1
January 4, 2015 at Advent Lutheran Church in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Second Sunday of Christmas. John 1: (1-9) 10-18. Jesus as the Enlightenment!
Question: Have any of you, at some time in your life thought of yourself as an unbeliever or especially an Atheist? I ask because two parallel things are happening, Atheists seem to be getting more militant, and the church more humane! Almost like the Enlightenment? What was it and when was it?
There really is no definitive starting and ending point, so most sources simply say it was a seventeenth and eighteenth century phenomena. When dates are given by historians, the English Civil wars and revolutions are referenced as the start.
Regardless of actually when the Enlightenment started, there is no doubt that its influence on human thought and history is rather significant. The thinkers and authors who wrote during the Enlightenment argued that human life and circumstances can be improved through education and reason.
I cannot imagine that anyone would argue with that today.
What is so ironic for me today is that the Enlightenment brought these thinkers in direct conflict with the political and especially religious establishment. These progressive thinkers were actually called “Intellectual terrorists,” simply because they dared to suggest that maybe humankind doesn’t have all the answers and there may be new things to be learned and discovered.
And just who were these “terrorists?”
They were the intellectuals and professionals of the time. Lawyers,administrators,businessmen, office holders and educated clergy as well as landed aristocracy.
Another irony is that the Enlightenment grew out of the Middle Ages which were ushered in by the Dark Ages. And the Dark Ages were known as a very religious time with a strong presence by the church.
These thinkers said that those who followed religious beliefs alone were lying to themselves, and creating a false reality. They were dominated by emotions, not facts. Religion was seen as contrary to rationality and reason, thus the move towards enlightenment -- a move away from “darkness.” Science and reason grew steadily during and after the Reformation and Age of Enlightenment.
With this background I was delighted to read about the introduction of Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson from John;
“The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”
Imagine that, the Scriptures proclaim that Jesus represents the very same Enlightenment that the church of the time fought so vigorously against! This is the same church that slaughtered Muslims and other unbelievers calling them “infidels.”
Following the lead of Copernicus who had revived the notion proposed as early as the 3rd century BC by Aristarchus of Samosthat the Earth revolves around the sun, Galileo in 1633,at the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church was forced to recant his theory and under threat of torture, Galileo recanted.
More than 350 years after the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo;Pope John Paul II rectified one of the Church's most infamous wrongs -- the persecution of the Italian astronomer and physicist for proving the Earth moves around the Sun.
With a formal statement at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1992, Vatican officials announced that the Pope has formally closed a 13-year investigation into the Church's condemnation of Galileo in 1633. The condemnation, which forced the astronomer and physicist to recant his discoveries, led to Galileo's house arrest for eight years before his death in 1642 at the age of 77.
It took 359 years and a 13 -year study for the church to figure out that Galileo was right all along. Does that seem very “enlightened” to you?
You see this is but yet another reason why I so often talk about the significance of Jesus not being even so much of Christian importanceas far more than that – of universal human enlightenment and significance.
It has been the church itself over the ages that has kept reason and Jesus locked up in the darkness of anti-intellectualism, anti-reason, and the continuation of exclusion and oppression of anyone the church decides they do not like.
In this context we should not be surprised that the current Pope, Francis comes from the Jesuit tradition. The Jesuit Order in the Catholic Church is known for higher education and the development of the intellect.
No wonder he is shaking things up, and the reason why he is both loved and hated by the curia, the college of cardinals, the hierarchy that run the Vatican. Apparently Pope Francis also understands the Gospel of John to mean that the Jewish community of his day gave birth to a Rabbi of extraordinary influence.
An influence that I believe would have been even greater had the church of the time not held his radical teachings captive by creating a dogma and doctrine around those teachings all but suffocating them in religious rules. Rules that the church of God is still trying to shake off as witnessed by the Holy Father’s work virtually every day.
Thankfully all of the various cultural disciplines of science, medicine, literature, music, even physics as witnessed by an article that CNN reported on that reads in part:
The prevalent theory of cosmic origins prior to the Big Bang theory was the “Steady State,” which argued that the universe has always existed, without a beginning that necessitated a cause.
However, this new evidence strongly suggests that there was a beginning to our universe.
If the universe did indeed have a beginning, by the simple logic of cause and effect, there had to be an agent – separate and apart from the effect – that caused it.
That sounds a lot like Genesis 1:1 to me: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.”
So this latest discovery is good news for us believers, as it adds scientific support to the idea that the universe was caused – or created – by something or someone outside it and not dependent on it.
Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God
The odds of life existing on another planet grow ever longer. Intelligent design, anyone? By, Eric Metaxas;
In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a surprising place—science itself.
French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire who attacked the dogmatic mentality of the church and how different it was from t he teachings of Jesus. Voltaire wrote about the heart of the message of Jesus in a dream-like fantasy:
“I saw a man of gentle, simple countenance, who seemed to me to be about thirty-five years old… I was astonished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, his hands likewise, his side pierced, and his ribs flayed with whip cuts… I said to him, ‘is it possible for a just man, a sage, to be in this state?... Is it by priests and judges that you have been so cruelly assassinated?’”
“He answered with much courtesy – ‘Yes.”’
“And who were these monsters?”
‘They were hypocrites.’
“Ah! That says everything. I understand by this single word that they must have condemned you to death… You wanted to teach them a new religion then?”
‘No – not at all; I said to them simply – ‘love God with all your heart and your fellow creature as yourself, for that is man’s whole duty.’”
1