Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Protestantism III


Protestantism III

The Age of the Enlightenment came at the hegemony of rationalism. The personalities of this age are described as one of the greatest exchange of ideas in the history of philosophy. The budding of scholars who tried to penetrate every possible question in reality had every mind of Europe gripped with confusion and in flux. The continental Europe whose exchange of ideas have been a singular source of its greatness and weakness created a traffic of development and expansion of theories, hypotheses, and exponents. The lasting effect of this will be felt until now, the Postmodern world.

The Catholic Church at the time found herself defensive against the ideas of the era. The Church had been attacked from within and without, even when some of these greatest minds had been Catholics or educated in Catholic schools themselves. Yet, the Church had to encounter, and, hence, She has to respond by turning inward and find the essence that She has been born out. France had not been kind to her. After the fall of Bastille, the Revolutionary forces who toppled the monarchy the graphic representation of it was by beheading the last Bourbon monarch, Louise XVI, usurped the government and became so hostile to the Church. The Catholic religion for the first time in France had been stripped off of Her patrimony that had helped the French populace in its advancement both in the material and spiritual benefits.

However, the encounter of the Church with the Kantian’s Copernican revolutionary and critical philosophy, empiricism that fell after skepticism from rationalism, the idealist thought that followed along in its wake, and the nationalist sentiments hovering over the whole of Europe made the Church conscious of Herself as ever. In one sense, the Church was made stronger in Her identity by the meeting of these solvent ideas. If She had been shaken with rationalism, which She helped foster, She, nonetheless, found the flowering of music in that age. The great masters of the day from Hadyn to Beethoven, and then to Mozart wrote voluminous musical masterpieces that would define the zenith of musical history in after years.

Here is the inverse relation of the beauty of reason and the beauty of music particularly in this time. Though reason which the Church did not expunge from Her apprehension of truth had been used through those years as a test against Her during the corrosive years of the Enlightenment, She still found the another way of magnificent presentation of truth in the form of melody and musical harmony. If the world becomes hostile through philosophy, then through music it can. This is the beauty of the Church. She does not express Christ only to certain modes of presentation but exhaust every means to offer it either to let it be discovered or make it as a constant sign for the world to hear and see.

The Age of the Enlightenment had been spurred in part by the coming of Protestantism. The view that disbelieving the perennial teachings of the Church could become legitimated by at least a credible person of the hour whose credentials at the very least could be the primary source of its validity. The outcry of Luther paralleled that of the fermenting ideas of the Renaissance and the growing sentiments of Europe toward its identity through national lines had given fertile grounds for pure Rationalism, whose primary characteristic was contemptuous toward religion especially Christianity, to fallout in the 18th century. Protestantism had become the vehicle of some of these ideas to prosper, and in the end, it too became its victim.

This is one of the reasons why Protestantism can never be a valid religion. The validity of this religion lies in its claim to purify the Church from the filth of its doctrine, discipline, worship, devotion, and life. And, because of that, they proposed sola scriptura and sola fidei as the fundamental criteria to which all things in faith had to be measured. The effect of this is 40,000 christian denominations in the world today and counting. The unity that was always at thoughts of Paul in his admonition to the different Churches from Rome to Philippi had been rendered impossible in human terms. Notwithstanding is the 1054 schism of the Eastern Churches we now called Orthodoxy. Thus, to each and every christian in today’s world, one has to feel the gravity spiritually of Christianity’s disunited fact. If certainly Protestantism can offer to the world Christ whose teaching is one and the same, then where is it? Its legacy is a total wreck and failure due to its natural predication: confusion.

Luther’s revolt against Rome could not be a cogent proposition for a renewed Christianity. Only by perfecting the Church inside can it be a valid recourse. The principles governing the Church are ancient and foundational for She drew it not from Her own accord but from Christ, the one essence with the Father and whose being is the visible truth that became man and whose teachings the Church has always protected and whose God-ness She has always proclaimed to the world. The founder did not promise the Church to be perfect in Her members. Albeit, He is inviting them to perfect themselves without cease in the world that tend to draw them against Him their master.

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Protestantism II


Protestantism II

Since 1517 of the pegging of the 95 theses of Martin Luther on the door of the Cathedral of Wittenberg, the western Christendom has been split into sects and denominations that up until now the evidence is quite seen vividly. One primary reason of Luther’s battlecry was on the reform of the Christian church as he saw fit. However, the reformers themselves had been divisive enough to cause in themselves differences in doctrine and discipline. The mayhem caused by the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany, by the rise of Calvinism in Geneva, and later, the coming into being of the Church of England brought about by Henry VIII’s quarrel with Pope Leo X, the succeeding founding of Anabaptism, and many others corollary to the initial dissent had led to more divisions, which has become the primary characteristic of Protestantism.

This is where arguments are brought to the fore: whence the rise protestantism which seeks to purify the Church has become itself the source of weakness within the religion professed by the reformers. It seems to me that Protestantism has defeated itself from the very beginning by its very nature, which is in itself instrinsically indefensible. The doctrines of sola fide and sola scriptura now becomes a havoc for the many who seek to interpret it on the appeal of subjectivity, as based on a said impulse of the Holy Spirit. The mere fact that what defines Protestants of today is already a great question to be posed against them when, indeed, what they protested about has been in existence since the time of the Apostles.

In my opinion, the Protestant reformers have failed by their temperament. Their attitude towards Rome has clouded their objectivity to root out what have been the non-essentials in the discipline of the Church. They had questioned the very existence of papacy when in fact, the office has been there even during the time of St. Ignatius of Antioch, a bishop under the tutelage of St. John, when he perfectly describes the Church of Rome as the one who presides with charity among churches. He has failed to notice that the Bishop of Rome is constitutive of the Church whose primary task it is mandated by Matthew 16. Luther failed to do his share of research and weigh things on by being constrained in the events of his day and the lure to change things in his own hands. He has become prey victim of the sovereigns of his time that only aggravated the precarious conditions, which the result is total breakdown of order in the society.

On one hand, it might be considered as beneficial for the Church to experience the reformation of the 1500s. Her identity became even more defined and the changes, though at the start slow in coming, came to a head as various popes have been adamant to enforce the Council of Trent’s decrees, which would eventually condition the Church for another 400 years until the Second Vatican Council.

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Protestantism


Protestantism

The founding of Protestantism saw the rupture of Christendom into fragments of denominations. This has become one of the sources of weakness and scandal in Christianity that today it has become even doubtful that union is possible. The rupture of the historic Church into many confessing churches has blurred the lines of beliefs that have held sway among Christians for 1500 years. Martin Luther may be a hero for some, but his name will continuously echo in the pages of history as one who stood for good or ill. Much in the debate about Luther centers on his personality at the crux in that part of history.

The events leading up to Protestantism is very much complex. The waning years of Scholastism and the gradual developing of humanism has caught the Church in the web of factors that She herself had need of integration. The seeming antithetical nature of humanism against the Christian faith need have to be synthesized within Her innate constitution, which She herself has received from Her founder. However, the Scholastism that had become identical with Catholic theology had found fertile grounds of abuses as it was becoming spent in itself. The inherent rationalism of Thomistic thought found no favor in a world, which was in flux of changes. Here Luther found his world as like others such as Calvin, Zwingli, and others.

The fomenting ideas that Scholastism had brought made a society that was dichotomized: a one class that has grown in itself that saw no meaning in the revealed religion because of continued abstraction, and theologians and priests who had become completely detached from the pew because of their continued fixation with beliefs that were far unreachable by the common people’s understanding. Therefore, it was inevitable that doubt would arise. The Church lost Her personal familiarity of Her believers in envigorating them for an existential change as a reaction to the Gospel. Indeed, the Church of the 1500s is marked by a clergy suffering from the laxity of discipline as a consequence of Christian rationalism.

At the backdrop of this event lies the looming influence of humanism that has brought the great Renaissance, the flowering of other ideas that has been sidelined by Aristotlean thought. Thus, the Church was caught at the midst of Her own agency: on one side, the reduction of morality, and on the other, the onslaught of secular learning that has found fertile ground in the 16th Century Europe.

Hence, Luther found distrust in the too rationalistic theology of his day and succumbed to a crisis that would recapitulate a disruption in the whole of Europe for two centuries.

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Charity A Nonconditional Issue


Charity A Nonconditional Issue

Is it wrong to give? Negative. I think the basic premise of the idea of giving does not stem from any condition that one attaches to it. Charity is intrinsically bound up in the command of Christ for gospel proclamation. Just as he was healing the wounded physically, emotionally, and spiritually, he did not restrict himself in any way to conditions imposed by circumstances and situations. Just when I give something to beggars does not in any way violate the rules of responsibility. The Savior did not choose the ones he healed, the ones he had given time with, and the ones he rose from death. The command to give is not something accidental where Christians find inadvertently in his following in the footsteps of the Master, but in itself is essentially a part of one’s conviction of following so.

We cannot relegate the concept of giving to the realm of the abstract. However, our faith should dictate our mind to do it concretely even in our midst. Jesus Christ did not remain as a hidden God, but He manifested Himself to the Jews as to be perceived in their senses and absorb in their cognition. We find Him at the epicenter of the life of Israel, working in their midst by liberating them physically from the binds of their disease and circumstances. Heretofore, we who call ourselves Christians should do likewise. We cannot remain consigned on a spot of just looking at our crosses at a distance, but must we take it upon ourselves and follow Him wherever He may lead us.

Therefore, our action of charity is an act of Christ wherever we choose to do it especially to the least of our brethren. A Christian who opts charity among other things does not acclaim himself for doing so, but by being called a Christian, he just follows the commands of the One whom he identifies himself with. "Whatever you do to the least of your brothers, you do it to me." How else can one interpret this except by doing it.

However, the one who gives may be accused of irresponsibility. But I think here we should find my disagreement. Firstly, the command of Christ is non-negotiable. The Gospel addresses these commands specifically without referring to any conditions of giving. The Lord did not state that we should give only until we find it abusive already. He did not put limitations in quantity and quality. Secondly, the admonition is an invitation in the one who receives the grace of faith. Now, the grace moves the man in his subjective capacity to extend help whoever is in need. The response of a Christian is the stimulus of the grace in the heart of the believer. Whoever, whatever, and whenever is the concerned, it does not take into account as to who receives the help.

The help one can give may not always be monetary. It may be in helping someone getting a job or illuminating someone in one’s prudential capacity as to the choices to be taken in a difficulty.

Many times we also fail to take note that giving something is a step to freedom. The liberating force of giving from the oppression of hunger and thirst is just a material example of a higher and spiritual battle each man strives to conquer. The emancipation from sin is both a temporal and spiritual warfare. That is why the Church has preferential option to caridad because giving is an act of love of God and neighbor which is antithetical to sin, the progenitor of slavery, of greed, and of hate.

So the next time you give, always think that you are conquering something which always invites us to act and think opposite to our true vocation as Christian.

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Another Quagmire: A Response


Another Quagmire: A Response

As I was reaching for comments with regards to what I have written in my "One of Days in Quagmire", I have found that most did not understand what I have written. At most, a colleague of mine says that it was complicated as a reading. Another had commented that I should be more to the point.

Firstly, as a writer of a topic one has to establish a "helipad" so to speak to make a point. A sentence topic if anyone is keen enough is the statement I made that there is in existence a uniqueness of every individual, and this is being implied by my statement, "You cannot suppress other people’s uniqueness, nor can you forego their similarities." This uniqueness can create tension because of the uniqueness itself. And, I have stated later in the same stanza that conflicts are not preventable and are bound to happen because of, well, uniqueness. And I suppose that everyone should have taken notice of the words thesis and anti-thesis, which are themselves philosophically meaningfull since we are beings that have differences, let alone similarities.

In the second stanza, I have underlined the inherent problem with everyone of us. What then is the problem? It is that anyone may tend to forget that what we hear, see, and feel can have objective reality (that such a thing exists outside yourself and in my example, gossiping) and subjective reality (our own interpretation of the thing that exits and in my example again, gossiping). Taking these NOT into account (the subjective and objective), one can have the tendency to oversimplify things: like making conclusions quickly that so and so has insulted me and judge the situation against your favor. Or, again to oversimplify things by interpreting other people’s minds (like so and so is guilty of insulting me because he is a friend of this). One becomes guilty because of association.

Now in the third stanza, I tried to explain that this is in no way simple since making sure everything is perfect in any interaction is an ideal thing. You cannot expect everyone to interpret a certain thing the same at all times, and our reactions vary from one to another based on our psychology or other factors at that point in time. However, consciously acknowledging this problem (tension in every interaction) may be of great help to construct for us a balanced view of life — that is why I said integrate.

I also point an important factor, which can be a helping hand for everyone who has the same problem: the religious beliefs. At times, our religious beliefs would help us to explain things and overcome by some sort of explanation. One such thing is that my religious belief teaches me to love my neighbor. This is a Christian commandment that is emphasized by Christ. By so doing, I am challenged to give my foe or otherwise a chance to explain herself or himself. But if things will turn out sour, I may likely say that this is some sort of test for my faith on how God will manifest His grace on me by stretching my patience in such unhappy encounter.

This and all is what I would have entailed everyone to understand. I can understand that I might be misreading my readers by thinking that they know the background knowledge that I have. I hope they will put some extra-time to read again and again. I do believe that words carry something that it represents. I do not want to delve this thing in this write-up, or else I will again be accused of being a complicated writer and incoherent at worse. No offense intended to anyone. I am open to suggestions and critiques from critics anyway.

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One of Days in Quagmire


One of Days in Quagmire

You cannot suppress other people’s uniqueness, nor can you forego their similarities. The tension that exists in the dynamics between the two is one of the learning experiences one can use to ratiocinate developing relationships. For almost two years, I have had quite a lot of these things before my eyes. Though the currents of emotion can carry you down the deluge of conflicts, I can hope for no better way than to exist seeing these things to happen as they should. I believe that there are things unpreventable to happen. Everyday people engage in intrapersonal and interpersonal communication, and it is inevitable that clashes would erupt anytime. The inherent uniqueness of every individual sets in itself a pylon of difference that is in principle a mark of peculiarity. So it raises questions of antithesis if thesis is there in the beginning. What could be an antithesis, but those whose existence itself is marked of his own peculiarity as an individual.

The danger of some individuals these days is to submerge this fact, which is in itself objective, into the domain of their own subjectivity without taking into account the subjectivity of other subjects surrounding them. Like for example, if I am presented with a problem of let us say gossiping, it is quite seldom for some to critically analyze and appraise the problem in question. We tend to subordinate the problem itself under our own subjective interpretation without assessing what could be other factors, which are variables of the problem in itself. The gossiping could after all be another opinion of someone else. Or, the gossiping could just be another emotional let up of someone, whose channeling of a burden inside is one’s way of ego protection.

However, this sort of practical example is an ideal in itself which hopes to be integrated by every individual. We do not make heroes in just twenty four hours. If need be, even a lifetime does.

Another thing that is far important for me is one’s religious beliefs. Somehow, when one is grounded with the positive tenets of one’s religion, it can mitigate potential disastrous effects of temper. More often, it palliates the ill consequence of a bad experience since the ego is open to a supernatural subsidy, which is in itself acquired by faith working through charity with hope.

Nobody ever says it is easy in any way, but how can one see this if this is not made in time and space.

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One Response to “ One of Days in Quagmire ”

  1. # 1 Lorvie Says:

    what is in the sentence up above the moon? can we see any capital letters there? in short, what’s the blah blah all about… coherence and more to the point please. a good writer gives life to the reader and language is not substance nor substance is language.

    in short, what is in the “story”? all that was said can be written in just one short paragraph.

    page 2 please…

Years Have Been

One of the things I liked most during my childhood years were my vacation days in Bohol. It looked for me like an expectation, a joyous expectation of meeting. I cannot reiterate it more than my solid identification of my place of origin. I do not particularly set off this tenth largest island of Philippines, but it seems to me that Bohol has given me something more to differentiate me. How do I say differentiation? It is in the sense that I have an origin that is rooted realistically which can be greatly constitutive of my becoming. Not on something borne out of imagination by someone who knows not their place of "coming from". It is for me of great importance that one has to look at the past, through the present, and project for the future and see how you as an individual has become as part of a larger "seeing". It is as if like the City of God of St. Augustine who sees history: past and present, and constructs the future. A future that is what you want to become, but only in Augustine’s case, a spiritual journey to the future where man meets God. This is where my wanderings in Bohol have been a great solace of memories for me. I have seen the people who themselves were characters of constant stories of my grandmother. She sees with her eyes the way the world unfolds before her. The poignant narratives of people’s idiosyncrasies, practices, habits, religious fervor, folkloric accounts, and many others seem like mythical of those accounts as they were run by incising recollection. She recounts them with levity in most and seriousness at some at times. The way I had absorbed them have kept them in my memories. So much so that the places that they were recounted hold as much vivid recollections as I would actually see them.

The peculiarities of those personages who, and most of them, have gone to their rests have remained in my consciousness, but only so few have taken them by recounts already. If I were to recall them in my memory, they become so magical, as if I am not here but in another place and time. My mind would recreate a world in which I participated in the events that were once part of those characters’ lives. As if reliving them is a reminder of once glorious days devoid of modern guttering.

The world that we have now has reached limitless possibilities, new currents of thought, new ways of doing things, and innovations that were previously hindered by time and space. Yet, adjunct with these revolutionary ideas and technologicaly advantage, the mere man on a corner has been continuously isolated from those pasts where communion with nature and people were a common theme governing life and living. Living in these memories of mine, I could walk hours and hours over hills and valleys; I could sweep across small glades and meadows while walking toward someone else’s abodes for chores and doing the usual errands. While my grandmother could not leave the house just easily as she would want to, we would just wait for someone to walk by peddling for some fishes or what-not’s. Salt and some "kakanin" would just come by anytime of the day. In one of these cyclic occurrences, we could engage in talks idly for a minute or two befor these peddlers depart for some other houses. Most of these talks would dwindle to certain common friends, or in a happenstance, it would turn out providential of meeting two relations whom each has not come to know until then. These sellers of sorts were from the lowlands usually, and it is common that they would usually retrace those familiar households they have been into in the past. It was as if life in the upland was not constructed to suit the demands of a structured society. It was as if man has to live by the power of his own demands, however, within the scope of limitations as specified implicity in the values of the community of which he is a great participant. No wonder, life in the hinterlands develops a more spontaneous activity. But on the other hand, one could sense, indeed, that events and life of the urban society would tend to trickle in these tranquil, rural lands. The encroachment of these influences upset these usual things.

But by the time I had come of age, things grew worse for me. Realities were coming on as if by piecemeal but largely. I had only a few times of these yearly sojourns to this beloved mountain-areas. Much more so when I had to study in college. The grave reality now came right just before my eyes, greedily invoking for challenge.

Times have tempered me. But not my memories of these things would I have bargained just as easily for the world that we are constantly encountering. The de-mystifying effects of this postmodern world render man in deficiency of sorts. A deficiency that falls back on nothing because it has been built on sand and dunes. A child growing on this age knows only a few of the world outside of his own. The computer age has turned man into himself, enclosing one to his own. Man now becomes prisoner of a tube where it has been synthetically constructed and structured for only an appeal for comfort but lifeless in itself. Indeed, I can say that I am fortunate that I have seen some of the best things that life that is more than the human innovations can ever offer.

Life keeps on going on and on, but as a Christian existentialist, I would say that one must appreciate the beautiful things that happened in your life. An appreciation of the memories of once that glorious past of yours can help you move forward in this world full of emptiness and meaninglessness save from the point of faith.

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The recent ire that the Muslim world has exhibited in these past few days since the address of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, to the academics at the University of Regensburg only exhibited a grave response of a deep problem inherent within the divide between our brother Muslims’ faith and the Christians view of his religion. I think what is the most fundamental relevance and difference between these two monotheistic religions is in its own concept of God. For our Muslim brothers, God is completely transcendent. A being absolutely incompatible with our own categories. What do I mean by this? God for an Islam believer cannot be in any way characterized by any of man’s conception of God. He cannot explain God’s being by his own terms and language. God is so separated from His creation that even His own prescriptions, he is not bound to follow. Contrast this one with the concept of God among Christians in which a Christian believer believes of the Logus, who has perfectly personified Himself in Jesus Christ through Incarnation. Through HIs birth and presence temporally, perfect revelation of the unseen God becomes manifested. That is why in Christian theology, Christianity has employed the agency of reason, which is in itself a gift of God too, to explain through the best of man’s finite ability this God who has become Man. Why? This is because the Logus is reason in Himself. Jesus Christ gaps the wide breach between Creator and creature that only a God-incarnate can undo, thereby revealing not only God-made-man but reason Himself. Seemingly, this difference indeed becomes more evident in the speech of the Holy Father who underscored the relevance and compatibility of faith and reason and how faith devoid of reason can be a justification for violence.


Just to make an appropriate fixed point to begin his discussion of the natural cohabitation of faith and reason and how illumination of reason with faith creates a profound culture that is inherently Western, the Pope posits an example of a dialogue between Michael Paleologus, a 15th century Byzantine emperor and a Persian scholar. Though the conversation was long as transcribed by a scholar, Prof. Khoury, the pope picked up the central theme of the interlocution that has become the source of incendiary reaction of the Muslim world: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman”. Though the Pope puts these words inside his speech, it does not mean that, one, this is his opinion, and two, that this should be interpreted outside from the text of the speech. Clearly, he set examples of why reason without faith is disastrous as exemplified by Europe and the West, and on the other hand, an equally nefarious effect of faith without reason can lead to blind profession of religion and confusion of interpretation.


But the majority of the media agencies have failed to note that the greater part of the speech is mostly directed to the schism of faith and reason in the contemporarry Western civilization of which the Chuch itself is suffering from within and without. That the separation of faith and reason has bred severally antagonistic approaches — a kind of nihilism against anything pertainig to faith. It should be noted that this has indeed weakened current European and Western societies where relativism is palpable from all phases of life, and where a shared common values that has been manifested, inculcated, and inculturated among Western and western-oriented nations like the Philippines has come close to extinction.


What sort of relevance does it make with us Filipinos?


The answer to that is on what influences the Filipinos have most. The grip of American and Western culture among us comes as no surprise considering our history. Sooner or later the redefinition of our values which have been cherished to some degree by our age and the generations before us may come as no later in a generation or two, taking always into account the prevalent effects of cyberspace into our homes and communities.


Thus, the address of the Holy Father shows a timely wisdom at this precise moment of this age and a diagnosis of insidious symptoms that have been formenting for years. What he is concretely talking about is his own insistence of returning to our roots and discover the richness of our heritage that formed us as a nation and as a Church. This is truly indispensable in a world where currents of thought comes coupling with the zeal of change. We cannot dialogue with the world if we fail to instill that which has formed and breathed our being. We cannot bridge authentic relationships of things foreign to our own if we do not know ourselves. Though the Pope has spoken in the name of his faith to redirect Europe in particular, we too as Filipinos may transpose the idea of the pope to ourselves to help us form our identity and consciousness, which we badly are in need of.


September 26, 2006