Scott
Puritan Board Graduate
Interesting theological analysis from someone outside the church, Nietzsche. While Nietzsche was a devil, this analysis is fascinating. Comments?
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The Lutheran Reformation, in all its length and breadth, was the indignation of the simple against something "complicated"; to speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest misunderstanding. Today we can see plainly that, with regard to all the cardinal power issues, Luther was fatally limited, superficial and imprudent. He fumbled, he tore things up, he handed over the holy books to everyone; which meant that they got into the hands of the philologists, that is, the destroyers of any belief based on books. He demolished the concept of "church" by repudiating faith in the inspiration of the councils; for the concept of "church" can only remain vigorous as long as it is presupposed that the inspiring Spirit which had founded the Church still lives in her, still builds her, still continues to build its own dwelling-house.
He gave back sexual intercourse to the priest: but three-quarters of the reverence of which the people are capable (and particularly the women of the people) rests on the belief that a man who is exceptional in this regard will also b exceptional in other matters. It is precisely here that the popular belief in something superhuman in man, in the miraculous, in the saving God in man, has its most subtle and suggestive advocate. Having given the priest a wife, he had to take from him auricular confession. Psychologically this was appropriate, but thereby he practically did away with the Christian priest himself, whose profoundest utility was ever consisted in his being a sacred ear, a silent well, a grave for secrets.
"Every man his own priest?" such expressions and their peasant cunning concealed, in Luther, the profound hatred of the "superior man" and the rule of the "superior man" as conceived by the Church. Luther destroyed an ideal, which he did not know how to attain, while seeming to combat the degeneration thereof. It was he, who could not be a monk, who repudiated the rule of homines religiosi; he consequently brought about within the ecclesiastical social order precisely what he so impatiently fought against in the civil order, namely, a "peasant revolt". He knew not what he did.
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- Friedrich Nietzsche Die Frohliche Wisssenschaft, 358.
[quote:53385ac2b0]
The Lutheran Reformation, in all its length and breadth, was the indignation of the simple against something "complicated"; to speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest misunderstanding. Today we can see plainly that, with regard to all the cardinal power issues, Luther was fatally limited, superficial and imprudent. He fumbled, he tore things up, he handed over the holy books to everyone; which meant that they got into the hands of the philologists, that is, the destroyers of any belief based on books. He demolished the concept of "church" by repudiating faith in the inspiration of the councils; for the concept of "church" can only remain vigorous as long as it is presupposed that the inspiring Spirit which had founded the Church still lives in her, still builds her, still continues to build its own dwelling-house.
He gave back sexual intercourse to the priest: but three-quarters of the reverence of which the people are capable (and particularly the women of the people) rests on the belief that a man who is exceptional in this regard will also b exceptional in other matters. It is precisely here that the popular belief in something superhuman in man, in the miraculous, in the saving God in man, has its most subtle and suggestive advocate. Having given the priest a wife, he had to take from him auricular confession. Psychologically this was appropriate, but thereby he practically did away with the Christian priest himself, whose profoundest utility was ever consisted in his being a sacred ear, a silent well, a grave for secrets.
"Every man his own priest?" such expressions and their peasant cunning concealed, in Luther, the profound hatred of the "superior man" and the rule of the "superior man" as conceived by the Church. Luther destroyed an ideal, which he did not know how to attain, while seeming to combat the degeneration thereof. It was he, who could not be a monk, who repudiated the rule of homines religiosi; he consequently brought about within the ecclesiastical social order precisely what he so impatiently fought against in the civil order, namely, a "peasant revolt". He knew not what he did.
[/quote:53385ac2b0]
- Friedrich Nietzsche Die Frohliche Wisssenschaft, 358.
