In terms of worldview thinking Romanticism / Transcendentalism was the mystical new agey subjectivistic godless ying to the rationalistic objectivistic godless yang of Deistic Unitarianism. Romanticism / Transcendentalism flexed its muscle in New England with the take over of Harvard from the Deistic Unitarians circa 1840’s.
Whereas Unitarianism posited some kind of rational divine order that could be read via the use of autonomous right reason of a deistic natural law, Romanticism / Transcendentalism had a kind of Hegelian pantheistic feel to it as it thumped the idea of connecting with the divine oversoul in all of us. Unitarianism was very rationalistic oriented while Transcendentalism / Romanticism was given to the feelings and the senses.
Epistemologically speaking, Deistic Enlightenment Unitarianism insisted that man could know via reason discovering self-evident truths. Transcendentalism / Romanticism however made the Epistemological move to intuition as the basis of knowing. Rationalism gaves us the godless outward look, while Romanticism / Transcendtalism gives us the godless inward look. Ontologically speaking, the god concept for Deistic Enlightenment Unitarianism remained objective, however ontology for the Transcendentalist / Romanticism was not the god outside but the god in all of us. The American Transcendental movement’s philosophical pillar was that the individual is identical with the world, and that world exists in unity with God. Through this logic, it followed that the individual soul is one with God. Anthropologically speaking, Romanticism / Transcendentalism believed that man should be primarily thought of in terms of spirit or the divine spark. They believed that man was inherently good and that man had only to be educated into his inherent goodness.
As Romanticism / Transcendentalism gained a foothold in American culture one consequence was the rise of radial abolitionism. The Romanticist /Transcendentalist worldview, believing that all men share equally in their god quotient therefore believed that all men were perfectly equal and that the power of the State should be used to insure that all men were forcefully given their equality. Interestingly enough, Romanticism / Transcendentalism, as it informed the radical abolitionists worldview, served as one of the factors that set the Northern Yankee armies marching.
The power of Romanticism / Transcendentalism dissipated and eventually the rise of Darwinism as a worldview began to account for social order mythology that animated the West. Somewhere around the 1930’s – 1940’s the power of Existentialism as the guiding motif for the West began to pick up steam.
America has had basically 4 or 5 worldviews. Calvinism, Rationalistic Unitarianism, Romanticism / Transcendentalism, (which also explains the rise of the Jacksonian Democratic Revolution here), Social Darwinism, and Existentialism. Some would argue that currently we are in a kind of Nihilistic worldview, though Nihilism, what is styled as “post-modernism,” could also be argued as merely subsequent extensions of Existentialism.
Of course these matters are not always clear cut in terms of the exact dates in which they are hegemonic. For example, even though we are in kind of a Nihilistic mode right now, the relative rationalism of Darwinism still reigns supreme in the hard sciences. Also keep in mind that in the end there are only two worldviews. Biblical Christianity vs. some variant of Humanism.
This is a fantastic post! Thank you, Pastor Bret!
Sarah Bacon
Worldview class
Week 26
Notes on the book (Dust of Death) read aloud:
The 60’s were not buried for two reasons: 1) it really was an epical and foundational change, those kinds of things don’t get buried that easily; and 2) the worldview before the 60’s didn’t make sense now that they were compared to after the 60’s happened. It was a dramatic change in the narrative. But it was a gradual build up, not a sudden change in the 60’s. During the 90’s and even now, it is a slow climb and build up, back to the ultimate climax. The 80’s were when the conservatives were so sure they had won, but fundamental cultural changes like the 60’s don’t just leave like that, they stay in hibernation but then come back and that is exactly what is happening right now. The 60’s were a time of counter-culture, but considered to be the culture since it was an upside down world. Since we are re-living the 60’s, our definitions are backwards – Christianity is the counter-culture and their counter-culture worldview is considered the culture. In a backwards/upside down world like that, good is bad, bad is good…beautiful is ugly, and ugly is beautiful.
New Age Psychology = Collective Consciousness
You are your own divine. We rise up spiritual awareness and collective consciousness to further its psychological and spiritual evolution. Reality is whatever you make it to be. “Mind over matter” is their slogan repeatedly. Their call was a call to expand and develop your mind.
New Age Sociology = Non-Traditional Home, Church, and State
This is psychology but on a bigger scale. They are just applying the psychology to the culture, not just the individual. Their end goal is to demolish the remaining Biblical standards (especially the family standards), and to abolish the church, home, and state. They advocate pluralism and believe that all religions end up at the same point. You erase all distinctions and roles.
New Age Law = Self-Law
They focus on the inner truth. Everyone makes their own law. Each man does what is right in his own eyes. Anything but self-law is restricting you from uncovering your spiritual awakening. Because of this, the church needs to be taken down, since the church sets out a clear, Biblical standard of laws. You need to set your own law and standards because you are god and you are ultimately good and incapable of doing evil.
New Age Politics = New Age Order
They see our political system as restrictive and limiting: perversion and crime are still perversion and crime. Until politics and the state advocates Cosmic Humanism, they will oppose and attempt to take down our modern politics. They seek to once again erase all distinctions…man and woman, state and nation, human and God.
New Age Economics = Universal Enlightened Production
Spiritually enlightened people are not bound by the limitations of modern economics which is all about rules, laws, and distinctions. They don’t address or discuss economics simply because economics only restricts you from unleashing your inner sense and being. Following your feelings and believe in yourself leads the enlightened to prosperity by the power of positive thinking. So their only rule is that there can be no rules…which happens to be a contradiction.
New Age History = Evolutionary Godhood
History is a record of how humans are ever increasing into their godness. It’s a record of how we develop and discover ourselves. Their goal would be a fully enlightened people and Utopia. Christians are looked on as the anchor that holds back enlightenment, so that must be gotten rid of. You are called to find your potential and calling apart from religion (which is not possible).
True love is not in Cosmic Humanism…god is everything they say, even the impersonal. But the impersonal cannot love, only people can love. But to them, everything is relative; everyone does whatever they want and it is deemed fine. If you enter into this, there is no right or wrong because you are just doing what you feel is right within you. Our destiny is in our own hands and is up to us. The counter to all this is that sin has its season, but then it turns to a life of destruction and unhappiness.
Sarah Bacon
History of Christendom
Week 27
We are going to look at the different points (Theology, Philosophy, Ethics, Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Law, Politics, Economics, and History), but this time from a Biblical Christian point of view.
Theology:
In order to prove God, you need to presuppose there is a God. That is your first principle. Whatever your first principle is, that will be your god. We reason to God, only from God. What is created must have a Creator.
Philosophy:
Natural and spiritual both really exist. It is not just the material, and not just the spiritual. How do we know? We learn through general and special revelation. It is global and reaches all areas.
Ethics:
Without God, there is no good or evil. There can be no standard to judge what is truly right or wrong. With Christianity it is absolute. With the image of God right in front of us, we know the truth but suppress it.
Biology:
Science points to a structured universe with a supernatural Creator. Modern’s science has its roots from Christianity because it is obvious that this world is not random. If it was, we could have no science. We have intelligent design, completely opposed to an evolutionary design.
Psychology:
The mind and the body conflict with each other. There really is a difference between the mind and the brain. All is not matter. Man is a body with both a mind and soul. A lot of rebellion issues are really related to the corporeal issues…but a lot is the working of the mind or theology. Bad theology hurts people. People are responsible for their actions and behaviors; it cannot just be blamed on chemical reactions.
Sociology:
People groups are created in God’s image, not just matter moving. We are capable of moving against the tide of the culture. We are still free to stray from the group and follow God’s law. Every individual is essential to grow and shape the culture and society. We are born into a covenantal family: our family, church, and culture. We are social beings, as God is.
We now pause a moment to reflect and condense what we just said.
Christianity:
Theology = God is
Philosophy = God created the heavens and the earth
Ethics = God revealed moral order
Biology = God created life
Psychology = God created man in His image
Sociology = God established certain social institutions.
And to continue:
Law:
Divine law’s foundation is simply God’s revealed Law. Our law is objective but only set in the stone of Biblical Christianity. Man-made law is constantly changing because it is subjective. Natural law is ok, as long as it is structured out of a Christian theology and from Scripture.
Politics:
Because of man’s fallenness, we needed a governing institution with divided power to enforce laws. Their job was to promote justice in accordance to Scripture, and not in accordance to their whim.
Economics:
We believe in private properly as opposed to public property. If you own something you will take better care of it because it is yours. The idea is that someday you will pass down what you won to your children.
History:
God acts in history. History is linear to the Christian. It is past, present, and future…not to mention alive. For the pagan, history is circular. But for the Biblical Christian it progresses to a certain end: the return of Christ. Christianity alone has produced civilization in the past. Without civilization you get theft (debt), death (abortion), and destruction (breaking down of family).
How do we deal with Relativism?
This is the belief that all is personal choice and opinion. People choose relativism because of moral license (the ability to do whatever you want) and for peer pressure (just wanting to do it to be accepted). Above all, we want to get along with everyone. We want to have everyone like us. Because of this, we become like chameleons, changing with the tide or wind. It is a very subjective belief as we get to choose what we want, when we want, and how we want. Right and wrong, good and bad were put in place by God and will always be true, even if it opposes your opinion at that time. Cultural relativism becomes a fight for power within the state. There they can create laws that are reflecting the culture’s worldview. Post-modernism teaches epistemological relativism, how we know is from an individual perspective. What is truth? Truth is whatever you want all of a sudden. There is not Truth…there is only truth. What you have to do to counter this kind of subjective religion is to always flip it back to them. If they say, “Who are you to say that?” then you ask them, “Who are you to ask?” We are told not to teach values with knowledge; rather to simply teach the knowledge and let the kinds determine their own values. This just fuels relativism. The one thought we must always keep in mind is *there is no such thing as neutrality*.
I will be posting book notes once I can compile them all together.
Sarah Bacon
Worldview
Week 28
Liberty or freedom is a question of moral relativism. Who is to decide the standard? Complete freedom belongs only to God. Liberty requires an amount of order. Without order, then anything is allowed.
Same-sex marriage cannot be called marriage…it’s not. When you say that union between genders is acceptable then you are making yourself to be God. Abortion also falls under this category. They say that if it words for you, then it’s right for you. The goal with dealing with relativists is to turn it back on them: “Can you really live up to your own standard? Even to the extreme?” If they say it’s just your opinion, well, that’s just *their* opinion isn’t it? If they got on your case for you pushing your morality on them, well, that’s their morality that they are pushing on you. You cannot know what evil is without good, and you cannot know what crooked is without know what straight is.
There are only three options to choose from when it comes to moral laws:
1) Morals are simply personal preference (Relativism…what is right or wrong? Who decides the ultimate laws?)
2) Morals happen by chance (Why would you obey chance? There is no obligation to because they are random)
3) Morals are designed and purposed (They are commands, meant to be followed. There is a commander and designer. The rules which we follow have a lawgiver and there is moral guilt for breaking the laws. This creates for accountability)
The Arts
The typical person picks up their worldview from celebrities, sports, music, movies…the list goes on forever. There is always a worldview driving these things, there can be no neutral ground. Once Christianity withdraws from an issue (divorce, homosexuality, abortion) then another false worldview is allowed to sweep over. Hollywood determines what is cool and acceptable. Where we once were led by books, we are now led by media. Advertising pays off and saturates us with its influence. When the media shows off violence, sexuality, rebellion, suicide, and other similar problems, it shows us that it is alright. There is an emotional impact that is portrayed with what is set before our eyes from the media. We are told that to be able to take on “the darkness” we need to embrace it. Art becomes a substitution for religion, or a doorway to a new religion. Christians desperately need to recapture the media and turn it to fit God’s agenda. But it cannot turn into a media of pietism, with a moral point that stands up and slaps you in the face. Moral points should be subtle, like the humanists have come to realize.
Music and Movies
Rebellion is one thing that has advanced as a part of being free and finding yourself. There are good and bad music within each genres. The point behind bad media is to distort our image of God and to turn us farther from the idea of living in a Christian fashion. Much of the message sent through music is to do what you want or how you feel. The lifestyles of the artists’ aren’t too clean either. Instead of communicating “do what God wants”, it says “do what *you* want”.
Sarah Bacon
Notes on Supplemental Reading
The Dust of Death:
Chapter 1 The Striptease of Humanism – We start by examining Optimistic Humanism and its rise and influence. Humanism is simply focused upon man and a concern for humanity…at least that’s how it started. During the mid-sixties in Europe was where optimistic humanism flourished the most. It built up steam from the fact that it advertised to be capable of solving all problems. The opposite of this optimistic humanism is pessimistic humanism. Optimistic humanism is strong to push the aspirations of human beings but is weak with understanding their oddness. Pessimistic humanism claims the insanity of human aspirations and embraces human abnormalities which can most often lead to a constant pull to despair and depression.
There are four different “pillars” of belief for the optimistic humanist. These ideals make up what it is built upon. The first is the belief in reason, for which they need faith because according to humanists it is impossible to reason that reason has validity. The second is the belief in progress…the idea that nature is always evolving higher and better. The third pillar is the belief in science as the guide to human progress and the provider of an alternative to both religion and morals. And then the fourth pillar is the belief in the self-sufficiency of human beings. We have to embrace either the idea that man is all good (in which case we have to ignore the evil) or we say that man is evil (in which case they will either blame God or minimize the importance of man till his evil is not a big deal).
Chapter 2 Utopia or Oblivion? – Where are we going? The subject of the future is a weighty one. Futurology is important because of several reasons: first, with all the “striptease of humanism” it has become essential to be testing different beliefs; second, the issue is rather an important one when it relates to the Christian view of humanness, society, and the course of history; and thirdly because no matter how the future turns out each person will be called to fend off general dehumanization in some area. If a worldview is not Christian, then it will most likely end up with disaster or hopelessness.
Chapter 3 The Great Refusal – I did read this chapter but barely understood a thing and so didn’t take any notes on it.
self refute back at them. expose contradictions.
whats there hot buttons. push them.
force there tolerance issues. cant you tolerate me worldview?
person preference
chance
Designed
Sarah Bacon
Worldview
Week 29
Keys to a good government:
It is one of our institutions and will be one of the reflections of a people’s worldview. Government calls for a good and beautiful justice system. The state’s job is to bring justice to evil by wielding a sword. A good government will produce good laws. We need a standard to determine what good is. America was largely influenced by England which was Christian, so America was born and raised up Christian. Their constitutions of the states each stated that the said person elected to the office believed in God the Father and Creator and Christ the sacrificial Son, and in the sanctifying Holy Spirit and in every word of Scripture. Education was also an important point for them as well.
We began our nation as a constitutional republic. We were made to be a republic, but we are constantly claiming to be a democracy. The difference between a republic and democracy is their source of authority. With a republic, it is God and His word, or even the constitution that is the source of authority. With a democracy it is the whim of the controlled people. We are controlled and manipulated by media, peer pressure (the majority or influence) and the elite. When you set someone over you (government or spouse) one of the most important things to do is to ensure they have the fear of God, a hatred of covetousness, and have a good and pure sense of justice. You cannot get good fruit from bad roots. The only cure for our problems is to make a return to God, to preach Christ crucified, and to exercise Church discipline when members stray. The Church is the guard of the well…if we allow the water to be muddied and fouled, then we are doing nothing but promoting and handing it out.
History and Background of Marxism/Leninism:
They always have the inevitability of triumph…they think they will always win. They have decided they will never be conquered. Christians should have that kind of mindset. Rapture is an escapism belief. We face anything because God is with us. Who can oppose us? There is always conflict between communism and capitalism. The communistic government seeks to control our children…especially through the public schools. They are soaked with the pagan agenda. They are the next generation ready to rise up against God. The state seeks to rip the family apart and replace it with the government. The government is to be all encompassing…our god. God, however, is an inescapable reality. Terror is a key instrument of theirs…to keep the people fearful and controllable. Starve a people, kill and hurt them and eventually you will beat them down into submission. WWI is known because it brought communism to national power. WWII is known because it brought communism to international power. Words mean nothing, only actions can speak whole truth. Lies, terror, slavery, control – this is the agenda of Marxism.
Prayer to the Government:
Dear Obama, who art in the White House; hallowed be they name alone. Your campaign win, your healthcare be passed, in America and worldwide. Be our sole provider (‘cause God ran out of bread) and forgive us when we doubt your perfection. Control us so we cannot think Biblically and deliver us from freedom. For you should have all the power, complete dominion, and our praise and glory forever. Amen.
Very good on the prayer Sarah.
Sarah Bacon
Worldview
Week 30
In regards to communists not being religions: “They have all characteristics of religions. They advocate a way of life on the basis of irrational dogmas; they have a sacred history, a Messiah, and a priesthood. I do not see what more could be demanded to qualify a doctrine as religion.” Bertrand Russell
Essential Questions that are answered by each worldview:
Ontology – what is our origin?
Epistemology – how do we know?
Axiology – what is our value?
Teleology – where are we going?
Anthropology – what is the nature of man?
Four Levels of Worldview Thinkers:
1. Original Thinkers – pure geniuses
2. Sociological Applicators – has influence
3. Eclectic – can semi-sort through worldviews
4. Conglomerate – go with the flow of anything and cannot integrate
Worldviews are completely totalistic and that includes Christianity; it is all encompassing and speaks to everything. Christians need to make sure to be consistent in all areas of life. If you are inconsistent in one area, you are not a true Christian. All of life is theological. From our worldview roots flows out our view of every area of life. We cannot compartmentalize because they all have a common source: worldview. Humanism claims to not be religious so they can pass it as all natural and normal especially in the schools. Every person you meet lives out their view of God.
Everyone has a God, which leads to a way of life, a dogma or doctrine which is taught by the priesthood (for the humanist it is teachers or shrinks), there is always a messiah involved (who is on the top of the pile?) and they have a sacred history (we find ours in the flag nowadays). Also, each worldview has their own catechism, songs, and curriculum. Once you become theologically mindful, you will often see the many contradictions. Many times, the contradictions are even lying side by side.
Four levels:
1. Original thinkers
2. Sociological Applicators
3. Eclectic
4. Conglomerate
We should try to be sociological applicators.
People believe what they want to believe not only for intellectual reasons but oftentimes because it keeps their pocket books comfortably stocked.
Ever worldview is totalistic- all encompassing. It can never be confined to one day of the week or one part of your life, and still be true.
Be VERY skeptical of the word “secular” Means it has no theological attachments, literally “of this world alone”, set apart from any spiritual belief.
Christianity and the Secular are separate, but they overlap. Don’t compartmentalize your worldview. It doesn’t work.
All people are religious is one way or another. There is no escaping it, thus a person cannot be truly neutral or non-religious. The idea of people being only matter with no Spiritual side is a very dangerous and wholly false one.
If it is then it cannot not be. Simple logic.
-Where is the God in the system?
-what is the Way of Life that God prescribes?
-What is the Dogma/Doctrine?
-Who are the priesthood? (shrinks)
-Who is the Messiah?
-What is their sacred history?
-What is their catechism?
-What are their songs and curriculum?
These are questions to deduct someone’s worldview, theology. They are what comprise religion.
Simply locate their God . Themselves? Who? What? It’s always there.
Irony… being a epistemologically aware reformed person with a solid worldview certainly shows you all the ironies of humanism!
Sarah Bacon
Worldview
Week 31
Cultural Marxism:
Their theology is rooted in economics; it is the queen of their sciences. There are two different types of Marxism: cultural and classical. The former wouldn’t say that the latter is true Marxism. Crisis for them isn’t a problem unless it threatens to entirely throw off economics. For the classical Marxist, economics was the main key focus, but for the cultural Marxist it is the culture as a whole that makes up their primary focus. With the turn of the century with WWI we see Marxism seeing the threat of Christianity and beginning its attack of Christianity. Antonio Gramsci (the founder of Cultural Marxism) saw the culture as needing to be overturned. The theology of the culture is displayed in several institutes: law, education, economics, the church, and family are a few of those institutes. These are the pillars of the community that Gramsci saw as needing to be taken down and attacked in order to rebuild them back up with Marxism at their core. So began the long march through the institutions. Their law is to make your own law. Relativism and Liberation Theology would fall under this category of cultural Marxism. He believed that religion was totalistic and effected all institutions.
Their ontology would have been egalitarianism or liberation theology. If they do mention God, He is distanced and never brought close…they shape the Bible with their beliefs instead of the other way around. Their Anthropology is that man is basically good and just needs to be informed of his goodness. They would say he is not sinful, but it is his environment that creates his flaws. They would say he is shapeable due to his culture or environment. Their epistemology would be from unaided reason (the love of numbers or statistics). Their Axiology with the questions of value would be that man is the ultimate value and the glory of man is the true value and goal. Teleology for them would be the goal is the Utopian kingdom of man.
In 1919 in Hungary, the cultural Marxists began a movement to overthrow sexual mores…the start of their attack on the family. Fortunately, the people of Hungary realized what was happening and put a firm stop to it. Afterwards, the Marxists said they hadn’t killed enough people, that was one reason why it didn’t work. Terror and fear is how they pass a lot of their agenda.
Critical Theory is another well-placed point of cultural Marxism. “Institutional Racism” is one phrase that you’ll hear that was started by Marxists. The institutions need to be taken down and rebuilt back due to being “infested with racism”…they need to be friendly to everyone regardless of race, sex, or ethnicity. If you deny or agree with them that there is institutional racism it will just be proving their point all the more. Critical Theory when boiled down is simply criticizing everything. They seek to undermine family, sexual boundaries, good literature, and other well-structured and Biblical ideas. It pushes the minority, feminists, and perverts to get their agenda forward. It attacks what is normal and makes it upside down – good is bad and beautiful is ugly. Cultural Marxism seeks to erase all distinctions of man and woman, child and parent, employer and employee, and black and white. White people and especially white Christians are the ones who are blamed for racism and everything wrong. Guilt is laid upon them and because of that false guilt we have, we seek to “make it up to them” by taking away all distinctions and putting them on a higher pedestal. The only guilt we should have is guilt of our sins which we can take before God because of Christ’s work for us. Guilt-trips are a big push…especially through elections.
If you succumb to that false guilt we will end up killing ourselves by promoting the minority so much that we will end up being the ones in the minority and being trampled on. We do have problems and are not perfect, but that is no reason to replace Christianity with pagan Cultural Marxism. Any deformed idea or imperfect living out of Christianity will still build a more stable and rooted civilization than any form of Cultural Marxism. To rid themselves of guilt they either become sadistic (blaming others) or masochist (blaming self and punishing by cutting or suicide). You will either release guilt on others or take on all the guilt of the world. Neither of these takes the guilt and sin to Christ and He is the only one who has ever been blameless and guiltless. Steps to recover from guilt 1) Repent 2) Think out thoughts after God and 3) Build Biblical families and churches. Through all of this, we can trust that God is sovereign and has a plan that is higher than we could ever imagine.
Theology – Therapeutic Moralistic Deity
Philosophy – Dialectical Materialism
Ethics – Aggrieved Morality
Biology – Darwinism
Psychology – Behaviorism
Sociology – Abolition of Church, Home, and State
Law – Positivistic Law
Politics – New World Order
Economics – Communism/Socialism
History – Historicism
Sarah Bacon – October 17, 2012
Christendom’s Ancien Regime:
“For the Enlightenment revolutionaries, the civilization of Christendom was dismissed as the Ancien Regime. They were determined to pull down its great monuments as a prequel to what they imagined to be a New World Order. And thus was Modernity birthed, or rather, unleashed.” – Christopher Dawson
Vocabulary:
adiaphora – indifferent; indifference.
patristic – of or pertaining to the fathers of the Christian church or their writings.
hegemony – leadership; predominance
Huguenot – a member of the Reformed or Calvinistic communion of France in the 16th and 17th centuries; a French Protestant.
ideology – the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group
regicide – the killing of a king
mercantilist – mercantile practices or spirit; commercialism
Much of the Ancien Regime grew out of Augustine’s worldview and the manifesto of the book he wrote: The City of God. There were many facts that lead up to, and carried out, the beginning of Modernity from the transition of the Ancien Regime: Christianity. The Enlightenment sought to pull down the glory of God and build up the glory of man. To annihilate the old world order and to then rebuild it into a New World Order.
Images are the language of the laymen. Many people today don’t read…and if they do read then it is trash that they read. Throughout the ages it has been the idea of images and imagery that have driven the people. Images stand in contrast to word. Christians are called to be people of the word and even Christ was called The Word. The media can influence our minds powerfully and manipulate our thoughts.
30: Jesus was crucified
70:Jerusalem was sacked and destroyed…completely torn down
100: The Patristic era began with Clement
280: Antony founded sancus discendi…universities. If there had been no monasticism then there would have been no universities…they were the direct outgrowth of the monks.
315: Athanasius stood contra mundum…against the world. When it came to Christ and his finished work and outpouring of grace by way of imputation it was the only ground for faithfulness and faith.
325: First Church Council was held at Nicea and they finally supported Athanasius.
395: Theodosius divided the Roman Empire because he believed it had grown too large to be appropriated
428: Augustine’s City of God was published paving the way for hundreds of Christians to be gathered together with a manifesto.
476: Emperor Romulus Augustulus was ousted
503: Ideas of Monasticism made it West and the Benedictine Rule was confirmed.
537: Hagia Sophia (built by Justinian) was dedicated to Constantinople. The sacking of Hagia Sophia spurred the Christians to finally take action.
610: Mohammed had ecstatic visions in his long wanderings around and on Mount Hira which then lead to the struggle with Islam and Christianity (also Judaism).
640: Alexandrian Library was burned to the ground by Muhammad’s successor Omar and his hoard.
711: Europe was invaded and occupied by Muslim armies crossing over the straights.
732: Charles Martel who was a sheriff of a sort pushed back the Muslim armies back and prevailed at Tours.
800: Charlemagne, the grandson of Charles Martel, was crowned in the West in what was soon called the Holy Roman Empire..
1054: The Christian East and West divided and sundered so they no longer had communication or connection with each other.
1095: Urban II called for a Holy Crusade.
1099: Crusaders recovered Jerusalem establishing a series of kingdoms which are now Israel and parts of Turkey today as an outpost of Christianity. Within 200 years, each of those kingdoms were swept away and taken over.
1163: Notre Dame was completed in Paris and dedicated.
1167: A collegium was established at Oxford when several monastic tutors took under their care some students who were then taught the great ideals of Christianity and history.
1215: The Magna Carta was sealed by King John which gave the nobles several rights and privileges. But it created a precedent for freedom in the years after.
1250: Thomas Aquinas launched scholasticism which was to bring the wisdom of recent Christian together and give way for logic which he hoped would lead to heaven on earth.
1294: The Babylonian Captivity began in Avignon and dashed that last hope of heaven on earth. Then followed a series of destructive assaults..
1320: The Arbroath Declaration was signed.
1337: The First Hundred Years War began.
1347: The Black Death swept across Europe.
1374: Gerhard Groote founded the Brethren of Common Life Schools which was based off of the Augustinian monastic ideals. A notion of great reading, writing, and logic.
1378: The Great Schism divided the Western Church with multiple popes.
1415: The Council of Constance was held to try and stamp out one of those little Reformed movements. Jan Milic had raised up disciples and established some great works and now they sought to get rid of that. .
1457: The Articles of Prague were published establishing a Protestant reformation..
1510: Erasmus published his Institutes on the failing of the Church in the West and how it needed to be reformed. He left a great legacy behind him.
1515: Raphael submitted plans for the Vatican that ultimately brought the need to raise funds for this new cathedral.
1517: Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses in Latin on the church doors at Wittenberg in direct opposition to Tetzel’s indulgences. He didn’t anticipate that people would translate the Latin into many other languages and print them to send them out. It was viewed more than any other book or pamphlet ever.
1559: Calvin released the final edition of The Institutes of the Christian Religion which was said to be as instrumental in the shaping of people for the next generations as The City of God.
1560: Knox, a follower of Calvin, secured the Scottish Reformatia Ordo: the order of Reformation for Scottish focusing on sound doctrine, worship, and ecclesiology.
1571: The Battle of Lepanto was won by Don John and saved the whole Western world from the Muslims and the Islamic world.
1636: Harvard was founded with nine students.
1643: The Westminster Divines began to meet in the Jerusalem chamber in the Westminster Abbey in London.
1644: Lex Rex was published by Samuel Rutherford which stated that the law came before the king and that the king cannot have absolute total rule over the people which laid place for freedom for the people.
1741: Jonathan Edwards preached his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon and continued to preach it at least 17 times in different places. It’s considered the best-selling sermon of all time.
1789: The Terror of the French Revolution began and ultimate the ascent of Christendom was interrupted and the beginning of Modernity began.
Christendom’s Presuppositions
Contents:
Creator/Creature Distinctions – we need to understand ourselves in the world in terms of this distinction in both matter and spirit. We’re not made of the same stuff that God is made of nor of a chain of being. He is the one who is ultimately sovereign and was the one at the beginning of time who decreed that the world be made with simply the sound of His voice. God is transcendent. There is a clear line between our sovereign God and everything else.
Imago Dei / Vox Populi – We are made in the image of God. Some would assume that since we are in the image of God that we are able to speak with the voice and power of God. But because of our distinction we know that this cannot be true. Man is fallen.
Ante Bellum / Post Bellum – Man is scarred and marred. There is a huge distinction between when before man fell and after man fell.
Realities:
Independence/Sovereign Providence – Man is not independent. We have a sovereign God who organizes and someday all men will bend their knee and look to God for all things, praising and glorifying Him. We cannot seek to be independent because it will lead to our ruin since we are flawed and sinful.
Autonomy/Covenantalism – We cannot be autonomous with God ruling over us. Our feelings and experiences are tainted by the fall and our great overwhelming sin nature. We are bound to God with checks and balances where we are responsible to and for someone else. This is done by grace of God to us. There is interdependence.
Antithesis/Adiaphora – things can be clearly defined be antithesis…it isn’t some shade of gray. There is a world of black and white…you cannot be in the middle. You are either good or bad. There is no indifference. If God is for something then He is obviously against something else. We must be the same.
Consequences:
Righteousness/Infidelity – We can live in the righteousness of Christ covering us so that we are literally in Christ. Or we can walk out from under that cover where we live apart from Christ and infidelity. If we seek to be on our own we are bound to fall hard, but if we actively seek out Christ and His righteousness then we are bound to succeed. What God works within us, He also works out. He places the desire in our hearts and then applies it to our whole life.
Reformation/Revolutionary Tyranny – We can either conform to God’s holy Word and seek to reform the world for God’s glory or we can force them to be what we want with revolutionary tyranny. We can either joyfully submit to God and His law-word or we can be the immature revolutionary always seeking to deny the existence of an ever-present God.
Metaphysics/Materialistic Centralism – We can follow on God’s ethical standards and His holy providence for us or we can focus on the things around us. There is a harmony of spirituality and materialism. When we fight wars for the continuance of Christianity, we use weapons…those weapons are both spiritual and material. Material so we can literally hold it and spiritual because we have dedicated it to God. There is no break in the harmony of spirituality and materialism until death.
Rebecca Bacon Wednesday class- Modernity 10/17/12
The Dust of Death- Chapter 3/The Great Refusal
“The Great Refusal” was a generation’s attempt to live counter to anything less than the highest values, principals, ideals and goals of previous generations.
From the Cordoba Manifesto in Argentina in 1918 came a rising tide which despite contradictory elements succeeded in uniting protest around the world. With the falling of governments in Cuba, Korea and Turkey, the galvanizing example of international student success was reflecting of the dramatic emergence of the New Left in the United States.
Another tributary is the rising tide of black nationalism.
This particular influence converges in the counter culture at two critical points: (1) the founding of the Student Non-violent coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960, where the espousal of violence marked a watershed between early principals and eventual pragmatism.
Beginning with the Beat
We begin to chart the growth of the Great Refusal with the Beat movement. Most of the early Beats were veterans or non-combatants with experience from World war II. If their reaction to the Nazi concentration camps, the allied bombing of Cologne and Dresden, and the holocaust of Hiroshima, was the first breeze in the winds of change in the West, it was not due to any well-reasoned social theory or to any persistent social action.
It was at New York Columbia University in 1948 where several veterans were making gestures at studying, simply hanging around or else dropping out. Overshadowing them all as their magical figure and strong mentor was the dark genius, William Burroughs.
The years passed, thousands of miles were covered and a whole variety of sensations was experienced and recorded in prose and poem. In 1951, Jack Kerouac typed On the Road on a hundred foot roll of shelf paper. The result was described later as a magnificent signal paragraph several blocks long.
Burroughs traveled like a modern nomad across the country from east to west and from west to east, then to London , Paris and finally Tangiers.
Punctuating the interminable traveling with intermittent pauses for pot, mescaline, sex and booze, the Beats became a loose tribe of experimental nomads who forged a axis from Greenwich Village to Berkley, with stops between in Denver and Michigan, colonies in North Beach and Venice West and outposts in Mexico, Tangiers and Paris.
Then in 1957 came the breakthrough; Bohemianism itself became Beat and the life style of a few became the image of a movement. Almost at once the City Lights Bookshop published the Pocket Poet Series and Kerouac made repeated appearances on television.
Primarily the Beats were important for the depth of their disaffiliation. By itself this was not enough but at least it was a beginning.
The Beats often elevated incoherence to the point of principle. If the world was phony, politics was a drag. Sometimes their only political statements with any content were expressed in poems against the Bomb, but, they expressed little that exceeded a common-sense anxiety any nuclear-age mother with a family might feel.
Though radicalism in the West had generally been tied closely to doctrinaire atheism the Beats thought no more of turning atheism on its head than anything else.
A final feature linking the Beats with the counter culture as their vulnerability to media. Despite this they undoubtedly stand as forerunners of the counter culture with an impressive influence and a strong continuity with later trends. The Beat may have been a rebel without a cause, but his was the only rebellion around.
The European Scene
For anyone with concern for radical action, a first glance at the European scene is starkly depressing. The mood is at once immature, uncreative, inarticulate; there is no coherent protest, only a chip-on-the-shoulder grudge.
A teenage generation had broken into a novel self-consciousness for the first time; the Teddy Boys had money to spend and no built-in sense of social defeatism. They are hardly worth calling a “protest movement.” But across the currents of the south London gangs, there emerged a distinct subculture, raw, sullen and inarticulate, aggressively non-conformist to all values except its own. Then came the Mods and Rockers.
The Angry Young Men
A more promising of source of effective radical action came from the “Angry Young Men,” they appeared more radical at first sight, genuinely creative and infinitely more political. Kingsley Amis openly denied his own connections with such a movement, but the powerful literary influence of Kenneth Tynan built the Angry Young Men into a myth that only time withered to reality. History has shown their efforts to have been notably successful.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)
Another group is the CND. This sprang from the Direct Action Committee and grew into the CND, supported by the influential group of public figures. Like the Beats, many of the founding members shared a deeply disturbing memory of World War II and a serious disquiet at the complacent of society.
When a split developed over policy, the moderates won the argument and lost the cause. But despite everything the Bomb was unmoved, and the CND was exposed as one of the last greatest causes of the old-line liberals and radicals, now evoking only a smile. Finally it achieved the status of an annual British institution.
Long before the anti-Viet Nam movement got under way, the CND questioned the monstrosity of modern war. Moreover, in the CND symbol all radical movements were to find their now familiar peace sign.
The Provos
A last European movement worthy of serious consideration is the Provos.
This movement sprang spontaneously from happenings in 1965 by young anarchist intellectuals.
The Provos were not particularly important for their platform to protest of reform which were not hardly novel or daring. Using happenings, community projects, rioting, violence and bitter jokes, they attempted to take social satire out of the television studio and bring it back to the streets.
By and large it was an informal anarchism that grew from underground cellars and centered in their famous houseboat headquarters in an Amsterdam canal.
The Provos were successful in electing representatives to the Amsterdam Municipal Council, and many of the issues they introduced are still being pushed by the current Dutch radicals.
One further point shown up in the mirror hindsight, gives the Provos wider significance. Their treatment by the government authorities was an example of monumental myopia.
At their brief best, the Provos showed both logic and integrity. But there were few who cared when a deluge of euphoria
descended on Europe and the United States with advent of the “Hippies” in 1966.
The Hippies
All of a sudden the community became a circus, the dream a nightmare, and with the early peace and love fading the romanticism spiraled downwards. The euphoria was terminal.
It was a reaction, never an answer. With later evidence coming to light, we can now assess his contribution as a somewhat cynical betrayal of his own ostensible idealism, so ardently preached with the best means at Ginsberg’s inventive disposal.
Ultimately there were only the petty criminals, the junkies, the pushers, the boarded-up shops and broken windows.
One feature which survived was its mimeographed magazines and roughly printed papers which mushroomed into the Underground Press. But despite this, the chief significance of the Hippies was their unmistakable failure.
Never again would there be such a wide unity and euphoria, such a blending of extremes. By 1967, it was back from psychedelia to politics, and many now find the interval embarrassing for its superficiality.
The New Left
For the New Left its emergence as a cultural force springs from its exploitation of the mood vacuum created by the failure of the Hippies and the grim escalation of the Viet Nam war.
The Old Left are the communists and radicals following the later Marx, Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. It had been betrayed by communism’s becoming in practice just one more nationalist elite. All such practitioners were scorned by Cyril Wright Mills as the “Old Futilitarians.” Against them the New Left took its stand. It took pride in its fervent existential and non-dogmatic humanism.
The New Left stands in contrast with the Silent Generation. It was natural in many ways, but there was a danger in it becoming a new ideology, the ideology of complacency.
The New Left saw itself as a spearhead comprised of students and intellectuals who would be the vanguard of a new revolution. Its role was to be the catalyst, fusing these forces into an effective agency of revolution.
Here rather than attempting to survey the kaleidoscope variety of the New Left, it is easier to take two organizations as representations of the larger movement.
The SNCC
The first is the SNCC (The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee). In October of the year 1960, 235 students met in Atlanta, Georgia, to found the SNCC. They showed a gentleness, an unashamed Christian commitment, an obvious middle-class background and an appeal to the Bible and the Bill of Rights.
In 1962 and 1963 their members were returning from the South. Some had been beaten, whipped and shot at. Some had even been killed.
It is no wonder such selfless heroism won Parris a legendary niche in the New Left. For many of the others, bitterness inevitably ousted bravery.
The turning point came in 1966. At one stroke, non-violence gave way to violence, cooperation to separatism, civil rights to black nationalism. Another polarization had been born.
SDS
The second organization, equally typical and important is the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). The SNCC, like the SDS was also a direct result of 1960. In December 1961, thirty-five students met to set up an executive committee and plan a convention for 1962. The convention was held June 11-15, 1962, at Port Huron, Michigan, with fifty-nine people present. From it the SDS was launched.
Originally the SDS was a liberal-left coalition with a multi-issue perspective and a humane if somewhat verbose manifesto.
The SDS soon fell out with the League for Industrial Democracy over their anti-communism stance and were locked out of their offices by the parent organization.
In 1963, the SDS was the first to copy the SNCC in beginning community organizations in the ghettoes. In 1965, they were the first to organize against the draft. For the movement generally there was the increasing trend from frustration towards despair. For the individual, too, there was usually some radical baptism, some movement of truth. The shared danger for the sake of justice was the sacramental baptism of fire.
There was always a connection between such romanticism and eventual totalitarianism, and the later SDS is no exception. Worse still, there was an increasing denial of free speech. Only partisan obstinacy can see the extreme dialectical somersault in this doctrinaire denial of free speech.
Space precludes discussing other groups, events and leaders, even though they merit serious treatment.
The Failure of the New Left
Two factors cruelly falsify any optimism. The first is the New Left’s substantial failure to achieve its goals, and the second is the heightened repression countering the attempt so far.
But it would be wrong not to appreciate the influence each national revolutionary movement has had. In the United States, the overall failure of the radicals has not prevented the acceptance of many of their ideas. Most of the visible change has been in the radicals themselves, and its terminus is despair.
One weakness is the conspicuous absence of several of the celebrated prerequisites of previous revolutions. There has been no devastating military disaster or extreme national humiliation abroad.
Their relation to the working class was, if anything, even more distant.
A final factor has been their susceptibility to the mass media.
The Parting of the Ways
The failure of the New Left is the occasion of a general parting of the movement.
The first trend, among those still committed to activism, is a resort to increased violence.
The second general trend is towards a new-line Marxism closer to Mao.
Looking back now, we can see that the New Left was correct in recognizing that Marx’s analysis had run aground on the realities of the post-war world. The new stage, then, is to turn from such a counter-productive conclusion and to strike a new stance as worker-theorists, appealing to Mao as the model.
The third general trend is toward completely apolitical areas of involvement.
The forth general trend is an accelerating swing towards new communities. Growing one’s own food, making one’s cloths, educating one’s children, such a return to simplicity and freedom is a natural goal in the world with no more frontiers to the West.
Sadly, this is not the total picture. Many intentional communities which base themselves on the ideal of total freedom fail within the first year.
The fifth general trend, is the Rock Festival phenomenon.
A sixth trend is the quiet compromise of principle and capitulation of action that leads so many radicals back to bourgeois normalcy.
Heightened Repression
Having diagnosed correctly the dehumanizing trends in industrial society, the radicals concluded their analysis so hastily that they failed to see the roots of the problem.
Truth is the majority law of that group which overpowers all others.
From Realism to Romanticism
The Great Refusal has unwittingly become the Great Betrayal. This should not drive us to defeatism or despair. Not for nothing is the decade of the seventies being described as the era of the counter counter culture.
Wednesday Class Notes
Lesson 1 – Christendom’s Ancien Regime
Age of Modernity – After the Enlightenment which was before 1789 , in which was the fall of Bastille.
1. Scientism
2. Materialistic
3. Democracy
4. Anti-Religious
With self, if God is not important, than to self, History is not important.
The Ancien Regime grew out of Augustan, The beginning of Modernity was in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
Charlemagne was the grandson of Charles Martel, who in 732 drove out the Muslim armies.
1167 – a group of teachers gathered a group, to teach them what they knew.
1636 – Harvard was founded
1789 – The terror of the West Revolution began.
The Pillars of Christian Civilization
I. Creator and Creature distinctions – We are different than God.
II. Imago Dei (We are made in the image of God).
III. Man
A.) Ante-Bellum
B.) Post-Bellum
IV. Sovereignty of God
No Autonomy
Anti-thesis
V. Righteousness
VI. Reformation
VII. Holistic
Harmony of spirituality and Materiality
Modernity normally dates from the enlightenment. Typical of Modernity:
• Scientism: Men invoke reason (independent of God) supported by science. Science becomes God.
• Materialism: No God. Nothing spiritual.
• Democracy: Supposedly all men become equal, but there are still elites, they are simply masked.
• Anti-religious: In other words Anti-Christianity.
Some have argued that we are in the post-modernity age, which is simply modernity on steroids. There is no objective reality. “That may be true for you, but it isn’t true for me.”
Man is the center of Modernity. History has no import in Modernity because God (who makes and ordains history) is thrown our the window, therefore all history except personal history becomes unimportant.
Everybody is infected with and affected by Modernity. If we don’t understand Modernity from a Christian worldview, it will affect our Christianity.
1789-The fall of Bastille and the beginning of the French Revolution is considered to be the beginning of the Enlightenment. The French Revolution was a return to the Renaissance, which itself was a return to Greek paganism, which was a return to the Fall.
The Ancien Regime is used to describe the civilization of Christendom.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist, he obtained his degree by plagiarism, was a womanizer, and an adulterer.
“There is not one square over all the domain of human existence in which Christ does not look and say ‘It is Mine.’ ”
The agenda of the Enlightenment was to pull down the old regime and bring up the new one.
“Images are the language of the laymen.” This statement is still accurate today. Movies and television are the languages people speak. It’s interesting that images stand in contrast both with the written word, and also with the Word.
Highlights of Christendom’s Ancien Regime:
30 Jesus was crucified
Higher education finds its roots in Christianity
There are 3 groups that are at odds with each other: Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
Old books like the Lord of the Rings, and the Narnia series hearken back to the Ancien Regime, which explains why they are so popular. People don’t realize it, but they desire that sort of civilization.
732 Charles Martel prevailed at Tours. Thank God for Charles Martel
If you want to understand the old world order, read City of God by Augustine, or The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin.
If you secure reformation of the church you will either change society along with the church, or you will face prosecution.
1789 The French Revolution began, arresting the growth of the Ancien Regime
The pillars of Christian civilization
• Contents: The creature/creator distinction was understood. Men are not made of the same things as God. God is transcendent. There is a line of distinction between the divine and everything else.
• Imago Dei: Man is made in the image of God. Therefore, “vox populi, vox dei” the voice of the people is the voice of God cannot be true. Also, there is value in life because man is made in the image of God.
• Ante-bellum/post-bellum: They recognized that after the “war” man became scarred and marred. He cannot be independent.
• Sovereignty of God: Man has no autonomy, due to the fall. We are bound by the fall. Checks and balances are necessary. Covenantalism.
• Though man is fallen, he can receive Christ’s righteousness. It is through Christ’s righteousness that we can have reformation.
• Reformation: Everything touched by those redeemed will change.
• Wholistic: A harmony of spirituality and materiality. Martel’s weapons were both spiritual and material. Modernity tries to eliminated the spiritual.
Sarah Bacon – October 24, 2012
Remaking the World: Three Great Revolutions
“When we talk about history, we make choices based on our own assumptions. Modernity is the age of smothering, dominating government where all their jurisdictions God has established for society are placed under the authority of the government. This will be the story that we will examine over the course of this year and that will drive us back to our own assumptions and choices over what is good and true and important over and over and over.”
Vocabulary:
tautology – needless repetition of an idea, especially in words other than those of the immediate context, without imparting additional force or clearness
dichotomy – division into two parts, kinds, etc.; subdivision into halves or pairs.
compilation – the act of compiling
triune – three in one; constituting a trinity in unity, as the Godhead
paradox – a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth
catalyzation – (Chemistry) to influence (a chemical reaction) by catalysis
cohere – to stick together; be united; hold fast, as parts of the same mass
Jacobin – (in the French Revolution) a member of a radical society or club of revolutionaries that promoted the Reign of Terror and other extreme measures, active chiefly from 1789 to 1794:so called from the Dominican convent in Paris, where they originally met; a extreme radical (especially in politics).
radical – a person who holds or follows strong convictions or extreme principles; extremist
feudalism – the feudal system, or its principles and practices
yellow journalism – the type of journalism that relies on on sensationalism and lucrid exaggeration to attract readers
ideology – the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group; the study of the nature and origin of ideas
demagoguery – the methods or practices of a demagogue
metastasize – to transform, especially into a dangerous form; to spread injuriously
“Three great revolutions in the West transformed both the shape of nations and the shape of their ancient Christian cultures.” ~Christopher Dawson
Many problems of the world are create on purpose by the government so that they could come in and “fix” it to be the hero of the day. They seek to control our thoughts and emotions. They seek also to blur the lines within domestic and international. This is not new…it is a New World Order agenda that is being pushed. Today they won’t be discreet and try to cover their agenda because they have the power and authority to do what they want. When you break down the barrier for countries, you are getting rid of self-identity. You also open the door for many conflicting religions and culture. This gives way for the government to have more control and authority. New World Order seeks to make “unity” which will mean one people and therefore one god. Man. Every man is god but with any religion there must be unity within the godhead. But if man was god, then the godhead would be in chaos due to different views of right and wrong. From this we would get uniformity.
Choosing a Date for Modernity’s Start:
When did it start? It is disagreed upon when exactly Modernity was born. Many like to put the date of the birth with specific events that happened starting with 1618 and ending to 1815.
The English Civil War: 1642-1651
The English Commonwealth: 1649-1659
The Thirty Year War 1618-1648
The Peace of Westphalia: 1648
The Glorious Revolution: 1688
The Second Hundred Years War: 1688-1815
The American War for Independence: 1763-1781
The French Revolution: 1789-1799
The Congress of Vienna – 1815
So where do we draw the line? Where do we trace it back? Where do we find the roots of any real religion or worldview? Can we ever know for sure?
“Ideas have consequences” is more of theological and ideological while “Consequences have ideas” are more sociological. They are both needed and they reflect one another: Ideas have consequences and then in response consequences have more ideas. But if forced to pick the more important and truthful, it would be that ideas have consequences. It’s a timetable. You flip it upside down and it’s still important. Our idea of history will be based off of our worldview. But at the same time our worldview is influenced by history and what we are told about history. When you watch the news it’s not the news you’re really watching…it is the worldview of the person (people) behind it and their agenda and it impacts how you think and live. They tell you what they want to tell you and not something particularly relevant or needed to live. It is a manipulation game.
There is no one cause for Modernity. It started with an idea which spread and grew. There was a redrawing of the map of Europe…driven by new ideas and worldviews. This redrawing happened first by our first revolution.
Revolution #1: Remaking of England and Scotland:
There was a Civil War in 1642 which contained the revolt against Charles I, the Solemn League and Covenant, and also the rise of Oliver Cromwell.
Conflict broke out when Charles I refused to give way to the people and they rose up against him. The Scots and English came together with the Solemn League and Covenant that bound them together to create a new force. Oliver Cromwell came forward because of his great leadership and courage in battle and when the king was taken and killed the Parliament turned to Oliver Cromwell to rule over them and he did this by the changing the way of ruling to more of a protecting type of rule. He was thereby named Lord Protectorate.
There was the Commonwealth which includes the Regicide and Parliamentary Victory, the Protectorate of Cromwell and the Restoration of the Stuarts.
There was also the Legacy of the Stuarts: Charles II and James II, William III, Mary II, Anne, and the House of Hanover and finally the Jacobite Rising.
Revolution #2: Remaking Continental Europe
The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) which included the Hapsburg Hegemony and Reformation, the Dutch and the Moravians, and Sweden, France, and England.
Hegemony meaning a smothering and controlling…it eventually turned to the reform and betterment of Hapsburg. England’s concern was turned inward at itself and to fix all the problems going on there. While all this happened Suleiman the Magnificent marched to London with his Muslim army to conquer it. If it wasn’t for his cannons getting stuck in the mud because of the heavy rains that year, then he would have completely wiped out London and it would be Muslim today. There were little uprising by the Dutch and the Moravians seeking to bring in their religion.
The Peace of Westphalia which included the Dismantling the Holy Roman Empire, National Sovereignty, and Central European Chaos.
The Grand Alliance brought in the Rise of Louis XIV (who sought to bring in a French sovereignty and rule), the Revocation of the Treaty of Nantes, and William III and the Refugees.
Revolution #3: Remaking the Great Rivalry:
This began with the Second Hundred Years War which brought in the Nationalist Alliances, Colonial Conflicts and Hegemony and also Mercantilist Ambitions.
The second thing brought in by all this was the French Turmoil which included the French Revolution (1789), the Reign of Terror, and the Rise of Dictatorship. This was a bloody time of tyranny and all this lead to World War.
This was the final impact of the Great Rivalry…World War. This brought in the Napoleonic Empire, the Specter of Perpetual Warfare, and the Congress of Vienna. This was a time of great war. But with the Congress of Vienna we have a remaking of the map of Europe.
All of these events shaped and laid the formation for the entrance of Modernity. Lots of rulers, dates, wars and other great events that have aided in bringing Modernity about. Modernity is defined most by ideological conflict. Modernity has set the agenda. You have to be able to speak in terms of government if you want to seek to control the chaos of the world. We have to speak in terms of Modernity…even if you are seeking to oppose it. So much of the world revolves around the government…how big is it? What does it control? Does it do its duty of justice? Our government hasn’t been given the authority over Church, home, education, media, guilds, and healthcare. They have stuck their fingers in pies that are not theirs. This has been driven by Modernity. Modernity is the age of smothering, overpowering government.
Thirteen signs of New World Order Progressivism:
1) The Promise of Utopianism – Kingdom of Man
2) Planning – State plans instead of individual
3) Centralization – Power moves to being diffused to being clumped into one
4) Identity/Sameness – All differences are erased
5) Majoritism – Everyone moves as a blob…if you don’t then you are cut off
6) Hostility Against Organized Religion – If you resist their religion then you are held in hate.
7) Hate Free Enterprise – Someone else planning is considered wrong.
8) Anti-family – Family is an organize group and can challenge centralization.
9) Intolerance – Intolerance for intolerance.
10) Statism – Everything moves in the state.
11) Messianism – Every religion must have a savior or messiah.
12) Colonialism – One country moves into a weaker and forms and shapes it with new principles.
13) Interventionism – Sticking our nose into everyone else’s business.
The age of Modernity is the age of the government.
Rebecca Bacon Wednesday class- Modernity 10/24/12
Chapter 6 – The Dust of Death
A second defining feature of the counter culture is the swing to Eastern religions. Another revolution is in the making, a revolution of consciousness equally critical of the system and society, but dramatically different in its solution. The British Raj was at the height of its power; as late as 1830. But suddenly the whole balance is changed, the status quo was upset and the swing to the East to find philosophic and religious answers is an important trend.
East Meats West in San Francisco
The East made its first entry into the counter culture in San Francisco through the Early Beats. Having written seven books on Zen before, Jack Kerouac was thirty-five; this one time Anglican counselor is a leading popularizer of the Eastern religions of the West.
Zen was obviously appealing in the climate of the Beat existentialism and antinomianism.
The rapid acceleration of interest in the east hardly needs documentation, for today the influence is everywhere in a rich profusion, if not confusion. For some it is a matter of utmost seriousness; for others with minimal understanding it is only a passing fad or a shallow commitment.
Another parallel is the popularity of the novels touching on the Eastern trend.
But above all, there are the thousands of young people on the road to the East either spiritually or physically. Some are working in the village communities in India; others have been initiated under gurus and are studying in ashrams.
The point is this: the East is still the East, but the West is no longer the West. No one can understand without first appreciating the underlying factors behind the movement.
Stirrings in the East and West
Many signs show that Western thought is somewhat played out, anemic and lifeless. The Western escape from reason has produced a twin reaction, first, to more imagination generally and, second, to more imagination particularly through the East. We see Western intellectuals looking towards the East because of the bankruptcy of Western thought.
An important feature is the stirring in the East itself. The India of the British Raj was no more the real India than the Britain of the 1970’s is the Britain of the British empire. A first feature is that India’s culture has a historic continuity from her pre-historic origin to the present, and no foreign conquest or invasion has ever severed that continuity.
The second point transcends this historical, archeological interest. As modern Europe is “de-Christened,” losing its Christian foundations, it feels itself in danger of losing its soul.
The question of time is an important case in point. Another point of contrast is the question of reality.
In this renaissance of Indian study there have been three avenues of rediscovery. The first but the least important was the patient work of scholarly research and government-sponsored investigation.
A second avenue of rediscovery was the translation of the various sacred texts.
The third avenue for rediscovery, and by far the most important, was the patient work of the various apologists from the East.
A great influence in the nineteenth century was the founding of the Theosophical Society. Also was important was Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950). With the benefits of an education in England, Aurobindo strenuously entered into politics as a young man, became a leader of the Nationalists Party. In 1910 he retired to his ashram in Pondicherry, remaining there the rest of his life.
In our own century several leaders stand out. Rabindranath Tagore (1861- 1941) was the Leonardo of the Bengal renaissance – poet, dramatist, actor, composer, painter, philosopher and prophet.
The East and Post-Christian West
The third great factor and the most important of all has been the convergent coincidence of Eastern thought with post-Christian Western thought. In a panorama of areas – from man’s origin in the past to his utopian hope in the future – there is a coincidence of Eastern and post-Christian thought.
The Silence of God
In philosophy, for example, there is the question of whether or not there is a God, and if so, whether he can speak. Although we speak of the noumenal, we must beware of being hexed by the “bewitching nature” of language. Verbalization cannot penetrate the unknown and unknowable noumenal.
There is a failure of language, not a failure of God.
This leaves the Western discussion of God with only two possibilities – the sheer silence of the atheist or the mere symbolism of the mystic. The fact of the death of God is a compromise that many modern atheists recognize as lacking integrity. For them, there is only silence, however hard or unwelcome.
God is always beyond, unknowable in his pure essence; any description we give him in terms of pictures or words is only a reduction for our human understanding. God cannot be known through rational, conceptual, verbalized thought of any kind. He is to be known only through institution or meditation, both of which stress the non-rational or the super-rational.
On the side of sheer silence Buddhism provides the parallel to Western atheism.
Many of the sayings now enjoying vogue on the campuses also illustrate silence. Zen is much concerned with the subtle paradoxes of language. As some would say, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Intellectually both East and post-Christian west have arrived at silence of atheism or mysticism.
Ecology and the Nature of Nature
A second example of this current dovetailing of East and post-Christian West is the area of ecology and the question of the basis for a proper treatment of nature. Some have suggested that the only answer to this is pantheism, a view that bases the respectful treatment of nature on man’s basic unity with nature.
That is, when man understands that he and nature stand in unity on a physical or natural level, man then comes to see that he and nature itself are really one on a more basic level.
Historic Christianity sees man as distinct, but not divorced, from nature. But on the level of his fitness man is one within nature as part of the wider finite creation.
Pantheism does not have balance.
The point is clear: taken as a whole, the defeatism in Western thought, the stirrings in the East and the coincidence in so many areas of thought are pushing the West further and further towards the East.
The Weakness of Western Christianity
The swing to the East has come at a time when Christianity is weak at just those points where it would need to be strong to withstand the East. Modern Christianity is crucially weak at three vital points. The first is its compromised, deficient understanding of revelation. Without the Bible, theology can only grow closer to Hinduism. Second, the modern Christian is drastically weak in an unmediated, personal, experiential knowledge of God. Third, the modern church is pathetically feeble in the expression of its focal principal of community.
Even within the church itself my have an understanding of their faith extremely blurred at the edges.
It is important to stress, however, that in the East There is much that is valid and good, much that we must acknowledge as true. The East stresses experience not theory and thus is a welcome relief from the sterile memory of preachers and pulpits, six feet above contradiction and life.
The East stresses integration and not isolated individually.
Monism: An Eastern Presupposition
There is a great range in Hindu theology. Seen one way, there are as many gods as there are Indians. It is certainly true that other varieties of Hinduism, not to speak of Buddhism, have vastly differing epistemologies or ontologies. But when stripped of their philosophic backgrounds, all the paths of yoga amount to much the same thing in practice. Their common aim is the liberation of the self from all that which is non-self, until the latter ceases.
Monism and Reality
As monism developed, the relation of God to his world was described in terms of a dreamer and his dream. The phenomenal world as we know it is a maya, whose root meaning in Sanskrit is to measure or classify. Thus, maya, the world of scientific phenomena, is illusion, ignorance and shadow, a world where individuality and diversity are thought to be real but are not. The trend from polytheism to monism has led increasingly to the stress on the unreality of the universe as we know it.
Monism and Personality
The second area is the relation of monism to personality.
The implied retreat from individuality is openly expressed in the Hindu ideals for life.
Monism does not see man’s dilemma as moral but as metaphysical. He must be helped from his individuality; he must merge with the Absolute. This cannot but lead to radical negation of any positive aspiration towards individuality in this life.
From nowhere in the East could one quarry a sufficient basis for such high views of man. In both philosophy and practice it exhibits a dangerous carelessness about the higher reaches of man’s aspirations of humanness.
Despite its distinct vagueness his goal is not unattractive, but this vagueness in fact turns out to be chronic.
Monism and Morality
The third important area is the relation of monism to morality. Monism says that good and evil are only distinct because of maya. Only in this life do you believe in goods and evil as real and distinct. Backstage, God and Satan are the best of friends. Within the framework of monism God contains both good and evil and is beyond good and evil. Zen is close to Hinduism here too.
The ideal is to attain to the level of bliss where one is so transcendent in consciousness that he is beyond the distinctions of good and evil.
As this works out in practice, there are two general tendencies. The first is the tendency towards personal resignation, fatalism. After all, action to relieve suffering is the abortion to karma.
Some say that perhaps few other countries in the world are so ripe for revolution, yet the communists make surprisingly little headway.
The second tendency is towards a general communal detachment. If the only solution for individuality is dissolution by merging with the Absolute, obviously the answer is not to be found in the run and the ruck of human life but in mental or physical withdrawal. For the Buddhist the practice of unselfishness is simply part of the overall technique of divesting oneself of the illusion of self.
From this examination of the monistic premises if Hinduism and their reaction to reality, personality and morality, it should be evident that monism is not only deficient but dangerous–deficient within the cultural situation of the East, but, more important for this discussion, dangerous in our Western situation.
A Christian Alternative
It is a perverse fact that people scornfully reject in Christianity, they welcome with open arms in Eastern mysticism. This despite the fact that Christianity is strong at just the points where the East is critically weak.
But God, as he reveals himself in Jesus Christ is personal and also infinite.
At the heart of God’s own Being there is diversity within unity and unity around diversity.
For the Christian, freedom for the individual is never freedom from individuality, but rather freedom to be finally fully himself.
Hinduism believes in only shadowy avatars as revealers of God, Mohammed held that it was blasphemy to call any man God, but Islam has made him into a quasi-deity. But Jesus is the only one who lived and died and be the Son of God–all in the open arena of history.
Tolerance: East and West
The real nature of the contrast does not lie where it is often supposed, but in the relativistic climate following the death of absolutes; there is a marked reluctance to think beyond the surface appearances.
If Jesus had spoken as he had to Indians and not Jews, everyone would have smiled, tossed some flowers or a garland and passed on down the street. But Jesus spoke deliberately and plainly to the Jews, the one nation on earth which was historically and theologically predisposed to reject categorically any idea of God becoming incarnate in human flesh.
It is quite plain that, if treated “fairly” on its own premises, Christianity excludes the full truth and final validity of other religions.
Of course, a Christian must remember that such “intolerance” must be an intolerance of principal; it must never become an intolerance against the people who hold the alternate views.
We should be able to understand why a generation disillusioned with the West has searched for alternatives in the East. Many of those most heavily “into the East” are now returning disappointed and disillusioned. And if the East can shed its lumbering cultural baggage of backwardness and be translate into a consciousness easier and more appealing to the Western mind, then the process can be dramatically accelerated.
This is the promise of the psychedelics.
Class notes
Lesson 2 – Remaking the World, Thee Great Revolutions
The Birth of Modernity
Many believe that Modernity was born within the dates 1618 and 1815.
Civil War (1642), Revolution No.1, Remaking England
England revolted against Charles I because he wanted full power.
Commonwealth
One of these men fighting against Charles was Oliver Cromwell, who, when Charles was executed, became “Lord Protector.” When Cromwell died, his son, Richard, tried to take his place. But instead, the people called Charles II (the son of Charles I) back to England to rule. When he died without an heir, his brother James II took his place and ruled for only 30 years (James was Catholic). But the people wanted a Protestant king and Queen so they called to James’s daughter Mary II and her Dutch husband William III to rule instead.
Revolution No.2, Remaking Continental Europe, The 30 Years War (1618-1648)
War starts with Sweden, France, and England because of laws against the Protestant religion. They finally make peace in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia.
The Grand Alliance
Louis XIV, the king of France became very wealthy and strong and his neighbors feared that he might attach them. When he did, they all banned together and fought him.
Revolution No.3, Remaking the Great Revolution, The Second Hundred Years War
Most of the second hundred years war started in France with King Louis.
13 signs of a New World Order
1.) The promise of Utopia (nowhere)
2.) Planning – has to be at the level of the government
3.) Centralization
4.) Identity or sameness
5.) Majoritism
6.) Hostility against organized religion
7.) Hatred of free enterprise
8.) Anti-family
9.) Intolerance
10.) Statism
11.) Messianism
12.) Colonialism or anti-colonialism
13.) Interventionism
Lesson 2: Remaking the world: Three Great Revolutions
New World Order. Tries to dilute and dissolve sovereignty of America, especially by destroying the Declaration of Independence, and putting something else in its place (declaration of interdependence.)
People trying to create this New World Order need money. You can’t move an agenda without money. Follow the money. They get their from large trusts.
They also try to create crisis’s. For example, many food crisis’s and population crisis’s are created by politicians so that they can step in to ‘solve the problem.’
These people will try to blur the difference between domestic and international affairs. Will use incrementalism (Fabian Socialism) to advance their goals.
Too much immigration breaks down borders so that a nation is no longer individual. Then, when all sorts of different groups are in the nation, the government is the only thing that can keep the groups unified.
In New World Order thinking, man is God. People want unity in God, therefore NOW seeks the uniformity of man.
There are many different arguments as to when Modernity began.
Ideas have consequences. Theological and ideological consequences. Also, consequences have ideas. Both these statements are true, but it starts with theology. History is shaped by people’s worldviews, and worldviews are shaped by history.
The news is the worldview of the news station.
Redrawing the map of Europe
Revolution 1: Remaking England and Scotland.
Henry VIII dissolved monasteries and became rich from the money the monasteries had collected. From that point the heirs controlled everything. People began to resent the Tudors, but they were popular. James VI of Scotland’s son, Charles I was not capable when he became king. He had Parliament make new standards of taxing, and as a result conflict broke out as the people revolted, creating a civil war. The Scots and the English entered into the Solemn League and Covenant. Oliver Cromwell was a fighter who rose in Parliament and became the Lord Protectorate. In 1660, the Stuarts restored the constitutional monarchy. The kings power was much restricted by Parliament. After the death of Mary, there were no more heirs. Parliament chose the Hanovers to be the next royal family. England had been reshaped.
Revolution 2: Remaking Continental Europe.
Hapsburg sought hegemony. Never before or since had one man controlled so much of the world’s population. At that time, England was changing and the Muslims were rising. Charles V was facing Islam, a divided France, and a divided England. Also, at this time Martin Luther was creating trouble, and the Dutch were holding onto their resistance. Because of these things, Charles V was distracted. He launched a campaign to destroy the Moravians and the Dutch. The 30 years war began. Some consider this the first world war. Then the Peace of Westphalia followed, but the Holy Roman Empire has begun to be dismantled. At this time, the King of France, Louis XIV, tried to take over. The Grand Alliance was created to try to stop him. Then a new rivalry began between France and England, which resulted in the first hundred years war from 1337 to 1453.
Revolution 3: Remaking the Great Rivalry.
After the second hundred years war (1688-1815) new national alliances began. There were colonial conflicts and the French-Indian war and others were a result. There was an attempt to create a nationalized economy, and as Napoleon rose, there was the possibility of perpetual war.
Modernity is defined by ideological conflicts.
Once, when people were asked where they were from, they would answer in terms of relationships. Now they answer in terms of nationality. Modernity is defined in terms of government. It is the age of smothering domination government.
13 Signs of Progressivism
Utopia 2) Planning 3) Centralization 4) Sameness 5) Majoritism 6) No organized religion 7) Hatred of free enterprise 8) Anti-family 9) Intolerance 10) Statism 11) Messiahism 12) Colonialism 13) Interventionism
Halloween in the church was originally a celebration of the saints.
Looking at Modernity through the eyes of the French Revolution.
Two competing factions occurred at the end of Christendom. Some argued reformation (Martin Luther, John Calvin). Returning reinterpreting and re-applying the Scriptures, while some argued revolution, saying that everything much be scrapped and must start from scratch.
Some say the American war for independence was a revolution, but it was actually a reformation. The people were reluctant to fight. It was a defensive war. A counterrevolution against revolutionaries in England. They were rebelling against rebellion.
The French revolution on the other hand was an attempt to topple the old institutions and start from scratch.
Revolution vs. Reformation:
Presupposes man, looks to reason vs. Presupposes God, looks for revelation
Seeks glory of man vs. seeks glory of God
Utopia vs. kingdom of God
Quick results vs. Long obedience
Loud publicity vs. Quiet reputation
Unrelenting science vs. Gentle persuasions
Programs and policies vs. covenant and callings
Charts, graphs, stats vs. faith, hope, love
Gargantuan purposes vs. small beginnings
Dealing with passing pleasures of sin vs. the Gospel
Undeterred by facts vs. undeterred by obstacles
Never fails to disappoint vs. never fails
Appeals to emotions vs. doctrine, life of the mind
Appeals to crowds vs. covenant, family by family
Propaganda, tries to fool people vs. truth
Ideology vs. truth
Manipulation vs. persuasion
Psychology vs. theology
Alexander Hamilton steered George Washington away from a revolution.
Revolutionaries complain about the unjust frying pan and jump into the fire.
French Revolution:
The myth is that the monarchy was corrupt and people were just trying to get their basic rights back. In truth, when they people stormed the Bastille, there were seven people in it. 4 guards and 3 mentally ill prisoners. The monarchy was not corrupt like people try to paint them.
The Fathers of the Revolution:
Rene Descartes: Thought it necessary to strip away presuppositions of philosophy and begin with only what can be observed. “I think, therefore I am.” Said that experience is judge. Cogito Erge Sun. Man determines truth. This concept ignores that man is fallen, therefore observations are going to be flawed. Man is easily fooled. “I think, therefore I am” is a tautology. It starts with man, to prove man.
Baruch Spinoza: Took Cartesian’s philosophy and argued that you can’t prove God, therefore man must live ignoring God.
Thomas Hobbes believe one could devise a science of man. He developed as mathematical approach to societies and suggest that society should start over and build a better world. Hobbes advocated elites.
David Hume was an atheist who had been caught by the tautology of “Can God create a rock so big He couldn’t pick it up?”
Voltaire went on an anti-religious crusade. He mocked the foundation of Christendom and suggested society start over with the experts rebuilding.
Jean Jacques Rousseau liked to argue. He wrote “The Social Contract” saying that the government coheres solely through social contracts with the people. He completely leaves God out.
Denis Diderot attempted to compile all human knowledge and called it the Encyclopedia. He thought the basis for a new kind of society should be rooted in man’s rationality.
Duc d’Orleans wanted to reinvent the world. He opened the Palais Royal to friends as a center of pleasure. It launched the industries of pornography, prostitution, and drugs.
Perversion is sold as liberations, but results in political slavery.
The Actors in the Revolution:
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette tried to end corruption in manors and court.
Comte Mirabeau tried to bring about constitutional monarchy.
Marquis de Lafayette was a moderate who was spared in the revolution because he was in Italy fighting.
Georges Danton
Jean-Paul Marat
Robespierre, who was known as the incorruptible. Headed the committee of public safety for three months. Wanted to destroy the city in order to rebuild. Tried to do away with the normal calendar, to switch to a year with 10 months, and 10 days in each week. Attempted to recreate a social order in their image, and tried to form a fiat reality.
Revolutionary cultures must change everything. Ties with the past must be cut off in this attempt, therefore there is no interest in history (except for personal history to an extent. Immediate history.)
The only outcome of revolution is dictatorship. Anarchy leads to tyranny. Someone steps forth out of the chaos to create stability.
Stages in the Revolution:
Unrest
Revolt
Stalemate
Radicalism. There are no rules of propriety.
War
Anarchy
Terror
Gridlock
Results of the Revolution:
The institutionalization of ideological politics
The popularization of demagoguery
The mobilization of conspiratorial politics
The catalyzation of terrorism
The metastasizing of enlightenment thought
The en of feudalism
The entrenchment of nationalism
The emergence of yellow journalism.
The ideas of the French Revolution became the center of Modernity.
Lesson 4: Paradigms for Colonialism
Political Election History.
Politics and elections go in cycles. From the Washington to the Jefferson was one cycle, then they are split up into the Jeffersonian revolution, the Jacksonian revolution (whish was what was considered the rise of the common man,) the Lincolnian revolution (where the electorate was largely Jacobin.) When McKinley was elected the parties shifted. The republicans reflected the democratic ideology, and the democrats reflected the republican ideology. From there, the Rosseveltian revolution occurred when FDR was elected, and then the Nixonian revolution. It can be argued now that when Obama was elected, we entered the Obamaian revolution.
Each revolution builds a new coalition. The Obamaian revolution seeks entitlements, feminism, academics, youths, unions, perverts. Its ideology is cultural marxism.
False worldviews are irrational.
Ideological Imperialism is the Hallmark of Modernity. It advocates only one ideology and eliminates all opposing viewpoints and all differences.
Colonialism begins with Columbus and his trips. When other nations saw the progress that could be made, they began to send their own explorers, looking for a new passage to Asia.
Columbus’s goals, as outlined by himself in his journal, were threefold: to bring the faith of Christianity to other nations, to flank the Muslims, and to find wealth in order to build a cathedral in Jerusalem.
The English didn’t want the Spanish to have all the opportunities, but they were met with many troubles in the great wilderness they landed at.
Three great changes made the way for colonialization. The agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and the transportation revolution.
In Europe, tremendous crowding due to the industrial revolution resulted in waves of immigrants leaving, looking for new places to settle. This was colonialization.
At the same time, there was an explosion in global trade.
Mercantilism, the wedding of big government and big corporations, began to popular. It was the primary means by which funding for colonialization was secured. Up to this point, government had not been responsible for the economy. That responsibility fell on the land owners among others.
This colonializtion was a great opportunity for Biblical evangelism, but the mercantilists wanted to limit the missionaries. A new sort of evangelizing occurred, secular evangelism as a result of manifest destiny, the belief that it is intended for a nation to spread itself because it is so good. It progressed to become nationalism.
Territorial acquisitions radically changed the world.
While technologies are important, it was the ideas that changed the world. They transform things when people believe in them long enough.
Sarah Bacon – November 7, 2012
Paradigms for Colonialism
Vocabulary:
leguminous crop rotation – The successive planting of different crops on the same land to improve soil fertility and help control insects and diseases
fallow – plowed and left unseeded for a season or more;uncultivated.
internecine – of or pertaining to conflict or struggle within a group
virtue – moral excellence; goodness; righteousness
leitmotif – a motif or theme associated throughout a music drama with a particular person, situation, or idea.
barbarity – brutal or inhumane conduct; cruelty
mercantilism – mercantile practices or spirit; commercialism
infanticide – the act of killing an infant
euthanasia – Also called mercy killing. the act of putting to death painlessly or allowing to die, as by withholding extreme medical measures, a person or animal suffering from an incurable, especially a painful, disease or condition
ribald – vulgar or indecent in speech, language, etc.; coarsely mocking, abusive, or irreverent; scurrilous
subjective – existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought
objective – being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject
affectation – an effort to appear to have a quality not really or fully possessed; the pretense of actual possession
effete – lacking in wholesome vigor; degenerate; decadent:
mendicant – begging; practicing begging; living on alms
devolution – the act or fact of devolving
antinomian – a person who maintains that Christians are freed from the moral law by virtue of grace as set forth in the gospel.
contrivance – something contrived
agribusiness – the businesses collectively associated with the production,processing, and distribution of agricultural products
Throughout the political line we see swells of new ideas brought on by new presidents…every so often we would have a new president who would bring in new ideas and ways of coming into office.
Ideological Imperialism – an idea becomes overwhelming. This is typical of modernity. This is the timeframe clocked at from the enlightenment onward. Before that time (usually called the ancien regime) they didn’t have a generalized empire or centralization so they did support the diversity and individualism.
India and Africa were hit by the colonization and for the large part the higher caste and lower caste were generally not informed of Christianity. In about 1840 there was a Marxist movement overseas that was quickly pushed down and squelched and as a result those put down came over to America and spread it here.
We see Christopher Columbus starting real colonization with the Spanish settlements and over the Indies. The English saw the great wealth that poured in from Columbus from the Spanish and they started paying explorers to begin to explore searching for a northwest passage to the Indies.
Columbus is largely hated because he sought to bring the word of Christianity to many of the foreign lands where he explored. 1) He sought to bring faith to the nations 2) He sought to bring down the Muslims hordes and 3) He sought to gain wealth in order to built a great cathedral in Jerusalem. He is very hated because the people of today are against Christianity so his name has become largely dirtied.
At the end of the Thirty Years War we see a lot of chaos and disputes breaking out across different nations. Within a generation, the message of Christ had been spread to the entire earth following all the Europe conflicts. There were some things that aided the betterment of the culture as a whole. 1) agricultural revolution – the beginning of agricultural technology. They developed and exercised stewardship over their dominion. As a result of this there was far less famine throughout the lands due to this great advancement in growing of food and crops. 2) Industrial revolution – factories were creating both markets and opportunities for families, cities, and even nations. The division of labor was focused on specific talents. 3) Transportation revolution – By the end of the Victorian age men were racing across the ground with motor vehicles and the air in great balloons and even airplanes. This all took place in less than a lifetime. It brought about great efficiency and power.
Prior to the development of strong housing ideas when people were crowded in cities you see the infrastructure breaks down. When usual society functions break down (like you see even in hurricane Sandy) you see a lot of chaos for things that we take for granted (bathrooms, trash companies etc.). Because of this, we see a lot of people trying to move away from situations like these and they begin to explore and travel more…which is where we get people starting to inhabit places like America…an opportunity to flee from persecution and bad living situations. In times like those you have three choices: fight, fright, or flight…and they chose flight. This did give a good boost to global trading though.
Capitalism began to grow…but did not allow for any competition. Before that time there was decentralization but following it with the coming in of mercantilism there was case of big corporations going in with capitalists. A whole new system of government as well as economic development was brought in and accepted. How to create wealth and how to rule in a centralized state was introduced. This was also hard for the missionaries to spread their gospel because of great pressure being put on them by those in power.
Manifest destiny – a hodgepodge of ideas that grow up from the divine right of kings as well as a secular version of the gaining of the world under their control. This was originally built off of a grand scheme to try and redeem the “Old World”.
America was a nation built originally upon common ideas, common laws, and a common God. It was not just a mishmash of ideas thrown together into a pot that was built out of mercantilism and colonization.
Ideas make for real difference in the world. It can wholly transform the world when people believe in them for long enough and strong enough. Ideas have consequences. Our job is to sort through these ideas…to find where they came from and which ones are the important ones so we can sift out the bad ones, encourage the good ones…and ultimately change the future with new and better ideas.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity Week 4 – Pirates on the High Seas – November 14, 2012
Vocabulary:
micro – extremely small
macro – very large in scale, scope, or capability
liege – a feudal lord entitled to allegiance and service
ecclesiology – the study of church doctrine
consolidation – an act or instance of consolidating; solidification; strengthening
feudal – of, pertaining to, or like the feudal system, or its political, military, social, and economic structure
covenant – an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified
manifest destiny – the belief or doctrine, held chiefly in the middle and latter part of the 19th century, that it was the destiny of the U.S. to expand its territory over the whole of North America and to extend and enhance its political, social, and economic influences
Salic Law – a code of laws of the Salian Franks and other Germanic tribes, especially a provision in this code excluding females from the inheritance of land
bequest – a disposition in a will; a legacy
hierarchicalism – The process or policy of organising as a hierarchy
“Modernity was birthed by violence. Its impulse to revolution and infidelity has been its birthright since the days of privateers and imperialists. The Modern world was thus built on the foundation of pirates and empires.” -Groen van Prinsterer
With the presence of Modernity we see one religion being pushed off stage and another coming onto the stage. The effects of Modernity live on today in many of the minds of people who don’t know better.
With the age of Renaissance we see a continuance of the ancient pagan ideals of Greece and Rome with humanism, naturalism, and individualism. More specifically, Classical Humanism, Pregnable Naturalism, and Antinomian Individualism.
Classical Humanism: a man-centered philosophy of life and the universe. Man is the measure of all things. Man is the point and determiner of all things. Anything and everything is based off of its relationship with man.
Pregnable Naturalism: a closed-world perspective of unrestricted materialism. All that matters is what we can see, touch, taste, smell, and do. It is the base of all of our working, feeling, thinking, and decision-making. We have an unrestricted perspective when it comes to the material universe.
Antinomian Individualism: a commitment to unhindered personal potential and pleasure. They appealed to the individual and sought to push him up to a god-position. It is a return to the garden of Eden, essentially.
During the Enlightenment and Renaissance we see a return over and over for the idea of revolution instead of reformation. They rejected their Christian heritage and refused to associate themselves with it in any way, shape, or form. It became a virtue to question authority. And so change became a mantra for the Enlightenment and Renaissance for the revolutionary call to rip up all Christian roots and foundations. For all the virtues and Christian laws before were now replaced by other laws. During any time that one worldview leaves the stage and another comes on, you will get one set of laws leaving the stage and another coming on. Honesty and integrity is replaced with sincerity or transparency. The “virtue” of tolerance is the big one of today.
Being the “bad boy” was what was considered to be a badge of honor and courage at that time. Vices became virtues. This brought slavery back to light. Also there was a reemergence of abortion and abandonment of children as well as euthanasia. All of these will support humanism, naturalism, and individualism.
An artistic leitmotif was started…brought in by their music, art, and literature. They were all based off of the older pagan Greek and Roman ideas of revolution. We still find this a lot in our modern art. Our music of today isn’t music and our art today isn’t really art. It’s really anti-music and anti-art. Humanism is there to destroy man and destroy meaning and it works into our music and art to do that.
What was evil, dishonest, or ugly was deemed as good, true, and beautiful. The acts they committed with their bodies, children, and others were seen as normal or even to be admired when in reality it was disgusting and pagan to put it mildly. There was a huge push for desensitize them…unwanted people, unwanted responsibilities, and a pursuit for humanism, naturalism, and individualism.
King Philip II was the king consort of Mary Tutor for 5 years and they ruled different realms. When Bloody Mary died in 1558, King Philip was asked to launch a crusade against England because Elizabeth I was a proclaimed Protestant. The plan was to set sail in the spring of 1558 and meet up with more men and launch an attack on England. The men were promised indulgences if they fought. They devised a way to use fireships…setting ships on fire and sailing them straight into Armada (the Spanish Catholic naval fleet). By the end of their retreat, they had lost half their ships and a third of their men. We see how God worked His hand through all of this warfare.
Piracy was introduced as a “get rich quick” scheme and had originally started as a global agribusiness with international law and lawlessness. It was a life of gold, silver, and gemstones. The men who started as traders and military combatants and turned into highwaymen and corsairs as an instrument of the state. They weren’t even considered bad…rather romanticized.
Not even the pirates were romanticized, but how they thought of them and wrote of them was in a sort of “mystical” and dreamed after type of lifestyle. To be rogue and bad was thought of as what was to be desired. A life of freedom and adventure…who wouldn’t want it? Pirates were even give a letter of marque…basically a license to steal as long as they stole from the enemies. They were also given a letter of reprisal which gave them freedom to take over ships if they held any enemy.
As a fish in a fishbowl we don’t think about our fishbowl..it’s all we’ve ever know. We just think “hey, that looks cool” without thinking about the implications behind it. We go with the flow without considering what we’re doing. We see this back with the pirates…people weren’t truly thinking about what was going on or the worldview behind it. If they did, then they didn’t care. The same applies for today and what goes on in the culture today. An idea is introduced and accepted because it’s “cool”.
Why did pirates, mercenaries put into press gangs, become the embodiment of the hero and the virtues of the new age? For the artists and philosophers of the Enlightenment, who embraced the vision of the noble savage, the pirate was the ideal romantic figure, holding onto the virtues and values of the new world of Revolution, the ultimate men of freedom. The skull and crossbones became the emblem of the man who would stand against the host of civilization.
Rebecca Bacon Wednesday class- Modernity October 31, 2012
Class Notes
Lesson 3- Revolution v. Reformation
Revolution and Reformation
The Reformation returns, re-interprets, and re-applies the scripture. But the Revolution wants to tear it all down.
Reformation presupposes God, looks for him in Revelation, and is moving towards the glory of God. Revolution, on the other hand, presupposes self, looks for self in Reason, and is going towards Utopia (nowhere).
Revolution … v. Reformation
1.) Quick results. 1.) Long obedience.
2.) Loud publicity. 2.) Quiet Reputation.
3.) Unrelenting Science. 3.) Gentle Persuasions.
4.) Programs and Politics. 4.) Covenant and Callings.
5.) Charts, Graphs, Stats. 5.) Faith, Hope, Love.
6.) Gargantuan Purposes. 6.) Small Beginnings.
7.) Undeterred by facts. 7.) Undeterred by obstacles.
8.) Never fails to disappoint. 8.) Never Fails.
9.) Appeals to Emotions. 9.) Appeals to Doctrine.
10.) Appeals to Crowds. 10.) Appeals with Family.
Going from the Ancien Regime to the French Revolution, was like going from the frying pan to the fire.
Storming the Bastille, Fathers of the Revolution
1.) Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
His thoughts were reduced to one idea. “Cogito Ergo Sum,”: “I think therefore I am.”
2.) Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
3.) Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
He thought that the Elites would take care of the World.
4.) David Hume (1711-1776)
5.) Voltair (1694-1778)
He was determined to make a mockery of the church.
6.) Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
7.) Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
He tried to contain all knowledge in a single set of books, the encyclopedia.
8.) Duc d`Orleans (1747-1793)
Actors of the Revolution
Louis XVI (1754-1793)
Marie Antoinette (1755-1793
Comte Mirabeau (1749-1791)
Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1854)
George Danton (1759-1794)
Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793)
Lazare Carnot (1753-1823)
Robespierre (1784-1794)
Stages of the Revolution
Unrest: May 1789-July 1789
Revolt: July 1789-October 1789
Stalemate: October 1789- June 1791
Radicalism: June 1791- September 1792
War: September 1792-January 1793
Anarchy: January 1793-April 1793
Terror: April 1793- June 1794
Gridlock: June 1794- November 1799
Results of the Revolution
The Institutionalization of Ideological Politics
The Popularization of Demagoguery
The Mobilization of Conspiratorial Politics
The Catalyzation of Terrorism
The Metastasizing the Enlightenment Thought
The End of Feudalism
The Entrenchment of Nationalism
The Emergence of Yellow Journalism
Notes on Dust of Death, Chapter 7
A third defining feature of the counter culture is its resort to drugs, particularly the psychedelics, to achieve a transcendental consciousness and true infinity.
Paradise Now
For centuries there has been the search for the attainment of that ideal which the Greeks called ataraxia, the ideal for quiet calm, of deep inner contentment, beyond the restlessness, frustrations and tensions of normal living.
Through chemistry modern man is heir to this age-old search and has added to its urgency his own quest for a new consciousness as a solution to the problems of man to the post-Christian era.
Two preliminary qualifications must be made. First, we are concerned with the psychedelics and not the depressants or stimulants.
A second preliminary qualification is that any general principals or experiences must be interpreted in light of the set and the setting of the user, his character and the circumstances under which he takes the drug.
The History of Marijuana
There are three distinct periods in the discovery of psychedelics. The first is the pre-Western history, the second period of serious but limited research in the West and the third the era of popularization.
The marijuana plant is cannabis sativa, so called by Linnaeus in 1753, but as Indian hemp it is one of the oldest domestic plants known to man. The stems of the male plant go into making the rope hemp, while the stems of the female plant give off a resinous exudation, golden yellow in color and minty in smell.
The known history of marijuana begins in China, where there is evidence that in the year 2737 B.C. the emperor Shen Nung, writing a book on pharmacy, knew more details on hemp than most of us today.
From China it came further west to India, and there it came into its own.
Undoubtedly its relationship to alcohol in India is the exactly the opposite of that in the United States.
From India marijuana came further west, into the Middle East, where the early stories are strangely bizarre.
From the Middle East marijuana spread slowly to other countries, especially in the Muslim world where, unlike alcohol, it was never prohibited. It is also widespread in Africa and other parts of Latin America.
The second historical stage involves serious Western interest and limited research.
The third stage is the resent one of popularization. United Nations statistics in 1951 estimated that there were over 200,000,000 marijuana users in the world. The first reaction was instant popularity and the second was an immediate popularization which has plagued the situation ever since.
The paranoia, too, is equally evident if understandable and is a common trait of many in the counter culture.
The alleged dangers of marijuana are said to include insanity, sexual perversion, violence and a dependence link with heroin.
Mescaline
Mescaline comes from peyote, an insignificant looking pin cushion cactus with a fleshy top.
The watershed for mescaline was May 1953, when Humphrey Osmond introduced it to Aldous Huxley in Hollywood. Osmond passed a very troubled night before he did so. But far from driving Huxley insane, the trip made him ecstatic. Struck by the similarity of thought and expression which he found in all mystics, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist or Muslim, he came to the conclusion that behind all the world religions there could be discerned an ultimate truth of which each religions was only a partial expression.
LSD
The fourth psychedelic drug, LSD, is a synthetic chemical, so not unnaturally it has no prehistory, although for centuries there was a purple parasitic fungus called ergot which caused chaos whenever found in cultivated fields of rye.
Timothy Leary was virtually “converted” under the influence of psychedelics. He returned to Harvard and from then on was in the forefront of developing and popularizing the psychedelics.
Leary went on to found the International Federation for Internal Freedom in 1963.
On April 16, 1966, a squad of Dutchess County police descended on Millbrook, searched it, found a minute quantity of grass and arrested the four there. Leary at this time was already appealing a conviction from December 1965, when he was found en route to Mexico with half an ounce of marijuana. For Leary there were two absolutes. First, thou shalt not alter the consciousness of thy fellow man; second, Thou shalt not prevent thy fellow man from altering his own consciousness.
The second important was Ken Kesey.
If Leary was the professor, then Kesey was the novelist, working not from Harvard but from Stanford’s Perry Lane. Buying an old 1939 bus, these two and others, marked its destination and set out on a crazy trip across the United States.
In the early days, acid taking was by no means limited to the counter culture.
Objections to Psychedelics
The question of these drugs’s danger throws light on the present position of psychedelics in the movement.
The swing from LSD is not so much a swing away as a swing beyond. The psychedelics are unable to take one to the high areas of transcendental consciousness which can be reached by more subtle meditative techniques. If only a comparative few fall foul of these drugs, the proportion who succumb to the escape they offer is dramatically high.
Many who turn on regularly or indulge in a periodic freak-out are just flirting with answers and escaping the real issues. Whether as an intentional motive or the end result, escapism figures heavily in our generation’s use of psychedelics.
Charting the Psychedelic Experience
As the psychedelics disinhibit the normal, rational, waking mind, they appear to act like a series of optical lenses, raising the level of conscious awareness.
The first level is minimal or anaesthetic, the consciousness of sleep, coma or stupor; here only sharp external stimuli are noticed. The second level is symbolic consciousness, the normal consciousness of our waking minds; here external objects are seen as external objects. The third level is external sensory awareness; here consciousness seems to focus on sensory nerve endings that receive information for us from outside – the retina, the ear drum or the taste buds. The forth level is the internal sensory awareness; here our consciousness seems to focus on the nerve endings which receive impulses from the visceral organs –the sexual, digestive, eliminative, cardiac, respiratory and cortical. The fifth level is the cellular; here, Leary claims, consciousness focuses on life in the cells themselves. The sixth level is the atomic pre-cellular consciousness; here one is conscious of the ultimate state of being, pure energy, very close to what the mystics describe as the “void.”
An adequate account of the phenomena must do justice to two obvious and counterbalancing facts. First, prior conceptions condition perception, so the variety of actual experiences objectively considered may not in fact be so great. Second, the data is of such variety that it cannot all be explained as issuing from an identical experience.
The normal mind requires constant feedback of external stimuli. If these are lacking, one may suffer deprivation to the point of hallucinations or transcendental consciousness.
Death and Evolution
The fear of non-being is a constant fear in man. In relating death to LSD, there is no animal that experiences the ceaseless thought of death. For man, death has two stings: The first is the loss of individuality and the second is the loss of his future orientation.
The second area is their relationship to evolution.
Communication
The third area is their relation to communication. Alan Watts and Leary see the psychedelic drugs as a means to communicate above communications.
We must ask ourselves if this is really communication with depth, content and meaning, or only a deepened experience of sensory awareness.
Utopian Dreams
The forth area is the relation to psychedelic drugs to the utopian claims made for them.
The evidence of the success in terms of individual enlightenment or communal achievement is slender. The attempt to inflate psychedelics to cultural proportions is an inglorious fiasco.
Psychedelics and God
The fifth area is their relation to the religious experience.
first, the definitions of their experiences are those which any atheist or humanist could accept and still remain an atheist or humanist, as many in fact do.
The evidence is totally inconclusive. It would be interpreted in either a religious or an atheistic framework.
The sense of being a “skin encapsulated ego” is shattered, and the contrasting sense of overwhelming oceanic unity brings flooding relief and release. This easily results in an interpretation of the experience of unity with the ground of being as having religious connotations.
Psychedelics and the East
the sixth area is the relationship of psychedelics to the Eastern religions. Although some disagree, most would interpret the psychedelic experience as being in the same direction as the East.
As with the East, the end is the loss of moral categories, followed with the tendency to withdrawal.
The Psychedelics and Alienation
The last area of importance is the relation of psychedelics to the sense of alienation. It is no accident that psychedelics and Eastern religions, ending as the do with conceptions that are basically impersonal, finally negate the individuality of man.
The Psychedelics and Christian Religion
The last important issue is to relate the psychedelic experience to the Christian experience and to see whether one can understand other forms of mysticism within the Christian frame work. If Christianity is true, this does not automatically mean that other experiences are unreal of necessarily wrong, and yet many interpretations can be seen as unacceptable in the light of the fuller understanding of Christian truth.
There is in nature a deeper and more intimate unity than is normally perceptible, and the barrier between the individual and his environment is far from absolute.
Usually in an experience of natural mysticism, the awareness is non-personal. Personal “relations” are rare with psychedelic drugs.
A Christian’s experience of God always comes in his life-historical context, often relating to it very specifically.
The dilemma for man is not who he is but what he has done. His predicament is not that he is small but that he is sinful.
Consequently, for a Christian psychedelic drugs are not morally wrong in the sence that any specific biblical vetoes them.
The psychedelics have proved to be only an illusory, counterfeit infinity, but many of those who start the cycle are no longer free to begin a new search.
Rebecca Bacon
Notes on book -The Dust of Death, Chapter 8, Encircling Eyes
The fire Burns Low
As we have witnessed the erosion and breakdown of the Christian culture of the West, so we have seen the vacuum filled with an upsurge of ideas that would have been unthinkable when the fires of the Christian culture were high. At this deeper level the occult needs to be felt to be understood.
Even in much theology, were one would expect to find a measure of belief, there is little acknowledgement of the supernatural, either positive or negative.
C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters were written to a generation caught in unbelief by a mechanistic world view which appeared to castrate the supernatural or unseen.
Back to the Occult- Why?
The first factor is the death of rationalism. Witchcraft was actually killed by the development and cultural adoption of Reformation theology and later yet by rationalism.
A second factor is the skepticism towards the supernatural in liberal theology. It looked as if Christian theology as a whole had succumbed to naturalism disguised by semantic symbolism. So anyone who searched for spiritual reality and did not find it in the church was forced towards the occult.
The Bible affirms the reality of the occult but denies its validity. Experience itself becomes normative.
The third factor is the influence of eastern religions. It is evident in all Eastern religions that, however high the ethics or sophisticated the philosophy, at grass-roots level there is open idolatry, animism and spiritualism.
The forth factor is the chaos and complexity of modern culture. Modern man finds occult participation one answer, an answer so popular that a psychic epidemic seems to be sweeping the post-Christian world.
A fifth factor is the present state of psychic
para-psychological research.
Synchronicity is the idea that all in the universe at any given moment participates in that moment with all else sharing that particular moment.
The sixth factor is that the supernatural does exist.
These are just some of the factors which contribute to the movement towards the occult.
Superstition
One belief of superstition is in the identification of stars with active deities.
Each superstition is characterized by a half acceptance and a half denial which gives superstitious modern man the best of both worlds.
But it is intriguing that many new superstitions are to be observed among the scientifically and technologically sophisticated.
But with a small percentage the game backfires and several have found themselves out of their depth as a spirit has taken control on board.
Superstition provides a good example of the necessity for critical discernment. We can divide the phenomena into three basic types. The first includes all the evidence which can be described only as fraud, hoax and swindle.
The second category is that group of powers which do not succeed but only because of the natural powers of telepathy or suggestion.
The third category includes those powers or prophecies which succeed because of genuine occult influence, and there are many examples of this today in healing and fortunetelling.
Spiritism
The word Witch comes from the Middle English word Wicca, meaning wise and is also related to the word wicked and wick, meaning alive.
Three sources contribute to witchcraft as we know it. The first is the ancient fertility-cult beliefs indigenous to Europe prior to Christianity and common to most pagan nature worship. The second is the heritage to magical practices derived circuitously from the priests of Egypt. The third is the series of parodies directed at the major religions contemporary with the various phases of witchcraft.
Since the witches were in league with the devil himself against
Christendom, any persecution could be justified if it rooted out this vile heresy.
Critical discernment is needed, for the ostensible distinction between white and black magic sometimes only blurs the issue.
Two factors explain the particular increase with Spiritism. First, there is the difficulty of discernment because of the experimental, contentless nature of modern religion.
The second factor is modern man’s uncertain view of death, dying and grief which is often reflected in the recourse to necromancy and Spiritualism.
For those of our generation who stumbled on the spirit world
accidentally, the two most common paths are LSD and misapplied
meditation techniques.
Satanism
It is in the area that we are seeing the resurgence today and, it parallels the main divisions in modern theology.
This movement is represented by various Satan Churches and the Church of the Anti-Christ, now spread through different parts of Europe and the United States.
First, most Satanism is related to heroin. Second, to criminal
practices, and third, to violence.
There are four ways to become involved with Satanism. The first is by heredity, the second is by devil’s subscription, the third, by occult experiments, and fourth, is by occult transference.
The Christian and the Occult
The Christian position on the occult is clear, but this cannot be said for the greater part of liberal theology.
The Bible teaches the double character of such power as a sign. The miraculous need not be divine; it can also be demonic.
In our day, there must be neither naiveté nor total skepticism, but a critical discernment made possible within the Christian framework.
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes Lesson 4- Paradimes of Colonialism
Ideological Imperialism
Rise of Colonialism
1.Spanish Main
1493-1504, Columbus became known as the Admiral of the Sea. He went looking for a way around the world to get to India.
2. English Failure
The English did not want the Spanish to accomplish this goal, so they tried to find a way around as well. We know that England and Spain did not find India, but America. Thus was created the English, French and Spanish colonies.
3. European Chaos
Making of Colonialism
1.Agricultural Rev.
Farmers learned to rotate their crops to get more from them than they did. After this followed the new Fertilizers and technology for the farms.
2. Industrial Rev.
3.Transportation Rev.
Then came cars and railroads to Europeans, including airplanes and balloons.
Colonial Expansion
1.Settlements
European cities were getting crowded and they needed to move to a new place. Tons of people started moving to the Americas to escape from the conditions of Europe and from persecution.
2. Global Trade
When they formed alliances with others (such as the Indians), they created the trade routes and expansion of markets. This created much wealth for many.
3. Mission Fields
Many saw this expansion, as an opportunity for Biblical Evangelism.
4.Conquests
Strategic Advantage
Balance of Power
Open sea lanes
5.Exploits
Many people started looking for the Grand Adventure, the Unbound Wealth, and the Accumulated power. This is were we got all of our stories of Adventurers and Superheroes
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 5 – The Second Hundred Years War
“The seemingly unending and calamitous conflict between the Kingdoms of Britain and France, a veritable Second Hundred Years War, became the single most significant feature for the establishment of Modernity” – Thomas Mooreland
Vocabulary:
Humanism – any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate
Egalitarianism – belief in the equality of all people, especially in political, social, or economic life.
Traditionalism – adherence to tradition as authority, especially in matters of religion
Succession – the coming of one person or thing after another in order, sequence, or in the course of events
Prodigious – extraordinary in size, amount, extent, degree, force, etc.
Treat – to act or behave toward (a person) in some specified way
Wrest – to twist or turn; pull, jerk, or force by a violent twist
Historiography: There is a macro and micro viewpoint on history. You can either take it in a bigger view…stepping back and looking at the big picture, or you can look at it on the small scale…zooming in close up and looking at even the smallest things to see how it influenced history. There is also the “hero” view (great man history). You look at an age’s hero(s) and use that to look at the history at that time. Is it the hero that creates the events or the events that create the hero? This has been a big debate over the years.
The First Hundred Years War – 1337-1457
With this you have largely a destruction of the old order. This is the end of the crusades and also the beginning of the grown of economics as well as the dying down of Christianity. The Vikings were separate Norse kingdom and lead by Rollo. Edward I (Longshanks), Wallace and Bruce, the Black Prince, Henry V, and Joan of Arc were all born out of conflicts and disputes. We see the gathering together of many great standing armies and the advancement of munitions technology. We see the Wars of the Roses and the Battles of Crecy, Agincourt, Poitiers, and Orleans.
The Black Death – 1347-1352
This swept through China and Mongolia to Iceland taking with it 25,000,000 people which was a good third of the whole population and this brought about the transformation of feudalism.
Babylonian Captivity of the Church – 1305-1378
The move of the papal sea from Rome to Avignon. At one point there were up to three different men claiming to be the real pope of the church and as such this eventually split the church into two divisions. With the rival popes and rival allegiances there was nothing but a horrific mess and chaos. We see an entrance of indulgences at this time as well. Military orders like the Knights Templar came and went and also there was the advancement of the papal states.
Hanseatic League – 1356-1438
It became a kind of monopoly for the Baltic Trade. It soon gained control over Lubeck, Brues, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Danzig, and Hanover. It was the beginning of the end of the feudalism and the guild system. Because of this great economic shift of power from the Mediterranean they became a great counter to Islam who became its rival.
Scholasticism – 1250-1390
Thomas Aquinas brought around the idea of Lectio and Disputatio while other thinkers like Anselm and Abelard were raise up who then brought around the idea of great universities. From this we get the advancements of Rationalism, Hierarchicalism, and Greek Categorical Thought. From all this was the bringing in of the Ivory Tower.
The Second Hundred Years War – 1677-1815
Because the First Hundred Years War wiped out all stability and the strong pillars of the foundation and now the Second Hundred Years War was fought over who would take over and be in charge of what would replace that. We see the rise of romantic poets in this age as well as the rise of great authors, thinkers, and politicians. War became a science and there was the advent of industrial munitions and warfare. It was now an industrial science. It was cold and emotionless and steely and total. There was unending warfare and unending revolutions. We see the demise of the great dynasties of Europe, the House of Stuarts being one of them, and it was also the great collapse of the divine right of the kinds and the feudal order. Ideological Nationalism stepped up to the plate to take over that which was wiped away and fulfill the pillars of society. With this we see the age of dictatorship…one dictator after another. This brought about the great divide between North and South, East and West.
The Conflicts of the Second Hundred Years War
The Great Anglo-Frankish Conflict (1688-1815)
The Nine Years War (1688-1697)
The War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714)
The War of Austrian Succession (1742-1748)
The First French and Indian Wars (1689-1754)
King William’s War (1689-1697)
Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713)
King George’s War (1744-1748)
The Second French and Indian War (1754-1763)
The Seven Years War (1756-1763)
The American War of Independence (1774-1783)
The French Revolution (1792-1802)
The War of the First Coalition (1792-1797)
The War of the Second Coalition (1798-1802)
The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815)
The War of 1812 (1812-1815)
The Peninsular War (1808-1814)
The Hundred Days War (1815)
All of these wars were the offspring or the result or even part of the Second Hundred Years War. Ideas do have consequences.
History doesn’t happen in isolated episodes. The rise of convulsive ideas like nationalism would have made no sense to the settled order of Christendom had the foundations of culture and life not been unsettled by some catastrophic series of events. Those events made up the Second Hundred Years War.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 6 – The Napoleonic Age
“Napoleon dominated the history of the world during his own age like no other man since Caesar or Nebuchadnezzar dominated their own. He is a solitary figure; one must comprehend his massive impact if there is to be any understanding of history whatsoever.” -Paul Johnson
Vocabulary:
dint: force; power
expatate: To range at large, or without restraint
loathsome: causing feelings of loathing; disgusting; revolting; repulsive
extrapolate: to infer (an unknown) from something that is known
apologetics: the branch of theology concerned with the defense or proof of Christianity
presuppositional: To believe or suppose in advance
evidentialism: a theory of justification according to which the justification of a belief depends solely on the evidence for it
systemization: to arrange in or according to a system; reduce to a system; make systematic
isogesis: the state or process of deriving from the same source or origins
exogesis: the hypothesis that life originated elsewhere in the universe and was spread to Earth
systematic theology: a branch of theology concerned with summarizing the doctrinal traditions of a religion (as Christianity) especially with a view to relating the traditions convincingly to the religion’s present-day setting
biblical theology: a discipline within Christian theology which studies the Bible from the perspective of understanding the progressive history of God revealing Himself to humanity following the Fall and throughout the Old Testament and New Testament
excogitation: thinking something out with care in order to achieve complete understanding of it
hubris: excessive pride or self-confidence
incarnation: a person who embodies in the flesh a deity, spirit, or abstract quality
immanence: the state of being within or not going beyond a given domain
assiduity: constant or close attention to what one is doing
legerdemain: skillful use of one’s hands when performing tricks; deception; trickery.
sublime: of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe
Comparison between French and American Revolutions (from years 1776, 1787, 1789):
French Distinctives vs. American Distinctives
Secular Commitment to Man-Centered Culture vs. Reliance on Divine Sovereignty
Man-Imposed Egalitarianism vs. Trust in His Good Providence
Man-Generated Rationalism vs. Biblical Standard for Morals and Ethics
Man-Induced Anti-Traditionalism vs. Recognizing the Consequences of the Fall
Man-Provoked Hope and Optimism vs. Promised Covenantal Succession
This was a time of Man vs. God. We see how they were blatantly focused on either man or God as the center of their whole being. They would focus their law, their lives, and their future children’s lives solely on whatever was the center of their universe.
Napoleon was born in 1769 in Ajaccio in Corsica in a land that was constantly tossed back between the great powers of the age: the commercial power of the Tuscan empire and the Aragonese. He eventually allied himself in 1788 with those who would lead the French Revolution, the Jacobins. He eventually became a lieutenant in the army. He quickly became a military hero which then lead to a political leader. In 1796 Napoleon was sent out to collect more land and this laid the foundation for the great conquests of his to come. His plan was to conquer the world, and he knew where to start: Jerusalem. He helped launched the crusade for it. He gained more prominent positions in the army and advanced to commander, and then master. He wasn’t a philosopher by trade, but every man in some sense is a philosopher. Napoleon was actually given the task of unburying the sphinx. Coup d’e tat – the taking over of the top of an organization or political seat of power and then filling in from the top down like a vacuum where everyone follows. This is what Napoleon did…he was able to control the military and launched three newspapers, eventually taking control over the media. He soon held all the cards. In 1800 he signed a church concordat with the Vatican to say that the Church could regain all former power and be over those who had been separated by the revolution. There was warfare before with the church, and now Napoleon seeks to gain more allies on his side by approving their power once again. By 1802 he was named the first consul for life. He began to reorder the whole structure of French government. Another thing he sought to change was the law code…when a person rewrites the law code you see a changing of the theology and the God of the time.
Napoleon is able to take the chaos and strategically take and manipulate many opportunities to where he was the one who was in complete power and control. Every opportunity aided him in his climb to leader of the world. In 1804 he was crowned Charlemagne’s successor and they did the ceremony in Notre Dame where instead of the pope crowning him, he grabbed the crown and put it on his own head. This kind of action should scream volumes at any person…this is a clear sign of a person seeking to set himself as God. Napoleon was a very loyal person and as such he set his family in very high and royal positions over their own countries. This was brilliant on his part because it kept everything really under his control. Even his successors were great and in high positions of power. Although he had many victories on land (Ulm and Austerlitz, Nelson and Trafalgar [1805], Peninsular War [1808-14]), his world around him began to crumble around him. It all began to fall apart with the Russian campaign in 1812. Even after his exile to Elba in 1814, he got tired of it and did make a comeback for the glories of France. He still had a few fights left in him with the Hundred Days battle and the Battle of Waterloo, both in 1815, but was imprisoned at St. Helena from 1815-1821.
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes
Lesson 5, Pirates on the High Seas 11/14/12
Renaissance Relaps, The Spanish Armada
King Phillip II was called the leader of the great revolution. When his wife, Mary I (Queen of England), died in 1558, King Phillip decided to attack England since the new Queen, Queen Elizabeth I, was Protestant.
Spain had 130 ships and 30,000 men. But when England won, 67 Spanish ships had been destroyed and 10,000 Spanish men had been killed.
Commerce and Crime
Press gangs were started. These were not volunteers, they were forced to join gangs on the sea. If you wanted to get money fast, you became a pirate captain and created your own press gang. The crew on the ship did not get paid.
A Culture of Piracy
Pirates were given permition to raid, as long as they were raiding the enemy. They were there to enjoy the high and free life of a pirate. The sign of the Jolly Roger (scull and crossbones) became the emblem of the true Noble Savage.
Many, after being pirates became wanderers in long cloaks, telling stories of the old pirate days. They would gather the villagers of a village around them at bonfires and tell them stories and sing songs. This is what pirates became. They held on to their past.Even though they were treated like heroes, they were beggars. They were called Mercenary Press gangs and Sea Beggars.
Vocabulary
Virtue- Moral excellence, goodness, righteousness.
Leitmotif- A motif or theme associated throughout a music drama with a particular person, situation, or idea.
Barbarity- Crudity of style, taste, expression, etc.
Mercantilism- Mercantile practices or spirit.
Infanticide- The act of killing an infant.
Euthanasia- The act of putting to death painlessly. Painless death.
Ribald- Vulgar or indecent in speech, language,etc.
Subjective- Existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject, rather than the objective of thought.
Objective- something that one’s efforts or actions are intended to attain or accomplish.
Affectation- An effort to appear to have a quality not really or fully possessed.
Effete- lacking in wholesome vigor.
Mendicant- Begging. Practicing begging. Living on alms.
Devolution- The passing on to a successor on an unexorcized right.
Antinomian- A person who maintains that Christians are freed from the moral law by virtue of grace as set forth in the gospel.
Contrivance- A plan or scheme.
Agribusiness- The businesses collectively associated with the production,processing, and distribution of agricultural products.
Lesson 6, The Second Hundred Years War 11/28/12
The First Hundred Years War (1337-1453)
The Black Death (1347-1352)
The Black Death roamed from China to Mongolia, to Ice Land killing hundreds.
The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1305-1378)
Hanseatic League (1356-1438)
Scholasticism (1250-1390)
The Second Hundred Years War (1688-1815)
Great familys began to emerge with the great thinkers, Authors and politicians.Romantic poems were written. There were unending revolutions and warfare. With these came the collapse of great Dynasties in Europe, collapse of the Divine Right of Kings, and the Collapse of the Feudal Order.Nationalism and Dictatorship step up to take their place.That is how the East, North, South and the West divide.
Conflicts of the Second Hundred Years War
There were 18 wars fought from 1688-1815.And even though they lasted more than a hundred years, they are all part of the Second Hundred Years War.
The two main players in this war were England(Protestant), and France(Catholic).
Revolutionists can be considered as-
– Progressives
– Socialists
– Fascists
– Cultural Marxists
– Liberals
– All who hate Christianity
Micro- Anything really small in scope or capability.
Macro- Anything very large in scale, scope or capability.
Liege- A feudal Lord entitled for allegiance and service.
Ecclesiology- The study of church doctrine.
Consolidation- An act or instance of consolidating.
Feudal- Of or pertaining to the Middle Ages.
Covenant- An agreement between two or more persons.
Manifest Destiny- The belief or doctrine that it was the destiny of the U.S to expand its territory over all of North America.
Salic Law- a code of laws of the Salian Franks and other Germanic tribes.
Bequest- A disposition in a will.
Hierarchicalism- The process or policy of organizing as a hierarchy.
Lesson 7, The Napoleonic Age 12/5/12
Signs of Modernity-
Technology
Psychology
Replacement of God
Attacks-
God, Community, Work, Church, and Family
How to get rid of Modernity
– Prayer
– Wholesome Families
– Be local as possible
In 1776 and 1787 was the American Revolution, and in 1789 was the French Revolution. The French Rev. over all gets rid of God and puts man on the throne. The American Rev. moves man closer to God.
Dominating Man
1. Opportunist
Napoleon Boulevard was born on Corsica, which was an Island off the coast of Italy.He was good at Math, science, and Geography. He proved to be a very good commander and was eventually promoted up the line to be one.
2. Commander
Napoleon became the General of the French Revolution.
3.Master
He was able to conduct a campaign to Egypt to uncover learning and history. At this time, the Sphinx was buried up to its ears in sand, so Napoleon had it uncovered.
Posturing for World Dominance
1. The first Consul
Napoleon became the first French consul for life.
2. Louisiana Purchase
The United States was given the ability to purchase Louisiana which was at that time owned by France. It was 828,000 square miles were sold for $15,000,000.
The Empereur des Francais
1. Emperor
Napoleon had the pope come to France to crown him as the Holy Roman Emperor. Instead of nealing and having the crown put on his head, he took it from the pope and put it on himself.
He put his family into great places too. He gave them all small amounts of land to rule.
The Downfall of the Empire
When Napoleon suffered a defeat at the Battle of Nations, he was put into exile.But soon he was allowed to come back and he fought the Battle of Waterloo. The plan was brilliant, but his orders were cut off.When they lost the battle,he was put into exile once more. This time it was on St. Helena, which was the farthest land mass from any other. He stayed there till he died from what doctors thought was a horrific cancer.
Vocabulary
Humanism- Any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values and dignity predominate.
Egalitarianism- Belief in the equality of all people.
Traditionalism- adherence to tradition as authority, especially in matters of religion.
Succession- The act, right or process, by which one person succeeds to the office, rank, estate, or the like of another.
Prodigious- Extraordinary in size, amount, etc.
Treat- To act with respect to someone.
Wrest- To take away by force.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 7 – The Astronomical Discourses: Thomas Chalmers
Transformation begins individually…with each and every single person within their hearts and minds. From that transformation inward it will then spread outward. Marriages will be repaired. Family lives will be repaired. Viewing choices will be altered. Work areas will be repaired. It will make a difference to where whole cultures and societies will be deeply altered. So from the individual there will be a sweeping out of that influence…it will go out and spread like bacteria to all the people that surround that one individual. Culture is religion externalized.
Vocabulary:
providence – the foreseeing care and guidance of God or nature over the creatures of the earth
hireling – a person who works only for pay, especially in a menial or boring job, with little or no concern for the value of the work
indenture – any deed, written contract, or sealed agreement
restitution – reparation made by giving an equivalent or compensation for loss, damage, or injury caused
vassal – a person holding some similar relation to a superior; a subject, subordinate, follower, or retainer
chattel – a slave
yeomen – a servant, attendant, or subordinate official in a royal or other great household
Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was a man who touched lives. He was the one who started the notion of foreign missions and foreign Bible societies. Most historians believe that the greatest influence of Britain were two men: Thomas Chalmer and Wilber Wilberforce. They were friends and together they changed the world in ways we cannot even imagine. Neither were born geniuses but grew into it as a gift from God but also hard studying and lots of work. He was born in a tiny fishing village named Anstruther.
He was a good reader by three and he loved his numbers (especially clocks and time). By age ten he was put into rigorous reading material to prepare him for St. Andrews, the university he would attend. At an early age he even began a book. He soon came to see his sin and was transformed inwardly by a little parish work in Kilmany. He started with 12-14 families but within a year there were hundreds who came and sat on the floor and crowded outside in the bitter cold just to hear his words. He began to write and publish at this time as well. He loved writing and he wrote a minimum of 15 letters a day.
Thomas Chalmers was soon very well known and was offered many bigger opportunities. He believed that if churches were not the center and focus of cities, than cities will become mere geographies of no singular place. It is a theology of place. Where there is no centrality of Christ, then it becomes a nowhere – a Utopia. A vacuum that must be filled with a new god and a new religion. So he went to the church in Glasgow, it was a huge and great church there. While he wasn’t a main preacher there he still got a chance to speak on a day of the week and what he spoke on for weeks was astronomy. He began speaking to more and more people and he gave seven lectures on astronomy which he made into a book. The book sold out on the first day.
Thomas Chalmers’ Astronomical Discourses (1815-1816)
A Sketch of Modern Astronomy
The Extent of Divine Condescension
The Knowledge of Man’s Moral History in Creation
Sympathy for Man in the Distant Places of Creation
The Contest for the Ascendency of Man
The Slender Influence of Mere Taste and Sensibility
The Apologetic Methods Chalmers Used:
Presuppositionalism: From Truth to Appearance
Evidentiality: From Appearance to Truth
Perspectivalism: To Truth through Circumstance
Historicism: To Circumstance through Truth
Systemization: By Means of Theological Isogesis
Expositional: By Means of Biblical Exegesis
Some Apologetic Problems Chalmers Addressed:
Immensity: Psalm 8 and Creation’s Crowded Splendor
Excogitation: 1 Corinthians 8 and Scientific Hubris
Implausibility: Psalm 113 and Presumptive Arguments
Exclusivity: 1 Peter 1 and the History of Redemption
Immanency: Luke 15 and the Grace of the Incarnation
Insignificance: Galatians 2 and the Enormity of Providence
Effectality: Ezekiel 33 and the Value of Permanent Things
When Chalmers was born in 1780, it was about the deadest time in the history of the Church of Scotland since the Reformation. When he died in 1847, it was about the alivest. The difference was almost entirely attributable to the Spirit’s work through him. ~Iain Murray
Chalmers believed his task was cultural transformation. He wanted to change the course of the church and ultimately the ourse of all the disciplines that would spring out of all the gifts of the young men and women he was called to mentor over the course of a lifetime – a hit and miss endeavor at its best. The result was that Chalmers had a longer-lasting effect than even Napoleon. Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 7 – The Astronomical Discourses: Thomas Chalmers
Transformation begins individually…with each and every single person within their hearts and minds. From that transformation inward it will then spread outward. Marriages will be repaired. Family lives will be repaired. Viewing choices will be altered. Work areas will be repaired. It will make a difference to where whole cultures and societies will be deeply altered. So from the individual there will be a sweeping out of that influence…it will go out and spread like bacteria to all the people that surround that one individual. Culture is religion externalized.
Vocabulary:
providence – the foreseeing care and guidance of God or nature over the creatures of the earth
hireling – a person who works only for pay, especially in a menial or boring job, with little or no concern for the value of the work
indenture – any deed, written contract, or sealed agreement
restitution – reparation made by giving an equivalent or compensation for loss, damage, or injury caused
vassal – a person holding some similar relation to a superior; a subject, subordinate, follower, or retainer
chattel – a slave
yeomen – a servant, attendant, or subordinate official in a royal or other great household
Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was a man who touched lives. He was the one who started the notion of foreign missions and foreign Bible societies. Most historians believe that the greatest influence of Britain were two men: Thomas Chalmer and Wilber Wilberforce. They were friends and together they changed the world in ways we cannot even imagine. Neither were born geniuses but grew into it as a gift from God but also hard studying and lots of work. He was born in a tiny fishing village named Anstruther.
He was a good reader by three and he loved his numbers (especially clocks and time). By age ten he was put into rigorous reading material to prepare him for St. Andrews, the university he would attend. At an early age he even began a book. He soon came to see his sin and was transformed inwardly by a little parish work in Kilmany. He started with 12-14 families but within a year there were hundreds who came and sat on the floor and crowded outside in the bitter cold just to hear his words. He began to write and publish at this time as well. He loved writing and he wrote a minimum of 15 letters a day.
Thomas Chalmers was soon very well known and was offered many bigger opportunities. He believed that if churches were not the center and focus of cities, than cities will become mere geographies of no singular place. It is a theology of place. Where there is no centrality of Christ, then it becomes a nowhere – a Utopia. A vacuum that must be filled with a new god and a new religion. So he went to the church in Glasgow, it was a huge and great church there. While he wasn’t a main preacher there he still got a chance to speak on a day of the week and what he spoke on for weeks was astronomy. He began speaking to more and more people and he gave seven lectures on astronomy which he made into a book. The book sold out on the first day.
Thomas Chalmers’ Astronomical Discourses (1815-1816)
A Sketch of Modern Astronomy
The Extent of Divine Condescension
The Knowledge of Man’s Moral History in Creation
Sympathy for Man in the Distant Places of Creation
The Contest for the Ascendency of Man
The Slender Influence of Mere Taste and Sensibility
The Apologetic Methods Chalmers Used:
Presuppositionalism: From Truth to Appearance
Evidentiality: From Appearance to Truth
Perspectivalism: To Truth through Circumstance
Historicism: To Circumstance through Truth
Systemization: By Means of Theological Isogesis
Expositional: By Means of Biblical Exegesis
Some Apologetic Problems Chalmers Addressed:
Immensity: Psalm 8 and Creation’s Crowded Splendor
Excogitation: 1 Corinthians 8 and Scientific Hubris
Implausibility: Psalm 113 and Presumptive Arguments
Exclusivity: 1 Peter 1 and the History of Redemption
Immanency: Luke 15 and the Grace of the Incarnation
Insignificance: Galatians 2 and the Enormity of Providence
Effectality: Ezekiel 33 and the Value of Permanent Things
When Chalmers was born in 1780, it was about the deadest time in the history of the Church of Scotland since the Reformation. When he died in 1847, it was about the alivest. The difference was almost entirely attributable to the Spirit’s work through him. ~Iain Murray
Chalmers believed his task was cultural transformation. He wanted to change the course of the church and ultimately the ourse of all the disciplines that would spring out of all the gifts of the young men and women he was called to mentor over the course of a lifetime – a hit and miss endeavor at its best. The result was that Chalmers had a longer-lasting effect than even Napoleon. Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 7 – The Astronomical Discourses: Thomas Chalmers
Transformation begins individually…with each and every single person within their hearts and minds. From that transformation inward it will then spread outward. Marriages will be repaired. Family lives will be repaired. Viewing choices will be altered. Work areas will be repaired. It will make a difference to where whole cultures and societies will be deeply altered. So from the individual there will be a sweeping out of that influence…it will go out and spread like bacteria to all the people that surround that one individual. Culture is religion externalized.
Vocabulary:
providence – the foreseeing care and guidance of God or nature over the creatures of the earth
hireling – a person who works only for pay, especially in a menial or boring job, with little or no concern for the value of the work
indenture – any deed, written contract, or sealed agreement
restitution – reparation made by giving an equivalent or compensation for loss, damage, or injury caused
vassal – a person holding some similar relation to a superior; a subject, subordinate, follower, or retainer
chattel – a slave
yeomen – a servant, attendant, or subordinate official in a royal or other great household
Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was a man who touched lives. He was the one who started the notion of foreign missions and foreign Bible societies. Most historians believe that the greatest influence of Britain were two men: Thomas Chalmer and Wilber Wilberforce. They were friends and together they changed the world in ways we cannot even imagine. Neither were born geniuses but grew into it as a gift from God but also hard studying and lots of work. He was born in a tiny fishing village named Anstruther.
He was a good reader by three and he loved his numbers (especially clocks and time). By age ten he was put into rigorous reading material to prepare him for St. Andrews, the university he would attend. At an early age he even began a book. He soon came to see his sin and was transformed inwardly by a little parish work in Kilmany. He started with 12-14 families but within a year there were hundreds who came and sat on the floor and crowded outside in the bitter cold just to hear his words. He began to write and publish at this time as well. He loved writing and he wrote a minimum of 15 letters a day.
Thomas Chalmers was soon very well known and was offered many bigger opportunities. He believed that if churches were not the center and focus of cities, than cities will become mere geographies of no singular place. It is a theology of place. Where there is no centrality of Christ, then it becomes a nowhere – a Utopia. A vacuum that must be filled with a new god and a new religion. So he went to the church in Glasgow, it was a huge and great church there. While he wasn’t a main preacher there he still got a chance to speak on a day of the week and what he spoke on for weeks was astronomy. He began speaking to more and more people and he gave seven lectures on astronomy which he made into a book. The book sold out on the first day.
Thomas Chalmers’ Astronomical Discourses (1815-1816)
A Sketch of Modern Astronomy
The Extent of Divine Condescension
The Knowledge of Man’s Moral History in Creation
Sympathy for Man in the Distant Places of Creation
The Contest for the Ascendency of Man
The Slender Influence of Mere Taste and Sensibility
The Apologetic Methods Chalmers Used:
Presuppositionalism: From Truth to Appearance
Evidentiality: From Appearance to Truth
Perspectivalism: To Truth through Circumstance
Historicism: To Circumstance through Truth
Systemization: By Means of Theological Isogesis
Expositional: By Means of Biblical Exegesis
Some Apologetic Problems Chalmers Addressed:
Immensity: Psalm 8 and Creation’s Crowded Splendor
Excogitation: 1 Corinthians 8 and Scientific Hubris
Implausibility: Psalm 113 and Presumptive Arguments
Exclusivity: 1 Peter 1 and the History of Redemption
Immanency: Luke 15 and the Grace of the Incarnation
Insignificance: Galatians 2 and the Enormity of Providence
Effectality: Ezekiel 33 and the Value of Permanent Things
When Chalmers was born in 1780, it was about the deadest time in the history of the Church of Scotland since the Reformation. When he died in 1847, it was about the alivest. The difference was almost entirely attributable to the Spirit’s work through him. ~Iain Murray
Chalmers believed his task was cultural transformation. He wanted to change the course of the church and ultimately the ourse of all the disciplines that would spring out of all the gifts of the young men and women he was called to mentor over the course of a lifetime – a hit and miss endeavor at its best. The result was that Chalmers had a longer-lasting effect than even Napoleon. Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 7 – The Astronomical Discourses: Thomas Chalmers
Transformation begins individually…with each and every single person within their hearts and minds. From that transformation inward it will then spread outward. Marriages will be repaired. Family lives will be repaired. Viewing choices will be altered. Work areas will be repaired. It will make a difference to where whole cultures and societies will be deeply altered. So from the individual there will be a sweeping out of that influence…it will go out and spread like bacteria to all the people that surround that one individual. Culture is religion externalized.
Vocabulary:
providence – the foreseeing care and guidance of God or nature over the creatures of the earth
hireling – a person who works only for pay, especially in a menial or boring job, with little or no concern for the value of the work
indenture – any deed, written contract, or sealed agreement
restitution – reparation made by giving an equivalent or compensation for loss, damage, or injury caused
vassal – a person holding some similar relation to a superior; a subject, subordinate, follower, or retainer
chattel – a slave
yeomen – a servant, attendant, or subordinate official in a royal or other great household
Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was a man who touched lives. He was the one who started the notion of foreign missions and foreign Bible societies. Most historians believe that the greatest influence of Britain were two men: Thomas Chalmer and Wilber Wilberforce. They were friends and together they changed the world in ways we cannot even imagine. Neither were born geniuses but grew into it as a gift from God but also hard studying and lots of work. He was born in a tiny fishing village named Anstruther.
He was a good reader by three and he loved his numbers (especially clocks and time). By age ten he was put into rigorous reading material to prepare him for St. Andrews, the university he would attend. At an early age he even began a book. He soon came to see his sin and was transformed inwardly by a little parish work in Kilmany. He started with 12-14 families but within a year there were hundreds who came and sat on the floor and crowded outside in the bitter cold just to hear his words. He began to write and publish at this time as well. He loved writing and he wrote a minimum of 15 letters a day.
Thomas Chalmers was soon very well known and was offered many bigger opportunities. He believed that if churches were not the center and focus of cities, than cities will become mere geographies of no singular place. It is a theology of place. Where there is no centrality of Christ, then it becomes a nowhere – a Utopia. A vacuum that must be filled with a new god and a new religion. So he went to the church in Glasgow, it was a huge and great church there. While he wasn’t a main preacher there he still got a chance to speak on a day of the week and what he spoke on for weeks was astronomy. He began speaking to more and more people and he gave seven lectures on astronomy which he made into a book. The book sold out on the first day.
Thomas Chalmers’ Astronomical Discourses (1815-1816)
A Sketch of Modern Astronomy
The Extent of Divine Condescension
The Knowledge of Man’s Moral History in Creation
Sympathy for Man in the Distant Places of Creation
The Contest for the Ascendency of Man
The Slender Influence of Mere Taste and Sensibility
The Apologetic Methods Chalmers Used:
Presuppositionalism: From Truth to Appearance
Evidentiality: From Appearance to Truth
Perspectivalism: To Truth through Circumstance
Historicism: To Circumstance through Truth
Systemization: By Means of Theological Isogesis
Expositional: By Means of Biblical Exegesis
Some Apologetic Problems Chalmers Addressed:
Immensity: Psalm 8 and Creation’s Crowded Splendor
Excogitation: 1 Corinthians 8 and Scientific Hubris
Implausibility: Psalm 113 and Presumptive Arguments
Exclusivity: 1 Peter 1 and the History of Redemption
Immanency: Luke 15 and the Grace of the Incarnation
Insignificance: Galatians 2 and the Enormity of Providence
Effectality: Ezekiel 33 and the Value of Permanent Things
When Chalmers was born in 1780, it was about the deadest time in the history of the Church of Scotland since the Reformation. When he died in 1847, it was about the alivest. The difference was almost entirely attributable to the Spirit’s work through him. ~Iain Murray
Chalmers believed his task was cultural transformation. He wanted to change the course of the church and ultimately the ourse of all the disciplines that would spring out of all the gifts of the young men and women he was called to mentor over the course of a lifetime – a hit and miss endeavor at its best. The result was that Chalmers had a longer-lasting effect than even Napoleon. Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 7 – The Astronomical Discourses: Thomas Chalmers
Transformation begins individually…with each and every single person within their hearts and minds. From that transformation inward it will then spread outward. Marriages will be repaired. Family lives will be repaired. Viewing choices will be altered. Work areas will be repaired. It will make a difference to where whole cultures and societies will be deeply altered. So from the individual there will be a sweeping out of that influence…it will go out and spread like bacteria to all the people that surround that one individual. Culture is religion externalized.
Vocabulary:
providence – the foreseeing care and guidance of God or nature over the creatures of the earth
hireling – a person who works only for pay, especially in a menial or boring job, with little or no concern for the value of the work
indenture – any deed, written contract, or sealed agreement
restitution – reparation made by giving an equivalent or compensation for loss, damage, or injury caused
vassal – a person holding some similar relation to a superior; a subject, subordinate, follower, or retainer
chattel – a slave
yeomen – a servant, attendant, or subordinate official in a royal or other great household
Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was a man who touched lives. He was the one who started the notion of foreign missions and foreign Bible societies. Most historians believe that the greatest influence of Britain were two men: Thomas Chalmer and Wilber Wilberforce. They were friends and together they changed the world in ways we cannot even imagine. Neither were born geniuses but grew into it as a gift from God but also hard studying and lots of work. He was born in a tiny fishing village named Anstruther.
He was a good reader by three and he loved his numbers (especially clocks and time). By age ten he was put into rigorous reading material to prepare him for St. Andrews, the university he would attend. At an early age he even began a book. He soon came to see his sin and was transformed inwardly by a little parish work in Kilmany. He started with 12-14 families but within a year there were hundreds who came and sat on the floor and crowded outside in the bitter cold just to hear his words. He began to write and publish at this time as well. He loved writing and he wrote a minimum of 15 letters a day.
Thomas Chalmers was soon very well known and was offered many bigger opportunities. He believed that if churches were not the center and focus of cities, than cities will become mere geographies of no singular place. It is a theology of place. Where there is no centrality of Christ, then it becomes a nowhere – a Utopia. A vacuum that must be filled with a new god and a new religion. So he went to the church in Glasgow, it was a huge and great church there. While he wasn’t a main preacher there he still got a chance to speak on a day of the week and what he spoke on for weeks was astronomy. He began speaking to more and more people and he gave seven lectures on astronomy which he made into a book. The book sold out on the first day.
Thomas Chalmers’ Astronomical Discourses (1815-1816)
A Sketch of Modern Astronomy
The Extent of Divine Condescension
The Knowledge of Man’s Moral History in Creation
Sympathy for Man in the Distant Places of Creation
The Contest for the Ascendency of Man
The Slender Influence of Mere Taste and Sensibility
The Apologetic Methods Chalmers Used:
Presuppositionalism: From Truth to Appearance
Evidentiality: From Appearance to Truth
Perspectivalism: To Truth through Circumstance
Historicism: To Circumstance through Truth
Systemization: By Means of Theological Isogesis
Expositional: By Means of Biblical Exegesis
Some Apologetic Problems Chalmers Addressed:
Immensity: Psalm 8 and Creation’s Crowded Splendor
Excogitation: 1 Corinthians 8 and Scientific Hubris
Implausibility: Psalm 113 and Presumptive Arguments
Exclusivity: 1 Peter 1 and the History of Redemption
Immanency: Luke 15 and the Grace of the Incarnation
Insignificance: Galatians 2 and the Enormity of Providence
Effectality: Ezekiel 33 and the Value of Permanent Things
When Chalmers was born in 1780, it was about the deadest time in the history of the Church of Scotland since the Reformation. When he died in 1847, it was about the alivest. The difference was almost entirely attributable to the Spirit’s work through him. ~Iain Murray
Chalmers believed his task was cultural transformation. He wanted to change the course of the church and ultimately the ourse of all the disciplines that would spring out of all the gifts of the young men and women he was called to mentor over the course of a lifetime – a hit and miss endeavor at its best. The result was that Chalmers had a longer-lasting effect than even Napoleon. Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 7 – The Astronomical Discourses: Thomas Chalmers
Transformation begins individually…with each and every single person within their hearts and minds. From that transformation inward it will then spread outward. Marriages will be repaired. Family lives will be repaired. Viewing choices will be altered. Work areas will be repaired. It will make a difference to where whole cultures and societies will be deeply altered. So from the individual there will be a sweeping out of that influence…it will go out and spread like bacteria to all the people that surround that one individual. Culture is religion externalized.
Vocabulary:
providence – the foreseeing care and guidance of God or nature over the creatures of the earth
hireling – a person who works only for pay, especially in a menial or boring job, with little or no concern for the value of the work
indenture – any deed, written contract, or sealed agreement
restitution – reparation made by giving an equivalent or compensation for loss, damage, or injury caused
vassal – a person holding some similar relation to a superior; a subject, subordinate, follower, or retainer
chattel – a slave
yeomen – a servant, attendant, or subordinate official in a royal or other great household
Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was a man who touched lives. He was the one who started the notion of foreign missions and foreign Bible societies. Most historians believe that the greatest influence of Britain were two men: Thomas Chalmer and Wilber Wilberforce. They were friends and together they changed the world in ways we cannot even imagine. Neither were born geniuses but grew into it as a gift from God but also hard studying and lots of work. He was born in a tiny fishing village named Anstruther.
He was a good reader by three and he loved his numbers (especially clocks and time). By age ten he was put into rigorous reading material to prepare him for St. Andrews, the university he would attend. At an early age he even began a book. He soon came to see his sin and was transformed inwardly by a little parish work in Kilmany. He started with 12-14 families but within a year there were hundreds who came and sat on the floor and crowded outside in the bitter cold just to hear his words. He began to write and publish at this time as well. He loved writing and he wrote a minimum of 15 letters a day.
Thomas Chalmers was soon very well known and was offered many bigger opportunities. He believed that if churches were not the center and focus of cities, than cities will become mere geographies of no singular place. It is a theology of place. Where there is no centrality of Christ, then it becomes a nowhere – a Utopia. A vacuum that must be filled with a new god and a new religion. So he went to the church in Glasgow, it was a huge and great church there. While he wasn’t a main preacher there he still got a chance to speak on a day of the week and what he spoke on for weeks was astronomy. He began speaking to more and more people and he gave seven lectures on astronomy which he made into a book. The book sold out on the first day.
Thomas Chalmers’ Astronomical Discourses (1815-1816)
A Sketch of Modern Astronomy
The Extent of Divine Condescension
The Knowledge of Man’s Moral History in Creation
Sympathy for Man in the Distant Places of Creation
The Contest for the Ascendency of Man
The Slender Influence of Mere Taste and Sensibility
The Apologetic Methods Chalmers Used:
Presuppositionalism: From Truth to Appearance
Evidentiality: From Appearance to Truth
Perspectivalism: To Truth through Circumstance
Historicism: To Circumstance through Truth
Systemization: By Means of Theological Isogesis
Expositional: By Means of Biblical Exegesis
Some Apologetic Problems Chalmers Addressed:
Immensity: Psalm 8 and Creation’s Crowded Splendor
Excogitation: 1 Corinthians 8 and Scientific Hubris
Implausibility: Psalm 113 and Presumptive Arguments
Exclusivity: 1 Peter 1 and the History of Redemption
Immanency: Luke 15 and the Grace of the Incarnation
Insignificance: Galatians 2 and the Enormity of Providence
Effectality: Ezekiel 33 and the Value of Permanent Things
When Chalmers was born in 1780, it was about the deadest time in the history of the Church of Scotland since the Reformation. When he died in 1847, it was about the alivest. The difference was almost entirely attributable to the Spirit’s work through him. ~Iain Murray
Chalmers believed his task was cultural transformation. He wanted to change the course of the church and ultimately the course of all the disciplines that would spring out of all the gifts of the young men and women he was called to mentor over the course of a lifetime – a hit and miss endeavor at its best. The result was that Chalmers had a longer-lasting effect than even Napoleon.
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes 12/12/12
Lesson 8, The Astronomical Discourses: Thomas Chalmers
Thomas Chalmers was not considered a genius, but some may think him as one. He was an able Math matition by 3 years old and when he was 11, he enrolled in a University of St.Andrews. By the age of 19 he became a tutor at the University even though the able age was 21.
When he got home from the University, his older brother was struck with Tuberculosis. As he was dieing, he requested of Thomas to read the newly published sermons of John Calvin, and to sing the Psalms to him. At this time of his life, Thomas was not a Christian.When his brother died, he was grieved to have him die, but was relived to be rid of his duties. But soon he got sick too. Only then, while he was lieing on what he thought was his death bed, did he think of the littleness of time, and the greatness of eternity.
“What are the true objects of Mathematical science? Magnitude and the proportions of magnitude. But in the foolishness of my youth, I had forgotten those two chief magnitudes: I thought not of the littleness of time and I recklessly thought not of the greatness of eternity.” -Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847)
When he recovered, he beceme a faithful and compleat Christian. He started preaching to many and he became famous. Many chances to become even more famous came his way but he passed them up.
He finally accepted a position as one of the many preachers at the Tron(meaning gait way) Church in Glasgow. He taught on Astronomy and the Church became so packed with hundreds of people that some even had to stand outside to listen. Scientists thought that there was some great power(not God) that controlled all the sciences. Chalmers taught that there was a greater power than that great power, which was God. When he finished preaching in Glasgow, his sermons(which were all on Astronomy) were all published and out sold anything else.
Vocabulary, Lesson 8
Dint- Force, power.
Obscure- Not clear or plain; vague, or uncertain.
Loathsome- Disgusting; revolting; repulsive.
Extrapolate- To infer from something that is known.
Apologetics- The branch of theology concerned with the defense or proof for Christianity.
Presuppositional- To take for granted in advance.
Evidentialism- Is a theory of justification according to which whether a belief is justified depends solely on what a person’s evidence is.
Systenization- To formulate into or reduce to a system.
Systematic Theology- The branch of theology of which the aim is to reduce all revealed truth to a series of statements.
Biblical Theology- Biblical theology is a discipline within Christian theology which studies the Bible from the perspective of understanding the progressive history of God revealing Himself to humanity.
Excogitation- To think-out, devise.
Hubris- Excessive pride or self-confidence.
Incarnation- A living being embodying a deity or spirit.
Immanence- Remaining within; indwelling.
Assiduity- Constant or close application or effort.
Legerdemain- Slight of hand.
Sublime- Elevated or lofty in thought.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 9 – The Novelty of Nations
“Nationality: An ethnic tribe, clan, or group; more recently, an ideological notion of political unity and independence.” ~1908 New English Dictionary
Vocabulary:
warp – to bend or twist out of shape, especially from a straight or flat form, as timbers or flooring
weft – before 900; Middle English, Old English
increment – something added or gained; addition; increase.
empirical – derived from or guided by experience or experiment
mechanize – to operate or perform by or as if by machinery
centrifugal force – an outward force on a body rotating about an axis, assumed equal and opposite to the centripetal force and postulated to account for the phenomena seen by an observer in the rotating body.
regulator – a person or thing that regulates.
The concept of nation as a political, geographical unity is a modern idea. In the 1800’s, the world was changed, and the map was changed, and a new thing in the affairs of men and politics was ushered in – the idea of ideological nationalism.
Nationalism is a sense of being tied to blood and soil: who you are related to and where you come from. This is how it *should* be. Ideological Nationalism is more of a Marxist worldview; it is a new nation based on an abstract set of belief.
Force is one way to get good political power. You cannot even hope to get ideological nationalism without any force. Prosperity is another way…if you give enough people what they want then they will follow you or find a reason to follow you. These are needed when you get leaders who want to remake the world in their own image. We see this in the war between the states. The Southerners were the ones in Nationalism…a sense of blood and soil. They fought against the Northerners who were under the influence of Ideological Nationalism which was more of a revolution as opposed to reformation.
Ideological Nationalism is the philosophical commitment to bring about cultural and social uniform by means of political consolidation and, if necessary, state coercion.
The vocabulary we use today is a sign of how we’ve been changed over the years into more of an ideological nation. What the word nationality used to mean was more of a distinct, ethnic group..a tribe, clan, or family. Now it has changed to mean more of an idea of political unity and independence.
We made a transition from Medievalism to Modernity when we made the transition from ethnic tribes and clans to political unity and independence.
What they considered completely normal was a strong sense of family, community and a shared faith, heritage and destiny. If it was not for the ideological ideal, there would be much more harmony between people groups that have been now too dysfunctional and are not fractured with one another.
Ideological Nationalism brings about: Union, Amalgamation, Conformity (language), Bureaucracy (little minions working to bring about the government’s agenda), Military and God State. It emphasizes the one as opposed to the many. It erases the individual and instead makes us all cookie cutter images…everything mashed together and acting, breathing, and moving the same. There is no difference from one person to another. There is no unity, but there is a uniformity. Everyone is the same, but peace and harmony isn’t a key agenda.
It doesn’t matter who is right…it matters what is right.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 10 – The Idea of Progress: Industrial Revolution
“The Industrial Revolution was a revolution in every aspect of society and life – for good and for ill.” J.R.R. Tolkien
internecine – of or pertaining to conflict or struggle within a group
irredentism – a member of a party in any country advocating the acquisition of some region included in another country by reason of cultural,historical, ethnic, racial, or other ties.
trenchant – incisive or keen, as language or a person; caustic; cutting.
proletariat – the class of wage earners, especially those who earn their living by manual labor or who are dependent for support on daily or casual employment; the working class.
status quo – the existing state or condition.
foment – to instigate or foster (discord, rebellion, etc.); promote the growth or development of.
egalitarianism – belief in the equality of all people, especially in political, social, or economic life.
irrevocable – not to be revoked or recalled; unable to be repealed or annulled; unalterable.
feudal – of, pertaining to, or like the feudal system, or its political, military, social, and economic structure.
eradicate – to remove or destroy utterly; extirpate.
cataclysmic – of, pertaining to, or resulting from a cataclysm.
ideological – of or pertaining to ideology; speculative; visionary.
semblance – outward aspect or appearance; a likeness, image, or copy.
maxim – an expression of a general truth or principle, especially an aphoristic or sententious one.
incendiary – used or adapted for setting property on fire; tending to arouse strife, sedition, etc.; inflammatory.
conspirator – a person who takes part in a conspiracy; plotter.
If you study the Industrial Revolution and all you learn is that some guys built some factories and dragged people in from the farms and forced them to work in these manufacturing enterprises, you miss all of the really interesting connections of weather and portrait painters, warfare quick on the heels of the Napoleonic Wars, the restructuring of the nations, and the idea of progress rooted in the heart of the Christian worldview.
The Industrial Revolution was basically those farmers were moved to the city. This lead to the breakdown of the family…it also meant child labor and abuse of children and women. The price of living went up and the length of life was expanded. There were both good and bad things that came about because of the Industrial Revolution.
Often it is in the face of absolute disaster where we find people inventing and coming up with new ideas for life. Futurology is just the idea that people look at the present and transform it a little to predict the future. But what they odn’ take into account is the weather. The volcano in 1815 in Indonesia set off an 18 month winter…people starved, many died and those who didn’t may have ended up being killed in riots for searches for food. Even after that winter, “summer”, and winter it was difficult to get back on their feet due to more bad crops.
There are many marked differences between Revolution and Reformation.
Revolution:
Instantaneous Convulsion (think of a person having a seizure)
Creation of a New Order (bringing about a new way of life)
Overturning the Old Way of Life (nothing is what it was)
Reformation:
Incremental Development (slowly moving towards a new idea)
Reforming an Old Order (keeping the older way of life)
Strengthening the Old Way of Life (making it different, but better)
Several of the greatest inventor who made life easier at that time were these great men: Blaise Pascal, Jethro Tull, Eli Whitney, John Deere, Cyrus McCormick, John Kay, and Edmund Cartwright. Without their minds and great work we would not be as advanced along as we are. They formed and shaped the world to eventually produce even greater progress.
The Idea of Progress:
Severer problems offer greater opportunities.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Progress is contagious.
Rebecca Bacon
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes 12/19/12
Lesson 9, The Work of Reformation: Wilberforce and Shaftesburg
The Work of Reformation
1. Urgency
Make the most of the time you have. So act. If you can, redeem the time you lost. Use every moment you can with Constancy, Diligence, and Passion.
2. Patience
Believe God’s Promises, his Sovereign working, and his good Providence. We must not be Anxious, Worried or Fretful, but Preserving, Enduring and Steadfast.
The Peculiar Institution
1. The Beginning of the Slave Trade
1325: Islamic Chattel Trade in Mali.
1444: Islamic Trade with Portuguese.
1482: Portuguese Chattel Trade in Benin.
1515: Slaves brought to the New World.
1562: English Slave Trading in the Indies.
1619: First Slave in the English Colonies.
2.The Slavery Controversy
1523: Confessio: Bartolome de las Casas.
Baxter, Pope, Locke, Edwards, and Burke were some of the great writers who were writing against the Slave Trade.
1738: First English Abolitionist society.
1789:American Constitutional Polarization.
Sources of the Slave Trade
The African tribal warfare.
Spreading Islamic influence.
Hispanic Colonization.
Caribbean Plantations.
English Mercantile shipping.
American Cotton production.
Servitude and the Bible
There are several references in the Bible of slaves and servitude. But these were treated kindly, almost like an equal. The ones I am talking of were normally treated harshly.Some were ever treated worse than animals. This type of slavery is not Biblical.
William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Wilberforce’s Abolitionist Reform
1. Dogged Persistence
1788: King appoints Privy Council Inquiry.
1789: First Debate on Abolition of Trade.
1791: Wilberforce’s first bill defeated.
1792, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99: Bills.
1800- 1804: The First Napoleonic Wars.
1804: Bill passes the Commons, delayed by the Lords.
2. Victory
1805: Trafalagar and Austerlitz.
1806: Death of Pitt and Passage of the Bill.
February 4, 1807: Bill passes the House of Lords.
1833: Final passage of total Abolition.
The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (1801-1885)
1. Shaftesbury’s Industrial Reform factories and mines
1826: Shaftesbury became a Tory member of Parliament.
1828: The first tour of the Asylums.
1833: Examination of child labor.
1835: The first tour of the coal mines.
1837: Proposal for limits on labor hours.
1848: Launches Ragged Schools.
2. Fruitful Labors
1842: The Coalmines Act.
1845: The Health and Lunacy Act.
1847: The Factory Labor Practices Act.
1853: The Labor and Manufactures Act.
Vocabulary
Providence- The foreseeing care and guidance of God over everything.
Hireling- A person who works only for pay, with little to no concern for the value of the work.
Indenture- Any deed, written contract, or sealed agreement.
Restitution- Any act of restoring or a condition of being restored.
Vassal- A servant or slave.
Chattel- Any artificial of tangible property other than land, buildings, and any other things annexed to land.
Yeomen- One of a class of lesser free holders, below the gentry, who cultivated their own land.
Lesson 9: The Work of Reformation: Wilberforce and Shaftesbury
The Bill of Rights is inalienable. The government did not give those rights to us, God did, therefore the government cannot take them away.
Modernity: Centralization of the state.
History is about revolution (man is sovereign) v. reformation (man has boundaries.)
Revolution has the state being the god of the gods.
Organic change: From an acorn to an oak tree. Natural. The change was in the acorn. Don’t try to change people overnight. Reformation can only come from God.
Victory is never won in a single day.
Despair is sin. It is driven by fear, which is an act of worship, thus a violation of the first commandment.
Reformation must be balanced with urgency and patience.
Slavery is a natural part of a fallen world, but because of the gospel, had disappeared from Christendom.
Slavery was also a part of the Africans life. The chief would sometimes sell his people to other tribes. Slavery is not unique to white men.
Simply because you deny Christ, you are not getting rid of your guilt. Jesus Christ is out guilt bearer. If men pour their guilt on themselves, that’s masochism. If they pour it on others, that’s sadism.
1444 Portuguese began cohorting with Islams and their slave trade
1482 Portuguese began their own slave trade
1515 Slaves brought to the New World
1562 English slave trade began in the Indes. The Jews were largely involved in financing ships and other endeavors.
1619 First slaves in English colonies. Slavery controversy
1738 3 groups existed, trying to end slavery
1789 The slave trade was accommodated, but people still planned for abolition
Sources of the slave trade
60% of slaves were in the Caribbean
35% in Brazil and Venezuela
5% at cotton plantations
The Old Testament references 7 kinds of slavery:
• Hired servants
• Indentures. Contracted servants for a time or task. 3/4 of the people coming to the New World were Indentures.
• Servile. Fell into debt and unable to pay. Were servants until the debt was paid.
• Bondsmen. If someone were to destroy property, as restitution, he would become a slave for a period to pay it off.
• Vassal. Like peasant yeomen.
• Doulos. If after serving, a man wanted to bind himself to his master for perpetual service, he would become covenantally bound.
• Chattel. The idea that the people are property. This type if condemned in the Old Testament.
William Wilberforce was born into a time when chattel slavery was entrenched in the system
He went to Cambridge, joined a group that desired change, and was elected to parliament. His friend, William Pitt, became Prime Minister when he was 24.
Wilberforce and Pitt went on a tour of Europe and took up with a Christian friend. While visiting Wilberforce underwent a conversion, and decided to devote his life to the contemplation of the gospel, considering that God wanted him to retire from parliament. Pitt convinced him that surely he can serve God in parliament. Wilberforce was uncertain and people began to meet with him, to encourage him to stay in parliament and to speak out against slavery.
The first casualty of war is truth.
1789 Wilberforce speaks on abolition
1791 His first bill to abolish the slave trade, not slavery, is presented
1792-1799 Countless bills are defeated
1796 Countercampaign begins
1798 A different kind of bill is passed that will reduce slavery
1804 A bill to eliminate the slave trade is passed in the house of Commons, but tabled at the house of Lords
1806 Another bill passes after the death of Pitt
1807 February 4th, The bill passes the house of Lords
1833 Total abolition bill passed its fourth reading, 3 days before Wilberforce died
The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury: Anthony Ashley Cooper
1826 Took place in parliament. Spoke for the downtrodden
1828 Toured asylums.
1835 Toured the coal mines
Attempted to pass bills to relieve the conditions of the destitute. Launches ragged schools, free schools for the poor.
Passed the Coal Mines Act, which limited the hours a person can spend underground in one stretch among other things.
The Health and Lunacy Act resulted in doctors having to check the mental health of a patient before the patient could be admitted to an asylum.
The Factory Labor Practices Act limited the hours women and children could work.
Cooper and Wilberforce desired reformation, and attained it through urgency and patience.
Convenental Succession: Preparing your children so that when you walk off this Earth, they can hit the ground running.
Revolution spells death.
Lesson 10: The Novelty of the Nations
Napoleon was stability in the time of the French Revolution.
“We will not be satisfied until the last king has been strangled with the entrails of the last priest” accurately sums up the attitude of the French Revolution.
Nations came just after Reformation. Nations came from regions, which themselves were defined by clans.
Prior to the 1800’s, nations were formed by blood and soil, and covenentalism. After, ideological nationalism is formed by adherence to subjective (abstracted) ideas. “Liberty, fraternity, and equality.”
Music is used to forward agendas
Ideological Nationalism is a grouping together of small nations, to build a new world order. The Congress of Vienna decided to push groups together, even though many of the groups they pushed together were enemies. They were one step short of internationalism.
Wars were fought in an effort to remake the world.
Old meaning of nationality was little more than an ethnic grouping. The new meaning took on political groupings. The only way to enforce this was by brute force.
The old nation is covenental, based on the concept of families. They had a common language, and a common faith. Family, land, and faith were what bound groups together. Ideological Nationalism cuts out the family and land bindings and cements a common faith through indoctrination.
The reality of feudalism remained to the Congress of Vienna.
Columbus did not sail for Spain. Spain did not exist at that time. Ferdinand was the royal head of Aragon and Isabella of Castille when they were joined together. These national distinctions in Spain remained until the Napoleanic Age.
Geceppi Gerabald desired a united Italy. He was exiled, returned to launch a war, was exiled again and returned once more with funding from Wall Street traders.
Ideological nationalism desires union, amalgamation, conformity, bureaucratization, militization, god state. Group people together, blend distinctions, centralize power.
Worry about what’s right, not who’s right.
The only solution to ideological nationalism is the gospel, and people living out their Christian faith.
Rebecca Bacon
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes 1/9/13
Lesson 10, The Novelty of Nations
A group of people decided to change the map of Europe. The put different countries together(on the map), who should not have been together. This caused war. But not only the map changed. Many other things changed as well, including the Dictionary and Vocabulary.
Ideological Nationalism
When Columbus landed in America, he did not claim it for Spain. When he sailed, he did not sail under the flag of Spain. Nor did his boats bear any mark of being owned by Spain. Because, at that time, there was no such thing as Spain.
Union- A together as one (Uniformity)
Amalgamation- The want and idea for everyone to be the “same.”
Conformity- To make all people as “same.”
Bureaucratization
Militarization- The idea of force.
State Power- The ability to control.
Vocabulary
Ethnic- Of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background.
Nation- A large body of people, associated with a particular territory.
Commonwealth- A group of sovereign states and their dependencies associated by their own choice and linked with common objectives and interests.
Confederation- A league or alliance.
Ideology- Body of doctrine, myth, etc., with reference to some political and social plan.
Feudalism- The feudal system, or its principles and practices.
Paradox- A statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.
Machination- An act or instance of machinating.
Heinous- Hateful; odious; abominable; totally reprehensible.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 11: The Revolutions of 1848
“The revolutions shook the very foundations of Europe. Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror. The whole of Western Civilization would never again be the same. An alien vision replaced native freedom.” Alexis de Tocqueville
Vocabulary:
utopia – any visionary system of political or social perfection.
conceit – an excessively favorable opinion of one’s own ability, importance, wit, etc.
penny dreadful – a cheap, sensational novel of adventure, crime, or violence; dime novel.
conceited – having an excessively favorable opinion of one’s abilities, appearance, etc.
metaphysis – The zone of growth between the epiphysis and diaphysis during development of a bone.
cant – insincere, especially conventional expressions of enthusiasm for high ideals, goodness, or piety; the private language of the underworld; whining or singsong speech, especially of beggars.
homogenous – corresponding in structure because of a common origin.
aplomb – imperturbable self-possession, poise, or assurance.
The defeat of Napoleon upset the balance of power threw all of Europe into a mad scramble. There was a creation of new alliances and a congress of Vienna was assembled. They sought to redo all that was before Napoleon. It was like trying to glue back a broken vase…once someone comes in a works that much influence it’s extremely difficult to make it what it once was. There were many different ideologies that were introduced as well, making it all harder because of the cessation of hostilities.
They sought to restore the different houses in the different countries: House of Bourbon, House of Orleans, House of Hapsburg, House of Hohenzollern, and House of Hanover. It was a time of restorationism. This word has one connotation in the U.S. – a charismatic Christian movement seeking to restore the beliefs and practices of the early Church – and another in Europe – the monarchist ideology (still alive and well in some quarters) aimed at restoring the old royal houses to their former glory and power.
“Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy and those who had anything united in common terror.” – referring to the revolution of Europe sweeping across the country. We have this still today…the appeal of envy.
If we look at the philosophical backdrop of the 1848 revolution we see the previous revolutions in America all preparing us for the revolutionaries of Europe. John Locke came up with a maxim of a Christian order. Life, Liberty, and Property (later changed to Happiness). When the French revolutionaries came along they thought along a whole new set of railway tracks. Their slogan was Liberty Equality, and Fraternity…all defined in very humanistic ways. They provided a whole new philosophical framework and a new political vocabulary. Slogans are wonderful windows into a worldview…it sums it all up in one pithy statement.
Democratization would mean everyone would have a say in who would rule.
Liberalism would mean the consent of any of those who are governed to be governed.
Nationalism would mean a forcing together of people groups into one geographical area.
Irrendentism (Irredentalism) would be for the purpose of creating a more “natural” boundary.
Socialism would mean a state-focused and state-centered world.
Francois-Noel Babeuf – the “prophet” of revolution. He had small jobs until the revolution where he found his call. He loved bloodletting and terror in the streets. Terror is very powerful and useful in advancing any kind of rule. He was one of the first pioneers of hate media…writing and handing out pamphlets. He was arrested often. While in prison he formed a conspiracy of equals…those who supported him and they started a newspaper: le Journal de la Liberte de la Presse. The driving point behind this was to spread believable lies to create terror in the people. This is why, even today, you cannot trust the press or the media. He said that nothing mattered but winning…no matter how you got it…ethics and morality don’t matter to them.
Filippo Giuseppe Maria Ludovico Buonarroti – He became a true disciple of Babeuf. He was in prison with him and learned from the master. He learned how to hate and hate deeply…how to pick on easy targets and make them hated by others. Rumors, hearsay…it was all used to benefit whatever the power behind it wants. He became a party of the freemason secret cells, hiding in the place where he was most pursued. He even began the Freemason group. In essence, it was a unitarian group, against the trinity. As the Freemasons grow, so does their secret agenda.
Karl Marx – He believed there was a spectre haunting Europe. The spectre of communism. He believed there was a new philosophical foundation by which the world could be ruled. He lived an extremely impoverished life…even though he married a very rich woman he ruined her…some of his children died in infancy from lack of nourishment. And when he died, only five people attended his funeral. During his life, he formed the Communist Manifesto.
Most history books allude to a period of unrest between the Napoleonic Wars ending in 1815 and the great nationalistic civil wars beginning after 1850. However, that unrest was, in fact, the Revolutions of 1848, in which every single country, principality, monarchy, kingdom, and duchy in Europe broke out in revolution save England, the Netherlands, and Russia. Furthermore, and perhaps more significantly, these revolutions laid the foundations for the modern era that touches nearly every arena of our lives, if not every arena.
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes, Rebecca Bacon
Lesson 11, The Idea of Progress: Industrial Revolution
Necessity: The Mother of Revolution
Sept. 1815: First major freeze of the Winter paralyzed Europe.
Nov. 1815: Already coldest Winter in European history.
June 1816: No sign of Spring.
July 1816: Snowfall across Northern Europe.
Aug. 1816: Food riots,
Sept. 1816: Winter comes again.
Oct. 1816: Invention begin to appear.
In April 1815, a volcano blew in Indonesia, which was the largest recorded volcano explosion in history. After this, the rain hardly came, and the crops did not grow. Without the rain came famine. Hundreds of people died that Winter. The point is, that no one can predict the future, with the exception of God. He was the only one who knew that the volcano was going to blow and certainly knew what would come after.
How to Identify…
Revolutionists-
Industrious Convulsion
Attempt to make a new order
Throw off the old order
vs.
Reformationists-
Increment change
Reforming of the old order
Retaining of old structures
The Idea of Progress
A lot of new ideas and inventions were made during crisis. So the greater the crisis is, the greater the opportunistic there are. Thus, Necessity becomes the Mother of Invention. Progress comes with hard labor, imagination, and a willing attitude to fail. Also, progress is contagious. When one person makes a change, and improves something, people will want to improve that improvement.
Forerunners of Industrialism
God placed many men in our past, who have helped to change this world for the better. Without many of the inventions that they made, many things we do today would either be done a hard and long way, or not doing them at all. These are only a few: Blaise Pascal, Jethro Tull, Eli Whitney, John Deere, Cyrus McCormick, John Kay, and Edmund Cartwright. Thanks to them, we have progressed in the world.
Vocabulary
Warp- to bend or twist out of shape, especially from a straight or flat form, as timbers or flooring.
Weft- a woven fabric or garment.
Increment- something added or gained; addition; increase.
Empirical- depending upon experience or observation alone, without using scientific method or theory.
Mechanize- to operate or perform by or as if by machinery.
Centrifugal force- an outward force on a body rotating about an axis.
Regulator- a person or thing that regulates.
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes, Rebecca Bacon 1/23/13
Lesson 12, Revolutions of 1848
The “48’ers” are what the Revolutions which happened in Europe (particularly Germany), in 1848 were called.
Historical Backdrop
Geopolitical
The defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo upsets the balance for the start of Revolution.
Restorationalism
No matter what they did, they could not fix what Napoleon had done.
The Philosophical Backdrop
“Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror.” – Alexis de Tocqueville
Revolutions started up in the street. Many of them could even be called Counter-Revolutions.
Life, Liberty, and Property: American Patriot’s slogan.
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity: French Revolution’s slogan.
You can know a lot about a person by what they say, the words they use, and their slogans.
Democratization: Some kind of commitment to the Universal Franchise.
Liberalism: Some kind of process to get the consent of the Governed.
Nationalism: Non-Historical Political Unity.
Irredentalism: The conquest of Adjacent Territories.
Socialism: Some kind of statist control or collectivist system.
The Strategic Backdrop
1. Babeuf (1760- 1797)
This man was unsuccessful in life. He found his cause during the time of Revolution. He enjoyed to see the blood and bodies laying on the street after wars, and most of all, he enjoyed to cause terror. He was one of the first of the members in the Hate Media to be arrested. He started up his own press and made journals and his key in them was to lie. But he didn’t get far. He said that hatred was key to good and real change. Soon after he got out of prison, he was re-arrested and hung.
Buonarroti
This man was a true disciple of Babeuf and was sent into exile. He was literally protected by the people he was trying to destroy. While he was in exile, he made and taught many groups of friends called Free Mason Secret Cells.
Marx
The Spectral Haunting
Communist International
Master Propagandist
The End Result, Internationalism
Realignment of Powers
Imposition of Dictatorship
The Rise of the Prussian State.
Global war
Franco- Prussian War: 1870-1872
World War I: 1914-1918
World War II: 1939-1945
Cold War: 1945-1991
Civil War
The Germanies and Prussia
The Italies and Lombardy
American North and South
Vocabulary
Internecine- of or pertaining to conflict or struggle within a group
Irredentism- a national policy advocating the acquisition of some region in another country by reason of common linguistic, cultural, historical, ethnic, or racial ties.
Trenchant- Forceful, effective, and vigorous
Proletariat- the class of wage earners, especially those who earn their living by manual labor or who are dependent for support on daily or casual employment; the working class.
Status quo- the existing state or condition.
Foment- promote the growth or development of.
Egalitarianism- belief in the equality of all people.
Irrevocable- not to be revoked or recalled.
Feudal- of or pertaining to the Middle Ages.
Eradicate- to remove or destroy utterly.
Cataclysmic- of, pertaining to, or resulting from a cataclysm.
Ideological- speculative; visionary.
Semblance- outward aspect or appearance.
Maxim- an expression of a general truth or principle.
Incendiary- used or adapted for setting property on fire.
Conspirator- a person who takes part in a conspiracy; plotter.
Proletariat- the class of wage earners.
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes, Rebecca Bacon, 2/6/13
Lesson 13, Flash Gordon Worldview: The Rise of Scientism
Modernity’s High Priests
1. The Flash Gordon Worldview
We, and the people around us are obsessed with change and progress.
Pretend that we only have three options in life,
1.) To glorify God, 2.) To make a BNW( Brave Knew World), or 3.) Despair/Suicide
We normally cast off 1.), and consider 3.) as a last resort.So we make 2.)our only option.
We also try to change our self along with the worldly changes. We want to be perfect since we suppose that the world is becoming perfect,but is really becoming worse. Since we were made in God’s image, when we try to change our self, we are showing that we want to change God. This is the same thing with suicide. If you try(or do) to kill yourself, then you are killing the image of God. This does not mean that we can not help and try to change the people who were born with reading disorder or autism, etc. In that case, we are not trying to change God, but we are trying to help both him and the person with a disorder.
2. Spirit of Science
Scientists are considered as the caretakers of the future, and the guardians of the truth.
3. Science and Ideology
When you try to get rid of Theology( you cant), Ideology( would) takes its place. Science turns from discovering the world, to become the tool to change it.
Modernity’s Pantheon
1. Fall
If God’s glory is beauty, than Satan’s glory is ugliness. this includes piercings and tattoos. Satan is driven by jealousy. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Once he (1.) steals God’s kingdom(he wont) he will (2.) kill all of God’s followers,and (3.) destroy all that is in God’s eyes, good.
We don’t often see the true satanic groups. They only show up every now and then, so we really don’t know what they are up to. Whatever they are doing, they are glorifying Satan. Normally its just the people who don’t care whether they go to heaven or hell that we see. For instance, the ones who literally “waddle” down the street, or the ones showing tons of tattoos or and piercings. I’m sure you have seen exactly what I am speaking of. Ugliness.
2. Mumbo Jumbo
One way of change is that some of the people in this world, think that there either to many people, or not enough food(they think its the people). Their goal is to reduce the population on earth. One of the ways of doing this is Abortion. Some even put terrible things in our food and water, so that we live shorter lives. Our only option for that is to grow our own food and filter our water. Some have even tried to bring back plagues to small communities. And their solution with starving children, is to starve them even more, rather than feed them.
Vocabulary
Utopia- an ideal place or state.
Conceit- a fancy; whim; fanciful notion.
Penny- a sum of money.
Dreadful- extremely bad, unpleasant, or ugly.
Conceited- having an excessively favorable opinion of one’s abilities, appearance, etc.
Cant- to talk hypocritically.
Homogenous- Biology . corresponding in structure because of a common origin.
Aplomb- imperturbable self-possession, poise, or assurance.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 12: Flash Gordon Worldview: The Rise of Scientism
“Modernity is often accompanied by a simultaneous hardening of the heart and a softening of the head.” G.K. Chesterton
Vocabulary:
seminal – having possibilities of future development.
dialectic – of, pertaining to, or of the nature of logical argumentation.
palingenesis – rebirth; regeneration.
palingeneration –
aesthetics – the branch of philosophy dealing with such notions as the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, the comic, etc., as applicable to the fine arts, with a view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments concerning works of art, and the principles underlying or justifying such judgments.
satirical – of, pertaining to, containing, or characterized by satire.
lexicon – the vocabulary of a particular language, field, social class, person, etc.
cause celebre – any controversy that attracts great public attention, as a celebrated legal case or trial.
coterie – an exclusive group; clique.
determinism – the doctrine that all facts and events exemplify natural laws.
reductionist – the practice of simplifying a complex idea, issue, condition, or the like, especially to the point of minimizing, obscuring, or distorting it.
hagiography – the writing and critical study of the lives of the saints; hagiology.
grotesqueries – something grotesque.
decrepitude – decrepit condition; dilapidated state; feebleness, especially from old age.
utilitarian – having regard to utility or usefulness rather than beauty, ornamentation, etc.
ruin – to reduce to ruin; devastate.
historiography – the body of techniques, theories, and principles of historical research and presentation; methods of historical scholarship.
We cannot separate science and theology. Scientism is no longer about truth, but rather what fits the best, what sounds the best, what works the best. With the huge leaps that we make when it comes to “progress” it is out of things that better push us forward. But does it really? Or does it hold us back from our true potential?
The original push behind Planned Parenthood was to attack the blacks and the Jews. This is a sign of scientism. The push for too many people in the world so the need for elimination. It’s all with the mindset of creating the perfect world with perfect people. We are changed from Revelation to Science (Reason) so it’s man starting from himself and is structuring any order according to himself. It is all based on the humanistic man.
We are told that if we commit ourselves…fully attach yourself to an idea then we can overcome anything. You haven’t committed yourself to cancer yet, so we haven’t been able to overcome cancer yet. We need to commit and only then can we achieve anything.
Man is placed in God’s true place…it becomes an upside down world. Man becomes the one who predestines, he controls the future. If we will not have God’s predestination then we will turn to man’s predestination. It will be a secular predestination.
The scientists become the guardians…the high caretakers who take care of us, the regular people. They are the super humans, the elite, who are the better and more perfect individual. They are farther along with progress…but a humanistic sense of progress. Any that are not that elite are but scum on the earth…cattle to be driven this way or that way.
In order to achieve all this we will need a social transformation. When you get rid of theology what then will come up eventually is ideology. When people use ideology to get rid of theology, the ideology will always pick up some strong traits of theology. There is no escaping it. You will always have a sacrament, hymn book, law order, and all other normal traits of a theology. They will need to transform not only the people, but the science as well.
They wanted to eliminate the cause, not the problem. They believed it was better to take out the population, not produce more and better food. Sterilization, vaccines, and abortions…all well know, well used ways to help eliminate the population. They cloak all these ideas under the name of science to appear elite and knowledgeable…sometimes confusing the less intelligent.
Phrenology – the feeling of the head to decided if you were fit to live. We laugh at this now, but hopefully that means that someday soon we will also laugh at psychology, the evolution of phrenology. Eugenics – eu (good) gen (beginning). It is the idea that science and control how humans look, act, and live…even before they are born. It is true selective breeding…a control of who can and cannot reproduce so that we achieve the highest possible level of good and perfect people.
Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) was the angel of death when it comes to abortion. She was the founder of Planned Parenthood and a strong promoter of eugenics. She had originally set up Planned Parenthood for the elimination of the “unfit”….the blacks and the Jews.
Social engineerings – we will create our own society and as such we must organize and arrange it so that it is perfect. Eugenics, Health Care, Global Warming, and Gun Control are all sub-categories of social engineering…a seeking to achieve Utopia. The way to get there is through science and scientism. Science is not bad…but when you have a bad theology driving science, then there is the true problem. It isn’t just science…anything taken apart from God and correct theology then it cannot prosper, it will only create death. “All those who hate me, love death.”
The thing we must remember through all of this despair is the fact that God is sovereign and He cares desperately for His people. He cares for them tenderly and everything that happens to them is from His loving hand…it is all blessings. There is only One who can bring in a new Utopia…and that we won’t see until Christ comes again. Because of that, we can have hope and courage for the kingdom of God.
Imagine a distant, gleaming skyline soaring up from the fruited plain through plump cumulous clouds to sleek Zeppelin docks and mad neon spires. Progress is everywhere; it’s a marvelous world. But can this brave new world save us and overturn the effects of the Fall? Can we remake humanity because we’ve got wifi and Twitter?
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes, Rebecca Bacon, 2/13/13
Lesson 14, A Tale of Two Men: Rationalistic Liberalism
Some have said that they couldn’t help coming to God, and some have said that they want to, but are unable to. They wish they could, but religion, to them, has crumbled(it cant). They mourn that it has.
Christianity goes into an eclipse, because they were living off the ideas of earlier thinkers. When this happens, Christianity gets replaced with Civil Religion. With this, They dispose of Christianity but keep the symbols, language, and the rituals, but they empty them of their meaning.
Books that Modernized the World
Candide: 1759
Social Contract: 1762
The Wealth of Nations: 1776
Dialogs on Religion: 1779
Essay on the Principle of Population:1798
Phenomenology of Mind: 1708
On the Origin of Species: 1859
Communist Manifesto:1848
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: 1884
Interpretation of Dreams: 1899
Ideas have consequences, some of them even lead armys into war.
A Tale of Two Men
1.) Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Father of Reductionistic History
Landed Gentry and Parliamentarian
Influenced by German Romanticism
Capitoline Vision in 1764
Volume one of Decline Published in 1776
John Stuart Mill (1803-1873)
Father of the Utilitarian Liberalism
Product of “Gradgrindism”
Enamored by English Romanticism
On Liberty Published in 1859
Essays Published Posthumously
A Tale of Two Books
Gibbon’s The of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire: 1776
Fruit of a Grand Tour and Disappointment
Father’s Estate Settled in 1770
Scathing view of Christianity’s Founding
Filling a Void and a Cause Celebre
Selective Use of Primary Sources
Mill’s Essays on Religion: 1874
Refined Deism and Faith in Faith
Foundations of a Theory of Liberty
Radical Empiricism in Logic and Math
The Principle of Utility
Selective Historiography
Vocabulary
Seminal- pertaining to, containing, or consisting of semen.
Dialectic- of, pertaining to, or of the nature of logical argumentation.
Palin genesis- rebirth; regeneration.
Palin generation- (I cannot find the definition for this word.)
Aesthetics- the study of the mind and emotions in relation to the sense of beauty.
Satirical- of, pertaining to, containing, or characterized by satire.
Lexicon- a wordbook or dictionary.
Cause Celebre- any controversy that attracts great public attention.
Coterie- a group of people who associate closely.
Determinism- the doctrine that all facts and events exemplify natural laws.
Reductionist- someone who believes that every complex phenomenon can be explained by analyzing the simplest, most basic physical mechanisms that are in operation during the phenomenon.
Hagiography- the writing and critical study of the lives of the saints.
Grotesqueries- something grotesque.
Decrepitude- decrepit condition; dilapidated state; feebleness, especially from old age.
Utilitarian- having regard to utility or usefulness rather than beauty, ornamentation, etc.
Ruin- the downfall, decay, or destruction of anything.
Historiography- the body of literature dealing with historical matters; histories collectively.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 13: A Tale of Two Men: Rationalistic Liberalism
“The rise of the secular intellectual has been a key factor in the shaping of the modern world. Intellectuals have laid claim to guide society from the very beginning. But, the new modern intellectual poses not simply as an interpreter of the gods but actually as a substitute.” Paul Johnson
Vocabulary:
etymology – the derivation of a word.
passion – any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.
reason – a basis or cause, as for some belief, action, fact, event, etc.
fundamental – serving as, or being an essential part of, a foundation or basis; basic; underlying
vernacular – using such a language
hallucinogenic – producing hallucinations
quixotic – extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable.
solace – comfort in sorrow, misfortune, or trouble; alleviation of distress or discomfort.
jargon – the language, especially the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group
archaism – something archaic, as a word or expression.
“An educated reader will always read books out of his time.” C.S. Lewis
You want to read the books before your time because it will give you the true theologies of the day; where they began and the true foundation of them. To be able to do this, you must go before Modernity (or the French Revolution) because everything since then is pretty much the same thing wrapped in different wrapping paper. You must read things before Modernity, or read from authors who are studying the times before Modernity.
Ideas have consequences. What drives these ideas? Now it is TV, magazines, and radio…but before all this it was books. Books are the true foundation for some of the greatest and worst ideas and consequences in history.
People seek to keep the aesthetics and morals of Christianity…they like the tradition and thought of it all….they love the “nice” side of it. But then they wipe out and ignore the theology of it all. They don’t want to see that side of it and so they adopt the “niceties” of Christianity but push away the true core of it.
Dismal science – Economics. It can get so involved and nitty gritty when you get down to study it closely. Coming out of it is like a breath of fresh air.
The Wealth of the Nations by Adam Smith introduced capitalism to a world of national capitalism and mercantilism.
The elite must manage the production of the people, use the power of the culture to shape their future, and essentially rule over any who are not elite. These were all points made in Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population. Marx read this book as he wrote The Communist Manifesto. Hegel, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud…these are only a few of the great twisted leaders who used this book to base a lot of their theologies after. Even though all of Malthus’ facts were later proven wrong, the book was a hit. They didn’t care if it wasn’t true…they still took it as truth. There is no such thing as a brute fact because all facts require a philosophy of facts. Julius Simon was named “The Doomslayer” because of how he ripped into Malthus’ and tore down his ideas.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Phenomenology of Mind, 1807) was the one who gave us the idea that you have a thesis and an anthesis and out of that you find a synthesis which eventually comes to be called the thesis which finds another opposite (anthesis) which then mold together to form another synthesis and so on and so forth.
Charles Darwin, when he wrote On the Origin of Species, laid out not science, but rather an ideological manifest…so in basic terms really his theology. Not backed up by truth…or even real facts…but rather just thoughts and ideas that entered his head.
You look at Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848) and you see great comparison where we are today. The ten planks of the manifesto run parallel if not overlapping to the laws which we have enforced today. We have become largely a socialist culture.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1884) argued for a rejection of the Christian worldview thoroughly…music, art, and so forth. He wrote this great myth that made a mockery of every Christian more and tradition and then presented a new and noble worldview for a non-theistic spirituality which would become a common calling card of the post-modern.
Sigmund Freud wrote in his Interpretation of Dreams said that what we feel and think and thus how we behave can be traced through scientific steps to see the different biological impulses across generations. Man has ultimately one nature…but there is no idea of sin brought into the equation. There is no idea of change brought into this theology…all men are given a certain situation and are bound to react the same way because of something previous in their life. No chance of old man/new man or any kind of regeneration.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) is known as the Father of Reductionistic History…the steely and systematic description of the past. Unemotional rejection of the holy people of the past…giving no true recognition to the strong men of the past. He rolled it up and made it scientific, facts only. He had a dramatic conversion of types to Roman Catholicism and was immediately dismissed by his family on a grand tour to cure him of this great disaster. While on this tour he came under the influence of German Romanticism. While in Rome, he decided to write a book surrounding the subject of Rome and why Rome came into its decline. He determined that Christianity was the villain of it all…the silly piety and deep corruptions had undermined the great glories of Rome. So really it was just the opposite of Augustine’s The City of God. The first volume of his book was published in 1776 and it traced the whole history of the origin of the Church. No matter what he wrote, it was all in effort to show how shallow and silly Christianity is…he made it into a cartoon. The rest of his life was dedicated to writing his history. He filled a void of history…where there was an empty hole of facts he laid the foundation for widespread skepticism.
John Stuart Mill (1803-1873) came after Gibbon and is known to be the Father of Utilitarian Liberalism…”What is the most good for the most people?” It’s a practical approach. The kind of liberty that comes from functional practicality and utility. Anything done that increases welfare or people’s happiness then it is good. He was thought of to be a product of “Gradgrindism” from Hard Times by Dickens. A mean, cruel, offensive man. By age three he was made to read off his day’s lessons in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin at the end of every day. But later in life he found himself enamored by English Romanticism. All this combined produced a book, On Liberty (1859). Later his essays were published posthumously after his death. He took his previous theology and surrounded his book by the idea of refined deism and a faith in faith…not God. It was really a foundation for a theory of liberty…all that matters is liberty. He said, “It doesn’t matter what a person believes just as long as they are an American.” But then…is it born in America? Or raised in America? Or living in America? It is logically unsound and unreasonable, but it was still accepted. That is why the principle of utility becomes inhumane. There are always rules that must apply but that principle dismisses them all…it gives rise to an idea that says if you want to shoot people it’s okay…if you want to lie and steal it’s okay. If you want to believe anything at all, it’s okay.
The skepticism of continental thinkers across the whole of the Napoleonic sphere of influence was perceived in conservative England to have led to Robespierre, The Terrors, Babeuf, Buonarroti, Napoleon, and finally the chaos of early Modernity. As a result, atheism was associated with social dissolution and anarchy. But that doesn’t mean England was a bastion of Christian faithfulness. Instead, what we see in England is an emergence of a new kind of skepticism in the modern world.
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes, Rebecca Bacon, 2/20/13
Lesson 14, A Tale of Two Men: Rationalistic Liberalism, Part 2
Non-theistic- No theology or no religion. It is impossible not to have a religion. Even not having a religion is a religion.
All facts require a philosophy of facts.
Books that Modernized the World
Friedrick Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This book mocks Christianity and all that it believes.
Sigmund Freud: Interpretation of Dreams. This book teaches that the way we act has reasons. How we act, think, talk, react to specific things, is because we did something else in our younger years. An example for this is if a boy does something, then it is predicted that he will do something specific when he is 18. These teachings are not true. We cannot predict the future until it happens.
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
Gibbon is known as the Father of Reductionist History.
He was part of the Landed Gentry and Parliament. He was also put under the influence of the German Romanticism.
When he saw the ruins of Rome, he had what he later called the Capitoline Vision(1764). He then had the inspiration for writing a book. It was published in 1776. In it, he blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome, mocked it, and called it rubbish. Overall, he made it look like a cartoon.
John Stuart Mill, Essays on Religion
Mill is known as the Father of Utilitarian Liberalism.
Utilitarian Liberalism is the belief that anything done to increase peoples happiness or wealth is good. And anything that causes harm or anger is bad.
Mill believed that it didn’t matter what you believed, as long as you were an American( he really means born in America). This theory really does not work. For if I, for instance, believed that going around killing people was fine to do, then I would automatically start running into problems( I do not believe as such).
If you have ever read Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, you will know who Thomas Gradgrind is. Mill’s father was much like him. Very hard and stern. At three, Mill was forced to recite his lessons in Greek, Hebrew and Latin.
When he was allowed to leave home, he thought to much about women. When he returned home, Mills found his parents angry that he had wasted his time. He wrote his book, but hid it from all, and it was not published until 1859.
The tale of these two books, is actually the story of the rise of Modernity. These are two specific books which helped lay the foundation for it. If you research these two men, and look into their history, you will find that they were indeed very strange men. Not only in looks, but in thoughts and deeds as well. But despite that they lived long ago, they are some of the many people who are responsible for the times we live in today. If we want to change these times, we’ve got to know what made them that way.
The skepticism of continental thinkers across the whole of the Napoleonic sphere of influence was perceived in conservative England to have led to Robespierre, The Terrors, Babeuf, Buonarroti, Napoleon, and finally the caos of early Modernity. As a result, atheism was associated with social dissolution and anarchy. But that doesn’t mean that England was a bastion of Christian faithfulness. Instead, what we see in England is an emergence of a new kind of skepticism in the modern world.
The rise of the secular intellectual has been a key factor in the shaping of the modern world. Intellectuals have laid claim to guide society from the very beginning. But, the knew modern intellectual poses not simply as an interpreter of the gods but actually as a substitute. -Paul Johnson
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes, Rebecca Bacon, 2/27/13
Lesson 15, Romantic Poets and Their Principle
Those who believe in Deism tends to be rational, but were replaced by Romanticism/ Transcendentalism. These tend on being irrational and pantheistic.
No matter which of these religions you have it will always lead to Revolution.
Some of the many Romantic Poets are as follows: Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Darley.
Revolution and Reformation
Quick results v. Long obedience in the same direction.
Loud Publicity v. Quiet Reputation.
Unrelenting Science v. Gentle Persuasions.
Programs and Policies v. Covenant and Calling.
Charts, Graphs, Stats v. Faith, Hope, Love.
Gargantuan Purposes v. Small Beginnings.
Undeterred by facts v. Undeterred by obstacles.
Never fails to Disappoint v. Never fails.
Most of the Romantic Poets were Italian, French and Spanish. Italian is from Italy and Italy is in Rome, thus comes the word “Roman”tic. Rome is Romantic’s root word.
People followed tradition. They grew up, they got married and they had kids because that was the backdrop that they were living behind.They didn’t even think of what was driving these ideas. What the Romantic Poets tried to do was reveal the ideas that were shaping their life’s.
They tried to expose passions which were always dictated by Christian Reason. Passions also trigger Emotions.
Precursors to the Romantics
Jean Jacqes Rousseau, On Passion versus Reason.
Johann Goethe, Sturm and Drang.
Friedrich von Schiller, Ballad of William Tell.
Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne.
William Blake, Songs of Innocence.
William Cowper, Olney Hymns.
Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake.
Philip Freneau, The Wild Honeysuckle.
George Crabbe, Village Life.
The Noble Savage is made to look like a good person.
People may not look at Poetry as a Worldview, but that is only because it is behind the scenes.
Freneau was the creator of the term “Mother Nature. When we get 4 inches of snow on the ground, the weather men always blame it on “Mother Nature.” Even though people don’t believe in a Mother Nature, they still use it. It is also another way of saying luck. There is also no such thing as luck. But there is such thing as God, who is the real artist.
The Great Romantic Poets
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
William Wordsworth, Upon Westminster Bridge.
Lord Byron, Don Juan.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound.
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn.
George Darley, Mermaid’s Vesper Hymn.
They try to use a Christian Worldview, in order to destroy it. They separate what they knew to be true and what they felt, from what they feel and act.
Heirs of the Romantics
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ode to Beauty.
Henry David Thoreau, On Walden Pond.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ichabod.
Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven.
John Quincy Adams, On Religion and Society.
James Montgomery, The Christian Poet.
Richard Mant, The Happiness of the Blessed Dead.
John Keble, Tracks for the Times.
John Henry Newman, The Prophetical Office.
The Principles of Romantics
Radical Liberty, changes into, Nationalism
Reconciling Man and Nature, changes into, State of Nature
Exotic Naturalism, changes into, Ethnicity
Undoing Tradition, changes into, Recovering Antiquity
Self-Consciousness, changes into, Expression of passion
Exulting in Plainness, changes into, Vernacular
Idealizing Peasant Values, changes into, The “Common Man”
Non-Christian Spirituality, changes into, Supernatural Horror
They changed the ideas of acting, music, painting,etc.This leads up to changing your Worldview as well.
Lesson Synopsis
When Revolution ultimately failed, those who held to the Revolutionary mindset attempted to bring about the Revolution by other means.They realized they would have to reshape the very soul of man. Thus Romantic Poets laid out this remarkable set of ideals that changed the way we think and feel, laying the foundations for a modern nihilism. So the things that matter most, we don’t feel anymore. And the things that matter least, we feel intensely.
Vocabulary
Etymology- the study of historical linguistic change, especially as manifested in individual words.
Passion- any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.
Reason- a basis or cause, as for some belief, action, fact, event, etc.
Fundamental- being an original or primary source.
Vernacular- using plain, everyday, ordinary language.
Hallucinogenic- of, pertaining to, or constituting a hallucinogen or hallucinogens.
Quixotic- impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.
Solace- comfort in sorrow, misfortune, or trouble.
Jargon- unintelligible or meaningless talk or writing; gibberish.
Archaism- the survival or presence of something from the past.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 15: The Romantic Poets and Their Principles
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” -John Keats
Vocab:
American exceptionalism – the myth that de Tocqueville wove into his book.
sovereignty – the status, dominion, power, or authority of a sovereign; royalty.
delegates – a person designated to act for or represent another or others
jurisdiction – the right, power, or authority to administer justice by hearing and determining controversies.
jurisdictionalism – the right, power, or authority to administer justice by hearing and determining controversies
relegated – to send or consign to an inferior position, place, or condition
electoral – pertaining to electors or election.
magistratal – a civil officer charged with the administration of the law
interposition – the act or fact of interposing or the condition of being interposed.
chads – a term used in the ‘08 election
bedevil – to torment or harass maliciously or diabolically, as with doubts, distractions, or worries.
relegate – to send or consign to an inferior position, place, or condition
Revolution Vs Reformation:
Quick, Hasty Results vs. Long Obedience in the Same Direction
Loud Publicity vs. Quiet Reputation
Unrelenting Science vs. Gentle Persuasions
Programs and Policies vs. Covenant and Callings
Charts, Graphs, Stats vs. Faith, Hope, Love
Gargantuan Purposes vs. Small Beginnings
Undeterred by Facts vs. Undeterred by Obstacles
Never Fails to Disappoint vs. Never Fails
Reformation moves slowly as is slower to change. It is not bothered by incremented results. Revolution wants BAM! Results. Revolution will fit reality to form new reality while Reformation will take time to form man to fit God’s reality.
Romantic poets were named that because they wrote romantic things of man. The true meaning of romance writers came from the romance languages. The romance languages were French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish. These came from Latin and that was spoken by the Romans. So really it was all a movement to get back to antiquity and Rome. Human relationships and the release of emotions.
Theology is ideas externalized. The ideas come from a small percentage of people and those get translated into the general public’s life. The “little people” don’t think about the ideas driving their lives. The reshaping of the soul and minds of men come from the language that a culture uses and how the ideas are distributed throughout the communities.
Man is a passionate being. Revolutionaries seek to change man and his culture from the outside in, but the Romantics they come to know the passions and emotions of man and seek any change from the inside out.
Precursors to the Romantics
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was one who sought to release passion from reason through his essay On Passion versus Reason. A professing believer with strong convictions, but you can still do other contradictions. Music is one great way you can do this. This was a push of Rousseau…emotion apart from reason. Music enters and it’s very powerful and can enter your head and alter who you are even if you don’t consciously realize it.
Johann Goethe (1749-1832) wrote Sturm und Drang. Passion and impulse released from the objective realities. Poetry was created to remove a person temporarily from his natural state to feel something. Movies are this way today…they mold your emotions to get attached to something or someone…to scare you…to anger you…to make you cry, to make you love, to make you laugh.
Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) used folk tales from the past to create a nationalistic connection. Ballad of William Tell was used for this purpose so that people would begin to look for larger-than-life heroes with all their passion and leaving their reason behind.
Robert Burns (1759-1796) retouched the whole idea of the noble savage into the common man. He appealed to the common man to appear as normal and general as anyone else. The noble savage is seen as good. People in their primitive state is the best way to have a person. It is put into a new setting to rephrase it all and introduce it to a new audience where it will appeal to them. You speak the language of common man to connect with them.
William Blake (1757-1827) who wrote Songs of Innocence and was deemed insane for his whole adult life. It was a reflection on returning to man’s first and truest nature. Man before the idea of the fall. Man is inherently good and without evil…all innocent. He believed that man is really good and was made that way but the idea of evil was introduced and man believed it. Now he has to remember and return to being educated that he is really all good. It is the perfect unhinging of passion from reason.
William Cowper (1731-1800) with his Olney Hymns was a devout Christian in his sane moments but then hide away in bouts of deep depression. Whether it was related to medical or religious depression we don’t know. But whatever he wrote was very influential in the laying of the groundwork for Romanticism.
Walter Scott (1771-1832) began his career by translating other previous German romantics like Goethe and Schiller into English and so he got that background. He loved the idea of German nationalism and he was Scottish and attempted to use the German style to achieve his own end. In a sense he was a conservative revolutionary. He used the tactics of the Romantics for his own purpose. But the more we look at it the more we realize that there is not much difference between the left or right parties. It is more a matter of speed, not goal…they have the same goal in mind but can work at different speeds…slower for the left and faster for the right. This came out with his The Lady of the Lake.
Philip Freneau (1752-1832) focused on nature. Man is in a sense attempting to return to nature and his noble savage. But nature for nature’s sake. What is the pleasure coming from the physical world? He began talking about Mother Nature as Mother Nature as opposed to it being a figment of our nature. The Wild Honeysuckle portrayed this. He separates nature entirely from God and it being His creation even if it isn’t rational.
George Crabbe (1754-1832) focused on the rural life and being politically correct and loving all things agrarian and rural.
The Great Romantic Poets
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) – Rime of the Ancient Mariner
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) – Upon Westminster Bridge
Lord Byron (1788-1824) – Don Juan
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) – Prometheus Unbound
John Keats (1795-1821) – Ode on a Grecian Urn
George Darley (1795-1846) – Mermaid’s Vesper Hymn
They have the ability to take ugly things of the world and make it something beautiful and attractive to anyone. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but many beholders are crazy or ugly themselves. Unleashing passion however you want, it doesn’t matter how as long as you do. They take the most abstract things and focus so intently on it. Everything they write is in the context of their “Christian worldview” but they use it to tear the true Christian worldview down. They clothe it in Christianity and cloak it in Biblical theology…but it’s stripped of the real truth and is portrayed in order to tear down true Christianity. All their agenda was pushed as was to separate entirely the what people thought and knew to be true and what people felt to be true. But this is really impossible because what you feel is directly based off of what you think. This idea of feelings has been introduced to the modern church and now we have gotten away from thinking solidly to thinking due to emotion and feeling.
Heirs of the Romantics
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Ode to Beauty
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) – On Walden Pond
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) – Ichabod
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) – The Raven
John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) – On Religion and Society
James Montgomery (1771-1854) – The Christian Poet
Richard Mant (1776-1848) – The Happiness of the Blessed Dead
John Keble (1792-1866) – Tracts for the Times
John Henry Newman (1801-1890) – The Prophetical Office
They wanted to get in touch with their feelings…examine what they really thought and felt beneath the surface. This is the excuse they used to explore passion and romance. The eyes are turned inwards and thoughts focus on the self. Focus on man is pushed. It is a more democratic, humanistic, pantheistic, and spiritual movement. You separate how you think from what you feel and act which creates ultimately a whole new world. A world without ration.
When Revolution ultimately failed, those who held to the Revolutionary mindset attempted to bring about the Revolution by other means. They realized they would have to reshape the very soul of man. Thus Romantic Poets laid out this remarkable set of ideals that changed the way we think and feel, laying the foundation for a modern nihilism. So the things that matter most, we don’t feel anymore. And the things that matter least, we feel intensely.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 16 – Biblical Principles of Politics: The Election of 2008
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Where there is liberty, then there is the true covenant community standing fast in its defense.” -Samuel Adams
Vocab:
epic – heroic; majestic; impressively great
subsequently – following in order or succession; succeeding
phantasmagoria – a shifting series of phantasms, illusions, or deceptive appearances, as in a dream or as created by the imagination
crenellations – to furnish with crenels or battlements
parsimonious – characterized by or showing parsimony; frugal or stingy
solace – comfort in sorrow, misfortune, or trouble; alleviation of distress or discomfort
foppery – the clothes, manners, actions, etc., of a fop
Propositional Nationhood – forming a nation solely on a creed. We are not just a nation with a common creed. But a history, a faith, a religion, ect. We share more than just a creed and those foundations just stated are what forms a solid community.
Most politicians have never had a job before and as such do not know the first thing about having to work and with people under them. With the election of ‘08 you have McCain who was the oldest candidate and Obama who was the black. The idea of “Change” was brought in…but what change? How do we know we want that change? The money spent on this campaign was excessive even in comparison to past elections. The idea of guilt of race is brought up whenever you critique Obama’s policies as a means to call attention away from him and put the spotlight on you as a racist. Everything, from the collapse of liquidity and the mortgage banking bailout to the Iraq War and the War on Islamic terrorism, was used and manipulated to push Obama out in the lead. Then the issue of abortion was brought up. Obama voted against a law being passed that said that if an infant was born even after attempted abortion it must be cared for…he voted against that three times. Fetal research was another issue brought up. With taxation and deficit spending they take the money from those who earn it to spend it in the economy however they want it instead of letting those that earn it spend it well in the economy how they want to. The government claims all this to be the benefit of the people, when really all the money flow goes to whatever pushes the government forward, not the people. This is in direct opposition to private capitalism and spending.
God has appointed different spheres within a culture. This was for the purpose of a checks and balances…an accountability for all people. It was to be a nation of spheres, jurisdictions, and sovereignty. These overlapping spheres are primarily narrowed down to the ecclesiastical, domestic, and governmental. Church, home, and state. There are things you can and cannot do. If you take power from one sphere and give it to another then the original sphere lacks that power. One grows as another shrinks.
The purpose of Biblical Politics is to bring about proper sovereignty. That is to bring hope and gladness, a worldwide kingdom under God, truth and justice, and a turning away from the idols of today. This would also mean the bringing back of God’s name into the government sphere. It will require great reformation in terms of our politics today.
With a mixed government we would find pure democracy, representationalism of the people, and the hybrid republic. This would mean that the vote is based on a direct popular vote and a regular flushing in and out regularly of the people in places of power. The people would vote for one who would represent the whole state’s interest to the federal state.
With a checks and balance type of system, there is the question of magistratal interposition. The people need to be protected from the power of the government so you make several spheres so that when one sphere steps out of line, another sphere can step between the bad sphere and the people to protect them. By state statute some of these protections should be put into place. There is a weighted difference with the electoral college. There are more representatives for the larger states and less representatives for the smaller states so it was evenly weighted.
Why has the American experiment in liberty survived hanging chads, stolen votes, and backroom deals? Well, if Alexis de Tocqueville is right, America is great because America is good, but if America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. What will we be as people? How will we respond to the challenges ahead of us? Will we continue to rely on law and tradition, or will we give up on American exceptionalism and look for a quick fix?
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes, Rebecca Bacon, 3/6/13
Lesson 16, Biblical Principles of Politics: The Election of 2008
Critical Issues: 2008
1. Change and the Experience to make it- the Candidates were very inexperienced and none of them had any market job.
2. Referendum Bush and the Bush doctrine.
3. Age, Race, Media Influence, Campaign Financing.
4. Iraq War and the War on Islamic Terrorism.
5. The Wall Street and Mortgage Banking Bailout.
What the Big Banks do:
(1.) Privatize Profits.
(2.) Collectivized losses.
We should have let the banks go when they were falling, because of the things they do.
6. Abortion, Infanticide, and Fetal Research.
7. Taxation and Deficit Spending.
8. Partisan control of the Congress and Senate.
9. Supreme Court Appointments.
10. The ongoing value of the Electoral College.
Psalm 97: 1-6 and 7-12 show completely that the Lord reigns over the whole earth. And He is sovereign over ALL things. Its not as if the Government can solve any of our problems. All the candidates were and are put to shame before Him.
Biblical Principle of Politics
Sovereignty
1. He brings Hope and Gladness
2. He has a Worldwide Kingdom
3. He brings Truth and Justice
4. He urges us to Turn from Idols
Jurisdictionalism
Ecclesia
Familia
Civitas
Communitas
Electoral College
Mixed Government
1. Pure Democracy
2. Representationalism
3. Hybrid Republic
Checks and Balances
1. Magistratal Interposition
2. State Statute
3. Weighted Influence
Dealing with Difficulties
1800: Jefferson and Burr
1824: Adams and Jackson
1876: Hays and Tilden
1888: Harrison and Cleveland
2000: Bush and Gore
Vocabulary
American exceptionalism- the proposition that the United States is different from other countries in that it has a specific world mission to spread liberty and democracy.
Sovereignty- supreme authority in a political community.
Delegates- a person designated to act for or represent another or others; deputy; representative, as in a political convention.
Jurisdiction- the right, power, or authority to administer justice by hearing and determining controversies.
Jurisdictionalism- the authority of a sovereign power to govern or legislate.
Relegated- to send or consign to an inferior position, place, or condition.
Electoral- pertaining to electors or election.
Magistratal- a local official exercising administrative and often judicial functions.
Interposition- the act or fact of interposing or the condition of being interposed.
Chads- a small paper disk or square formed when a hole is punched in a punch card or paper tape.
Bedevil- to torment or harass maliciously or diabolically, as with doubts, distractions, or worries.
Relegate- to send into exile; banish.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 17 – The Virtues of the Victorians
“Combining elements of a tamed Romanticism, an energetic Industrialism, a converted Enlightenment, and a domesticated Modernism, Victorianism was all the best and all the worst of Modernity all at once. It was a season of great paradox.” G.K. Chesteron
Vocabulary:
tactic – a plan, procedure, or expedient for promoting a desired end or result
mercantilist – mercantile practices or spirit; commercialism
speculation – a single instance or process of consideration
exploit – a striking or notable deed; feat; spirited or heroic act
perilous – involving or full of grave risk or peril; hazardous; dangerous
imperil – to put in peril or danger; endanger
magistracy – a body of magistrates
turbulent – being in a state of agitation or tumult; disturbed
halcyon – calm; peaceful; tranquil; rich; wealthy; prosperous; happy; joyful; carefree
hegemonist – the policy or practice of hegemony to serve national interests
bequest – the act of bequeathing
bestow – to present as a gift; give; confer
bequeath – to hand down; pass on
Queen Victoria (1819-1901) ruled over the vast British empire with her husband Prince Albert but he died earlier on leaving her to reign alone for another 40 years. It was an ever expanding empire and she was able to see Britain grow to one of its greatest reigns ever. She had nine children and forty-two grandchildren. She believed in hard work, faith, and dedication. The French Revolution was a war that touched the world but not so much Britian.
Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) was a member of an avant garde called The Bloomsbury Group composed of historians. This group sought to overturn the high-end Victorian proprieties. He was a sodomite and sought to tear down the morals of the age by writing Eminent Victorians. He decided to write biographies about well known and respected people and satirized them. He mocked them and made fun of them.
Henry Edward Manning (1801-1892) was the first of the respected that was torn at by Strachey. He was part of the Oxford Movement that believed that their faith should shape the wider culture around them. The shapeless and spineless modern faith, he believed, was too emotional and unsubstantial to change the world. They wanted to find something that gave their lives meaning and sought to make a true return to Christendom and was mentored by Cardinal Henry Newman. Manning himself eventually converted to Catholicism and later rose to become bishop and then cardinal. He lived out the morals of work, family, and faith.
Dr. Thomas Arnold (1795-1842) was another of the men torn down by Strachey. He sought to bring back the richness of the West’s legacy. In an effort to uncover and relive the past he founded The Rugby School. He recovers the idea of the chapel and the liturgical calendar. This just means to say that your life in terms of a calendar was marked often by Christian events and days and times. This helps to define Christians. The second area of focus for Arnold was uncovering the classics and teaching Latin and Greek to better read the classics. He was the father of Matthew Arnold and the grandfather of Aldous Huxley.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a hero of the Victorian age but yet again one to be dragged through the mud by Lytton Strachey. She was very grounded with domination in that industry and time. She was appalled by the conditions of the war and almost single-handedly took over the fight to introduce sanitary environments for wounded soldiers and to fight to lobby the politicians and had to deal with the war office. She was dominant and worked hard to eventually found the Red Cross. She was very strong and a dominating character but always submitted to authority around her and this is how Strachey attacked her.
General Charles Gordon (1833-1885) was another one to be lampooned by Strachey. He was a military hero with a deep faith who made it well known in China and then later in Africa. He was called in to address a problem in Africa and terrorism and in the end he and his men were slaughtered. Gordon was called old-fashioned and stuck in the past…too weak for the modern age.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was another to be satirized by Strachey but he was one of the first people to explore etymology and helped shaped the english writing techniques and wrote the dictionary. He was conservative and he valued faith, family, and work above all else and this gave rise to some of the greatest english literary traditions ever.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was yet another to be attacked by this book compiled by Strachey. In his conservatism he tried to go back to the traditions. He believed that change was inevitable but that change should be slow. No change for change’s sake. He is known for his oratory and his essays and was called the Father of Conservatism. Burke believed there was a way to evenly balance freedom and liberty…but really freedom and order. If it’s just freedom then you get anarchy…if you just have order then it’s tyranny.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was always underestimated and this helped Strachey as he helped to tear her down. She lived in distressing times but found a way to make it through as a female author even though anonymous. She wrote things that would lampoon follies…making fun of ideas and morals of those of the modern times. But what she did like to focus on were the things that really mattered most. She was another of those who focused on family, faith, and work.
Walter Scott (1771-1832) was a book-lover. His library was a wonderful and great thing. Scott loved new gadgets and loved change though he was very focused on the past and what the modern world really should be. He loved the Romantics, but even that love of that time was shaped by Christianity. He wrote several books and had a manifesto for truth. He sought to connect the ties between the past and the present to properly shape the future…he was a firm believer in covenantalism. He made great emphasis on the past, present, and future…in fact, Scott would say that the future would precede the present. As Christians we should always seek to be future-minded. He had a great appreciation of and for the past, a recovery of legacy and greatness, and a continuity for the future. But what we want to avoid is the morbid preoccupation with the self, an ignorance of the past, and a blind faith in the future.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was a novelist, lecturer, and reformer…he wrote many books and essays. He wrote stories of the ordinary people of the world to help people relate to the hardships and times of those in his stories. He wrote Tale of Two Cities, and Hard Times along with many others but those are two of his more famous. Hard Times was a critique on modern times, especially the capitalists. Dickens was a man very focused on hard work and how important that is in the life of a Christian.
William Gladstone (1809-1898) was into classic liberalism and was a statesman who was shaped and very influenced by Christian reform. Lytton Strachey hated him. Gladstone was said to be the embodiment of the Victorian age. He served as the prime minister four times and had a progressive social agenda. Queen Victoria once said that she couldn’t live with him and she couldn’t live without him.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) was Jewish and was Nouveau Rich meaning it was not a new wealth passed down…but he made it himself. He came from that kind of family. He was committed to static conservatism…no change at all was to be had. He was a classic Tory and had a regressive social agenda but was still said to be greatly influential and substantial to the Victorian Age.
There were many values of the Victorian Age. Work was extremely pushed during this time and believed in a Puritan work ethic…a self-help kind of work. There was a certain push towards entrepreneurial zeal…you produce a product that others want and there is a good market for you to put it out there and for others to be attracted to what you have. The opposite of this is that the government is in charge of what is being produced and how and how much. The government is not to come in and take over how work is to be done.
Family is another strong ideal of Victorians. It is the cornerstone of any nation and society. There was a renewed interest in domesticity and not just in women. Home and family was a highly valued thing. You saw a lot of large families during this time. They understood that families were unique and separate parts combined to form a smooth working order. Families were integrated together. They invented the childhood…today we are undoing this. We don’t have children anymore. Their ideas of marriage were on love and partnership…mutual ideas and beliefs that functioned smoothly and properly together for life.
Faith was the other strong idea of the time. Faith formed and shaped. If you were a Christ-hater you were not usually admitted into the general society. Faith was about rootedness and covenantalism. There was true stability throughout. There was an energy and tradition to study and grow up the faith in all areas of life and at all times in life.
For Lytton Strachey, an eighteenth-century avant garde intellectual, the Victorian ideal was foolishness, nonsense. The values of faith, family, and work were obviously outmoded and outdated in the midst of the modern world and it was time to embrace the richness of the new age. However, he ignored the reality that it was during the Victorian Age that industrialization, urbanization, the transportation revolution, communication, commerce, manufacturing, and economic growth all reshaped the English and the European world.
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes, Rebecca Bacon, 3/13/13
Lesson 17, The Virtues of the Victorians
Queen Victoria was born May 24, 1819 and died on January 22, 1901. She became queen when only eighteen years old, and died at the age of eighty-one. She wat fifty-eight when she married her distant cousin, Prince Albert (1819-1861), who at the time was also fifty-eight He died only two years later at twenty-one. Although this was not long, Victoria had nine children, who each in turn got married and gave birth to fourty-two grandchildren.Victoria ruled over a wide expantion of the British Empire, and died after reigning sixty-three years.
Lytton Strachey lived from 1880-1932. He was part of the Bloomsbury group which believed in change. The members of the Bloomsbury group in the end all had bad relationships and many of them comited suicide. Strachey wrote the book Eminent Victorians which has the biographys of Henry Edward Manning, Florence Nightingale, Generak Charles Gordon and Dr.Thomas Arnold, four well known respected people, and made them look bad.
1. Henry Edward Manning was part of the Oxford Movement, which would have been against Modernity. This group wanted people to return to Christianity and thought tradition was essencial. Manning was tutored by Henry Newman. He became an English Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and a cardinal.1808-1892
2. Dr.Thomas Arnold thought that the West’s Legacy needed to be recovered. He founded what was called the First Rugby School. This school taught the students history, mathemetics, the modern language, and most inportant in Arnold’s eyes, the classic languages.
He was the father of Mattew Arnold, who became a romantic poet. Also, he was the Grandfather of Aldous Huxley, who was an arch herritic along with his close family. 1795-1842
3. Florence Nightingale lived during the war and disliked how it was run. She almost took over the War office. She wanted to help the soldiers so she formed the Red Cross, since she had nurcing in her background. She had a Dominating influence but was not a feminist. 1820-1910
4. General Charles Gordon was a military hero. He first had experience in China. He was also a commited Christian. He went to Sudan to help fight off Islamic Terrorists. Disaster happened in Khartoum and he and his followers were killed. 1833-1885
Other Strong Victorians
Samual Johnson wrote a number of fine books and was a fine Christian. He was also a strong Victorian. 1709-1784
Edmund Burke believed in change and tradition. But when he wanted change, he wanted the slow and gradual change. He enfisised tradition very strongly. He was known as the father of Conservatism. He was also known for his Oratory and Literature. He thought we needed a balancing Freedom and Order. 1729-1797
Jane Austen was said to be underestemated, But a lot of weman were in her time. She lived during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Age. She saw that weman were treated wrongly and published many books on their strengths. During her time, weman did not write. 1775-1817
Walter Scott is known for his many books, one of which has been made into a movie. Even though he loved the past, he chould see room for improvement in the present. But his vision for change was formed from the past. He loved books so much that it was said that his favorite room in his house was the library. 1771-1832
All of these people thought it was nessisary to look to the past.
Serious Social Criticism
1. Tradition
Appreciation of and for the past
Recovery of Legacy and Greatness
Continuity for the Future
2. Contemporaneity
Morbid Preoccupation with Self
Ignorance of the Past
Blind faith in the Future
3. Remembering
Measuring Rods of Faithfulness
Passing on the Legacy
Effectual Doers v. Forgetful Hearers
Charles Dickens was a Novelist, Lecturer, and Reformer. He wrote many books about ordinary people who go through life. He wanted all wrongs righted and showed so in his works. He believed in hard work but was not a full Christian.1812-1870
William Gladstone was a scottish Evangelical. He believed in the ideas of Dickens, that all wrongs should be righted. Believed in Classical Liberalism and wass a Prime Minister four different times. He also believed in a Progressive Social Agenda. 1809-1898
Benjamin Disraeli was born into a Jewish Nouveau Rich family. He was a Prime Minister twice and was Queen Victorias favorite. Believed in a Regressive Social Agenda. 1804-1881
The Values of Victorianism
1. Work
The Puritan Work Ethic
Self-Help
Entrepreneurial Zeal
2. Family
Renewed Domesticity
Inventing Childhood
Marriage Partnerships
3. Faith
Energy and Tradition
Appeal and Substance
Pastoral Care and Mission
Vocabulary
Epic- heroic; majestic; impressively great.
Subsequently- occurring or coming later or after.
Phantasmagoria- a shifting series of phantasms, illusions, or deceptive appearances, as in a dream or as created by the imagination.
Crenellations- furnishings of crenels or battlements.
Solace- comfort in sorrow, misfortune, or trouble; alleviation of distress or discomfort.
Foppery- the clothes, manners, actions, etc., of a fop.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 18 – The Regency Interregnum
“The Regency was the ornate frenzy between the Georgian and the Victorian Ages.” -Tristan Gylberd
Vocabulary:
covenant – an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified
progeny – a descendant or offspring, as a child, plant, or animal
historiography – the body of literature dealing with historical matters; histories collectively
sphere sovereignty –
gargantuanism – gigantic; enormous; colossal
legacy – a gift of property, especially personal property, as money, by will; a bequest
aghast – struck with overwhelming shock or amazement; filled with sudden fright or horror
George I (1660-1727) ascended to the throne (1714) from Queen Anne’s (his mother) death…he spoke no English, had heard of England, but not Scotland at all. During his “reign” there was the Jacobite Rising of 1715. The Scots sought to place the Stuarts back on the throne because they were “rightful royalty”..so they sought to take down the house of Hanover, or George I. There was also at this time a financial crisis. The South Sea Bubble was a speculation to make quick money. In short, it was a money scam where you put in great amounts of money and eventually the bubble pops and you lose out on your money.
George II (1683-1760) was the ruler (1727) when the Jacobite Rising of ‘45 happened. Yet another uprising happened, this time of Bonnie Prince Charlie raising an army to try and take over the throne for his father…seeking to upset the Hanover reign of George II on the throne.
George III (1738-1820) arose to the throne (1760) next and had to deal with the American War for Independence and then the French Revolution. However, he dealt with a lot of illnesses in his life and because of that it was hard for him to be taken seriously as the king.
George IV ruled with George III from 1811-1820 since his father was considered mad. He didn’t officially rule till 1820 when his father died. At this point the king was really more of a figure-head…just something to be seen and not someone who did real ruling. The prime minister ran the affairs of the nation state. Britain grew more into her status as the empire at this time. The Pax Britannica was brought into mention at this point as well. From 1815-1919, Britain advanced and gained more control over more continents. George IV sought to great an international rule…one instance of this was when John Nash built the Royal Pavilion at the Brighton Seashore…it was a combination of many different cultures and their differing styles. Whenever you get the idea of an Empire you have the idea of internationalism…all nations under one rule…a New World Order. This turns a people away from Christ and away from true Biblical authority and rule.
In order to understand some of the things we’re facing now, the liquidity crisis, the Wall Street collapse, the fascination with change and heroic figures coming to the rescue when in fact we have the most robust economy in the world, we need to understand one key thing: the Regency Period of English and continental history.
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes, Rebecca Bacon, 3/20/13
Lesson 18, The Regency Interregnum
The Georgian Period
George I, 1660-1727, R.1714
1. Ascension of the House of Hanover
Many of the people who have ruled England in the past have died without an heir. So the rein of England would be passed on to the closest relative. One of these instances was with George I. He had never been in England and he couldn’t speak English.
2. Jacobite Rising of ’15
3. The South Sea Bubble
Bubbles are created when people believe that something costs more than it is really worth. So the price gets bigger and bigger until the “bubble” pops. When it does, the price of that thing drops back down to its real price. People buy these things when they become a bubble and then sell it at the last moment for a chance to earn money.
George II, 1683-1760, R. 1727
1. Robert Walpole’s Magistracy
2.The Jacobite Rising ’45
3. Seven Year war
George III, 1738-1820, R. 1760
When the King looses authority, the Parliament gains power over the colonies.
1. The American War for Independence
2. The French Revolution
3. Episodes of Acute Porphyria
The Regency Period
George IV
1. Regency, 1811-1820
George IV was not completely King because his father, George III, had not died yet.
2. Napoleonic Wars.
The Prime Minister ruled the Nation State during the Napoleonic Age because there was no King.
3. The Halcyon Day of the Empire.
Internationalism
1. The Mercantilism Era
2. Colonial Acquisitions
3. Wealth and Fashion
Nationalism
1. Brighton, Buckingham, and Windsor
2. Galleries, Museums, and Parks
3. Reinventing the Scots
The Christian sees that History is necessary because it is God’s. We cannot understand the present without the past. We need to understand it by interpreting it through a Christian Worldview.
Money is not real. The food we eat is increasingly unreal. Our relationships, our self, the culture around us, fashion, etc. will become unreal if you have a bad worldview. A bad worldview hurts people. The only way to become”real” is to return to God. We can’t see through all the unrealness unless we look at it with a Christian Worldview.
In order to understand some of the things we’re facing now, the liquidity crisis, the Wall Street collapse, the fascination with change and heroic figures coming to the rescue when in fact we have the most robust economy in the world, we need to understand one key thing: the Regency Period of English and continental history.
Vocabulary
Tactic- a system or a detail of tactics.
Mercantilist- someone who has mercantile practices or spirit; commercialism.
Speculation- a single instance or process of consideration.
Exploit- a striking or notable deed; feat; spirited or heroic act.
Perilous- involving or full of grave risk or peril; hazardous; dangerous.
Imperil- to put in peril or danger; endanger.
Magistracy- the office or function of a magistrate.
Turbulent- being in a state of agitation or tumult; disturbed.
Halcyon- calm; peaceful; tranquil.
Hegemonist- someone who practices hegemony to serve national interests.
Bequest- a disposition in a will.
Bestow- to present as a gift; give; confer.
Bequeath- to hand down; pass on.
Sarah Bacon – Modernity
Week 19 – The Legacy of the Mighty Scots
“But the covenant standard shall again rise, as the progeny of Skye and Strath and Spey, dance the dance of America and sing the song of Freedom. Adieu to loch and moor; Aye to plain and plateau.” -Alastair MacDonald
Vocabulary:
suasion – the act of advising, urging, or attempting to persuade; persuasion.
pansophic – universal wisdom or knowledge.
collegium – a group of ruling officials each with equal rank and power, especially one that formerly administered a Soviet commissariat.
trivium – the lower division of the seven liberal arts,comprising grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
Shema – a liturgical prayer, prominent in Jewish history and tradition, that is recited daily at the morning and evening services and expresses the Jewish people’s ardent faith in and love of God.
purblind – slow or deficient in understanding, imagination, or vision.
didactic – intended for instruction; instructive
ardor – great warmth of feeling; fervor; passion
paradigm – an example serving as a model; pattern.
aesthetic – having a sense of the beautiful; characterized by a love of beauty.
Hobbesian – a person who believes in or advocates the principles of Thomas Hobbes.
primacy – the state of being first in order, rank, importance, etc.
ethical – pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principles of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct.
The Scots had their own traditions and habits (kilts, bagpipes) and this is what set them apart. They were stubborn and firm about freedom. It was a unique people-group. Arbroath Declaration preceded the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta put limits on King John and the Arbroath Declaration limits the government. They were both negative charters of Liberty. They limited what you could and could not do.
Four men who reshaped the enlightenment of the Scots were: David Hume (1711-1776), Adam Smith (1723-1790), Thomas Reid (1710-1796), and James Mill (1773-186). There were other men too.
Thomas Chalmers was dramatically converted as an adult and the transformation in him vastly changed Scotland. He engaged the culture around him. Chalmer sought to create small parishes, not big mega churches. That way the pastors have hands-on work around them and they are all close and connected to one another. He then went to the schools and worked to affect the minds of those going out into the world.
Sir Walter Scott sat under Chalmers, who was his pastor. He wrote many different novels and led songs. He had a strong emphasis on the sense of home in all his novels.
Scotland invented many impressive things like the radio, telephone, radar, television, fingerprinting, asphalt roads, steam boat, gas lighting, four-cycle gas engine, MRI scanner, gas mask, bicycle, speedometer, suspension bridge, steam engine, wrought iron, cast steel, threshing machine, adhesive postage stamp, the cure for scurvy, the cure for malaria, surgical anaesthesia, hypodermic syringe, the vaccine for typhoid fever, insulin, penicillin, hypnosis, logarithms, the theory of electromagnetism, kaleidoscope, matches, paraffin, fountain pen, life ring, electric clock, color photography, comb, golf tee, and key ring.
The Scots went through many trials due to their fierce love of land and liberty. There was the Stuart Succession Crisis, the Hanoverian Usurpation, the Rising of the Jacobites, and the Immigration to America eventually. In addition to this there was the fight to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne. The Scots backed him up because he had Scottish roots and they tried to give him rule. But eventually Prince Charlie went to America.
The Arbroath Declaration of 1320 gave some good standards to the people of Scotland. It gave the points of Equality Under Law, Individual Liberty, Checks and Balances, Sphere Sovereignty, and Inalienable Rights. Having the mind of Christ will influence the law. If you are following God’s law and living a Christian life, it will be easy to follow the laws like the Arbroath Declaration. And the National Covenant of 1638 set forward principles like a firm reliance on the Divine Providence, it established justice, it ensured domestic tranquility, promoted the common welfare, and the crown rights of King Jesus.
The history books will always steer us to the great big events, but sometimes it’s the tiny little pushes in concert with a thousand other little pushes that makes all the difference. This smallest, poorest, least-populated people of Europe took ideas about freedom, virtue, hard work, progress, equality under law, individual liberty, the necessity for checks and balances and spheres of sovereignty, and God-given inalienable rights and changed the world. And they did it in the oddest of ways by taking small steps. This tiny group of people changed the world.