Jordan Peterson Leaves Joe Rogan Speechless On The Bible!

RPT’s quick note: Peterson’s “air-typing” aside…. what he explains is the worldview that shaped and allowed free thought/speech, the scientific revolution, as close as you can get to a free body politic — etc.

“Worldview:” “People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize.  By “presuppositions” we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic worldview, the grid through which he sees the world.  Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists.  People’s presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world.  Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.  ‘As a man thinketh, so he is,’ is really profound.  An individual is not just the product of the forces around him.  He has a mind, an inner world.  Then, having thought, a person can bring forth actions into the external world and thus influence it.  People are apt to look at the outer theater of action, forgetting the actor who “lives in the mind” and who therefore is the true actor in the external world.  The inner thought world determines the outward action.  Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles.  But people with more understanding realize that their presuppositions should be chosen after a careful consideration of what worldview is true.  When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, ‘not many men are in the room’ — that is, although worldviews have many variations, there are not many basic worldviews or presuppositions.” 

Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1976), 19-20.

Many of you may have heard about the recent episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast where he interviewed the renowned Jordan Peterson, and at a number of points in their conversation, the subject turned to Peterson’s views on Christianity, which included a profound explanation of the role of the Bible in the formation of Western Civilization. Rogan sat rather spellbound as Peterson detailed what the Bible actually is and its significance for cultivating the world as we know it. What I found so fascinating about Peterson’s explanation was how well it resonated with what cultural anthropologists have been observing about the inherently religious foundations of all civilizations around the world, and why our current secular world is beginning to implode. So what I want to do is play you Peterson’s explanation of the Bible, and then I’m going to compare it to what cultural anthropologists are saying to help us better appreciate why secular liberalism is waning and why a new post-secular age is rising.

Jordan Peterson Teaches Joe Rogan about the Cross!

Dr Steve Turley’s bio: He formerly served as faculty member at Tall Oaks Classical School in Bear, DE, where he taught Theology and Rhetoric, and Professor of Fine Arts at Eastern University. In May of 2021, he decided to quit his professor job and work full-time to promote his organization which promotes right-wing populism and Christian conservatism.

Turley lectures at universities, conferences, and churches throughout the U.S. and abroad. His research and writings have appeared in such journals as Christianity and Literature, Calvin Theological Journal, First Things, Touchstone, and The Chesterton Review.

Turley earned his PhD at Durham University.

5-Part Series: Science and God | Stephen Meyer

Can you believe in God and science at the same time? Many claim that belief in religion is at odds with “the science” of today. But is that really true? In this five-part series, Stephen Meyer, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, attempts to answer this existential question.

Series “Broken Out”

  1. Are Religion and Science in Conflict? — Science and God | Does belief in God get in the way of science? The idea that science and religion are inevitably in conflict is a popular way of thinking today. But the history of science tells a different story.
  2. How Did the Universe Begin? — Science and God | Was the universe always here, or did it have a beginning? If so, how did it start? Mankind has debated these questions for centuries and has only recently begun to find some answers. And those answers may point to some even more intriguing conclusions.
  3. Aliens, the Multiverse, or God? — Science and God | Even staunch Darwinists have acknowledged that life in the universe displays an appearance of design, rather than being created out of random chance. If that’s true, where did that design come from? In other words, does a design require a designer?
  4. What Is Intelligent Design? — Science and God | Chances are if you’ve heard anything about intelligent design, you’ve heard that it’s faith-based, not science-based. Is that true? Or does modern science, in fact, point us in the direction of a designing intelligence?
  5. What’s Wrong with Atheism? — Science and God | Is there any meaning to life? Or is life nothing more than a cosmic accident? Scientific atheists claim the latter, but ironically, it’s science itself that suggests the former.

Why the West Won (6 Killer Apps)

For the past few centuries, Western Civilization has dominated the world both culturally and economically. Why? Some point to imperialism, slavery, and colonial wars. But those sins are common to all empires throughout history. What separates the West from the rest? Stanford historian Niall Ferguson has the answer in this highly informative video.

Why You Can’t Argue with a Leftist

When two people share the same goals, they can disagree – even strongly disagree – and still have a productive discussion about how to reach those shared objectives. As comedian and author Owen Benjamin explains, the problem with America today is we no longer share the same goals, and that’s tearing us apart.

“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

You may hear Democrats or Leftists reference this speech by MLK… however, they never reference it’s beginning. Why? Because MLK references Western Culture as what is the foundation to civility, civil rights, and the like. Nowadays these thinkers are said to be old dead white people.

Here is the beginning portion:

As you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” — I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there. I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.

But I wouldn’t stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and esthetic life of man. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I’m named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church in Wittenberg.

But I wouldn’t stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

But I wouldn’t stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.” Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a away that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same — “We want to be free.”

And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we’re going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.

That is where we are today. And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done, and in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding. And I’m happy that He’s allowed me to be in Memphis.

I can remember, I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn’t itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God’s world.

And that’s all this whole thing is about. We aren’t engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we don’t have to live like we are forced to live….

Two “Self-Lacerating” Stories of Western Suicide

FOX NEWS has a story to catch the listener up on the issue, and one must take not that I stuffed the CNN bit in-between Prager’s commentary.

NEWSBUSTERS discusses the upcoming D.C. policy regarding gender and I.D.

If you like your pronouns, you can keep your pronouns.

Well, you could. But not any longer. Now, you must use whatever pronoun somebody else wants. We are now all supposed to guess who might want to be thought of as another gender. Or, act like idiots and ask gender pronouns of everyone we meet.

Perhaps we need a database, readily accessible from our phones, that lists all the new gender possibilities (a large database) and then you can run down the list every time you meet someone new. “Hello, possibly human person, do you consider yourself a he, she, it, ze, zir, they or some other made up word to express your inner issues?”

Gosh, I wish I was joking. But new pronouns are all the rage. D.C. (which stands for District of Columbia, not the opposite of AC) is now issuing genderless driver’s licenses. CNN reported June 28: “They would become the first people in the United States to choose X as their gender marker instead of male or female on driver’s licenses and identification cards.” X, as we all learned in movies, marks the spot. In this case, the spot that is the most gender insane in the U.S.

Lefty media love this craziness. “On May 31, AP released its 2017 Stylebook. The new Stylebook contains changes on the language used around gender, LGBTQ people and ‘they,’ as a ‘singular, gender-neutral pronoun,’” wrote the Washington Blade.

Citylab gave readers “A Guide to Using Gender-Neutral Pronouns” way back in 2015. “Rule No. 1: Don’t assume you know someone’s gender just by looking at them,” readers were told.

For timeliness, there’s an 8-month-old Canadian baby that has no official gender. Let’s look at the loons from Jezebel to explain how insane this is: “The baby, named Searyl Atli Doty, was born in November in a house rather than a hospital and did not have a medical official inspect their genitals to determine their biological gender. One of the baby’s parents, Kori Doty, a non-binary trans person, wants Searyl to discover their own gender—and not having a specific gender on any of the baby’s records is integral to that discovery.”

“Discover their own gender.” Boy, that’s going to be one well-adjusted kid later in life.

And now, the lefty women’s site Refinery 29 explained, “THE EASIEST WAY TO KNOW IF SOMEONE PREFERS TO BE CALLED ‘HE,’ ‘SHE,’ OR ‘THEY.’” That’ was part of the video feature, “TRANS 102.”

The video is important to watch because governments in New York and Canada are working on making mis-gendering someone a crime. Yep, lefty governments are that demented. And the alt-left can’t even agree on how many genders there are — New York’s 31 or Facebook’s 58? Or some other number bigger than a bread box…..

(read it all)

 

Dennis Prager reads from GATESTONE’S article, entitled: “Australia: The Madness Continues.” The whole hour was on the West’s suicide, but this section is for all my fellow patriots to the Western ideals down-under. We are at war with trying to conserve simple common sense designations.

Europe’s Leaders Have No “Skin” In The Game

A couple of the comments by others under STEFAN’S TWEET:

  • Macron’s step kids are probably older than him
  • They clearly wouldn’t want to bring children into this hellish world that they are helping to bring to fruition.
  • Nor does Sweden PM Stefan Löfven or Holland PM Mark Rutte, far as I know. Maybe a few trainee Prime Ministers will migrate to Europe.
  • Explains why they have no problem destroying their own counties, they have no biological stake in it!
  • — A point well made, no emotional capital in the future of their countries. No guilt when the mayhem starts
  • Europeans liberal leftist snowflakes don’t want children. it gives stretch marks. That’s why they let in millions of migrants to make them
  • They are the Mom & Dad to the Middle East
  • Neither do my friends who voted for Killary.
  • Actually… … Thank God.
  • That would make them natural *Keynesians* (Keynes also had no children): “In the long run we are all dead”.
  • Don’t forget the Netherlands and Luxemburg.
  • They don’t need them, they’re busy nannying the whole world.
  • That means that they don’t understand the truths of life which having children teaches you.

 

The Impact of Godly Men on Culture: John Wesley, Martin Luther

This is an excerpt from a book that really points out the impact of Godly men on many persons and facets of life just assumed to be the way they are for no reason. For instance, the impact of John Wesley is immeasurable:

  • Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (Nashville, TN: Thoomas Nelson, 2011), 270-271, 272.

A further fruit of Wesley’s work were the conversions of William Wilberforce, Lord Shaftesbury, and others, and the development of what is called the Clapham Sect. This was a group of devout evan­gelicals who lived around Clapham Common, southeast of London. This community of Christians included businessmen, bankers, politi­cians, colonial governors, and members of Parliament, whose cease­less, sacrificial labors benefited millions of their fellows at home and abroad–especially in Africa and India.

Restoration of the authority of the Bible in the English world amounted to a civilization finding its soul. Writings of a number of literary men and women give evidence of their recovering a biblical perspective. Poets such as William Blake, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, and later Rudyard Kipling and John Masefield; nov­elists like Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, the Brontë sisters, Robert Louis Stevenson — all these and others owed much to the purging and ennobling influence of the biblical revival.

To the degree their writings were shaped by the Bible’s worldview, they held in check [temperred] the logical consequences of the Enlightenment’s rejection of of revelation…

[….]

The following improvements came in a direct line of descent from the Wesleyan revival. First was the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the industrial workers in England. Then came fac­tory schools, ragged schools, the humanizing of the prison system, the reform of the penal code, the forming of the Salvation Army, the Religious Tract Society, the Pastoral Aid Society, the London City Mission, Müller’s Homes, Fegan’s Homes, the National Children’s Home and Orphanages, the forming of evening classes and polytech­nics, Agnes Weston’s Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Rest, YMCAs, Barnardo’s Homes, the NSPCC, the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, the Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the list goes on.

Ninety-nine out of a hundred people behind these movements were Christians. All these movements grew out of the revival of bibli­cal spirituality, the result of John Wesley and his associates opening up the Bible that led to the Great Awakening of hearts, minds, con­sciences, and wills.


This is not to suggest that everyone was fully Biblical in this worldview, or that no other belief system shaped their mind-set.

Which brings me to the impact of the marriage relationship as it applies to Western Culture, and the impact the Reformation had, yes, even on the marriage relationship:


  • Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (Nashville, TN: Thoomas Nelson, 2011), 283-291.

ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN

[p. 283>] Rodney Stark, in his authoritative study The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History, discusses the rise of Christianity in its early pagan Greco-Roman setting. Among other things, he explores the impact of the Bible’s commands concerning adultery, rape, murder, divorce, love for wives, care for widows, and so forth, on womanhood in general. The following is from a section entitled “Wives, Widows, and Brides”:

First of all, a major aspect of women’s improved status in the Christian subculture is that Christians did not condone female infanticide . . . the more favorable Christian view of women is also demonstrated in their condemnation of divorce, incest, marital infidelity, and polygamy. As Fox put it, “fidelity, without divorce, was expected of every Christian.” . . . Like pagans, early Christians prized female chastity, but unlike pagans, they rejected the double standard that gave pagan men so much sexual license. Christian men were urged to remain virgins until marriage, and extramarital sex was condemned as adultery. Chadwick noted that Christianity “regarded unchastity in a husband as no less serious a breach of loy­alty and trust than unfaithfulness in a wife.”

Stark pointed out that Christian widows enjoyed substantial advantages over pagan widows, who faced great social pressure to [p. 284>] remarry. Augustus Caesar, for example, fined widows who failed to remarry within two years. When a widow remarried, she lost all her inheritance—it became the property of her new husband. In contrast, the New Testament required Christians to respect and care for wid­ows. Well-to-do Christian widows kept their husbands’ estates, and the church sustained the poorer ones, giving them a choice whether or not to remarry.

Christians also expressed their respect for women by raising the age of marriage. Roman law established twelve as the minimum age at which girls could marry. But the law was nothing more than a rec­ommendation. It carried no penalties and was routinely ignored. The best available studies show that in the Roman Empire the pagans’ daughters were three times more likely than Christians to marry before they were thirteen. By age eleven, 10 percent were wed. Nearly half (44 percent) of the pagan girls were married off by the time they were fourteen, compared with 20 percent of the Christians. In con­trast, nearly half (48 percent) of the Christian females did not marry before they were eighteen.

Stark reported that in 1955, French historian Durry published his findings that Roman marriages involving child brides were con­summated even if the bride had not achieved puberty. Durry thought that this was not the norm. However, substantial literary evidence has since emerged that consummation of these marriages was taken for granted. Pagan writers like Plutarch called this custom cruel and con­trary to nature because it filled girls with hatred and fear. Christians, in contrast, could delay their daughters’ marriages because the New Testament gave them different moral standards—the same standard for men and women. The Bible’s sexual ethic gave Christian girls the time to grow up and become better wives and mothers.

SEX AND MARRIAGE

Rome’s classical culture did not see sex merely as secular pleasure. Like the Tantric sects in India, many Roman temples were packed with prostitutes—female as well as male. An 1889 study found that [p. 285>] quite a few married women of high-ranking families in the Roman Empire had “asked to have their names entered amongst the public prostitutes, in order that they might not be punished for adultery.”

Adultery was a crime with serious consequences because it was an economic offense, taking another man’s property (wife) —not because it was a matter of sexual impurity, a disruption of the holy union of husband and wife or a violation ‘of sacred vows. In fact, extramarital sex with a temple prostitute was considered a purifying, god-pleasing, religious event, if not the very means of Gnostic enlightenment. Even today, many Hindu gurus and Yoga teachers have sex with their female and male devotees on the pretext of “purifying chakras”—the psychic centers in one’s body.

Religious and aristocratic promotion of extramarital sex had colossal consequences. Easy availability of sex without commitment took away men’s motivation to be married. Dislike for marriage had become evident as early as 131 BC, when the Roman censor Quintus Metellus Macedonicus proposed that marriage must be made manda­tory. Too many men preferred to remain single, leading the censor to concede: “If we could get on without a wife . . . we would all avoid that annoyance.”

Metellus continued, however, stating that men needed to take into account the long-term welfare of the state: “But since nature has ordained that we can neither live very comfortably with them nor at all without them, we must take thought for our lasting well-being rather than for the pleasure of the moment.” More than a century later, Augustus Caesar quoted this passage to the Senate to justify his own legislation on behalf of marriage. The need was obvious, the argu­ment was compelling, but the legislation was not greeted with any greater enthusiasm the second time around. Historian Beryl Rawson wrote: ” [O]ne theme that recurs in Latin literature is that wives are difficult and therefore men do not care much for marriage.”

Another cumulative result of promiscuity, child marriage, mis­treatment of women, divorce, and fear of marriage was that Rome’s pagan population began to decline during the final years of the empire. Unwed mothers and insecure wives (who feared divorce) [p. 286>] chose abortion and infanticide even if their natural instincts were for nurture and care. Toward the end of the second century AD, Minucius Felix charged in Octavius that religious mythology encouraged mur­der through infanticide and abortion:

I see your newly born sons exposed by you to wild beasts and birds of prey, or cruelly strangled to death. There are also women among you who, by taking certain drugs, destroy the beginnings of the future human being while it is still in the womb and are guilty of infanti­cide before they are mothers. These practices have certainly come down to you from your gods.

The long-term consequence of prostitution, permissiveness, sin­gleness, divorce, abortion, infanticide, and decline of population was that Roman towns began to shrink in numbers and size. Eventually the empire had to depend on a constant influx of “barbarian” set­tlers. As early as the second century, Marcus Aurelius had to draft slaves and gladiators and hire Germans and Scythians in order to fill the ranks of the army. Consequently, Rome became vulnerable. The main challenge to this depressing trend came from the Church, which followed the biblical injunction to Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply.”

Compared to the pagans, the Christians’ commitment to marriage resulted in more secure women and a higher fertility rate. Likewise, Christian opposition to infanticide and abortion resulted in a lower mortality rate. Together the Christian population naturally grew faster than that of Rome’s pagans. Christians’ choices in favor of sexual purity, stable marriage, and care for children, orphans, and widows aided civilization but were not caused by concerns for civilization. Their motive was to please God by obeying his Word.

During the first millennium AD, the Roman Catholic Church was the greatest force for the emancipation of women. In the beginning of the second millennium, however, the “cult of Virgin Mary” and [p. 287>] the idea of earning salvation through religiosity led to an unbiblical exaltation of celibacy. The idea of “salvation by works” often leads to denial of comforts—certain foods, drinks, sleep, sex, marriage, etc. This mind-set—the denial of pleasure and the achievement of righteousness by pious works—caused people to view sex, marriage, family, and economically productive labor (necessary to sustain a family) as concessions for the spiritually inferior. The renunciation of marriage and the pleasures (and responsibilities) of family life were held up as pious virtues. Celibacy became public proof of spiritual superiority. Joining a monastery became the surest way to heaven. This spiritual pride led to gross prejudice against women.

For example, the popular Hammer Against the Witches (AD 1487) seduced Inquisitors to think that women were sexually .insatiable hyenas and a constant danger to men and their society. Tantric sexual permissiveness resulted in similar reactions in mainstream Hinduism—exaltation of asceticism and celibacy (Brahmacharya) with a degrading view of women as temptresses. The Hindu reaction went further than European exaltation of celibacy by considering physical matter, the human body, and sex as inherently evil, in con­trast to spirit, which was good. For example, Swami Sivananda, the founder of the Divine Life Society and a pioneer of the modern guru movement, wrote statements such as:

Sex-pleasure is the most devitalizing and demoralizing of pleasures. Sexual pleasure is no pleasure at all. It is a mental delusion. It is false, utterly worthless, and extremely harmful.

Thankfully for the West, the sixteenth-century Reformation began restoring biblical norms for sexual mores. Reformers like Martin Luther argued that, according to God’s Word, sex and marriage were a means to holiness. The family, not the monastery, was the divinely ordained school of character. Acclaimed author and historian Roland [p. 288>] Bainton wrote: “Luther who got married to testify to his faith . . . did more than any other person to determine the tone of German [and Protestant] domestic relations for the next four centuries.” Luther’s home in Wittenberg became the first Christian vicarage after centu­ries. The biblical norms for family life that Luther taught remained virtually unchallenged until the end of the twentieth century.

Martin Luther’s attack on the Catholic idea of celibacy and his advocacy of the biblical idea of marriage did more to promote the Reformation than his attack on indulgences. He taught that accord­ing to the Bible some individuals are called to a celibate life. However, God’s normal plan for human beings is marriage. The doctrine that marriage is spiritually inferior or undesirable is “teaching of the demons.” Luther taught that the family, not the monastery, is God’s school of character; celibacy has become the devil’s trap to lure priests and monks into sin.

Initially, from 1517 to 1521, to ordinary Europeans the Reformation appeared as a matter of theological disputes between experts. Ordinary people woke up to it when priests began to marry as a result of Luther’s little book The Babylonian Captivity. Luther argued that the laws of men could not annul the command of God to marry. God ordained marriage for men before sin entered the world. Sex was a part of the material world that the Creator declared “very good.” Luther noted that the Scripture informs us: “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ In other words, God made Eve for Adam. She is good and necessary for him—a perfect gift planned by divine wisdom. God made only one woman for a man—the two of them to “become one flesh.”

Luther followed up his iconoclastic book with an Address to the Nobility. This presented the practical rationale for priests (not monks) to marry: A priest had to have a housekeeper; to put a man and a woman together was like bringing fire to straw and expecting nothing to happen. The unchaste chastity in the Church needed to be brought to an end. Priests had to be set free to marry. The natural, divinely ordained sexual drive needed to be recognized as a necessary, good, and honorable impulse.

[p. 289>] Luther—a monk—was still hiding in the castle of Wartburg to avoid being burned as a heretic, when three priests affirmed the right­ness of his teaching by getting married. Archbishop Albert of Mainz arrested them. Luther sent a stern protest. Albert decided to consult the University of Wittenberg. Luther’s senior colleague and a highly respected scholar, Andreas Carlstadt, answered the bishop’s query by writing a book against celibacy. He concluded that, according to the Bible, a priest not only might marry but that he must marry and father a family. In place of obligatory celibacy, Carlstadt substituted obliga­tory matrimony and paternity. He went on to confirm his Bible study by setting a personal example. He got married.

Luther was delighted by Carlstadt’s bold decision. He was uncom­fortable, however, with Carlstadt’s proposal that even monks should marry. Luther felt that the case for monks, like him, was different from that of priests. Monks had taken voluntary vows to remain celibate. It would be wrong to break those vows. That raised a new question: Did God enjoin the vows of celibacy? Luther’s answer helped create the modern concept of marriage as well as the modern politico-economic world.

The question forced Luther to go back to the Scriptures. He found the monk’s vow against marrying unscriptural and in conflict with charity and liberty. He sent his theses back to the university: “Marriage is good, virginity is better, but liberty is best” From the Bible Luther concluded that monastic vows rested on false and arrogant assumptions that celibate Christians had a special calling or vocation, to observe the counsels of perfection, which were superior to ordinary Christians who obey ordinary moral laws. Luther’s revolutionary conclusion is known as the “priesthood of all believers.”

Luther’s exposition of the Bible began to empty out monaster­ies. His exposition became the basic theological factor that enabled Protestant nations to develop economically faster than Catholic countries and to build egalitarian democracies. The family is a civili­zation’s primary engine for economic growth. If a man has no family, he might plant crops, but he is unlikely to plant and nurture trees and develop fields for coming generations. He might dig a cave or hew a [p. 290>] tree house, but he is unlikely to build a home for his grandchildren. The family motivates parents to plan, earn, sacrifice, save, and invest for future generations—for their physical as well as social welfare.

This “priesthood of all believers” negated a priest’s vocation as superior. Luther taught the cobbler was as important as the priest. All vocations had to be honored equally. Each had to be undertaken diligently as a service to God. This biblical priesthood of all believers challenged Europe’s class distinctions. It birthed the modern demo­cratic equality of all citizens—rich or poor, educated or illiterate, old or young, male or female. Luther planted seeds in Europe that yielded their best harvest in America.

On January 10, 1529, Luther preached on the second chapter of the gospel of John. The passage recounts Jesus’ miracle of turn­ing water into wine at a wedding in Cana at his widowed mother’s request. Luther encapsulated the intrinsic goodness of marriage, the priesthood of all believers, the equal value of every vocation, and the family as the school of character:

There are three estates: marriage, virginity, and widowhood. They are all good. None is to be despised. The virgin is not to be esteemed above the widow, nor the widow above the wife, anymore than the tailor is to be esteemed above the butcher. There is no estate to which the Devil is so opposed as to marriage. The clergy have not wanted to be bothered with work and worry. They have been afraid of a nag­ging wife, disobedient children, difficult relatives, or the dying pig or a cow. They want to lie abed until the sun shines through the window. Our ancestors knew this and would say, “Dear child, be a priest or a nun and have a good time.” I have heard married people say to monks, “You have it easy, but when we get up we do not know where to find our bread.” Marriage is a heavy cross because so many couples quarrel. It is the grace of God when they agree. The Holy Spirit declares there are three wonders: when brothers agree, when neighbors love each other, and when a man and a wife are at one. When I see a pair like that, I am glad as if I were in a garden of roses. It is rare.

[p. 291>] Radical feminists were not the first to see marriage as a “heavy cross”—a burden or slavery. Luther said marriage was slavery for men as much as for women. That is precisely why many men in pagan Rome preferred not to marry but to seek extramarital or homosexual relationships. Christianity made marriage harder for men by requir­ing that husbands remain faithful, committed, and loving to the same woman—no matter what—”until death do us part.” When a husband is forbidden extramarital affairs, taking a second wife, or divorcing a difficult wife; when he is not allowed to hate or be harsh with her; when he is required to love and honor his wife; then his wife is empowered. She has the security to seek for her dignity and rights.

Marriage brings out the worst in both husbands and wives. They must choose whether to stay in that school of character or to drop out. The Bible made divorce difficult because one does not learn much by quitting a challenging school. The only way to make monogamy work is to value love above pleasure, to pursue holiness and humility rather than power and personal fulfillment, to find grace to repent rather than condemn, to learn sacrifice and patience in place of indulgence and gratification. The modern world was created by countless couples who did just that. In working to preserve their marriages and provide for their children, they invested in the future of civilization itself.


The Reformers saw it as a “cult,” since there was no biblical basis for praying to Mary or for assuming that she had remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth. There is biblical evidence that she had normal marital relations and children with her husband (Matthew 13:55-56; Mark 6:3; Galatians 1:19).

“Do It for Denmark” ~ Demographic Reality for the West

(HotAir) Sex sells, so the axiom instructs, and it’s at least true for page views of this travel agency’s latest PR effort. After hitting YouTube yesterday, the mildly-NSFW ad already has almost 400,000 page views, mostly due to the sultry sales pitch for planning a little procreation on Danish holiday travels. Noting the precarious decline of the fertility rate among Danes, Spies Travel will hold a contest for those who become pregnant while on tour through the romantic cities of Europe (via NPR):

Russia did something similar, in that it promoted having babies for the homeland because of its falling population rates.

The Book That Made Your World ~ Serious Saturday

This presentation by Vishal Mangalwadi is based on his book, “The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization.” The description of the book is as follows:

Whether you’re an avid student of the Bible or a skeptic of its relevance, The Book That Made Your World will transform your perception of its influence on virtually every facet of Western civilization.

Indian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi reveals the personal motivation that fueled his own study of the Bible and systematically illustrates how its precepts became the framework for societal structure throughout the last millennium.  From politics and science, to academia and technology, the Bible’s sacred copy became the key that unlocked the Western mind.

Through Mangalwadi’s wide-ranging and fascinating investigation, you’ll discover:

  • What triggered the West’s passion for scientific, medical, and technological advancement
  • How the biblical notion of human dignity informs the West’s social structure and how it intersects with other worldviews
  • How the Bible created a fertile ground for women to find social and economic empowerment
  • How the Bible has uniquely equipped the West to cultivate compassion, human rights, prosperity, and strong families
  • The role of the Bible in the transformation of education
  • How the modern literary notion of a hero has been shaped by the Bible’s archetypal protagonist

Journey with Mangalwadi as he examines the origins of a civilization’s greatness and the misguided beliefs that threaten to unravel its progress.  Learn how the Bible transformed the social, political, and religious institutions that have sustained Western culture for the past millennium, and discover how secular corruption endangers the stability and longevity of Western civilization.