Theme: Institution

THE CHURCH WAS PROFOUNDLY CORRUPT – AS ARE ALL GOVERNING INSTITUTIONS, BUT THE THINKERS WERE LARGELY RIGHT – AT LEAST METAPHORICALLY

The church, as vastly corrupt as it was, on a scale we cannot imagine today, where the priesthood was often illiterate and just ‘made it up’, did produce an attempt to marry the aristocratic philosophy of europeans and their conquest and domestication of man and nature, with the underclass religion of the Semites, and their presumption of human evil, and need for authoritarian regulation if they were to integrate into the modernity that the greco-roman civilization had brought about.

So the germanized christianity that resulted in Europe was a combination of platonic ‘elite’ authority and fictionalism (pretense of knowledge) in his idealism (forms), and semitic authoritarian

While Aristotle and his peers sought to domesticate animal man (the underclasses) into the aristocratic tradition of responsibility and agency thus preserving the distributed dictatorship of equals, plato, like the the semites, sought to rule over the peasantry in the presumption that they would remain but domesticated animals (women and children) and never evolve into men (aristocracy) and responsibility.

Thus we found Augustine and eventually Aquinas who tried to synthesize the semitic, platonic, and aristotelian-epicurean-stoic systems of thought eventually outputting the natural law, which, of course, varies very little from the traditional law of europeans, the common law of rome, germania, and eventually the common law of england, and finally the natural law of Blackstone and the american constitution.

The Protestants
The protestants however, in an effort to escape the corruption of the church, and the corruption fo the alliance between church and state, adopted a textual fundamentalism – theological anarchism so to speak.

The result was the anglo preservation of natural law, common law, and the developoment of the modern rule of law state.

The phrase “Sola Scriptura” is a Latin term that means “by Scripture alone.” It is one of the five “solas” (Latin for “alone”) that emerged during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

The five solas are:
1. Sola Scriptura (by Scripture alone)
2. Sola Fide (by faith alone)
3. Sola Gratia (by grace alone)
4. Solus Christus (Christ alone)
5. Soli Deo Gloria (glory to God alone)

Sola Scriptura is a theological doctrine that holds that the Bible is the supreme authority in all matters of doctrine and practice. It asserts that the Bible, as the inspired Word of God, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and that it alone is sufficient for understanding God’s will and for living a Christian life.

This doctrine emphasizes that the Bible contains all knowledge necessary for salvation and holiness, and that it is the final authority for the church. It rejects the idea that sacred tradition, religious institutions, or individual leaders have authority equal to or above that of the Bible.

Sola Scriptura was a central tenet of the Protestant Reformation, as reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin sought to challenge the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and its reliance on tradition and papal authority. They argued that the Bible, not the church, was the ultimate authority for Christians.

While Sola Scriptura is a foundational belief in many Protestant denominations, it is not accepted by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, which hold that the Bible must be interpreted within the context of sacred tradition and the teachings of the church.

It’s the reason we have the extreme problem of American fundamentalism in evangelical protestantism but not in catholicism.

Unfortunately there was on one like Augustine or Aquinas in the 19th or 20th century to restore the church to its unification of European aristocratic and semitic underclass education and training in the christian morals and ethics, by claiming the church despite it’s corruption, supernaturalism, and errors was correct in uniting christian equality forgiveness and charity with European aristocracy truth, duty, and natural law.

ME MYSELF AND I
As for myself, while I was raised as a catholic by my mother with a protestant father and the dominance of anglo New England tradition, I find myself functionally a Tory and most closely aligned with the Church of England.
Why? Because the CofE does not care what you believe as an adult. They only care that they succeeded in indoctrinating you into Christian morals and ethics.

And that is all they SHOULD care about. Everything else is politics.

And fundamentalism, unless you are mentally incapable of aduthood is but infantilization that is harmful to all.