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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n An article of mine has appeared in Meridian Magazine<\/em>.\u00a0 Perhaps a few of you, if you have absolutely nothing better to do, might find it interesting:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDivine Emotions: A Contradiction to Aristotle\u2019s Best Thinking on God\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Two new items went up yesterday on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Come, Follow Me<\/em> \u2014 Old Testament Study and Teaching Helps Lesson 12, March 14\u201320: Genesis 42\u201350 \u2014\u00a0\u201cGod Meant It unto Good\u201d<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n A generous contribution from Jonn Claybaugh<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me<\/em> Old Testament Lesson 12 \u201cGod Meant It unto Good\u201d<\/em>: Genesis 42\u201350<\/a><\/p>\n The Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me<\/em>\u00a0Old Testament Lesson 12,\u00a0\u201cGod Meant It unto<\/em> Good,\u201d on Genesis 42\u201350, featured the husband-and-wife team of Neal Rappleye and Jasmin Rappleye.\u00a0 This roundtable, shorn of commercial and other distractions, has been drawn from the 6 February 2022 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show.\u00a0 The complete<\/em> show is archived for your listening pleasure and edification at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/interpreter-radio-show-February-6-2022\/<\/a>. The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard each and every week on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve mentioned here previously, I\u2019ve been reading a bit in recent weeks on Martin Luther, the single most important figure in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century.\u00a0 In particular, I\u2019m just about finished with Roland Bainton\u2019s classic 1950 biography Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This morning, I read a chapter that was devoted, in significant part, to Thomas M\u00fcntzer (ca. 1489-1525).\u00a0 A reformer, but also a revolutionary who sought to establish a theocracy and a \u201cpure\u201d society through the use of violence, M\u00fcntzer remains a focus of controversy and debate.\u00a0 (He was in his day, as well.\u00a0 He was eventually executed.). I myself find him both interesting and repulsive.\u00a0 Anyway, here are some passages in today\u2019s reading that I thought might be worth sharing and in which some of you will find echoes of familiar things:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Those who rely on the letter, said he, are the scribes against whom Christ inveighed.\u00a0 Scripture as a mere book is but paper and ink.\u00a0 \u201cBible, Babel, bubble!\u201d he cried.\u00a0 Behind this virulence was a religious concern.\u00a0 M\u00fcntzer had not been troubled like Luther as to how to get right with God, but as to whether there is any God to get right with.\u00a0 The Scripture as a mere written record did not reassure him because he observed that it is convincing only to the convinced.\u00a0 The Turks are acquainted with the Bible but remain completely alienated.\u00a0 The men who wrote the Bible had no Bible at the time when they wrote.\u00a0 Whence, then, did they derive their assurance?\u00a0 The only answer can be that God spoke to them directly, and so must he speak to us if we are so much as to understand the Bible.\u00a0 M\u00fcntzer held, with the Catholic Church, that the Bible is inadequate without a divinely inspired interpreter, but that interpreter is not the Church nor the pope but the prophet, the new Elijah, the new Daniel, to whom is given the key of David to open the book sealed with seven seals.<\/span><\/p>\n M\u00fcntzer was readily able to find support for his view of the spirit in the Scripture itself, where it is said that \u201cthe letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life\u201d (II Cor. 3:6). . . .\u00a0 The real menace of M\u00fcntzer in Luther\u2019s eyes was that he destroyed the uniqueness of Christian revelation in the past by his elevation of revelation in the present.\u00a0 Luther for himself had had absolutely no experience of any contemporary revelation, and in times of despondency the advice to rely upon the spirit was for him a counsel of despair, since within he could find only utter blackness.<\/span><\/p>\n In such moments he must have assurance in tangible form in a written record of the stupendous act of God in Christ.\u00a0 Luther freely avowed his weakness and his need of historic revelation.\u00a0 Therefore he would not listen to M\u00fcntzer though \u201che had swallowed the Holy Ghost, feathers and all.\u201d\u00a0 At this point lies much of the difference not only between M\u00fcntzer and Luther, but between modern liberal Protestantism and the religion of the founders.<\/span><\/p>\n Had M\u00fcntzer drawn no practical consequences from his view, Luther would have been less outraged, but M\u00fcntzer proceeded to use the gift of the Spirit as a basis for the formation of a church.\u00a0 He is the progenitor of the Protestant theocracies, based not as in Judaism primarily on blood and soil, nor as in Catholicism on sacramentalism, but rather on inward experience of the infusion of the Spirit.\u00a0 (261-262)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In a sermon rather unwisely preached at Weimar before Frederick the Wise, the Prince-Elector of Saxony, and Frederick\u2019s brother, Duke John, M\u00fcntzer attempted to enlist them in his cause:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n He took his text from Daniel\u2019s interpretation of the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar and began by saying that the Church was an undefiled virgin until corrupted by the scribes who murder the Spirit and assert that God no longer reveals himself as of old.<\/span><\/p>\n But God does disclose himself in the inner word in the abyss of the soul.\u00a0 The man who has not received the living witness of God knows really nothing about God, though he may have swallowed 100,000 Bibles.\u00a0 God comes in dreams to his beloved as he did to the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles.\u00a0 He comes especially in affliction.\u00a0 That is why Brother Easychair [Martin Luther] rejects him.\u00a0 God pours out his spirit upon all flesh, and now the Spirit reveals to the elect a mighty and irresistible reformation to come.<\/strong>\u00a0 (263-264)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Realizing that his sermon had not been well received \u2014 Frederick the Wise had, after all, emerged as Luther\u2019s benefactor and protector \u2014 M\u00fcntzer escaped the town by night and fled from Saxony.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Finally, you\u2019ll probably want to join a really strong support group before you open these horrifying links that I\u2019ve drawn from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u00a9.\u00a0 You have been warned:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHow Women in England Link Arms to Serve Those \u2018on the Margins of Society\u2019\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cLearn 16 simple ways to be a better humanitarian\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cHow JustServe and an FDA-Approved Stake Center Led to Thousands of Meals for Kids\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cChurch Delivers Truckload of Food to NYC Food Bank: Elder Quentin L. Cook presents donation to feed more than 300 families\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cDonation of 2,000 mobility devices set to change lives in South Africa: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> donated 900 wheelchairs and 1,200 mobility aids in partnership with the Western Cape Department of Health.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 An article of mine has appeared in Meridian Magazine.\u00a0 Perhaps a few of you, if you have absolutely nothing better to do, might find it interesting: \u00a0 \u201cDivine Emotions: A Contradiction to Aristotle\u2019s Best Thinking on God\u201d \u00a0 *** \u00a0 Two new items went up yesterday on the website of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4720,813,20206,4021,4841,6435,28463,28466,28475,28478,2253,3406,2601,2652,20511,3415,12764,3418,28457,28454,28472,4820,6675,28481,28469,28460,28451,4717],"class_list":["post-94463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aristotle","tag-christopher-hitchens","tag-christopher-hitchens-memorial-how-religion-poisons-everything-file","tag-deity","tag-divine","tag-emotions","tag-frederick","tag-frederick-the-wise","tag-genesis-42","tag-genesis-50","tag-german","tag-germany","tag-god","tag-hitchens","tag-hitchens-file","tag-luther","tag-lutheranism","tag-martin-luther","tag-muentzer","tag-muntzer","tag-prince-elector","tag-protestant","tag-protestantism","tag-roland-bainton","tag-saxony","tag-thomas-muentzer","tag-thomas-muntzer","tag-unmoved-mover"],"yoast_head":"\n