Human Perfectibility vs. the Incorrigible Depravity of Human Nature

There are those in the United States who style this a “Christian nation” and state that it has been so since its inception and see this as a basis for attempting to institute Christian sharia. I believe it is important to note the “Christian” here denotes Protestant per se  (indeed the state of Maryland was originally instituted as a safe haven for Catholics who were regularly reviled by the Protestant majority, denigrated in newspapers and books and otherwise discriminated against in other American territories – which does not excuse Catholic oppression of non-Catholics in other countries around the world over the millenia). And that could explain a lot about this place. Perhaps.

Here’s an interesting review in the New York Times Book Review of Erasmus, Luther and the Fight for the Western Mind By Michael Massing regarding the relationship between the father of Protestantism and his contemporary, a Catholic apologist — initially an influence on the former. To wit:

“Like Petrarch, Erasmus searched out the pagan manuscripts disintegrating in monasteries, laboriously taught himself ancient Greek and cultivated a stylistically dazzling Latin. Such achievements counted, for him, as moral achievements, almost on a par with the Christian virtues. He was a firm believer in human perfectibility, which is one of the convictions that would put him on a collision course with Luther, committed to the incorrigible depravity of human nature.

“Erasmus’s humanist scholarship and reformist Christianity converged in his ‘Novum Instrumentum,’ the first Greek New Testament ever to be published. His motivation was to better Christianity by correcting corruptions of the original Greek that had insinuated themselves into the Latin Vulgate. While the orthodox condemned him, the implication that errors were embedded in church tenets made him a hero to some, including an obscure young man [Luther] seeking certitude in a monastery in Wittenberg.”

Read the whole review here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/books/review/fatal-discord-michael-massing.html.

None of the above is intended to promulate for any of these sects — but it could promote a better understanding of the socio-political enviroment we American Thelemites find ourselves mired in at the moment. Or not.