Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000398B
|
00:05 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider.
00:08 Before the break with the guest Elijah Mvundura, 00:12 you invoked the Reformation, and I cut you short 00:15 because that's just too big a topic to have the sound bite 00:18 on before our break that, you know... 00:20 Yes, the Reformation is important. 00:23 And for me, why it is so important that we, 00:26 I mean, not just Christians, the whole world, 00:29 is that it has been reduced to justification by faith. 00:32 And people, they think 00:34 it was all by justification by faith. 00:35 It was more than that. 00:37 Absolutely. 00:39 The medieval culture was the whole culture. 00:42 It was an all-embracing world view. 00:46 It tried to give guidelines for people 00:48 in every area of their life. 00:50 That's why, all those rituals, those all religious calendars, 00:55 they literally give you a compass for life. 00:57 And to oppose the church was to oppose your society, 01:01 to oppose the government usually, 01:02 and that's why Hitler was... 01:04 Not Hitler. 01:05 Why Luther was before the emperor. 01:07 Yes. 01:09 But yes, you're saying... 01:10 I would actually say that to oppose your religion, 01:13 it was really destroying the whole universe 01:15 because you have this... 01:17 Let me use the technical terms. 01:19 It was an Aristotelian, scholastic synthesis, 01:23 a complex technology... 01:25 A heavy phrase. 01:27 Yes, a heavy phrase, 01:28 but I'm trying to say you had it 01:30 at a philosophical level. 01:31 It described how the universe actually was organized. 01:35 And it was in terms of a hierarchy, 01:37 so everything was connected. 01:39 And for anyone to take themselves away from that, 01:44 it is literally breaking up the whole universe. 01:47 And the kind of moral confusion 01:49 that the Western world is experiencing today, 01:52 you can trace it back to there that that compass, 01:57 how do you guide yourself in your daily life. 01:59 People, they no longer have that compass. 02:01 No wonder why we, in terms of identity, 02:02 people don't know who they are 02:05 because within the medieval culture, 02:07 people knew their place. 02:09 You know, people don't know yet. 02:10 For example, and they say it smith and butcher... 02:15 Yes, the butcher and they're like, 02:17 you know, you are smith's son 02:18 because your father was a blacksmith. 02:20 You follow the trade of your father. 02:22 Well, we've become disconnected from history, 02:25 and therefore, from ourselves often in... 02:27 That's why we know... 02:29 don't know us. 02:30 You know, you read many of them too. 02:31 The setting problem 02:33 of Western culture is alienation, 02:35 ultimately, an alienation 02:36 from self whether it starts from... 02:38 you don't your neighbors, you don't know your history, 02:40 you don't know your future, very disempowering for... 02:45 We're talking about Karl Marx. 02:47 One of the key terms with Karl Marx 02:49 is alienation and estrangement, 02:51 that you're estranged from the things that you make, 02:54 you're estranged from your society. 02:56 So Karl Marx was actually undertaking 02:58 a religious reform of some kind. 03:01 He wanted to reconcile the things 03:03 that had been alienated. 03:05 And so if we're going to have a Christian witness 03:08 in the modern world, 03:09 our gospel has got to attend 03:12 to kind of the existential problems 03:14 that people... 03:16 That's to give meaning. Yes. Yes. 03:17 Which it does of course. Yes, yes. 03:18 It's meaning, yes, to put it in simple terms, 03:20 people, they don't have meaning in their lives, 03:21 but how can the Bible give us meaning in our life 03:24 and how does that relate to religious liberty 03:26 because the whole idea what Luther did, 03:29 you know, to go back to Luther, 03:31 yes, I digress a little bit, to go back to Luther... 03:33 Luther has the reformation. 03:35 He destroys this Aristotelian scholastic complex. 03:39 He destroys it. How does he destroy it? 03:41 Yeah, you and I know, but explain for viewers, 03:43 how did Aristotle create a world view? 03:46 I don't think of this stage, 03:47 outside of maybe colored circle people know 03:50 what Aristotle, Plato, 03:52 what the Greek philosophers people. 03:54 It's very... 03:55 Plato and Aristotle, those were Greek philosophers. 03:58 And basically, their philosophy describes the world, 04:02 you know, the cosmos and everything. 04:04 And it interlinks from the smallest objects in nature 04:08 to the human beings. 04:09 It puts them in this complex, 04:11 so with the collapse of the Roman Empire, 04:14 the church took up the writings of Plato and Aristotle 04:18 and used them also to describe a whole universe, 04:22 to describe how the world operates, 04:24 to describe the morals, 04:25 how society is supposed to be governed and rule itself. 04:29 So this why... 04:30 Now let me interject something. Yes. 04:32 Those that have watched this program 04:34 before might have heard me 04:35 speak about some papal documents. 04:39 And one that troubled me at the time, 04:40 not a document but a speech from Benedict 04:45 that caused rioting all over the world 04:46 because he used an example of violence in Islam. 04:49 But he spoke to violence in Christianity, 04:52 and he said there were three incipient threats 04:55 to the violence of Christianity. 04:57 And the first he said was the reformers 05:00 by their insistence on sola scriptura, 05:03 expose the church to violence. 05:05 Yes. 05:06 And you know what he said made Christianity non-violent? 05:11 He said it adopted Hellenistic rationality, 05:15 and you've just described that. 05:16 It was Plato and Aristotle, 05:18 but I would say the church adopted paganism. 05:22 Yes, yes. 05:24 You know, that's very, very important 05:25 because what people miss is that when the church, 05:28 after the collapse of the Roman Empire 05:30 and with the Christianization of the Roman Empire, 05:33 the church actually inherited 05:35 all the coercive operators of the Roman Empire. 05:38 They are law. That's why there is canon law. 05:40 All that, they actually... 05:42 And even Latin. Yes. 05:43 People don't think about it. 05:45 This is Romanism, the Roman part. 05:47 So they actually inherited the coercive operators, 05:51 the Constantine sword. 05:53 The church did not have a sword. 05:55 The church was born 05:56 as an independent body in the Roman Empire. 05:59 It's the body of Christ. 06:00 He did not have a sword. 06:02 And I need to clarify 06:03 what I said about the Regensburg speech. 06:06 That's what I was quoting from, of Benedict. 06:09 It was in Turkey that he had... 06:12 No, it's a Regensburg University. 06:14 Yes, yes. 06:15 He went to Turkey to placate the Muslims at the Blue Mosque. 06:18 But he gave the speech at Regensburg University, 06:21 but he made a false model. 06:23 He said that early Christianity 06:25 had been violent too like Islam. 06:26 Well, it wasn't. 06:28 The Romans complained the Christians 06:30 went willingly to the lions. 06:33 But you have to accept his model 06:35 to see where he's going, 06:37 but then he says it became non-violent 06:39 when it adopted Greek Hellenistic rationality. 06:44 Now that's a fallacious argument. 06:47 So we need to point out 06:48 early Christianity was distinctly non-violent 06:51 and passive in the face of persecution. 06:54 Yes. 06:55 Actually, what introduces violence out... 06:57 Actually, they say it's Aristotle 06:59 because the whole thing is, Aristotle, 07:01 everything has got to be precise, 07:03 put up in these rational models, 07:06 and anybody who departs from that... 07:08 So what you find, I think, 07:10 in the middle ages is trying to objectify the gospel. 07:14 The gospel is about the way you live. 07:18 It's not so much the way you think but the way you live. 07:21 And I think that whole process is one of the things 07:23 that leads to the persecution in the church. 07:28 It's so much about the church authority. 07:29 The church had actually embraced the world. 07:31 It was not just the church. 07:33 It was a church state. 07:35 You know, today, we speak about church state, 07:37 those distinctions came after the Reformation. 07:40 Yeah, for a long, the church 07:42 and the state were indistinguishable. 07:43 Yes. 07:44 They actually called it just simply the Christian society. 07:46 That's why I continued going back 07:47 about it's very, very important 07:48 that those distinctions were not there, 07:51 but when you mix church and state, 07:53 we must never forget 07:55 that the church is the body of Christ, 07:58 it's the mystical body of Christ. 08:00 And so how do you unite this body of Christ 08:03 with a worldly body? 08:06 Not... 08:07 Well, that was done easily 08:09 or at least they slipped into it easily, 08:10 but it was a forced marriage 08:11 I think, always had contradictions built to do it. 08:15 And, of course, the history, the middle ages, 08:18 there was the rivalry between the kings and the popes. 08:20 And the popes used 08:23 a lot of methods including shaming 08:25 or excommunicating the king to keep him under control. 08:27 But to me, it was an uneasy alliance 08:30 even at its most strong. 08:32 Yes, and for me, I think that we must not only 08:35 look at the distinction of church and state, 08:37 when you mix church and state, 08:39 you're also mixing to use another language, 08:41 religion, and politics, 08:43 but when you also mix that, 08:45 you are likely also to not know the distinction 08:49 between the divine and the human, 08:52 the divine and the demonic. 08:54 This is very, very important. 08:55 When we speak about 08:57 the separation of church and state, 08:58 it's not just these institutions. 09:00 There are deeper realities that are involved in this. 09:03 And one of the realities 09:04 is that if you mix church and state, 09:06 you're not going to be aware of the distinction 09:09 between the divine and the demonic. 09:12 I know this is part of what you've written on, 09:14 and what I think was the genius 09:16 of at least two of your articles 09:19 that I can think of. 09:20 That's not an aspect that people understand. 09:24 The false spirit 09:26 that enters into the church and state union, 09:29 you know, it's not just the Spirit of God twisted. 09:33 It's a malignant spirit comes in. 09:36 Yes. 09:37 Because when you describe, 09:39 when you unite church and state, 09:42 as they used to say in the middle ages, 09:43 anybody outside the church is dumped, 09:47 he's not served. 09:48 Salvation is only in the church, 09:50 so where do you put the devil in that equation? 09:53 If it is the church versus the world, 09:56 where is the devil in that dynamic? 09:58 And so for me, it's a very, very important 10:00 as to know that we cannot unite church and state. 10:03 This very alienation that we talk about, 10:05 we cannot unite these fears only until the end of time. 10:11 That's when... 10:12 We are clearly seeing an attempt to unify it now, 10:15 but where do you think that will end? 10:18 I think that it is going to... 10:21 It's hard to predict the future, 10:23 but what we're seeing today 10:25 is a collapse of the very distinctions 10:29 between the religious and the political. 10:34 And as we see this collapse, 10:37 I believe that it is going to lead 10:39 to a whole collapse of church and state and religion 10:43 and lead to a totalitarian state. 10:44 And later, there is another philosopher 10:46 who has actually mentioned that... 10:49 From Notre Dame, 10:50 he speaks about the collapse of liberalism and says that... 10:54 After liberalism, 10:55 actually what comes is an authoritarian state. 10:59 And for me, after liberalism comes the Antichrist. 11:07 Dreams of my father, of course, 11:09 evokes President Obama's biography 11:14 that really launched him into the public eye. 11:17 It was an amazing description of the formative influences 11:20 of not only his father 11:22 but his whole African ancestry. 11:26 And today, on this program, guest Elijah Mvundura 11:31 has shared many of his imperatives 11:35 going back to his father. 11:37 I could do the same thing with my father. 11:39 An influence of a father is powerful 11:43 not just in the imposing of their will on you, 11:46 which really they do, 11:48 but how they are a model for behavior, 11:50 but when I think about this 11:51 and I hear his discussion in my experience, 11:55 I'm reminded that all of us need to be careful to obey 12:00 and to remember the dreams of our Heavenly Father, 12:03 which as it says... 12:05 As Paul says, 12:07 "For our goodness and our care." 12:09 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2018-08-27