be inconsequential because the permanent acquisition of dominion over the Holy Land failed. But the doctrinal effects of the Crusades on Christianity were lasting and had two great consequences: First, the Biblical teaching of the mortality of the unregenerate soul was exterminated along with the Cathari; and second, all resistance of any consequence to the universal spread of Romish Rational Christianity was killed. Since then Natural Reason has become a part of Christian life, and the immortality of the pagan soul has never been seriously questioned. When Dante wrote The Divine Comedy around 1315, the Crusades against the Cathari, together with the Inquisition’s teaching that anyone who denied the immortality of pagan souls was a heretic, were well known to European society. Dante agreed with the forerunner of Rationalist Christians, Justin (page H5-6), about the fate of certain pagans. It may be that Dante was also influenced by the uproar over the Cathari and how crucial the Roman Church said the immortality of pagan souls was, because in Divine Comedy Dante had God refuse to put the pagan philosophers who originated the theory of the immortality of the unregenerate soul in hell – He rewarded them by putting them in Limbo instead! But those people who did not adopt the pagan doctrine were assigned to the deepest parts of hell. By the time the Crusades began, philosophy was widely accepted among scholars and was beginning to infect society as people started to think and act on their own – albeit in relatively minor displays of rebellion. Marriage is a good example. Originally, marriage was not a “sacrament” because marriage was not complicated – a man gave his daughter to another man to be his wife. A supper or other celebration was held to announce the union so no one would think the woman was sinning when she slept with her husband, and so all would know she now had the authority to act in her husband’s name. But over the years the Catholic Church assumed more and more control over various aspects of life. Rome ignored what the Bible said and declared marriage to be not only a “sacrament” by which the married received “sanctifying grace”, but also, since the Western Church was God’s agent and dispenser of His sanctifying grace on earth, a Roman Catholic priest had to be at the wedding or it didn’t count. Oh, the families could still announce and celebrate the union at a marriage supper if they wanted, but the Church had to be  involved. And that had been the way Catholics performed weddings for centuries – with a priest. But now some Catholics were beginning to return to the original way of marrying – without a priest, and then have the marriage recorded by a village clerk to make it a matter of public record. The Vatican responded by telling people any alternatives to church weddings, such as a marriage supper or the use of a justice of the peace to certify that a wedding had taken place, were not the sacrament of matrimony, did not convey sanctifying grace, and were heresy. When people continued to ignore the Vatican and use private ceremonies, the Office of the Inquisition was instructed to add non-church weddings to its list of heresies. The Inquisition did almost as thorough a job dealing with marriage as it did with the immortality of the soul issue because today many people – even Protestants – think the only valid union is one that is presided over by a preacher. And that is how church weddings and the immortality of the pagan soul became traditional doctrines in Christianity. ALBERTUS MAGNUS At the same time the Vatican was using the Inquisition to control the pewsters, it had to contend with increasing division in the Catholic hierarchy. Liberals wanted more Reason in Christianity and conservatives wanted less. There did not seem to be any easy solution and as a result Vatican policy on the matter was erratic. The problem facing the Vatican was real. On its face this was just another academic squabble among the intellectual elite. But underneath was a nagging fear shared by conservatives and many liberals: What would happen to society and to the Church if the mindless masses had their Reason unleashed? And then a shocking incident in England seemed to indicate their fears about liberating the masses were well founded, and that the order of the whole world might be turned upside down. In 1215 English barons, unhappy with King John, forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which would eventually become one of the “sacred documents” in democratic history. This document gave them “rights” and took away the king’s prerogative to arbitrarily put people in jail. (This incident would, several hundred years later, be interpreted by liberal antiquarians as an ancient Natural Law “proof” that kings are supposed to be subject to the people and to laws made by the people.) The pope was shocked that subjects could be so rebellious against authority; it just didn’t happen: This was an era when every child learned submission and self-control by getting his face slapped if he dared to sass his mother. Stop and think for a minute: If the Magna Carta rebellion does not seem like that big of a deal to you, you need to remember that all authority is of God. Would you sass Him or try to force Him to grant you His prerogatives? The pope properly released King John from honoring the highly illegal and unchristian Magna Carta. As a person, King John was despicable. He was a liar who betrayed both his father when he was king, and his brother, Richard the Lion-hearted, when he was king. And John did not improve when he became king. He was a treacherous and cruel hypocrite motivated only by greed. Biblically speaking, however, none of that matters as far as his subjects were concerned – if they were Christians. [No, I don’t think they were Christians. Neither do I think the other Roman Catholics mentioned in this book were Christians – no matter how I word things when writing about them. Neither do I think the Roman Catholic Church is a true Christian organization. But this is a textbook and we are in classroom learning from history what is Biblical behavior and what is not. And not a lot of material is available about the tiny groups of real Christians – because they quietly lived submissive lives. So, let’s get back to work.] Following the Magna Carta rebellion another Englishman, Roger Bacon (1214-1294), a Franciscan monk and student of philosophy, taught at Oxford University (a popular English center for learning Greek philosophy) that the secular Reason espoused by Greek philosophy was a gift of God to be used for the betterment of mankind. (Today when Christians defend their carnal – and often ignorant – opinions with, “Well, God gave us brains and I think He expects us to use them”, they don’t realize they have merely restated Roger Bacon’s rehash of pagan philosophy in a more immature way.) Bacon was part of a group of liberal, pro-philosophy Roman Catholics that was growing in size and influence at the same time that antiphilosophy Christians like the Cathari were being systematically hunted down and exterminated. He was one of those who kept the Vatican busy administering discipline because he was always picking quarrels with conservative academics whose views differed from his. Bacon is most noted for his work helping to develop methods of scientific observation and is called the Admirable Doctor. But his influence pales in comparison with his Italian contemporary, Albertus Magnus. Saint Albertus Magnus (1200-1280) was a Dominican bishop and teacher of philosophy at the radical University of Paris. (France was popular with militant Christian Rationalists, and the University of Paris was a major Temple of Reason.) Albertus would become the Catholic patron saint of all scientists by papal decree because of all he did for philosophy. He is the only scholar of his age to be called “the Great.” Albertus, as a member of the Dominican Order whose responsibility it was to exterminate heretics who rejected the pagan Greek doctrine of the immortality of all unregenerate souls, wrote several major works defending the doctrine. Christian intellectuals of the time were grappling with the issue not so much because of the ongoing, high profile extermination of the Cathari, but because of the influence of a Spanish-Arab scholar named Averroes (1126-1198), who was a noted translator of Aristotle’s works. Although Averroes was dead, his works were becoming available in Europe and were greatly admired by – and very influential among – both Jewish and Christian scholars. A noted philosopher who exalted Reason, Averroes correctly pointed out that all arguments for the immortality of the pagan soul – whether made by pagans like the Greek philosophers or Christians like Augustine – were based on specious reasoning, and therefore the true, unbiased position of philosophy had to be that the soul was – just as unbiased scientific observation revealed it to be – mortal. His point was so obviously right, Christian scholars found themselves in the embarrassing position of having to admit not only that their great Saint Augustine had based his doctrinal conclusions on faulty Reason, but also that Christian scholars for almost eight hundred years had blindly accepted Augustine’s position as a foundational Christian doctrine. The implications were enormous.  If the Bible says the unregenerate souls of humans are not immortal – just like the souls of animals are not immortal, and previously discredited verses like Ec 3:18,19 and Mt 15:26 had been literally correct all along, the first problem for the Roman Catholic Church was its daily slaughter of the innocent and doctrinally-correct Cathari. The second problem was more far-reaching: The Catholic Church had relied on the doctrine of the immortality of pagan souls to justify a daisy chain of other doctrines: 1) Pagans are just as much children of God as Christians; 2) therefore pagans must be required to live by the Bible; 3) if they don’t they will go to hell; 4) therefore Rome must continue to conquer pagan lands in order to convert hell-bound pagans and to establish Christian government. If the Cathari were right it meant instead of being so obsessed with compassing sea and land to make one more proselyte, the Catholic Church should have spent more time and energy training up its pewsters in the way of the Bible so they could avoid the common pitfalls the Bible says are so habitual among God’s people. The Roman Catholic hierarchy reacted the same way most Christians today would react. Instead of humbly pausing to Scripturally analyze a doctrine that had been fumbled by pagan philosophers whose great Reason was so tuned into God’s truth that even He wouldn’t throw them into hell, a doctrine that had been botched – or ignored – by every great Christian mind for eight hundred years (with the possible exception of Christians like the Cathari), the Vatican became stubbornly defensive and, suddenly unable to rely on the old “common knowledge” that pagan souls have everlasting life, resorted to sophistry. If it admitted it had been wrong for so many centuries and allowed doubt to exist about the immortality of pagan souls, people might respond by having doubts about the validity and purpose of the Catholic Church itself – and even begin to doubt immortality and the existence of the spiritual realm. Using that specious, issue-dodging justification, the Vatican, knowing it didn’t know if it was right or wrong about the doctrine but figuring there was too much at stake, began looking for one of its best minds to step forward and establish the validity of the doctrine once and for all. At the same time, the Vatican decided to continue killing Cathari rather than impartially confer with them about the doctrine. The man chosen to champion the pagan/Catholic doctrine was Albertus Magnus, Dominican defender of Augustinian doctrine. As Albertus began to look into the immortality issue he found out why no one – pagan or Christian – had been able to prove the doctrine: It wasn’t in the Bible! Any “Scriptural” defense, therefore, had to be built upon verses whose interpretation depended on assumptions – assumptions now called into question. The Bible turned out to be useless as a defense because it repeatedly said human souls die in the same way Christians now believe animal souls die, and the Bible repeatedly said the unregenerate were in fact no different from animals because they both die. Therefore, if Albertus argued that verses in the Bible like Josh 11:11; Ps 89:48; Jb 12:10/Re 16:3; and Ezek 18:20 were really only talking about mortal, physical bodies – and not mortal souls as was literally written – he would make things worse because such an argument would lead to the obvious conclusion that pagans and animals both have everlasting souls – and thereby force the Vatican to start exterminating any Christians who believed the souls of unsaved beasts were mortal! And that would mean the animals in the manger were there worshipping the newborn Saviour in order to save their immortal souls from hell! Albertus was in quite a pickle. With nothing Scriptural to go on, Albertus had to do what others before him had done – ignore what the Bible actually said and use sophistry to build a case. Because he and all the other Christian scholars he consulted were unable to come up with anything definitive that wouldn’t blatantly contradict the Bible, Albertus’ first treatise was unsatisfactory, which caused him to ultimately write a series of defenses – all lame. He used the old two-step routine so familiar to debaters; he maintained that some truths in life are revealed by the Scriptures, and other truths not mentioned in Scripture are revealed by Reason. Even though the immortality of the unregenerate soul was supported by neither the Scriptures nor by Reason alone, he argued, it was supported by the two of them when used together – just as a bridge needs both pillars to support it. And then he danced back and forth from one to the other, leaving the one without having established anything but acting as if he had when he turned to the other. His attempt to verify the immortality of the unregenerate soul was his biggest failure as a philosopher and theologian. Knowing he was able to establish nothing, Albertus the Great, without being too obvious about it in his defense, retreated from both Scripture and philosophy and said the faithful could safely rely on the doctrines of their Holy Mother Church. Today’s Christians are unable to do any better than Albertus, so this huge and important topic is absent from works on Christian doctrine. In other words, just as Christians – before Averroes opened his big mouth and shouted “The emperor has no clothes!” – ignored Bible study and trusted that their sincere, godly, dead heroes of the faith were doctrinally correct, today’s preachers and pewsters are doing the same thing by blindly relying on the validity of the traditions of the elders. Today’s encyclopedias, however, with no religious axe to grind, are not afraid to openly state that the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul is not supported by either Testament of the Bible, but came to Christianity from the Greek philosophers. (Go look it up in your encyclopedia. Britannica’s Micropædia has it under “soul”; and in the Macropædia under “Christianity” find the section “Christian thought and doctrine”, and in the subsection “Christian Philosophy” read the part called “History of Christian philosophy.”) The pagan origin of the doctrine is not a mystery. I say again, it is very well known. But it is an unmentionable because it reveals that our spiritual leaders and preachers have been for many centuries ignorant and/or shallow in their understanding of the Bible, or have been hypocrites who knew better but were too weak and selfish to stand up and preach correct doctrine. As a result, all Protestant denominations that inherited the doctrine from Rome have Logically built the same doctrinal daisy chain the Roman Catholic Church did upon the Platonic/Augustinian foundation. If the souls of the unsaved do not have everlasting life, much of the evangelical emphasis of the church, which is based on saving the pagans from spending their “everlasting lives” in the lake of fire, will turn out to be wasted. And it would mean the reason the Lord issued the Great Commission (Mk 16:15) was for some reason other than the traditional belief that He wanted to keep the unsaved from going to hell when they died (Mt 10:5; 15:22-26). And it would explain the question that has plagued Christians since Augustine: How could God so callously ignore the fact that multiple millions of Gentiles (with “immortal” souls) were pouring into hell all during the Old Testament period, blatantly expose that callousness in the verses we just looked at, and not bother to issue the Great Commission until after His resurrection?! When the false doctrine of the immortality of unregenerate human-but-not-animal souls made converting the unsaved the major purpose of the church (“the main thing is soul-winning”), preachers began to place more emphasis on the importance of their pewsters’ bringing unsaved visitors to church than on the pewsters learning the Bible. And since the unsaved are not and cannot be subject to the laws of God (Ro 8:7) because God’s truth is spiritually discerned (1 Co 2:14; Jn 3:3,6), preachers found that the word of God had less effect on carnal pagans than did emotion. So evangelistic preaching lowered its aim from the head to the gut. That’s why you hear so many dramatic, heart-wrenching, and heart-warming stories from the pulpit aimed at the unsaved – emotion has an appeal the Bible cannot match! Preachers found that their born again but carnal Christian congregations also enjoyed soap opera stories more than they did Scripture, and at home their pewsters had more interest in reading novels (“Christian fiction”) than in reading God’s Book. And guess what today’s preachers discern from that telling fact: Nothing! Anyway, some denominations built upon the false doctrine of the immortality of the unregenerate soul in a different way. They correctly wondered what good it was to get everlasting life from the new birth if we all already have everlasting life. And they wondered why the Bible says we get everlasting life only from Christ if in fact even the unsaved pagans have everlasting souls. So they changed the definition of everlasting life from life without end to “living in heaven rather than living in hell.” Therefore they claim salvation no longer means a mortal person is birthed by the Spirit of God into spiritual immortality, it means the never-ending life he “already has” will be spent in heaven. Again, because they thought the Greek philosophers were right about everybody already having immortal life, these denominations redefined the word “everlasting” to mean God would never punish the iniquity of saints by changing His children’s home address from heaven to hell like He did with His beloved Lucifer. They say Lucifer’s being kicked out of God’s household means even though Lucifer was immortal and had spirit life he never had “everlasting” life because God knew this son of His was a “professor” not a “possessor.” Thus was the false doctrine the Roman Catholic Church launched four Crusades to defend used as the foundation for the false doctrine of “eternal security”. But I don’t want to go into doctrine in depth here in the historical section, so let’s press on. One of Albertus Magnus’ main agendas was to lobby for the official combining of Greek philosophy and Christianity. This would not just bring liberals and conservatives together, it would also allow philosophy to free the mind while Christianity prevented the social chaos and decadence that many scholars feared would result if Reason ever did become public property. Albertus believed religion should be kept out of all topics except itself – in accordance with the rules of philosophy. In other words, because philosophy’s Reason was believed to be a reliable road to truth, it would be a helpful addition to Christianity because it would expose superstition and error in the Bible; but because Christianity and the Bible were uncertain roads, they should not be allowed to affect the reliable road of philosophy. Because he lived at a time when the Vatican wasn’t ready to completely sell out to philosophy, Albertus just missed becoming the Third Pillar of Western Civilization. However, just as the First Pillar, Alexander the Great, learned philosophy at the feet of Aristotle, and just as the Second Pillar, Augustine, learned philosophy at the feet of the Eight-Day Wonder, Ambrose, so, too, did the Third Pillar of Western Civilization, Thomas Aquinas, learn philosophy at the feet of Albertus Magnus – and Aquinas was Albertus’ greatest contribution to civilization. from Blogger http://ift.tt/2zNbbmw via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

[hellojulie1971]

The collapse of the Roman Empire and its attendant governmental authority, economic structure, and societal order resulted in an end to civilization in Europe. Currency was no longer minted or regulated and became worthless. The ships and carts of commerce stopped carrying food and supplies. Unchecked lawlessness put travelers and isolated families at risk. Those who dared to travel were no longer in a stream of travelers; they were alone. The demise of travel further isolated communities because without commerce and without news the outside world practically and psychologically ceased to exist. People of means were suddenly without, and for the first time were poor, hungry, helpless, and frightened. Europeans gathered into defensive clusters of tribes, villages, and towns, and several families often lived in one communal home. Because there was almost no travel, it was very rare to see a stranger, and strangers were distrusted and unwelcome. People who did travel were frightened when they saw another person because crime was so rampant. And the fear was not just of bands of outlaws. In lean times those who were cold and hungry sometimes murdered traveling strangers, cooked and ate their flesh, wore their clothes, and saved any food and goods for later use – nothing was wasted. (Because of verses like Lk 18:20 we know the murder they committed was a sin, and because of verses like Jn 6:51-58 we know the cannibalism wasn’t. Even so, cannibalism has always been repugnant – as it was to Christ’s disciples in Jn 6:59-61,66.) The isolation of communities caused names to be less important because in small communities there is no confusion as to whom you are referring when you say Peter, or Jesus, or Barjesus (son of Jesus – Ac 13:6), or Arthur, or MacArthur (son of Arthur), or Will, or Willson, or Richard, or Richardson, or Abbas, or Barabbas (son of Abbas). Often people were simply known as Blondie, Red, Redbeard, or Skinny. If there might be some confusion about whom you were speaking it was common to add specificity by saying Jesus of Nazareth, Richard the Lion-hearted, Herod the Great, Pepin the Short, Henry the Eighth, and Philip the Fair. Even the villages people lived in often had no names because without travel a name wasn’t necessary. If a man got lost in the woods it was common for him to never return: If he happened to stumble upon another settlement those people couldn’t help him because his, “My village has a burned tree at the top of a hill” meant nothing to them. And even if his village was called Philipsburg, the people of the settlement knew neither Philip nor his burg. So he spent the rest of his life there. When larger populations made a second name (or “last” name) necessary, these were often just the man’s occupation: Miller, Wheeler, Tailor, Smith, Cooper, Farmer, Shepherd, Fuller. But people were very casual about their names because ego – self – was not yet a big deal. For example, even the educated German who in the late 16th century founded a munitions dynasty variously wrote his own name as Krupp, Krupe, Kripp, and, of course, Krapp. In addition to the casual informality about names and their spellings, people in the old days were often referred to by other names (for unknown reasons) and by nicknames – all to the great consternation of historians and Bible students. Lacking understanding about oldtime names and their spellings has sometimes led ignorant Christians to assume they have found an error in the Bible when they think some name is incorrect. Widespread poverty caused function and necessity to have greater importance. Therefore, even prosperous peasants’ homes had but one room. Everyone who lived there, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters and their spouses and children, slept in and/or on the one bed (Lk 11:7), which was usually on the floor and of varying sizes and material. Privacy was neither a Biblical requirement nor a necessity. So when a man and his wife engaged in sexual activity it was variously applauded or ignored by all according to the mood. In cold and inclement weather all shared the chamber pot in the corner. During the warm months, especially when working, these European Christians often went naked (Jn 21:7; Dt 24:12,13), just as people had throughout history. Clothes, because they were hard to get, expensive to buy, and time-consuming to make, were a luxury (Dt 24:13,17) prudently reserved for winter use. Therefore when people dressed and undressed indoors in winter there was neither a perceived need nor a moral requirement for privacy curtains or dressing rooms; these people were not sinning against God. In lean years of famine many had to sell their clothes (Lk 22:36) and faced the prospect of no clothing even in winter. Bathing was a luxury and was done outside in public with no shame (2 Sa 11:2). There was no plumbing. During the warm months after a hard day of labor it was routine for the families of the community, often leading the family cow, to gather at the river or lake to drink, bathe, and relax in the cool, quiet twilight. Except when harvests were bad every meal was washed down with wine in southern Europe, and with beer in northern Europe – by adults and children. These Christians were not sinning against God. Before philosophy exalted ego/self and equality, the people in society viewed themselves the same way the old conservative, agrarian, philosophy-rejecting, democracy-hating Spartans did – as figurative members of a larger body whose duty was to further the welfare of the body. These European Christians had several bodies: The church, the family, and the community. Self and what self wanted, therefore, was always subordinated to the welfare of the church, the family, and the community. An example of this pre-Enlightened viewpoint can be found in the old cathedrals of Europe, many of which required three to four centuries to build. Even though these cathedrals are marvels of architecture and construction, nothing is known about the individuals who designed and built them because those people were not thought to have done anything extraordinary. Why? Because they were just doing their duty like everyone else in society. The man who designed the cathedral had done nothing nobler than the man who weeded the family vegetable garden or the woman who drew water from the well. There is no nobler deed than the performance of one’s duty. One of the ironies of today’s egalitarianism is that it has given various duties unequal stature: In direct violation of 1 Co 12:20-26 ditch diggers are laughed at because they are not rocket scientists. At the same time the collapse of the Roman Empire was causing chaos in Europe, the Roman Catholic Church – also known as the Western Church – was using the teachings of Augustine to maintain and strengthen its tenuous control of the western churches. Control means communication, and in those days communication required travel. The bishop of Rome (more commonly addressed in later years as “the pope”) communicated with his bishops in various European locales by sending them messages via couriers. Couriers had a difficult and dangerous job; there was no law enforcement and they had no maps. The couriers delivered more than mail; they were welcome sources of news about the outside world. By telling eager bishops what was happening in the Eastern Church in Constantinople, and what deal the pope made with the barbarians to keep them from sacking Rome again, and all the juicy tidbits of gossip, the couriers helped establish Rome as the hub of western Christianity. And when the local bishops, in turn, sent their own couriers to neighboring villages that had priests under their control, that flow of information helped the villages regard the bishop as their hub. With this fragile infrastructure the Catholic Church maintained a semblance of order, something that grew in direct proportion to papal power. As the infrastructure developed and branched out from the papacy and the bishoprics, the people in those bishoprics began to demonstrate the same kind of geographic loyalty (later called nationalism) their ancestors exhibited when the political rivalry between Rome and Constantinople caused a similar geographic polarization in Christianity. Therefore, as the papacy increased its control over Europe it also restored the societal order that had collapsed with the Roman Empire. With order came politics and the bishoprics began to gel into nations. With the nations came law and order and the return of commerce. The period of social chaos between the social order and prosperity of the Roman Empire and the later formation of nations in Europe is called the Dark Ages. Protestants generally blame the Dark Ages on the Roman Catholic Church because it reached the zenith of its power from about the 12th to the 16th centuries, power that began to fade when the Protestant Reformation caused a return of Bible-oriented Christianity. However, the Dark Ages was actually caused by the collapse of the Roman Empire, something that happened before the Catholic Church existed. When viewed from a superficial perspective it can be properly argued that the Roman Catholic Church was the savior of Europe and was the instrument that restored the order and prosperity of the Roman Empire. But when viewed from a Biblical perspective the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for something far worse than Protestants realize. She infected Christianity with philosophy and thereby caused Christians to incorrectly but fervently believe the advents of the Age of Reason and of democracy were – because they are products of the “Natural Laws” God supposedly programmed into our minds – results of the revival of Biblical Christianity caused by Protestant reform. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH The chaos in society resulted in different men and various groups vying with each other for political power. The papacy was just one of these groups. When the army of a rival faction surrounded Rome and threatened the papacy, Pope Stephen II in 754 made the long and dangerous journey to France where he consecrated and crowned Pepin the Short (father of Charlemagne) as king of the Franks. Now that Pepin had what he wanted – a throne legitimized by “Apostolic authority” – he and his army followed Pope Stephen back to Rome and drove the threatening army away. When the Vatican crowned people as kings it used an impressive “Christian” ceremony. The pope ignored both the fact that the New Testament specifically commands Christians to submit to and obey governors, and that it provides no guidelines for Christian governance of society. The New Testament limits itself to addressing administrative and disciplinary functions of the church itself. Therefore the Vatican went into the Old Testament, borrowed from the accounts of David and Solomon, and arranged coronation ceremonies that seemed official and Scriptural. Just as the Vatican acquired real estate for itself in Rome that did not fall under the jurisdiction of Italy, it acquired real estate all over Europe for churches, rectories, monasteries, schools, seminaries, etc. It quickly grew into the wealthiest, most powerful, most educated, and most corrupt institution in Europe. Eventually the life of almost every European from birth to burial was shaped and governed by Roman clergy. Most people, including the highest-ranking priests, were ignorant of the Scriptures and therefore of necessity had no alternative but to “serve” God by doing what was right and good in accordance with their carnal Reason. That Christianity survived at all is a tribute to God and His Bible; its survival certainly had nothing to do with medieval “Christianity.” While it is true that many in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church were ignorant of the Scriptures, that is not to say they were poorly educated. On the contrary, theirs were easily some of the best minds in Europe. They were mentally far, far above the masses. That, combined with their extreme wealth and power, insulated and isolated them from normal society, which resulted in their living dual lives. In public they were variously pious, aloof, arrogant, humble, and magisterial as situations warranted. In private they simply did whatever they wanted. They got drunk, they stayed up all night, they slept around the clock, they tinkered, they read, they hunted, they hosted huge parties, they murdered people, they traveled, etc. And, like most men in history with great power and authority (such as David and Solomon), they possessed huge sexual appetites that were – for the good men of history – difficult to control, and – for the bad – something to be indulged. These clerics simply did anything and everything…and they did it with impunity. The upper echelons of the Roman Catholic hierarchy were an elite group; they were above the law. They would burn common people at the stake for voicing heresies and then retire to the drawing room with a group of their peers to seriously discuss the very heresies for which they executed others. They circulated books, manuscripts, and papers among themselves that concerned philosophy, heresy, government, religion, sexual practices, the economy, trade, foreign religions, etc. They were minds, strong minds that examined, discussed, and became intrigued with a topic – only to become bored with it later. Because they had strong minds and walked on an intellectual plane, they could handle principles, concepts, and ideas, including those associated with heresies. But the common people lacked those mental abilities. If a commoner learned about a heresy he couldn’t control himself; he invariably opened his stupid mouth and spread the leaven to others like him in society where it often took root because the masses were incapable of mentally dealing with and properly analyzing principles and doctrines. Throughout most of history the 1 Co 12:20-26 view of humanity was accepted: People are not equal. They are different members of the body of society who have different abilities and different jobs. This produced mutual respect as long as each person did his duty. It was the duty of the heads, the men who ruled, to do the thinking. As philosophy took root it convinced people that all men are equal and that even the opinions of the stupid and the ignorant were to be respected. That is why the Catholic hierarchy began to fear the common masses and to control them by censoring certain material the masses couldn’t handle. And that is why Copernicus did not get into trouble for publishing his theory that the earth orbits the sun (something we still have not been able to prove in the 21st century, which would contribute to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and his Special Theory of Relativity); he got in trouble for publishing it in the vernacular so the commoners could read it. He was burned at the stake. Leonardo da Vinci also challenged existing “truths”, but he not only did not publish his works, he wrote them backwards to keep them from prying eyes. Leonardo lived to a ripe old age. Erasmus published parallel texts of the Bible, but he did it in Latin and Greek so only scholars could read them. William Tyndale, on the other hand, published the New Testament in the vernacular and was executed. Pope Gregory I (mentioned on page H6-2) in intellectual circles maintained that the three Christian virtues (faith, hope, and charity) should be combined with the four “Natural virtues” of the Greek philosophers (wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice). But pagan philosophy still had centuries to go before it was made a legitimate part of Christianity, so it wasn’t until the 14th century that the two groups were combined into the seven “cardinal virtues.” This slow and reluctant acceptance of pagan doctrines was also responsible for the late acceptance in Christian circles of “morality.” The Greeks said Nature’s god had programmed Natural Laws into Nature. Man, part of Nature, was given Reason to unlock these Natural Laws. The Natural Laws pertaining to society in general were called Moral Laws, or Morality. And when morality, the instinctive but vague knowledge of good and evil, is studied it results in rules of conduct, which are called “Ethics.” Pope Gregory I is not generally regarded as a “Rationalist” – one who uses the Reason espoused by philosophy. However, as a fan of Augustine he was certainly a forerunner of a growing movement of clerics and scholars in the Catholic Church who were called Christian Rationalists. CHRISTIAN RATIONALISTS One of the humanistic Catholic scholars who worked with and helped develop our modern value system of morality and ethics was Peter Abelard (1079-1142), a monk who’d been castrated as a penalty for his sexual escapades. A devotee of Greek philosophy, he founded the University of Paris, which would become noted for its fervent support of Reason. He taught university students and fellow monks, “Think for yourself. For I have learned something different from my Arab masters – to use Reason as a guide. You however, taken captive by authority, are merely led by a halter.” (He said “Arab masters” because the writings of Greek philosophers had largely been destroyed by Vandalism. Then when the Arabs conquered Alexandria they preserved – through their Arab translations of the Greek, much of the fundamentals of philosophy.) Notice Abelard’s statement only has seeming value when viewed with the carnal gut reaction of “self-evidence.” In other words, he was a sophist who relied on “common knowledge” for right and wrong rather than on any real and authoritative source. Abelard wrote two books that were important as building blocks for Western civilization in which he said all authority should be subject (!) to Reasoned questioning. That was a huge and very bold step for mankind – not to mention eunuchs. As a result of Abelard’s boldness he became a leading spokesman for the “New Thinkers” and was the most conspicuous scholar in Europe. His writings, including his Know Thyself, clearly showed that much of Christianity contained intellectual problems and inconsistencies when subjected to Reason. He wrote about passages in the Bible that were “obvious errors” because the very fact that they offended humanistic Reason showed the passages to be inconsistent with God’s Natural Law. Abelard’s work furthered a subtle trend growing in Christian ranks:  Pagan ways were no longer shunned and were no longer unmentionables. For example, Abelard openly advocated using both Christian values and pagan morals – as long as the two were not allowed to be confused with each other. He thought it should be taught that morals and ethics contained certain principles of Christianity, but only in those cases believed to be consistent with philosophic Reason. In this way he believed Western society could be improved in practical ways without compromising Christian doctrine. Understandably, Abelard was more popular with those scholars within the church who placed greater value on Reason than on faith in written revelation. (Many Christians would have ended the previous sentence with the word faith. But because “faith” has come to mean different things that did not come from the Bible – and is therefore not the Biblical faith that pleases God – I prefer to include words like written revelation in order to make it clear what real faith is based upon.) Intellectuals like Abelard who agreed with philosophy were a minority that conservatives derisively called “Rationalists” because they used secular humanism/Reason to point out “problems” in the Bible that offended Reason – such as miracles. Conservative scholars such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) warned that Christian Rationalism would grow and eventually become a problem. He said Rationalism was a subtle danger because any so-called “neutral” pursuit of knowledge, such as secular scholarship, Christian Rationalism, and science, is not neutral; it is actively pagan and contrary to the lordship of Christ and the glory of God. We’ll see why Bernard was correct in a few minutes. Pagan concepts like morality and ethics would continue to make slow inroads into Christianity. René Descartes (1596-1650) for example, became a popular proponent of morality by merely repeating earlier theories. Morality, he taught, is the result of conforming to the Law of Human Reason programmed into all men. Morality and ethical behavior, therefore, can be learned by man’s introspective study of himself and his proper place in Nature. Not everybody was happy with the increasing trend to consider morality as a worthy part of Christian society. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the author of Gulliver’s Travels, said, “The system of morality to be gathered from the writings of ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.” But Swift was in the minority. He and those who shared his view were considered boring and old fashioned, and were outnumbered by people like Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a German philosopher who is still considered a superstar. Kant’s 1781 work, Critique of Pure Reason, advocated the use of secular Reason. In Critique he said he was filled with “ever-increasing wonder and awe” every time he reflected on “the moral law within me.” His works – which are extremely complex – really only build on the writings of Descartes and Locke. Yes, to us today the teachings of the Big Names are anticlimactic and somewhat of a disappointment because of their childish simplicity, naïveté, sophistry, and complete lack of any reliable and authoritative foundation. But back then the fact that these ideas were radical and daring challenges to the authority structure that had existed since God made the angels and Adam made them exciting, heady stuff. One last example to show how much pagan philosophy became an accepted part of Christianity: We turn to Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the book that made the name Webster synonymous with dictionary. Before we look at some of his definitions let’s note that many verses in Scripture – such as 1 Th 5:23, He 4:12, and Mt 10:28 – show that the body (mortal body), soul (intellect), and spirit (immortal body) are different. But ignoring the Bible by making soul and spirit the same thing was becoming popular because it tended to support Augustine’s doctrine that the soul is immortal, and all men having immortality would put them in contact with the Kingdom of God, which “proved” all men – Christians and the unregenerate – really were given Reason as a way to know Truth without the Bible just like the ancient Greeks said. In other words, just as the Greeks had used Natural Law/Reason to formulate the theory of the immortality of all human souls, Christians not only did the same thing, they went further by using Reason to discredit verses like 1 Co 2:14; Ro 8:7,8; Ec 3:18,19. Let’s see what Webster – popular with Christians merely because he references Scripture in his dictionary – has to say (emphasis added): “SPIRIT: The soul of man; the intelligent, immaterial and immortal part of human beings: See SOUL.” “SOUL: The spiritual, rational, and immortal substance in man which distinguishes him from brutes; that part of man which enables him to think and reason, and which renders him a subject of moral government. The immortality of the soul is a fundamental article of the Christian system.” We find no Scripture. We find that soul and spirit are not separate entities like God said. We find that the soul cannot die like God said it could. And we find that the human soul is tuned into “moral” rules by its ability to use Reason. Why did Christians begin saying Reason differentiates men from beasts? Because they needed to defend the traditional doctrine of the immortality of the soul that they inherited from the Greeks and Saint Augustine against the Bible: The Bible says God gave animals souls and the breath of life, which made it look like there really was no difference between men and animals. And that meant, 1) animals having souls and the breath of life meant they, too, had immortal souls, or 2) all souls are mortal and man gets immortality only from the second (spirit) body of the new birth. The pagan Greek theory of Reason came to the rescue: Reason seemed like a perfect “proof” that unregenerate men and beasts were not the same like the Bible says they are, and for centuries it was accepted that man was different from beasts…and Christians “only” had to ignore a few verses of Scripture. By the time Webster wrote his dictionary Reason had become a “Christian” concept. Did Webster learn about morality and Reason from the Bible – or from philosophy? Let’s see what Webster has to say about moral: “MORAL: 1) The word moral is applicable to actions that are good or evil…and has reference to the law of God as the standard by which their character is to be determined. The word however may be applied to actions which affect only…a person’s own happiness. 3) Supported by the evidence of Reason…founded on experience… 7) In general, moral denotes something which respects the conduct of men…as social beings whose actions have a bearing on each other’s Rights and Happiness, and are therefore right or wrong. Moral sense is an innate or Natural sense of right and wrong; an instinctive perception of right and wrong…independent of…the knowledge of any positive [real] rule or law [like the Bible]. But the existence of any such moral sense is [now] very much doubted.” Notice (as we address the last part first) he does a pretty good job quoting the pagan party line before admitting that Moral Law/Natural Law was by 1828 generally known to be just another Greek myth. The problem is the non-existent Natural Law foundation of morality no longer matters! Why? Because Webster accurately shows that by 1828 morality was unquestioningly incorporated into Christianity! I say again, by 1828 no Scripture was required because the carnal self evidence of Reason was – and is – blindly accepted as Christian. Read the definition of MORAL again and carefully notice it comes right out and says Christians and pagans do not need the Bible because the Prime Mover wants mankind to utilize the [forbidden] fruit of the tree of the knowledge of [rather than discerning] good and evil. (Read that sentence again and substitute Satan for Prime Mover.) Now notice that Webster’s definitions of MORAL are actually deceitful because the average ignorant Christian will assume Webster’s use of “the law of God” has to do with the Bible when it is really a reference to the mythical Laws of Nature, which were derived by Reason and assumed to be more dependably consistent than the Bible because the Bible might be wrong but Reason and Natural Law were direct conduits to the Prime Mover itself. I applaud Webster’s integrity for including in his dictionary the fact that morality might not even exist. However, three things are true: First, in 1828 morality wasn’t the only facet of Western civilization in danger of toppling. Natural Law itself, which was the key link between pagan philosophy and Christianity, was increasingly recognized as something that never existed. That meant the foundational principles and doctrines of Western civilization and its cherished institutions, like its democratic forms of government, its laws, and modern Christianity, which were derived from Nature’s Laws, were based on a lie. Second, the Christians like Webster who participated in the Natural Law debate were in a distinct minority in Christianity. Most Christians in 1828 were no different from Dark Age Christians and 21st century Christians – incapable of understanding and dealing with the Biblical importance of words, principles, ideologies, and doctrines. Because they had not studied the Bible to shew themselves approved unto God, they tried to hide the fact that they were shameful workmen who could neither rightly divide the word nor put two intelligent sentences back-to-back in a discussion about doctrine. They tried to hide their inexcusable ignorance of Scripture by scurrying around with wide eyes and horrified tones as they babbled about Satanic New Age symbols on product labels, black helicopters, social security numbers, and all manner of pointless trivia having no meaning or relevance when viewed from the perspective of eternity – or even from just a few years later. Therefore, Christians who recognized the horrifying implications of the Natural Law hoax were without remedy because they were not only a minority among Christians, they were in a democratic country run by the majority. Third, even though Webster wrote that admission/warning in his definition of moral, take a look at his definition of ethics: “ETHICS: [The results of] the science of moral philosophy, which teaches men their duty and the reasons of it.” His definition is a fairly good one but where is the warning that, because ethics is based on morality and morality is based on Natural Law, it’s all a joke? Look at Webster’s definition of “Law of nature”: “Law of nature, is a rule of conduct arising out of the natural relations of human beings established by the Creator, and existing prior to any positive precept [such as the Bible]. Thus it is a law of nature, that one man should not injure another, and murder and fraud would [still] be crimes, independent of [even without] any prohibition from a supreme power [rules from God].” It was believed the Law of Nature was programmed into us by whatever supreme being or prime mover might be out there so we could know the truth about religion, and could know right and wrong via Reason (which incorrectly caused Ro 1:18-32 to be applied to all men – even the unregenerate). The Bible, therefore, was only true in those parts that agreed with Reason. And the parts in Scripture that depended on faith may or may not be true. The important point here is to note that Webster believed the Laws of Nature were designed by God to teach His rules to us even without the Bible! If Webster was right, I am wrong. And if Webster was right, the fact that most Christians do not know the Bible very well is perfectly OK – because we don’t need it! Was I correct when I said the laws of Western civilization are based on Natural Law and not the Bible? Well, let’s again consult Noah Webster, our Rationalist founding father and ardent supporter of George Washington: “Law of nations, the rules that regulate the mutual intercourse of nations or states. These rules depend on natural law, or the principles of justice that spring from the social state; or they are founded on customs, compacts, treaties, leagues and agreements between independent communities.” Webster correctly states that Natural Law comes from the “social state” and is the source of the laws of nations. How then did your preacher get the idea that the government of the United States of America and its laws are founded upon “Scripture” or “Biblical principles”? He got that idea because he is as careless studying history as he is studying the Bible – he honestly doesn’t know that when our founding fathers said stuff about our government and its laws being based on God’s truth, Biblical principles, Christianity, etc., they only said that because their acute ignorance/unbelief concerning the Scriptures caused them to foolishly accept the philosophy that anything that was self-evident was only self evident because the “supreme being” programmed His truth into us. The founding fathers thought they were founding a government based on truth – that meant the government was based on the principles of the Koran, or the Bible, or the teachings of Buddha, or whatever religion ended up being the true one. Since many of the founding fathers were Christians they therefore Naturally assumed that because they based the government of this nation on Natural Law they were glorifying God in accordance with whatever parts of the Bible turned out to be true. There was no conspiracy: Just like God’s people in the Old Testament often angered Him by doing what they honestly thought would be right and pleasing in His sight, the founding fathers screwed up by letting the philosophy the Bible warns us about convince them that the carnal mind was programmed by God to be a substitute for His Holy Bible. To find an example of this we need look no further than our old buddy, Noah Webster. He has already told us the Law of Nature, and its derivative – morality, and morality’s derivative – ethics, do not come from the Bible. Now carefully read his definition of moral law (as opposed to his earlier definition of moral) and do what your preacher should have done – pay attention to what he doesn’t say as well as what he does say: “Moral law, a law which prescribes to men their religious and social duties, in other words, their duties to God and to each other. The moral law is summarily contained in the decalogue or ten commandments, written by the finger of God on two tables of stone, and delivered to Moses on mount Sinai. Ex. xx.” See what I mean? He doesn’t say Moral Law comes from or is based on the Bible or the Ten Commandments. No, he turns it the other way around and says the Ten Commandments are but a brief summary of, or based on, the Moral Law. In other words Webster – like all other Christian Rationalists – believed Moral Law, or Natural Law, to be the foundation upon which God based the Ten Commandments and the Bible. Now you know why so many Christians think the U.S. Constitution is divinely inspired: Just like the Ten Commandments are God’s holy truth because they are based on the Moral Laws of Nature, anything that is also based on the Moral Laws of Nature – such as the Constitution – has a status and importance equal to that of the Ten Commandments. (To see an example showing 21st-century Americans still think the Constitution is divinely inspired, read the formal campaign statement on page D24-8 of a Christian politician while he was running for President.) Now let’s see why St. Bernard of Clairvaux was correct when he predicted Christian Rationalism’s blending of Reason with Scripture would cause problems: Once again we find our old Christian Rationalist friend, Noah Webster, is a good example. Webster said the Ten Commandments contained Moral Law. That means the Ten Commandments are not authoritative because they were written by the finger of God, but because they were based upon or in agreement with the Moral Laws of Nature that God supposedly set up. That means if God had written commandments that did not contain or were not based upon the Moral Laws of Nature, those commandments would be revealed by Reason to be violations of the Laws of Nature, which would make them contrary to the truths programmed into Nature and Reason by the true supreme being.  And that would mean the god who wrote the ten commandments with his own finger was a fake who should have subordinated himself to the rules established by the true God revealed by Reason. Rationalists would use this type of “Webster Reason” to discredit Jesus Christ because His miracles violated the true god’s Natural Laws. What the philosophy of the Christian Rationalists also meant was any laws created by man that were revealed by Reason to be self-evident, were actually in accordance with Nature’s true God and therefore should become international laws that were binding for all men. But that’s not all. The fact that Nature’s God programmed human Reason to reveal His universal and eternal Natural Laws meant all men really were God’s children, really did all have immortal souls, and really should have governments over them ruling in accordance with the Natural truths He established. Reason could now be used to subdue and unite the world – while thinking we were fulfilling God’s commission to Adam to subdue the world! In summation: The acceptance of Reason as part of Christianity by “Christian Rationalists” like Noah Webster took the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and made it good! Because this topic is so important I want you to now – with Webster’s definitions in mind – reread the first two paragraphs under “The Kingdom Divided” on page H1-1. You need to understand the fact that over the centuries Christians changed the definition of carnality by making it deal primarily with sexual lust, and they used the mythical idea that the “Prime Mover” programmed its “Laws of Nature” and “Reason” into us so we could logically base right and wrong in our lives upon self-evidence. By so doing, our forefathers made the true and evil meaning of carnality actually become a good and necessary part of modern Christianity. It is only because we no longer know what carnality is that we are able to view carnal fruit like Freedom, Independence, and Democracy as good. Let’s continue to follow history and see how clairvoyant St. Bernard of Clairvaux was when he said Rationalism would paganize Christianity. IDEOLOGICAL WARFARE The Roman Catholic Church had grown so large and powerful it could now use warfare to promote its doctrines, spread its influence, and defend itself from any threat. Therefore in 1095 the Vatican launched the holy wars known as Crusades, or as the Muslims call them, Jihads, which would continue for two bloody centuries. Obviously, if the Vatican could draw upon the resources of European nations for such large armies, those nations were once again established, secure, orderly, and wealthy enough to support commerce. The Crusades also revived an interest in philosophical Reason. Therefore the Crusades effectively mark the end of the Dark Ages portion of the Middle Ages. The terms Dark Ages and Middle Ages are used by historians to mark the low tide of Reason: The classical age of the pagan Greeks and Romans was “good” because it was an age of Reason. And the modern age of Enlightened Western civilization is “good” because it is another age of Reason. But in the middle of those two ages there was a “bad” period when Christians rejected Reason – called the Middle Ages (400-1300 A.D.). The more specific term, Dark Ages, refers to the first part of the Middle Ages (400-1000) before the Crusades rekindled interest in the Reason of the Greek philosophers. Again, the Middle Ages are the years between the Hellenized civilization of the Roman Empire and the Hellenized civilization of Europe. European commerce with foreign nations had already resumed by the time of the Crusades, but the Crusades stimulated international trade because when common soldiers returned to their homes with foreign goods their friends and neighbors developed an appetite for those goods. As commerce increased, so too did academic intercourse. Western scholars were able to obtain more Arabic – and to a lesser extent Hebrew – translations of Greek philosophical works. These turned out to be wonderful sources of pure philosophic leaven, and Western scholars realized most of the traditional sources of philosophic thought that they’d studied for centuries had been edited and diluted by old-fashioned Christian scholars who, offended by and suspicious of pagan philosophy, removed the parts they thought were too radical and dangerous. Today it is difficult to appreciate just how radical and offensive philosophy was. After all, in just a few pages we have easily covered material it took European Christians centuries to digest. There are two reasons philosophy took so long to work its way into the fabric of the lives of Western Christians: First, philosophy truly was radical to people in general and Christians in particular who had, since time began, lived under authority. People simply were not supposed to think or act on their own unless they were an authority and had that prerogative. And even Christian authorities who had no earthly authority over them – like King David – were still required to check with God before doing anything to ensure they didn’t offend Him. Christians simply understood how arrogantly evil it was to do something without proper authority, to step out of line, to leave your place in society, to be a foot that acted without consulting the head. Second, philosophy remained an academic pursuit within the exclusive and carefully protected domain of scholars…until it began to be passed on to the unthinking masses – most notably and dramatically by Martin Luther. Scholars were careful with Reason because they had the mental capacity to realize how truly revolutionary it was to the fundamental structure of society. Lacking that mental ability to deal with concepts and principles, the masses would respond to Reason by “knowing” on a gut level it was right and good because it “felt” so Naturally self-evident. Yes, Christian scholars were titillated by philosophy and enjoyed flirting with and occasionally being seduced by its charms. But they knew it was very dangerous. That is why people like Ambrose and Augustine, even while subtly using philosophy in their works, were careful to publicly condemn it. Other Christian Rationalists, afraid to go directly to pagan philosophy to justify their Reason, cloaked their works in sheep’s clothing by quoting, drawing on, and building upon the leavened works of “Saint Augustine”, “the church fathers”, “early Christian thinkers”, etc. The Vatican used more than the Crusades to fight its ideological warfare. It created the Office of the Inquisition, an office administered by Dominican friars, to deal with heresy and heretics. A Spaniard, Dominic Guzman, started the Dominican order of friars. He is famous among Roman Catholics because when the Virgin Mary invented the rosary, she gave the first one she made to him. Just how many she made is unknown but it is known she kept at least one for herself because the Catholic teaching says when Mary showed up seven centuries later and revealed herself to three small peasant children in Fatima, Portugal, she was going from bead to bead praying “Hail Marys” to herself. Why she didn’t hand out more rosaries on this occasion is unknown. When she returned to heaven she kept the rosary she’d been using, presumably to keep track of her prayers to herself so she could continue worshipping herself by asking herself to pray for herself – a sinner – now and at the hour of her death! If Catholic doctrine is taken seriously by any Catholics they must wonder, when their priest tells them to “say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys” as penance for their sins, if Mary is still alive to hear them or if she is dead and busily answering her own prayers to herself to pray for herself when she died. (When I poke fun at the idiocies of other “faiths” I am following Elijah’s example in 1 Ki 18:27.) The Dominican Order was originally established in accordance with St. Augustine’s teachings, but when he became a scholastic and doctrinal embarrassment the order was reorganized in accordance with the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. The order was established to take care of heretics in general – and the Cathari in particular. In the early 11th century a large group of Christians who were not Roman Catholics and who were openly opposed to the doctrines of the Western Church appeared on the Vatican’s Most Wanted list. These Christians called themselves Cathari, which means “the pure.” They lived in southern France and in pockets in the mountainous regions of northern Italy. The Vatican controlled most of Europe, including northern France. But southern France, because it was largely populated by Cathari, was not under the political or religious control of Rome. The Vatican wanted to control all of Europe, and the Cathari were in the way. Because there was a large population of Cathari in Albi, France, the Cathari are often called Albigenses. The Cathari believed the Catholic Church was the Whore of Revelation 17. They rejected Catholic doctrine and all of what Rome called “sacraments.” They preached only the Bible, believing the church should not be part of the world and should not base its doctrines upon the theories of the unregenerate. Therefore they rejected as unscriptural Aristotle’s teaching that “Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul” so all men can instinctively know the Laws God programmed into Nature (page H5-3), and they rejected the Catholic Church’s acceptance of the pagan theory that the souls of the unregenerate have everlasting life. That pagan foundation also resulted in other Roman Catholic “Natural Law doctrines” such as, “At the bar of God’s justice, a man will not be judged by anything but his own conscience.” The Cathari believed immortality was available to the souls of men only through the Biblical new birth, and that God’s truth is available only through His word. They believed the Natural, carnal, physical old man is instinctively evil and Naturally opposed to God. This Natural human evil manifested itself in man’s tendency to be independent of God, which is rebellion against His Headship. This meant all philosophy was evil rebellion, and a monk in a monastery contemplating Self in order to learn about God was wasting both his time and the offerings of faithful Catholics. It is hard to be definite about the doctrines of the Cathari because so little of what they believed has survived. They are almost universally labeled as heretics by secular and religious historians for four reasons: First, what we know of their beliefs about the nature of good (walking in the Spirit) and evil (walking in the flesh) is from sketchy and vague information that can easily be misinterpreted as Dualism, which is itself vague and ill-defined. Second, modernists love Natural Reason and dislike those who don’t. Third, since most of Europe was Roman Catholic, Catholicism is often thought of as the standard by which Christianity is judged: all others are “heretics.” Fourth, little is known about low-profile Christian groups like the Cathari, the Paulicians, the Bogomils, and the Wends or Sorbs (who were, interestingly enough, of Slavic and Saxon origin: see pages D24-1 and D27-12). These groups fellowshipped with each other and rejected the authority and orthodoxy of the powerful Church of Rome. When the Catholic Inquisition exterminated them it even burned their books and literature. Nothing has survived. Therefore, the same enemies who massacred them wrote all of the “history” about them, and the information must be viewed as anti-Cathari propaganda intended to make the extreme and shocking measures taken to kill them appear justified. (For documentation of the atrocities committed see Fox’s Book of Christian Martyrs and van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror.) In fact, because the Cathari and the other groups were so numerous and occupied such a large area across southern Europe, and because their beliefs were considered to be so threatening to Catholic doctrine, four large-scale military Crusades were launched against them – just like the ones sent to the Holy Land, and with the same material and spiritual incentives to do a thorough job. Millions were slaughtered during this Christian holocaust. By 1200 the surviving Cathari were so few in number the mop-up work was left to the Inquisition. By 1400 they were completely exterminated. Secular history always stresses the economic importance of the Crusades because they increased trade between east and west. And secular history views the military results of the Crusades to be inconsequential because the permanent acquisition of dominion over the Holy Land failed. But the doctrinal effects of the Crusades on Christianity were lasting and had two great consequences: First, the Biblical teaching of the mortality of the unregenerate soul was exterminated along with the Cathari; and second, all resistance of any consequence to the universal spread of Romish Rational Christianity was killed. Since then Natural Reason has become a part of Christian life, and the immortality of the pagan soul has never been seriously questioned. When Dante wrote The Divine Comedy around 1315, the Crusades against the Cathari, together with the Inquisition’s teaching that anyone who denied the immortality of pagan souls was a heretic, were well known to European society. Dante agreed with the forerunner of Rationalist Christians, Justin (page H5-6), about the fate of certain pagans. It may be that Dante was also influenced by the uproar over the Cathari and how crucial the Roman Church said the immortality of pagan souls was, because in Divine Comedy Dante had God refuse to put the pagan philosophers who originated the theory of the immortality of the unregenerate soul in hell – He rewarded them by putting them in Limbo instead! But those people who did not adopt the pagan doctrine were assigned to the deepest parts of hell. By the time the Crusades began, philosophy was widely accepted among scholars and was beginning to infect society as people started to think and act on their own – albeit in relatively minor displays of rebellion. Marriage is a good example. Originally, marriage was not a “sacrament” because marriage was not complicated – a man gave his daughter to another man to be his wife. A supper or other celebration was held to announce the union so no one would think the woman was sinning when she slept with her husband, and so all would know she now had the authority to act in her husband’s name. But over the years the Catholic Church assumed more and more control over various aspects of life. Rome ignored what the Bible said and declared marriage to be not only a “sacrament” by which the married received “sanctifying grace”, but also, since the Western Church was God’s agent and dispenser of His sanctifying grace on earth, a Roman Catholic priest had to be at the wedding or it didn’t count. Oh, the families could still announce and celebrate the union at a marriage supper if they wanted, but the Church had to be  involved. And that had been the way Catholics performed weddings for centuries – with a priest. But now some Catholics were beginning to return to the original way of marrying – without a priest, and then have the marriage recorded by a village clerk to make it a matter of public record. The Vatican responded by telling people any alternatives to church weddings, such as a marriage supper or the use of a justice of the peace to certify that a wedding had taken place, were not the sacrament of matrimony, did not convey sanctifying grace, and were heresy. When people continued to ignore the Vatican and use private ceremonies, the Office of the Inquisition was instructed to add non-church weddings to its list of heresies. The Inquisition did almost as thorough a job dealing with marriage as it did with the immortality of the soul issue because today many people – even Protestants – think the only valid union is one that is presided over by a preacher. And that is how church weddings and the immortality of the pagan soul became traditional doctrines in Christianity. ALBERTUS MAGNUS At the same time the Vatican was using the Inquisition to control the pewsters, it had to contend with increasing division in the Catholic hierarchy. Liberals wanted more Reason in Christianity and conservatives wanted less. There did not seem to be any easy solution and as a result Vatican policy on the matter was erratic. The problem facing the Vatican was real. On its face this was just another academic squabble among the intellectual elite. But underneath was a nagging fear shared by conservatives and many liberals: What would happen to society and to the Church if the mindless masses had their Reason unleashed? And then a shocking incident in England seemed to indicate their fears about liberating the masses were well founded, and that the order of the whole world might be turned upside down. In 1215 English barons, unhappy with King John, forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which would eventually become one of the “sacred documents” in democratic history. This document gave them “rights” and took away the king’s prerogative to arbitrarily put people in jail. (This incident would, several hundred years later, be interpreted by liberal antiquarians as an ancient Natural Law “proof” that kings are supposed to be subject to the people and to laws made by the people.) The pope was shocked that subjects could be so rebellious against authority; it just didn’t happen: This was an era when every child learned submission and self-control by getting his face slapped if he dared to sass his mother. Stop and think for a minute: If the Magna Carta rebellion does not seem like that big of a deal to you, you need to remember that all authority is of God. Would you sass Him or try to force Him to grant you His prerogatives? The pope properly released King John from honoring the highly illegal and unchristian Magna Carta. As a person, King John was despicable. He was a liar who betrayed both his father when he was king, and his brother, Richard the Lion-hearted, when he was king. And John did not improve when he became king. He was a treacherous and cruel hypocrite motivated only by greed. Biblically speaking, however, none of that matters as far as his subjects were concerned – if they were Christians. [No, I don’t think they were Christians. Neither do I think the other Roman Catholics mentioned in this book were Christians – no matter how I word things when writing about them. Neither do I think the Roman Catholic Church is a true Christian organization. But this is a textbook and we are in classroom learning from history what is Biblical behavior and what is not. And not a lot of material is available about the tiny groups of real Christians – because they quietly lived submissive lives. So, let’s get back to work.] Following the Magna Carta rebellion another Englishman, Roger Bacon (1214-1294), a Franciscan monk and student of philosophy, taught at Oxford University (a popular English center for learning Greek philosophy) that the secular Reason espoused by Greek philosophy was a gift of God to be used for the betterment of mankind. (Today when Christians defend their carnal – and often ignorant – opinions with, “Well, God gave us brains and I think He expects us to use them”, they don’t realize they have merely restated Roger Bacon’s rehash of pagan philosophy in a more immature way.) Bacon was part of a group of liberal, pro-philosophy Roman Catholics that was growing in size and influence at the same time that antiphilosophy Christians like the Cathari were being systematically hunted down and exterminated. He was one of those who kept the Vatican busy administering discipline because he was always picking quarrels with conservative academics whose views differed from his. Bacon is most noted for his work helping to develop methods of scientific observation and is called the Admirable Doctor. But his influence pales in comparison with his Italian contemporary, Albertus Magnus. Saint Albertus Magnus (1200-1280) was a Dominican bishop and teacher of philosophy at the radical University of Paris. (France was popular with militant Christian Rationalists, and the University of Paris was a major Temple of Reason.) Albertus would become the Catholic patron saint of all scientists by papal decree because of all he did for philosophy. He is the only scholar of his age to be called “the Great.” Albertus, as a member of the Dominican Order whose responsibility it was to exterminate heretics who rejected the pagan Greek doctrine of the immortality of all unregenerate souls, wrote several major works defending the doctrine. Christian intellectuals of the time were grappling with the issue not so much because of the ongoing, high profile extermination of the Cathari, but because of the influence of a Spanish-Arab scholar named Averroes (1126-1198), who was a noted translator of Aristotle’s works. Although Averroes was dead, his works were becoming available in Europe and were greatly admired by – and very influential among – both Jewish and Christian scholars. A noted philosopher who exalted Reason, Averroes correctly pointed out that all arguments for the immortality of the pagan soul – whether made by pagans like the Greek philosophers or Christians like Augustine – were based on specious reasoning, and therefore the true, unbiased position of philosophy had to be that the soul was – just as unbiased scientific observation revealed it to be – mortal. His point was so obviously right, Christian scholars found themselves in the embarrassing position of having to admit not only that their great Saint Augustine had based his doctrinal conclusions on faulty Reason, but also that Christian scholars for almost eight hundred years had blindly accepted Augustine’s position as a foundational Christian doctrine. The implications were enormous.  If the Bible says the unregenerate souls of humans are not immortal – just like the souls of animals are not immortal, and previously discredited verses like Ec 3:18,19 and Mt 15:26 had been literally correct all along, the first problem for the Roman Catholic Church was its daily slaughter of the innocent and doctrinally-correct Cathari. The second problem was more far-reaching: The Catholic Church had relied on the doctrine of the immortality of pagan souls to justify a daisy chain of other doctrines: 1) Pagans are just as much children of God as Christians; 2) therefore pagans must be required to live by the Bible; 3) if they don’t they will go to hell; 4) therefore Rome must continue to conquer pagan lands in order to convert hell-bound pagans and to establish Christian government. If the Cathari were right it meant instead of being so obsessed with compassing sea and land to make one more proselyte, the Catholic Church should have spent more time and energy training up its pewsters in the way of the Bible so they could avoid the common pitfalls the Bible says are so habitual among God’s people. The Roman Catholic hierarchy reacted the same way most Christians today would react. Instead of humbly pausing to Scripturally analyze a doctrine that had been fumbled by pagan philosophers whose great Reason was so tuned into God’s truth that even He wouldn’t throw them into hell, a doctrine that had been botched – or ignored – by every great Christian mind for eight hundred years (with the possible exception of Christians like the Cathari), the Vatican became stubbornly defensive and, suddenly unable to rely on the old “common knowledge” that pagan souls have everlasting life, resorted to sophistry. If it admitted it had been wrong for so many centuries and allowed doubt to exist about the immortality of pagan souls, people might respond by having doubts about the validity and purpose of the Catholic Church itself – and even begin to doubt immortality and the existence of the spiritual realm. Using that specious, issue-dodging justification, the Vatican, knowing it didn’t know if it was right or wrong about the doctrine but figuring there was too much at stake, began looking for one of its best minds to step forward and establish the validity of the doctrine once and for all. At the same time, the Vatican decided to continue killing Cathari rather than impartially confer with them about the doctrine. The man chosen to champion the pagan/Catholic doctrine was Albertus Magnus, Dominican defender of Augustinian doctrine. As Albertus began to look into the immortality issue he found out why no one – pagan or Christian – had been able to prove the doctrine: It wasn’t in the Bible! Any “Scriptural” defense, therefore, had to be built upon verses whose interpretation depended on assumptions – assumptions now called into question. The Bible turned out to be useless as a defense because it repeatedly said human souls die in the same way Christians now believe animal souls die, and the Bible repeatedly said the unregenerate were in fact no different from animals because they both die. Therefore, if Albertus argued that verses in the Bible like Josh 11:11; Ps 89:48; Jb 12:10/Re 16:3; and Ezek 18:20 were really only talking about mortal, physical bodies – and not mortal souls as was literally written – he would make things worse because such an argument would lead to the obvious conclusion that pagans and animals both have everlasting souls – and thereby force the Vatican to start exterminating any Christians who believed the souls of unsaved beasts were mortal! And that would mean the animals in the manger were there worshipping the newborn Saviour in order to save their immortal souls from hell! Albertus was in quite a pickle. With nothing Scriptural to go on, Albertus had to do what others before him had done – ignore what the Bible actually said and use sophistry to build a case. Because he and all the other Christian scholars he consulted were unable to come up with anything definitive that wouldn’t blatantly contradict the Bible, Albertus’ first treatise was unsatisfactory, which caused him to ultimately write a series of defenses – all lame. He used the old two-step routine so familiar to debaters; he maintained that some truths in life are revealed by the Scriptures, and other truths not mentioned in Scripture are revealed by Reason. Even though the immortality of the unregenerate soul was supported by neither the Scriptures nor by Reason alone, he argued, it was supported by the two of them when used together – just as a bridge needs both pillars to support it. And then he danced back and forth from one to the other, leaving the one without having established anything but acting as if he had when he turned to the other. His attempt to verify the immortality of the unregenerate soul was his biggest failure as a philosopher and theologian. Knowing he was able to establish nothing, Albertus the Great, without being too obvious about it in his defense, retreated from both Scripture and philosophy and said the faithful could safely rely on the doctrines of their Holy Mother Church. Today’s Christians are unable to do any better than Albertus, so this huge and important topic is absent from works on Christian doctrine. In other words, just as Christians – before Averroes opened his big mouth and shouted “The emperor has no clothes!” – ignored Bible study and trusted that their sincere, godly, dead heroes of the faith were doctrinally correct, today’s preachers and pewsters are doing the same thing by blindly relying on the validity of the traditions of the elders. Today’s encyclopedias, however, with no religious axe to grind, are not afraid to openly state that the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul is not supported by either Testament of the Bible, but came to Christianity from the Greek philosophers. (Go look it up in your encyclopedia. Britannica’s Micropædia has it under “soul”; and in the Macropædia under “Christianity” find the section “Christian thought and doctrine”, and in the subsection “Christian Philosophy” read the part called “History of Christian philosophy.”) The pagan origin of the doctrine is not a mystery. I say again, it is very well known. But it is an unmentionable because it reveals that our spiritual leaders and preachers have been for many centuries ignorant and/or shallow in their understanding of the Bible, or have been hypocrites who knew better but were too weak and selfish to stand up and preach correct doctrine. As a result, all Protestant denominations that inherited the doctrine from Rome have Logically built the same doctrinal daisy chain the Roman Catholic Church did upon the Platonic/Augustinian foundation. If the souls of the unsaved do not have everlasting life, much of the evangelical emphasis of the church, which is based on saving the pagans from spending their “everlasting lives” in the lake of fire, will turn out to be wasted. And it would mean the reason the Lord issued the Great Commission (Mk 16:15) was for some reason other than the traditional belief that He wanted to keep the unsaved from going to hell when they died (Mt 10:5; 15:22-26). And it would explain the question that has plagued Christians since Augustine: How could God so callously ignore the fact that multiple millions of Gentiles (with “immortal” souls) were pouring into hell all during the Old Testament period, blatantly expose that callousness in the verses we just looked at, and not bother to issue the Great Commission until after His resurrection?! When the false doctrine of the immortality of unregenerate human-but-not-animal souls made converting the unsaved the major purpose of the church (“the main thing is soul-winning”), preachers began to place more emphasis on the importance of their pewsters’ bringing unsaved visitors to church than on the pewsters learning the Bible. And since the unsaved are not and cannot be subject to the laws of God (Ro 8:7) because God’s truth is spiritually discerned (1 Co 2:14; Jn 3:3,6), preachers found that the word of God had less effect on carnal pagans than did emotion. So evangelistic preaching lowered its aim from the head to the gut. That’s why you hear so many dramatic, heart-wrenching, and heart-warming stories from the pulpit aimed at the unsaved – emotion has an appeal the Bible cannot match! Preachers found that their born again but carnal Christian congregations also enjoyed soap opera stories more than they did Scripture, and at home their pewsters had more interest in reading novels (“Christian fiction”) than in reading God’s Book. And guess what today’s preachers discern from that telling fact: Nothing! Anyway, some denominations built upon the false doctrine of the immortality of the unregenerate soul in a different way. They correctly wondered what good it was to get everlasting life from the new birth if we all already have everlasting life. And they wondered why the Bible says we get everlasting life only from Christ if in fact even the unsaved pagans have everlasting souls. So they changed the definition of everlasting life from life without end to “living in heaven rather than living in hell.” Therefore they claim salvation no longer means a mortal person is birthed by the Spirit of God into spiritual immortality, it means the never-ending life he “already has” will be spent in heaven. Again, because they thought the Greek philosophers were right about everybody already having immortal life, these denominations redefined the word “everlasting” to mean God would never punish the iniquity of saints by changing His children’s home address from heaven to hell like He did with His beloved Lucifer. They say Lucifer’s being kicked out of God’s household means even though Lucifer was immortal and had spirit life he never had “everlasting” life because God knew this son of His was a “professor” not a “possessor.” Thus was the false doctrine the Roman Catholic Church launched four Crusades to defend used as the foundation for the false doctrine of “eternal security”. But I don’t want to go into doctrine in depth here in the historical section, so let’s press on. One of Albertus Magnus’ main agendas was to lobby for the official combining of Greek philosophy and Christianity. This would not just bring liberals and conservatives together, it would also allow philosophy to free the mind while Christianity prevented the social chaos and decadence that many scholars feared would result if Reason ever did become public property. Albertus believed religion should be kept out of all topics except itself – in accordance with the rules of philosophy. In other words, because philosophy’s Reason was believed to be a reliable road to truth, it would be a helpful addition to Christianity because it would expose superstition and error in the Bible; but because Christianity and the Bible were uncertain roads, they should not be allowed to affect the reliable road of philosophy. Because he lived at a time when the Vatican wasn’t ready to completely sell out to philosophy, Albertus just missed becoming the Third Pillar of Western Civilization. However, just as the First Pillar, Alexander the Great, learned philosophy at the feet of Aristotle, and just as the Second Pillar, Augustine, learned philosophy at the feet of the Eight-Day Wonder, Ambrose, so, too, did the Third Pillar of Western Civilization, Thomas Aquinas, learn philosophy at the feet of Albertus Magnus – and Aquinas was Albertus’ greatest contribution to civilization.

http://allchristiansarewelcome.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-dark-ages.html

#THE DARK AGES The collapse of the Roman Empire and its attendant governmental authority #economic st

[hellojulie1971]

The collapse of the Roman Empire and its attendant governmental authority, economic structure, and societal order resulted in an end to civilization in Europe. Currency was no longer minted or regulated and became worthless. The ships and carts of commerce stopped carrying food and supplies. Unchecked lawlessness put travelers and isolated families at risk. Those who dared to travel were no longer in a stream of travelers; they were alone. The demise of travel further isolated communities because without commerce and without news the outside world practically and psychologically ceased to exist. People of means were suddenly without, and for the first time were poor, hungry, helpless, and frightened. Europeans gathered into defensive clusters of tribes, villages, and towns, and several families often lived in one communal home. Because there was almost no travel, it was very rare to see a stranger, and strangers were distrusted and unwelcome. People who did travel were frightened when they saw another person because crime was so rampant. And the fear was not just of bands of outlaws. In lean times those who were cold and hungry sometimes murdered traveling strangers, cooked and ate their flesh, wore their clothes, and saved any food and goods for later use – nothing was wasted. (Because of verses like Lk 18:20 we know the murder they committed was a sin, and because of verses like Jn 6:51-58 we know the cannibalism wasn’t. Even so, cannibalism has always been repugnant – as it was to Christ’s disciples in Jn 6:59-61,66.) The isolation of communities caused names to be less important because in small communities there is no confusion as to whom you are referring when you say Peter, or Jesus, or Barjesus (son of Jesus – Ac 13:6), or Arthur, or MacArthur (son of Arthur), or Will, or Willson, or Richard, or Richardson, or Abbas, or Barabbas (son of Abbas). Often people were simply known as Blondie, Red, Redbeard, or Skinny. If there might be some confusion about whom you were speaking it was common to add specificity by saying Jesus of Nazareth, Richard the Lion-hearted, Herod the Great, Pepin the Short, Henry the Eighth, and Philip the Fair. Even the villages people lived in often had no names because without travel a name wasn’t necessary. If a man got lost in the woods it was common for him to never return: If he happened to stumble upon another settlement those people couldn’t help him because his, “My village has a burned tree at the top of a hill” meant nothing to them. And even if his village was called Philipsburg, the people of the settlement knew neither Philip nor his burg. So he spent the rest of his life there. When larger populations made a second name (or “last” name) necessary, these were often just the man’s occupation: Miller, Wheeler, Tailor, Smith, Cooper, Farmer, Shepherd, Fuller. But people were very casual about their names because ego – self – was not yet a big deal. For example, even the educated German who in the late 16th century founded a munitions dynasty variously wrote his own name as Krupp, Krupe, Kripp, and, of course, Krapp. In addition to the casual informality about names and their spellings, people in the old days were often referred to by other names (for unknown reasons) and by nicknames – all to the great consternation of historians and Bible students. Lacking understanding about oldtime names and their spellings has sometimes led ignorant Christians to assume they have found an error in the Bible when they think some name is incorrect. Widespread poverty caused function and necessity to have greater importance. Therefore, even prosperous peasants’ homes had but one room. Everyone who lived there, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters and their spouses and children, slept in and/or on the one bed (Lk 11:7), which was usually on the floor and of varying sizes and material. Privacy was neither a Biblical requirement nor a necessity. So when a man and his wife engaged in sexual activity it was variously applauded or ignored by all according to the mood. In cold and inclement weather all shared the chamber pot in the corner. During the warm months, especially when working, these European Christians often went naked (Jn 21:7; Dt 24:12,13), just as people had throughout history. Clothes, because they were hard to get, expensive to buy, and time-consuming to make, were a luxury (Dt 24:13,17) prudently reserved for winter use. Therefore when people dressed and undressed indoors in winter there was neither a perceived need nor a moral requirement for privacy curtains or dressing rooms; these people were not sinning against God. In lean years of famine many had to sell their clothes (Lk 22:36) and faced the prospect of no clothing even in winter. Bathing was a luxury and was done outside in public with no shame (2 Sa 11:2). There was no plumbing. During the warm months after a hard day of labor it was routine for the families of the community, often leading the family cow, to gather at the river or lake to drink, bathe, and relax in the cool, quiet twilight. Except when harvests were bad every meal was washed down with wine in southern Europe, and with beer in northern Europe – by adults and children. These Christians were not sinning against God. Before philosophy exalted ego/self and equality, the people in society viewed themselves the same way the old conservative, agrarian, philosophy-rejecting, democracy-hating Spartans did – as figurative members of a larger body whose duty was to further the welfare of the body. These European Christians had several bodies: The church, the family, and the community. Self and what self wanted, therefore, was always subordinated to the welfare of the church, the family, and the community. An example of this pre-Enlightened viewpoint can be found in the old cathedrals of Europe, many of which required three to four centuries to build. Even though these cathedrals are marvels of architecture and construction, nothing is known about the individuals who designed and built them because those people were not thought to have done anything extraordinary. Why? Because they were just doing their duty like everyone else in society. The man who designed the cathedral had done nothing nobler than the man who weeded the family vegetable garden or the woman who drew water from the well. There is no nobler deed than the performance of one’s duty. One of the ironies of today’s egalitarianism is that it has given various duties unequal stature: In direct violation of 1 Co 12:20-26 ditch diggers are laughed at because they are not rocket scientists. At the same time the collapse of the Roman Empire was causing chaos in Europe, the Roman Catholic Church – also known as the Western Church – was using the teachings of Augustine to maintain and strengthen its tenuous control of the western churches. Control means communication, and in those days communication required travel. The bishop of Rome (more commonly addressed in later years as “the pope”) communicated with his bishops in various European locales by sending them messages via couriers. Couriers had a difficult and dangerous job; there was no law enforcement and they had no maps. The couriers delivered more than mail; they were welcome sources of news about the outside world. By telling eager bishops what was happening in the Eastern Church in Constantinople, and what deal the pope made with the barbarians to keep them from sacking Rome again, and all the juicy tidbits of gossip, the couriers helped establish Rome as the hub of western Christianity. And when the local bishops, in turn, sent their own couriers to neighboring villages that had priests under their control, that flow of information helped the villages regard the bishop as their hub. With this fragile infrastructure the Catholic Church maintained a semblance of order, something that grew in direct proportion to papal power. As the infrastructure developed and branched out from the papacy and the bishoprics, the people in those bishoprics began to demonstrate the same kind of geographic loyalty (later called nationalism) their ancestors exhibited when the political rivalry between Rome and Constantinople caused a similar geographic polarization in Christianity. Therefore, as the papacy increased its control over Europe it also restored the societal order that had collapsed with the Roman Empire. With order came politics and the bishoprics began to gel into nations. With the nations came law and order and the return of commerce. The period of social chaos between the social order and prosperity of the Roman Empire and the later formation of nations in Europe is called the Dark Ages. Protestants generally blame the Dark Ages on the Roman Catholic Church because it reached the zenith of its power from about the 12th to the 16th centuries, power that began to fade when the Protestant Reformation caused a return of Bible-oriented Christianity. However, the Dark Ages was actually caused by the collapse of the Roman Empire, something that happened before the Catholic Church existed. When viewed from a superficial perspective it can be properly argued that the Roman Catholic Church was the savior of Europe and was the instrument that restored the order and prosperity of the Roman Empire. But when viewed from a Biblical perspective the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for something far worse than Protestants realize. She infected Christianity with philosophy and thereby caused Christians to incorrectly but fervently believe the advents of the Age of Reason and of democracy were – because they are products of the “Natural Laws” God supposedly programmed into our minds – results of the revival of Biblical Christianity caused by Protestant reform. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH The chaos in society resulted in different men and various groups vying with each other for political power. The papacy was just one of these groups. When the army of a rival faction surrounded Rome and threatened the papacy, Pope Stephen II in 754 made the long and dangerous journey to France where he consecrated and crowned Pepin the Short (father of Charlemagne) as king of the Franks. Now that Pepin had what he wanted – a throne legitimized by “Apostolic authority” – he and his army followed Pope Stephen back to Rome and drove the threatening army away. When the Vatican crowned people as kings it used an impressive “Christian” ceremony. The pope ignored both the fact that the New Testament specifically commands Christians to submit to and obey governors, and that it provides no guidelines for Christian governance of society. The New Testament limits itself to addressing administrative and disciplinary functions of the church itself. Therefore the Vatican went into the Old Testament, borrowed from the accounts of David and Solomon, and arranged coronation ceremonies that seemed official and Scriptural. Just as the Vatican acquired real estate for itself in Rome that did not fall under the jurisdiction of Italy, it acquired real estate all over Europe for churches, rectories, monasteries, schools, seminaries, etc. It quickly grew into the wealthiest, most powerful, most educated, and most corrupt institution in Europe. Eventually the life of almost every European from birth to burial was shaped and governed by Roman clergy. Most people, including the highest-ranking priests, were ignorant of the Scriptures and therefore of necessity had no alternative but to “serve” God by doing what was right and good in accordance with their carnal Reason. That Christianity survived at all is a tribute to God and His Bible; its survival certainly had nothing to do with medieval “Christianity.” While it is true that many in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church were ignorant of the Scriptures, that is not to say they were poorly educated. On the contrary, theirs were easily some of the best minds in Europe. They were mentally far, far above the masses. That, combined with their extreme wealth and power, insulated and isolated them from normal society, which resulted in their living dual lives. In public they were variously pious, aloof, arrogant, humble, and magisterial as situations warranted. In private they simply did whatever they wanted. They got drunk, they stayed up all night, they slept around the clock, they tinkered, they read, they hunted, they hosted huge parties, they murdered people, they traveled, etc. And, like most men in history with great power and authority (such as David and Solomon), they possessed huge sexual appetites that were – for the good men of history – difficult to control, and – for the bad – something to be indulged. These clerics simply did anything and everything…and they did it with impunity. The upper echelons of the Roman Catholic hierarchy were an elite group; they were above the law. They would burn common people at the stake for voicing heresies and then retire to the drawing room with a group of their peers to seriously discuss the very heresies for which they executed others. They circulated books, manuscripts, and papers among themselves that concerned philosophy, heresy, government, religion, sexual practices, the economy, trade, foreign religions, etc. They were minds, strong minds that examined, discussed, and became intrigued with a topic – only to become bored with it later. Because they had strong minds and walked on an intellectual plane, they could handle principles, concepts, and ideas, including those associated with heresies. But the common people lacked those mental abilities. If a commoner learned about a heresy he couldn’t control himself; he invariably opened his stupid mouth and spread the leaven to others like him in society where it often took root because the masses were incapable of mentally dealing with and properly analyzing principles and doctrines. Throughout most of history the 1 Co 12:20-26 view of humanity was accepted: People are not equal. They are different members of the body of society who have different abilities and different jobs. This produced mutual respect as long as each person did his duty. It was the duty of the heads, the men who ruled, to do the thinking. As philosophy took root it convinced people that all men are equal and that even the opinions of the stupid and the ignorant were to be respected. That is why the Catholic hierarchy began to fear the common masses and to control them by censoring certain material the masses couldn’t handle. And that is why Copernicus did not get into trouble for publishing his theory that the earth orbits the sun (something we still have not been able to prove in the 21st century, which would contribute to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and his Special Theory of Relativity); he got in trouble for publishing it in the vernacular so the commoners could read it. He was burned at the stake. Leonardo da Vinci also challenged existing “truths”, but he not only did not publish his works, he wrote them backwards to keep them from prying eyes. Leonardo lived to a ripe old age. Erasmus published parallel texts of the Bible, but he did it in Latin and Greek so only scholars could read them. William Tyndale, on the other hand, published the New Testament in the vernacular and was executed. Pope Gregory I (mentioned on page H6-2) in intellectual circles maintained that the three Christian virtues (faith, hope, and charity) should be combined with the four “Natural virtues” of the Greek philosophers (wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice). But pagan philosophy still had centuries to go before it was made a legitimate part of Christianity, so it wasn’t until the 14th century that the two groups were combined into the seven “cardinal virtues.” This slow and reluctant acceptance of pagan doctrines was also responsible for the late acceptance in Christian circles of “morality.” The Greeks said Nature’s god had programmed Natural Laws into Nature. Man, part of Nature, was given Reason to unlock these Natural Laws. The Natural Laws pertaining to society in general were called Moral Laws, or Morality. And when morality, the instinctive but vague knowledge of good and evil, is studied it results in rules of conduct, which are called “Ethics.” Pope Gregory I is not generally regarded as a “Rationalist” – one who uses the Reason espoused by philosophy. However, as a fan of Augustine he was certainly a forerunner of a growing movement of clerics and scholars in the Catholic Church who were called Christian Rationalists. CHRISTIAN RATIONALISTS One of the humanistic Catholic scholars who worked with and helped develop our modern value system of morality and ethics was Peter Abelard (1079-1142), a monk who’d been castrated as a penalty for his sexual escapades. A devotee of Greek philosophy, he founded the University of Paris, which would become noted for its fervent support of Reason. He taught university students and fellow monks, “Think for yourself. For I have learned something different from my Arab masters – to use Reason as a guide. You however, taken captive by authority, are merely led by a halter.” (He said “Arab masters” because the writings of Greek philosophers had largely been destroyed by Vandalism. Then when the Arabs conquered Alexandria they preserved – through their Arab translations of the Greek, much of the fundamentals of philosophy.) Notice Abelard’s statement only has seeming value when viewed with the carnal gut reaction of “self-evidence.” In other words, he was a sophist who relied on “common knowledge” for right and wrong rather than on any real and authoritative source. Abelard wrote two books that were important as building blocks for Western civilization in which he said all authority should be subject (!) to Reasoned questioning. That was a huge and very bold step for mankind – not to mention eunuchs. As a result of Abelard’s boldness he became a leading spokesman for the “New Thinkers” and was the most conspicuous scholar in Europe. His writings, including his Know Thyself, clearly showed that much of Christianity contained intellectual problems and inconsistencies when subjected to Reason. He wrote about passages in the Bible that were “obvious errors” because the very fact that they offended humanistic Reason showed the passages to be inconsistent with God’s Natural Law. Abelard’s work furthered a subtle trend growing in Christian ranks:  Pagan ways were no longer shunned and were no longer unmentionables. For example, Abelard openly advocated using both Christian values and pagan morals – as long as the two were not allowed to be confused with each other. He thought it should be taught that morals and ethics contained certain principles of Christianity, but only in those cases believed to be consistent with philosophic Reason. In this way he believed Western society could be improved in practical ways without compromising Christian doctrine. Understandably, Abelard was more popular with those scholars within the church who placed greater value on Reason than on faith in written revelation. (Many Christians would have ended the previous sentence with the word faith. But because “faith” has come to mean different things that did not come from the Bible – and is therefore not the Biblical faith that pleases God – I prefer to include words like written revelation in order to make it clear what real faith is based upon.) Intellectuals like Abelard who agreed with philosophy were a minority that conservatives derisively called “Rationalists” because they used secular humanism/Reason to point out “problems” in the Bible that offended Reason – such as miracles. Conservative scholars such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) warned that Christian Rationalism would grow and eventually become a problem. He said Rationalism was a subtle danger because any so-called “neutral” pursuit of knowledge, such as secular scholarship, Christian Rationalism, and science, is not neutral; it is actively pagan and contrary to the lordship of Christ and the glory of God. We’ll see why Bernard was correct in a few minutes. Pagan concepts like morality and ethics would continue to make slow inroads into Christianity. René Descartes (1596-1650) for example, became a popular proponent of morality by merely repeating earlier theories. Morality, he taught, is the result of conforming to the Law of Human Reason programmed into all men. Morality and ethical behavior, therefore, can be learned by man’s introspective study of himself and his proper place in Nature. Not everybody was happy with the increasing trend to consider morality as a worthy part of Christian society. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the author of Gulliver’s Travels, said, “The system of morality to be gathered from the writings of ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.” But Swift was in the minority. He and those who shared his view were considered boring and old fashioned, and were outnumbered by people like Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a German philosopher who is still considered a superstar. Kant’s 1781 work, Critique of Pure Reason, advocated the use of secular Reason. In Critique he said he was filled with “ever-increasing wonder and awe” every time he reflected on “the moral law within me.” His works – which are extremely complex – really only build on the writings of Descartes and Locke. Yes, to us today the teachings of the Big Names are anticlimactic and somewhat of a disappointment because of their childish simplicity, naïveté, sophistry, and complete lack of any reliable and authoritative foundation. But back then the fact that these ideas were radical and daring challenges to the authority structure that had existed since God made the angels and Adam made them exciting, heady stuff. One last example to show how much pagan philosophy became an accepted part of Christianity: We turn to Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the book that made the name Webster synonymous with dictionary. Before we look at some of his definitions let’s note that many verses in Scripture – such as 1 Th 5:23, He 4:12, and Mt 10:28 – show that the body (mortal body), soul (intellect), and spirit (immortal body) are different. But ignoring the Bible by making soul and spirit the same thing was becoming popular because it tended to support Augustine’s doctrine that the soul is immortal, and all men having immortality would put them in contact with the Kingdom of God, which “proved” all men – Christians and the unregenerate – really were given Reason as a way to know Truth without the Bible just like the ancient Greeks said. In other words, just as the Greeks had used Natural Law/Reason to formulate the theory of the immortality of all human souls, Christians not only did the same thing, they went further by using Reason to discredit verses like 1 Co 2:14; Ro 8:7,8; Ec 3:18,19. Let’s see what Webster – popular with Christians merely because he references Scripture in his dictionary – has to say (emphasis added): “SPIRIT: The soul of man; the intelligent, immaterial and immortal part of human beings: See SOUL.” “SOUL: The spiritual, rational, and immortal substance in man which distinguishes him from brutes; that part of man which enables him to think and reason, and which renders him a subject of moral government. The immortality of the soul is a fundamental article of the Christian system.” We find no Scripture. We find that soul and spirit are not separate entities like God said. We find that the soul cannot die like God said it could. And we find that the human soul is tuned into “moral” rules by its ability to use Reason. Why did Christians begin saying Reason differentiates men from beasts? Because they needed to defend the traditional doctrine of the immortality of the soul that they inherited from the Greeks and Saint Augustine against the Bible: The Bible says God gave animals souls and the breath of life, which made it look like there really was no difference between men and animals. And that meant, 1) animals having souls and the breath of life meant they, too, had immortal souls, or 2) all souls are mortal and man gets immortality only from the second (spirit) body of the new birth. The pagan Greek theory of Reason came to the rescue: Reason seemed like a perfect “proof” that unregenerate men and beasts were not the same like the Bible says they are, and for centuries it was accepted that man was different from beasts…and Christians “only” had to ignore a few verses of Scripture. By the time Webster wrote his dictionary Reason had become a “Christian” concept. Did Webster learn about morality and Reason from the Bible – or from philosophy? Let’s see what Webster has to say about moral: “MORAL: 1) The word moral is applicable to actions that are good or evil…and has reference to the law of God as the standard by which their character is to be determined. The word however may be applied to actions which affect only…a person’s own happiness. 3) Supported by the evidence of Reason…founded on experience… 7) In general, moral denotes something which respects the conduct of men…as social beings whose actions have a bearing on each other’s Rights and Happiness, and are therefore right or wrong. Moral sense is an innate or Natural sense of right and wrong; an instinctive perception of right and wrong…independent of…the knowledge of any positive [real] rule or law [like the Bible]. But the existence of any such moral sense is [now] very much doubted.” Notice (as we address the last part first) he does a pretty good job quoting the pagan party line before admitting that Moral Law/Natural Law was by 1828 generally known to be just another Greek myth. The problem is the non-existent Natural Law foundation of morality no longer matters! Why? Because Webster accurately shows that by 1828 morality was unquestioningly incorporated into Christianity! I say again, by 1828 no Scripture was required because the carnal self evidence of Reason was – and is – blindly accepted as Christian. Read the definition of MORAL again and carefully notice it comes right out and says Christians and pagans do not need the Bible because the Prime Mover wants mankind to utilize the [forbidden] fruit of the tree of the knowledge of [rather than discerning] good and evil. (Read that sentence again and substitute Satan for Prime Mover.) Now notice that Webster’s definitions of MORAL are actually deceitful because the average ignorant Christian will assume Webster’s use of “the law of God” has to do with the Bible when it is really a reference to the mythical Laws of Nature, which were derived by Reason and assumed to be more dependably consistent than the Bible because the Bible might be wrong but Reason and Natural Law were direct conduits to the Prime Mover itself. I applaud Webster’s integrity for including in his dictionary the fact that morality might not even exist. However, three things are true: First, in 1828 morality wasn’t the only facet of Western civilization in danger of toppling. Natural Law itself, which was the key link between pagan philosophy and Christianity, was increasingly recognized as something that never existed. That meant the foundational principles and doctrines of Western civilization and its cherished institutions, like its democratic forms of government, its laws, and modern Christianity, which were derived from Nature’s Laws, were based on a lie. Second, the Christians like Webster who participated in the Natural Law debate were in a distinct minority in Christianity. Most Christians in 1828 were no different from Dark Age Christians and 21st century Christians – incapable of understanding and dealing with the Biblical importance of words, principles, ideologies, and doctrines. Because they had not studied the Bible to shew themselves approved unto God, they tried to hide the fact that they were shameful workmen who could neither rightly divide the word nor put two intelligent sentences back-to-back in a discussion about doctrine. They tried to hide their inexcusable ignorance of Scripture by scurrying around with wide eyes and horrified tones as they babbled about Satanic New Age symbols on product labels, black helicopters, social security numbers, and all manner of pointless trivia having no meaning or relevance when viewed from the perspective of eternity – or even from just a few years later. Therefore, Christians who recognized the horrifying implications of the Natural Law hoax were without remedy because they were not only a minority among Christians, they were in a democratic country run by the majority. Third, even though Webster wrote that admission/warning in his definition of moral, take a look at his definition of ethics: “ETHICS: [The results of] the science of moral philosophy, which teaches men their duty and the reasons of it.” His definition is a fairly good one but where is the warning that, because ethics is based on morality and morality is based on Natural Law, it’s all a joke? Look at Webster’s definition of “Law of nature”: “Law of nature, is a rule of conduct arising out of the natural relations of human beings established by the Creator, and existing prior to any positive precept [such as the Bible]. Thus it is a law of nature, that one man should not injure another, and murder and fraud would [still] be crimes, independent of [even without] any prohibition from a supreme power [rules from God].” It was believed the Law of Nature was programmed into us by whatever supreme being or prime mover might be out there so we could know the truth about religion, and could know right and wrong via Reason (which incorrectly caused Ro 1:18-32 to be applied to all men – even the unregenerate). The Bible, therefore, was only true in those parts that agreed with Reason. And the parts in Scripture that depended on faith may or may not be true. The important point here is to note that Webster believed the Laws of Nature were designed by God to teach His rules to us even without the Bible! If Webster was right, I am wrong. And if Webster was right, the fact that most Christians do not know the Bible very well is perfectly OK – because we don’t need it! Was I correct when I said the laws of Western civilization are based on Natural Law and not the Bible? Well, let’s again consult Noah Webster, our Rationalist founding father and ardent supporter of George Washington: “Law of nations, the rules that regulate the mutual intercourse of nations or states. These rules depend on natural law, or the principles of justice that spring from the social state; or they are founded on customs, compacts, treaties, leagues and agreements between independent communities.” Webster correctly states that Natural Law comes from the “social state” and is the source of the laws of nations. How then did your preacher get the idea that the government of the United States of America and its laws are founded upon “Scripture” or “Biblical principles”? He got that idea because he is as careless studying history as he is studying the Bible – he honestly doesn’t know that when our founding fathers said stuff about our government and its laws being based on God’s truth, Biblical principles, Christianity, etc., they only said that because their acute ignorance/unbelief concerning the Scriptures caused them to foolishly accept the philosophy that anything that was self-evident was only self evident because the “supreme being” programmed His truth into us. The founding fathers thought they were founding a government based on truth – that meant the government was based on the principles of the Koran, or the Bible, or the teachings of Buddha, or whatever religion ended up being the true one. Since many of the founding fathers were Christians they therefore Naturally assumed that because they based the government of this nation on Natural Law they were glorifying God in accordance with whatever parts of the Bible turned out to be true. There was no conspiracy: Just like God’s people in the Old Testament often angered Him by doing what they honestly thought would be right and pleasing in His sight, the founding fathers screwed up by letting the philosophy the Bible warns us about convince them that the carnal mind was programmed by God to be a substitute for His Holy Bible. To find an example of this we need look no further than our old buddy, Noah Webster. He has already told us the Law of Nature, and its derivative – morality, and morality’s derivative – ethics, do not come from the Bible. Now carefully read his definition of moral law (as opposed to his earlier definition of moral) and do what your preacher should have done – pay attention to what he doesn’t say as well as what he does say: “Moral law, a law which prescribes to men their religious and social duties, in other words, their duties to God and to each other. The moral law is summarily contained in the decalogue or ten commandments, written by the finger of God on two tables of stone, and delivered to Moses on mount Sinai. Ex. xx.” See what I mean? He doesn’t say Moral Law comes from or is based on the Bible or the Ten Commandments. No, he turns it the other way around and says the Ten Commandments are but a brief summary of, or based on, the Moral Law. In other words Webster – like all other Christian Rationalists – believed Moral Law, or Natural Law, to be the foundation upon which God based the Ten Commandments and the Bible. Now you know why so many Christians think the U.S. Constitution is divinely inspired: Just like the Ten Commandments are God’s holy truth because they are based on the Moral Laws of Nature, anything that is also based on the Moral Laws of Nature – such as the Constitution – has a status and importance equal to that of the Ten Commandments. (To see an example showing 21st-century Americans still think the Constitution is divinely inspired, read the formal campaign statement on page D24-8 of a Christian politician while he was running for President.) Now let’s see why St. Bernard of Clairvaux was correct when he predicted Christian Rationalism’s blending of Reason with Scripture would cause problems: Once again we find our old Christian Rationalist friend, Noah Webster, is a good example. Webster said the Ten Commandments contained Moral Law. That means the Ten Commandments are not authoritative because they were written by the finger of God, but because they were based upon or in agreement with the Moral Laws of Nature that God supposedly set up. That means if God had written commandments that did not contain or were not based upon the Moral Laws of Nature, those commandments would be revealed by Reason to be violations of the Laws of Nature, which would make them contrary to the truths programmed into Nature and Reason by the true supreme being.  And that would mean the god who wrote the ten commandments with his own finger was a fake who should have subordinated himself to the rules established by the true God revealed by Reason. Rationalists would use this type of “Webster Reason” to discredit Jesus Christ because His miracles violated the true god’s Natural Laws. What the philosophy of the Christian Rationalists also meant was any laws created by man that were revealed by Reason to be self-evident, were actually in accordance with Nature’s true God and therefore should become international laws that were binding for all men. But that’s not all. The fact that Nature’s God programmed human Reason to reveal His universal and eternal Natural Laws meant all men really were God’s children, really did all have immortal souls, and really should have governments over them ruling in accordance with the Natural truths He established. Reason could now be used to subdue and unite the world – while thinking we were fulfilling God’s commission to Adam to subdue the world! In summation: The acceptance of Reason as part of Christianity by “Christian Rationalists” like Noah Webster took the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and made it good! Because this topic is so important I want you to now – with Webster’s definitions in mind – reread the first two paragraphs under “The Kingdom Divided” on page H1-1. You need to understand the fact that over the centuries Christians changed the definition of carnality by making it deal primarily with sexual lust, and they used the mythical idea that the “Prime Mover” programmed its “Laws of Nature” and “Reason” into us so we could logically base right and wrong in our lives upon self-evidence. By so doing, our forefathers made the true and evil meaning of carnality actually become a good and necessary part of modern Christianity. It is only because we no longer know what carnality is that we are able to view carnal fruit like Freedom, Independence, and Democracy as good. Let’s continue to follow history and see how clairvoyant St. Bernard of Clairvaux was when he said Rationalism would paganize Christianity. IDEOLOGICAL WARFARE The Roman Catholic Church had grown so large and powerful it could now use warfare to promote its doctrines, spread its influence, and defend itself from any threat. Therefore in 1095 the Vatican launched the holy wars known as Crusades, or as the Muslims call them, Jihads, which would continue for two bloody centuries. Obviously, if the Vatican could draw upon the resources of European nations for such large armies, those nations were once again established, secure, orderly, and wealthy enough to support commerce. The Crusades also revived an interest in philosophical Reason. Therefore the Crusades effectively mark the end of the Dark Ages portion of the Middle Ages. The terms Dark Ages and Middle Ages are used by historians to mark the low tide of Reason: The classical age of the pagan Greeks and Romans was “good” because it was an age of Reason. And the modern age of Enlightened Western civilization is “good” because it is another age of Reason. But in the middle of those two ages there was a “bad” period when Christians rejected Reason – called the Middle Ages (400-1300 A.D.). The more specific term, Dark Ages, refers to the first part of the Middle Ages (400-1000) before the Crusades rekindled interest in the Reason of the Greek philosophers. Again, the Middle Ages are the years between the Hellenized civilization of the Roman Empire and the Hellenized civilization of Europe. European commerce with foreign nations had already resumed by the time of the Crusades, but the Crusades stimulated international trade because when common soldiers returned to their homes with foreign goods their friends and neighbors developed an appetite for those goods. As commerce increased, so too did academic intercourse. Western scholars were able to obtain more Arabic – and to a lesser extent Hebrew – translations of Greek philosophical works. These turned out to be wonderful sources of pure philosophic leaven, and Western scholars realized most of the traditional sources of philosophic thought that they’d studied for centuries had been edited and diluted by old-fashioned Christian scholars who, offended by and suspicious of pagan philosophy, removed the parts they thought were too radical and dangerous. Today it is difficult to appreciate just how radical and offensive philosophy was. After all, in just a few pages we have easily covered material it took European Christians centuries to digest. There are two reasons philosophy took so long to work its way into the fabric of the lives of Western Christians: First, philosophy truly was radical to people in general and Christians in particular who had, since time began, lived under authority. People simply were not supposed to think or act on their own unless they were an authority and had that prerogative. And even Christian authorities who had no earthly authority over them – like King David – were still required to check with God before doing anything to ensure they didn’t offend Him. Christians simply understood how arrogantly evil it was to do something without proper authority, to step out of line, to leave your place in society, to be a foot that acted without consulting the head. Second, philosophy remained an academic pursuit within the exclusive and carefully protected domain of scholars…until it began to be passed on to the unthinking masses – most notably and dramatically by Martin Luther. Scholars were careful with Reason because they had the mental capacity to realize how truly revolutionary it was to the fundamental structure of society. Lacking that mental ability to deal with concepts and principles, the masses would respond to Reason by “knowing” on a gut level it was right and good because it “felt” so Naturally self-evident. Yes, Christian scholars were titillated by philosophy and enjoyed flirting with and occasionally being seduced by its charms. But they knew it was very dangerous. That is why people like Ambrose and Augustine, even while subtly using philosophy in their works, were careful to publicly condemn it. Other Christian Rationalists, afraid to go directly to pagan philosophy to justify their Reason, cloaked their works in sheep’s clothing by quoting, drawing on, and building upon the leavened works of “Saint Augustine”, “the church fathers”, “early Christian thinkers”, etc. The Vatican used more than the Crusades to fight its ideological warfare. It created the Office of the Inquisition, an office administered by Dominican friars, to deal with heresy and heretics. A Spaniard, Dominic Guzman, started the Dominican order of friars. He is famous among Roman Catholics because when the Virgin Mary invented the rosary, she gave the first one she made to him. Just how many she made is unknown but it is known she kept at least one for herself because the Catholic teaching says when Mary showed up seven centuries later and revealed herself to three small peasant children in Fatima, Portugal, she was going from bead to bead praying “Hail Marys” to herself. Why she didn’t hand out more rosaries on this occasion is unknown. When she returned to heaven she kept the rosary she’d been using, presumably to keep track of her prayers to herself so she could continue worshipping herself by asking herself to pray for herself – a sinner – now and at the hour of her death! If Catholic doctrine is taken seriously by any Catholics they must wonder, when their priest tells them to “say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys” as penance for their sins, if Mary is still alive to hear them or if she is dead and busily answering her own prayers to herself to pray for herself when she died. (When I poke fun at the idiocies of other “faiths” I am following Elijah’s example in 1 Ki 18:27.) The Dominican Order was originally established in accordance with St. Augustine’s teachings, but when he became a scholastic and doctrinal embarrassment the order was reorganized in accordance with the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. The order was established to take care of heretics in general – and the Cathari in particular. In the early 11th century a large group of Christians who were not Roman Catholics and who were openly opposed to the doctrines of the Western Church appeared on the Vatican’s Most Wanted list. These Christians called themselves Cathari, which means “the pure.” They lived in southern France and in pockets in the mountainous regions of northern Italy. The Vatican controlled most of Europe, including northern France. But southern France, because it was largely populated by Cathari, was not under the political or religious control of Rome. The Vatican wanted to control all of Europe, and the Cathari were in the way. Because there was a large population of Cathari in Albi, France, the Cathari are often called Albigenses. The Cathari believed the Catholic Church was the Whore of Revelation 17. They rejected Catholic doctrine and all of what Rome called “sacraments.” They preached only the Bible, believing the church should not be part of the world and should not base its doctrines upon the theories of the unregenerate. Therefore they rejected as unscriptural Aristotle’s teaching that “Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul” so all men can instinctively know the Laws God programmed into Nature (page H5-3), and they rejected the Catholic Church’s acceptance of the pagan theory that the souls of the unregenerate have everlasting life. That pagan foundation also resulted in other Roman Catholic “Natural Law doctrines” such as, “At the bar of God’s justice, a man will not be judged by anything but his own conscience.” The Cathari believed immortality was available to the souls of men only through the Biblical new birth, and that God’s truth is available only through His word. They believed the Natural, carnal, physical old man is instinctively evil and Naturally opposed to God. This Natural human evil manifested itself in man’s tendency to be independent of God, which is rebellion against His Headship. This meant all philosophy was evil rebellion, and a monk in a monastery contemplating Self in order to learn about God was wasting both his time and the offerings of faithful Catholics. It is hard to be definite about the doctrines of the Cathari because so little of what they believed has survived. They are almost universally labeled as heretics by secular and religious historians for four reasons: First, what we know of their beliefs about the nature of good (walking in the Spirit) and evil (walking in the flesh) is from sketchy and vague information that can easily be misinterpreted as Dualism, which is itself vague and ill-defined. Second, modernists love Natural Reason and dislike those who don’t. Third, since most of Europe was Roman Catholic, Catholicism is often thought of as the standard by which Christianity is judged: all others are “heretics.” Fourth, little is known about low-profile Christian groups like the Cathari, the Paulicians, the Bogomils, and the Wends or Sorbs (who were, interestingly enough, of Slavic and Saxon origin: see pages D24-1 and D27-12). These groups fellowshipped with each other and rejected the authority and orthodoxy of the powerful Church of Rome. When the Catholic Inquisition exterminated them it even burned their books and literature. Nothing has survived. Therefore, the same enemies who massacred them wrote all of the “history” about them, and the information must be viewed as anti-Cathari propaganda intended to make the extreme and shocking measures taken to kill them appear justified. (For documentation of the atrocities committed see Fox’s Book of Christian Martyrs and van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror.) In fact, because the Cathari and the other groups were so numerous and occupied such a large area across southern Europe, and because their beliefs were considered to be so threatening to Catholic doctrine, four large-scale military Crusades were launched against them – just like the ones sent to the Holy Land, and with the same material and spiritual incentives to do a thorough job. Millions were slaughtered during this Christian holocaust. By 1200 the surviving Cathari were so few in number the mop-up work was left to the Inquisition. By 1400 they were completely exterminated. Secular history always stresses the economic importance of the Crusades because they increased trade between east and west. And secular history views the military results of the Crusades to be inconsequential because the permanent acquisition of dominion over the Holy Land failed. But the doctrinal effects of the Crusades on Christianity were lasting and had two great consequences: First, the Biblical teaching of the mortality of the unregenerate soul was exterminated along with the Cathari; and second, all resistance of any consequence to the universal spread of Romish Rational Christianity was killed. Since then Natural Reason has become a part of Christian life, and the immortality of the pagan soul has never been seriously questioned. When Dante wrote The Divine Comedy around 1315, the Crusades against the Cathari, together with the Inquisition’s teaching that anyone who denied the immortality of pagan souls was a heretic, were well known to European society. Dante agreed with the forerunner of Rationalist Christians, Justin (page H5-6), about the fate of certain pagans. It may be that Dante was also influenced by the uproar over the Cathari and how crucial the Roman Church said the immortality of pagan souls was, because in Divine Comedy Dante had God refuse to put the pagan philosophers who originated the theory of the immortality of the unregenerate soul in hell – He rewarded them by putting them in Limbo instead! But those people who did not adopt the pagan doctrine were assigned to the deepest parts of hell. By the time the Crusades began, philosophy was widely accepted among scholars and was beginning to infect society as people started to think and act on their own – albeit in relatively minor displays of rebellion. Marriage is a good example. Originally, marriage was not a “sacrament” because marriage was not complicated – a man gave his daughter to another man to be his wife. A supper or other celebration was held to announce the union so no one would think the woman was sinning when she slept with her husband, and so all would know she now had the authority to act in her husband’s name. But over the years the Catholic Church assumed more and more control over various aspects of life. Rome ignored what the Bible said and declared marriage to be not only a “sacrament” by which the married received “sanctifying grace”, but also, since the Western Church was God’s agent and dispenser of His sanctifying grace on earth, a Roman Catholic priest had to be at the wedding or it didn’t count. Oh, the families could still announce and celebrate the union at a marriage supper if they wanted, but the Church had to be  involved. And that had been the way Catholics performed weddings for centuries – with a priest. But now some Catholics were beginning to return to the original way of marrying – without a priest, and then have the marriage recorded by a village clerk to make it a matter of public record. The Vatican responded by telling people any alternatives to church weddings, such as a marriage supper or the use of a justice of the peace to certify that a wedding had taken place, were not the sacrament of matrimony, did not convey sanctifying grace, and were heresy. When people continued to ignore the Vatican and use private ceremonies, the Office of the Inquisition was instructed to add non-church weddings to its list of heresies. The Inquisition did almost as thorough a job dealing with marriage as it did with the immortality of the soul issue because today many people – even Protestants – think the only valid union is one that is presided over by a preacher. And that is how church weddings and the immortality of the pagan soul became traditional doctrines in Christianity. ALBERTUS MAGNUS At the same time the Vatican was using the Inquisition to control the pewsters, it had to contend with increasing division in the Catholic hierarchy. Liberals wanted more Reason in Christianity and conservatives wanted less. There did not seem to be any easy solution and as a result Vatican policy on the matter was erratic. The problem facing the Vatican was real. On its face this was just another academic squabble among the intellectual elite. But underneath was a nagging fear shared by conservatives and many liberals: What would happen to society and to the Church if the mindless masses had their Reason unleashed? And then a shocking incident in England seemed to indicate their fears about liberating the masses were well founded, and that the order of the whole world might be turned upside down. In 1215 English barons, unhappy with King John, forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which would eventually become one of the “sacred documents” in democratic history. This document gave them “rights” and took away the king’s prerogative to arbitrarily put people in jail. (This incident would, several hundred years later, be interpreted by liberal antiquarians as an ancient Natural Law “proof” that kings are supposed to be subject to the people and to laws made by the people.) The pope was shocked that subjects could be so rebellious against authority; it just didn’t happen: This was an era when every child learned submission and self-control by getting his face slapped if he dared to sass his mother. Stop and think for a minute: If the Magna Carta rebellion does not seem like that big of a deal to you, you need to remember that all authority is of God. Would you sass Him or try to force Him to grant you His prerogatives? The pope properly released King John from honoring the highly illegal and unchristian Magna Carta. As a person, King John was despicable. He was a liar who betrayed both his father when he was king, and his brother, Richard the Lion-hearted, when he was king. And John did not improve when he became king. He was a treacherous and cruel hypocrite motivated only by greed. Biblically speaking, however, none of that matters as far as his subjects were concerned – if they were Christians. [No, I don’t think they were Christians. Neither do I think the other Roman Catholics mentioned in this book were Christians – no matter how I word things when writing about them. Neither do I think the Roman Catholic Church is a true Christian organization. But this is a textbook and we are in classroom learning from history what is Biblical behavior and what is not. And not a lot of material is available about the tiny groups of real Christians – because they quietly lived submissive lives. So, let’s get back to work.] Following the Magna Carta rebellion another Englishman, Roger Bacon (1214-1294), a Franciscan monk and student of philosophy, taught at Oxford University (a popular English center for learning Greek philosophy) that the secular Reason espoused by Greek philosophy was a gift of God to be used for the betterment of mankind. (Today when Christians defend their carnal – and often ignorant – opinions with, “Well, God gave us brains and I think He expects us to use them”, they don’t realize they have merely restated Roger Bacon’s rehash of pagan philosophy in a more immature way.) Bacon was part of a group of liberal, pro-philosophy Roman Catholics that was growing in size and influence at the same time that antiphilosophy Christians like the Cathari were being systematically hunted down and exterminated. He was one of those who kept the Vatican busy administering discipline because he was always picking quarrels with conservative academics whose views differed from his. Bacon is most noted for his work helping to develop methods of scientific observation and is called the Admirable Doctor. But his influence pales in comparison with his Italian contemporary, Albertus Magnus. Saint Albertus Magnus (1200-1280) was a Dominican bishop and teacher of philosophy at the radical University of Paris. (France was popular with militant Christian Rationalists, and the University of Paris was a major Temple of Reason.) Albertus would become the Catholic patron saint of all scientists by papal decree because of all he did for philosophy. He is the only scholar of his age to be called “the Great.” Albertus, as a member of the Dominican Order whose responsibility it was to exterminate heretics who rejected the pagan Greek doctrine of the immortality of all unregenerate souls, wrote several major works defending the doctrine. Christian intellectuals of the time were grappling with the issue not so much because of the ongoing, high profile extermination of the Cathari, but because of the influence of a Spanish-Arab scholar named Averroes (1126-1198), who was a noted translator of Aristotle’s works. Although Averroes was dead, his works were becoming available in Europe and were greatly admired by – and very influential among – both Jewish and Christian scholars. A noted philosopher who exalted Reason, Averroes correctly pointed out that all arguments for the immortality of the pagan soul – whether made by pagans like the Greek philosophers or Christians like Augustine – were based on specious reasoning, and therefore the true, unbiased position of philosophy had to be that the soul was – just as unbiased scientific observation revealed it to be – mortal. His point was so obviously right, Christian scholars found themselves in the embarrassing position of having to admit not only that their great Saint Augustine had based his doctrinal conclusions on faulty Reason, but also that Christian scholars for almost eight hundred years had blindly accepted Augustine’s position as a foundational Christian doctrine. The implications were enormous.  If the Bible says the unregenerate souls of humans are not immortal – just like the souls of animals are not immortal, and previously discredited verses like Ec 3:18,19 and Mt 15:26 had been literally correct all along, the first problem for the Roman Catholic Church was its daily slaughter of the innocent and doctrinally-correct Cathari. The second problem was more far-reaching: The Catholic Church had relied on the doctrine of the immortality of pagan souls to justify a daisy chain of other doctrines: 1) Pagans are just as much children of God as Christians; 2) therefore pagans must be required to live by the Bible; 3) if they don’t they will go to hell; 4) therefore Rome must continue to conquer pagan lands in order to convert hell-bound pagans and to establish Christian government. If the Cathari were right it meant instead of being so obsessed with compassing sea and land to make one more proselyte, the Catholic Church should have spent more time and energy training up its pewsters in the way of the Bible so they could avoid the common pitfalls the Bible says are so habitual among God’s people. The Roman Catholic hierarchy reacted the same way most Christians today would react. Instead of humbly pausing to Scripturally analyze a doctrine that had been fumbled by pagan philosophers whose great Reason was so tuned into God’s truth that even He wouldn’t throw them into hell, a doctrine that had been botched – or ignored – by every great Christian mind for eight hundred years (with the possible exception of Christians like the Cathari), the Vatican became stubbornly defensive and, suddenly unable to rely on the old “common knowledge” that pagan souls have everlasting life, resorted to sophistry. If it admitted it had been wrong for so many centuries and allowed doubt to exist about the immortality of pagan souls, people might respond by having doubts about the validity and purpose of the Catholic Church itself – and even begin to doubt immortality and the existence of the spiritual realm. Using that specious, issue-dodging justification, the Vatican, knowing it didn’t know if it was right or wrong about the doctrine but figuring there was too much at stake, began looking for one of its best minds to step forward and establish the validity of the doctrine once and for all. At the same time, the Vatican decided to continue killing Cathari rather than impartially confer with them about the doctrine. The man chosen to champion the pagan/Catholic doctrine was Albertus Magnus, Dominican defender of Augustinian doctrine. As Albertus began to look into the immortality issue he found out why no one – pagan or Christian – had been able to prove the doctrine: It wasn’t in the Bible! Any “Scriptural” defense, therefore, had to be built upon verses whose interpretation depended on assumptions – assumptions now called into question. The Bible turned out to be useless as a defense because it repeatedly said human souls die in the same way Christians now believe animal souls die, and the Bible repeatedly said the unregenerate were in fact no different from animals because they both die. Therefore, if Albertus argued that verses in the Bible like Josh 11:11; Ps 89:48; Jb 12:10/Re 16:3; and Ezek 18:20 were really only talking about mortal, physical bodies – and not mortal souls as was literally written – he would make things worse because such an argument would lead to the obvious conclusion that pagans and animals both have everlasting souls – and thereby force the Vatican to start exterminating any Christians who believed the souls of unsaved beasts were mortal! And that would mean the animals in the manger were there worshipping the newborn Saviour in order to save their immortal souls from hell! Albertus was in quite a pickle. With nothing Scriptural to go on, Albertus had to do what others before him had done – ignore what the Bible actually said and use sophistry to build a case. Because he and all the other Christian scholars he consulted were unable to come up with anything definitive that wouldn’t blatantly contradict the Bible, Albertus’ first treatise was unsatisfactory, which caused him to ultimately write a series of defenses – all lame. He used the old two-step routine so familiar to debaters; he maintained that some truths in life are revealed by the Scriptures, and other truths not mentioned in Scripture are revealed by Reason. Even though the immortality of the unregenerate soul was supported by neither the Scriptures nor by Reason alone, he argued, it was supported by the two of them when used together – just as a bridge needs both pillars to support it. And then he danced back and forth from one to the other, leaving the one without having established anything but acting as if he had when he turned to the other. His attempt to verify the immortality of the unregenerate soul was his biggest failure as a philosopher and theologian. Knowing he was able to establish nothing, Albertus the Great, without being too obvious about it in his defense, retreated from both Scripture and philosophy and said the faithful could safely rely on the doctrines of their Holy Mother Church. Today’s Christians are unable to do any better than Albertus, so this huge and important topic is absent from works on Christian doctrine. In other words, just as Christians – before Averroes opened his big mouth and shouted “The emperor has no clothes!” – ignored Bible study and trusted that their sincere, godly, dead heroes of the faith were doctrinally correct, today’s preachers and pewsters are doing the same thing by blindly relying on the validity of the traditions of the elders. Today’s encyclopedias, however, with no religious axe to grind, are not afraid to openly state that the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul is not supported by either Testament of the Bible, but came to Christianity from the Greek philosophers. (Go look it up in your encyclopedia. Britannica’s Micropædia has it under “soul”; and in the Macropædia under “Christianity” find the section “Christian thought and doctrine”, and in the subsection “Christian Philosophy” read the part called “History of Christian philosophy.”) The pagan origin of the doctrine is not a mystery. I say again, it is very well known. But it is an unmentionable because it reveals that our spiritual leaders and preachers have been for many centuries ignorant and/or shallow in their understanding of the Bible, or have been hypocrites who knew better but were too weak and selfish to stand up and preach correct doctrine. As a result, all Protestant denominations that inherited the doctrine from Rome have Logically built the same doctrinal daisy chain the Roman Catholic Church did upon the Platonic/Augustinian foundation. If the souls of the unsaved do not have everlasting life, much of the evangelical emphasis of the church, which is based on saving the pagans from spending their “everlasting lives” in the lake of fire, will turn out to be wasted. And it would mean the reason the Lord issued the Great Commission (Mk 16:15) was for some reason other than the traditional belief that He wanted to keep the unsaved from going to hell when they died (Mt 10:5; 15:22-26). And it would explain the question that has plagued Christians since Augustine: How could God so callously ignore the fact that multiple millions of Gentiles (with “immortal” souls) were pouring into hell all during the Old Testament period, blatantly expose that callousness in the verses we just looked at, and not bother to issue the Great Commission until after His resurrection?! When the false doctrine of the immortality of unregenerate human-but-not-animal souls made converting the unsaved the major purpose of the church (“the main thing is soul-winning”), preachers began to place more emphasis on the importance of their pewsters’ bringing unsaved visitors to church than on the pewsters learning the Bible. And since the unsaved are not and cannot be subject to the laws of God (Ro 8:7) because God’s truth is spiritually discerned (1 Co 2:14; Jn 3:3,6), preachers found that the word of God had less effect on carnal pagans than did emotion. So evangelistic preaching lowered its aim from the head to the gut. That’s why you hear so many dramatic, heart-wrenching, and heart-warming stories from the pulpit aimed at the unsaved – emotion has an appeal the Bible cannot match! Preachers found that their born again but carnal Christian congregations also enjoyed soap opera stories more than they did Scripture, and at home their pewsters had more interest in reading novels (“Christian fiction”) than in reading God’s Book. And guess what today’s preachers discern from that telling fact: Nothing! Anyway, some denominations built upon the false doctrine of the immortality of the unregenerate soul in a different way. They correctly wondered what good it was to get everlasting life from the new birth if we all already have everlasting life. And they wondered why the Bible says we get everlasting life only from Christ if in fact even the unsaved pagans have everlasting souls. So they changed the definition of everlasting life from life without end to “living in heaven rather than living in hell.” Therefore they claim salvation no longer means a mortal person is birthed by the Spirit of God into spiritual immortality, it means the never-ending life he “already has” will be spent in heaven. Again, because they thought the Greek philosophers were right about everybody already having immortal life, these denominations redefined the word “everlasting” to mean God would never punish the iniquity of saints by changing His children’s home address from heaven to hell like He did with His beloved Lucifer. They say Lucifer’s being kicked out of God’s household means even though Lucifer was immortal and had spirit life he never had “everlasting” life because God knew this son of His was a “professor” not a “possessor.” Thus was the false doctrine the Roman Catholic Church launched four Crusades to defend used as the foundation for the false doctrine of “eternal security”. But I don’t want to go into doctrine in depth here in the historical section, so let’s press on. One of Albertus Magnus’ main agendas was to lobby for the official combining of Greek philosophy and Christianity. This would not just bring liberals and conservatives together, it would also allow philosophy to free the mind while Christianity prevented the social chaos and decadence that many scholars feared would result if Reason ever did become public property. Albertus believed religion should be kept out of all topics except itself – in accordance with the rules of philosophy. In other words, because philosophy’s Reason was believed to be a reliable road to truth, it would be a helpful addition to Christianity because it would expose superstition and error in the Bible; but because Christianity and the Bible were uncertain roads, they should not be allowed to affect the reliable road of philosophy. Because he lived at a time when the Vatican wasn’t ready to completely sell out to philosophy, Albertus just missed becoming the Third Pillar of Western Civilization. However, just as the First Pillar, Alexander the Great, learned philosophy at the feet of Aristotle, and just as the Second Pillar, Augustine, learned philosophy at the feet of the Eight-Day Wonder, Ambrose, so, too, did the Third Pillar of Western Civilization, Thomas Aquinas, learn philosophy at the feet of Albertus Magnus – and Aquinas was Albertus’ greatest contribution to civilization.

http://ifttt.com/images/no_image_card.png

#THE DARK AGES http://ifttt.com/images/no_image_card.png The collapse of the Roman Empire and its att