re: #106 Jay C

Though I’m not quite sure about Luther. I recall reading once that once he had launched the Reformation, he started a sort of outreach program to the Jews: along the lines that they would be more receptive to the notion of “Christianity” once it was freed from the framework of the institutional (Catholic) Church. However, they didn’t bite: and Luther reverted to the standard “spawn of Satan” memes in pretty quick order….

I was raised in the Lutheran church. I was well aware of how Luther was aggrandized and the pope demonized. I was carefully taught about all the wonderful things that would never have happened if Luther had not broken the catholic church. (The Renaissance, democracy, the modern nation state, ad nauseum) although they never never took credit for the following 500 years of war and torture that continues to this day. My take, not as a scholar, is that Luther was borderline sane; that he so feared hell and found that his human urges could not be tamed, finally solved his problem by writing his version of a religion. Which he felt freed him from his torturous compulsions. It nonetheless did not free him from all the inconsistencies inherent in any system of mythology. It just substituted ones that he could live with. Calvin did the same thing. Place and circumstance elevated Luther above the other marginally insane (including the popes) so that it was in the interest of the rich and powerful to promote his new mythology. Others were not so lucky and were tortured and murdered by fire.