The Cross Section - RMB Blog

Human Reason's Dead End Enlightenment Vs. Reformation This chapter focuses on the era known as the Enlightenment and the political revolutions which were influenced by the thinking it produced.  These revolutions are contrasted with others that were influenced by the thinking of the Reformation.  To be sure there is overlap.  Nothing in history is as simple as A caused B.  However, Schaeffer is correct to categorize them based on what the strongest influence was for each and how that explains the grossly different outcomes. The Enlightenment occurred in roughly the 17th and 18th Centuries.  It couldn't have happened without the Reformation but its approach to truth was diametrically opposed.  The Reformation led to the Scientific Revolution.  At a high level, the Enlightenment came out of the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. The ideals of the Enlightenment were science, reason, humanism, and secularism.  It was named by those who participate...

I just had to share this.  I was given this video from my brother in Christ who is a computer science and data analyst expert.  The title is a quote from the video as they described the potential fraud.  It is a balanced, scientific, thoughtful analysis showing apparent fraud. I have seen a couple of similar analyses but this video is the most thorough.  Take a look.  Think.  Observe the character of the messengers. I don't know what to do next, but first we need to be certain of what is happening around us and to us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztu5Y5obWPk&feature=youtu.be

 If you aren't familiar with the premise of the X-Men story it is this, there is a certain group of people who develop special abilities when they go through puberty.  It is explicit that Mutants don't manifest powers in childhood except in very special cases.  Based on that the parallel of developing mutant abilities and sexual traits happen at the same point in life. The underlying message of the X-Men has been described by others as describing the fight of racial equality and acceptance of homosexuality.  Those are both reasonable metaphors when reading the stories.  Mutants are hated and feared by human kind.  In the comics, mutants are called homo superior in contrast to "normal" people being homo sapiens.  The X-Men stories can reasonably be applied to the plight of racial and sexual minorities.  In the year the books started, 1963, the Civil Rights movement was in full swing.  There were even violent backlashes against it.  Black ...

2nd Order Effects " Every action has a consequence, and each consequence has another consequence. These are called  Second-Order Effects . Every change you make to a system will have Second-Order Effects, which may affect the system’s functionality. Be careful when making changes, they may have the opposite effect of what you aimed for. " -  https://personalmba.com/second-order-effects/   Luther posted the 95 Theses for the purpose of challenging incorrect doctrine and church corruption.  Chapter 4 covers the effect the Reformation had on theology and church operation.  Things got better because they removed pagan influence which had crept in and taken root during the Renaissance.  But outside of reestablishing Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy, what did the Reformation cause? Schaeffer covers three 2nd order effects of the Reformation in the realm of politics, slavery or race relations and economics.  Most of the chapter attributes advances in politi...

Disclaimer: The Reformation was not a Golden Age.  The Reformers weren't perfect.  Schaeffer is very positive (me too) about the Reformation due to the effect the movement had on theology and intellectual thought.  However, when you look at the history, there was societal upheaval and injustice which the Reformers were associated with.  Schaeffer only mentions it briefly.  The only thing he says about politics is that the seeds of democracy were sown, which he also portrayed as a positive.  However, with the breakdown of the unified church in Europe political freedom certainly suffered.  You can read more about that at   https://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/ . It is important we don't idolize Reformers and assign them a type of infallibility which has been attributed to Popes.  These were men who sought to understand the Bible and obey God's commands in it.  In some ways they gloriously succeeded.  In others they shamefully fail...

                                              Michelangelo's "Unfinished" Sculptures                                                         Michelangelo's Pieta Introduction I would like to start off discussing Chapter 3 by presenting pictures of some of Michelangelo's sculptures.  This is helpful for two reasons.  First, Schaeffer uses art prominently to explain the course of thought during the Renaissance.  Second, these two pictures display vividly the course itself, at least the points Schaeffer wants to raise. Chapter 3 was much more straightforward than Chapter 2.  That might be because the Renaissance was more simple than the Middle Ages.  ...

A Time Named By Its Detractors The years 500-1400 AD have been called different things, all of them dismissive.  They are called Medieval which conjures thoughts of mercilessness and savagery.  The saying "to go Medieval on somebody's..." refers more properly to the Paleolithic era before civilization not the time following the fall of Rome.  These years are also called the Middle Ages.  The thought is that it was merely a time between two others.  Apparently nothing important happened from the end of the last great Ancient civilization until the start of the modern world.  It says "nothing to see here, move along to the Renaissance."  The third name for these years was created by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the Dark Ages.  Of course they were biased.  According to them, they had to bring light to the darkness of the preceding years.  Those in the Enlightenment placed all their faith in reason.  To them anything else was ...