(urth) Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 5:15 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> Luther was a man of many faults, looking back at him 400 years later. Dan'l
> accused me of being binary, but Luther tended to see all things binarily. In
> his view, the rebels in the Peasant's War were violating the Bible's command
> to be subject to one's rulers and so he bestowed a blessing on those who cut
> them down (Irony? Maybe. But see the end of this paragraph). When Zwingli
> died in battle defending Zurich, Luther's attitude was "Serves him right"
> for carrying a sword as a priest. But to call him an oath-breaker, I think,
> is out-luthering Luther. It seems to me, he had come to believe that those
> who demanded the oath celibacy from him were frauds (the church leaders in
> Rome who --often as not-- never followed the oath themselves and were in
> many cases cynical skeptics toward Christianity as a whole) and that that
> oath was part of their fraud. Maybe he was wrong, but he saw what he saw and
> drew his conclusions, and I don't think there is enough counter-evidence to
> condemn him as an oath-breaker.

Obviously, I disagree. If others broke their oaths, that does not excuse
him breaking his. If the Pope and all the Bishops jumped off the Wurtemberg
tower, would that mean Luther should? As it were.

Luther was setting himself up as _better_than_ the Church hierarchy. To
begin that project by breaking his oaths casts the whole project in doubt.


-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes