Панові Гарнаку: Ваш улюбленець Арістотель і Лютер
11/12/2006 | Георгій
"Aristotle is the master of those who suppose the world is orderly, no matter how chaotic it seems. Aristotle taught that human reason was the glory of humanity and that reason was adequate in itself to perceive the nature of things. The world we see, hear, taste, feel and smell is the real world, and the impressions we gain from common sense are true. Everything in the world exists for a purpose defined by nature, and a sensible man can find the purpose by looking for it. We exist to live with others of our kind in society. Truth, virtue, and all the other moral values are open to reason, and when we know what is right, reason helps us do the right thing as long as we keep our passions under control, and virtue is its own reward. (...) Aristotle developed proofs for the existence of God that Aquinas adopted. But (...) Aristotle's God was impersonal and abstract. Aristotle would never have thought of speaking to God or calling on him by name or asking him to change something about the world or assuming that God had created the cosmos in time. (...) Aristotle spoke of God as first mover, the reason behind all things in that God was the intelligible principle of the cosmos. But he spoke with the detachment that one might use today to discuss the age of the moon or the composition of a gas (...). Aristotle loved God only as one might love geometry or the orderly shining of the stars in the night sky. (...)
Confronted with the wrath of God in death, Luther considered humankind - and above all himself - to be wretched and helpless, filled with self-destructive pride. He felt contempt for the claims of philosophy to unravel the enigma of the universe and the nature and destiny of humankind. He was awed by the mistery of things. Aristotle with his explanations of everything under the sun was to Luther a charlatan, a huckster of the intellect, offering a worthless tonic to cure a deadly sickness. We can turn this attitude over and look at it from another angle. Luther craved certainty about peace with God and victory over death. Aristotle gave him the wrong answers and showed that reason based on sensory experience lead to the collapse of the very certainties Luther wanted to affirm. Luther wanted God to be a person with a name and a will, acting, speaking, giving grace, withholding grace, sustaining the world by his power and directing it till doomsday. This was the living God of the Old Testament, where Luther always felt most at home.
Aristotle's God never spoke, never listened, never comforted, never judged, never interfered with the orderly course of nature. Throughout his life when Luther condemned reason, we may find lurking under the surface of these condemnations the agony that reason created for anyone yearning for the Christian meaning that Luther wished to impose on his universe, the cosmos of the spirit where he floundered around, looking for certainty. Luther was not alone in his dislike of Aristotle. Almost two centuries earlier, the Italian poet Petrarch that he had read all of the Aristotle's "moral works," including the etics. He had admired Aristotle's ability to classify and define, but reading Aristotle had been finally disappointing: "It is one thing to know, another to love; one thing to understand, another to will. He teaches what virtue is; I do not deny that. But his lesson lacks the words that sting and set afire and urge towards love of virtue and hatred of vice or, at any rate, does not have enough of such power." Luther put the case against philosophy in divine things more bluntly. Philosophy cannot give a god who cares, he said. Metaphysics in sacred knowledge is "like a cow looking at a new gate."
(R. Marius, "Martin Luther: the Christian between God and Death." Belknap, 1999, pp. 73-75.)
Confronted with the wrath of God in death, Luther considered humankind - and above all himself - to be wretched and helpless, filled with self-destructive pride. He felt contempt for the claims of philosophy to unravel the enigma of the universe and the nature and destiny of humankind. He was awed by the mistery of things. Aristotle with his explanations of everything under the sun was to Luther a charlatan, a huckster of the intellect, offering a worthless tonic to cure a deadly sickness. We can turn this attitude over and look at it from another angle. Luther craved certainty about peace with God and victory over death. Aristotle gave him the wrong answers and showed that reason based on sensory experience lead to the collapse of the very certainties Luther wanted to affirm. Luther wanted God to be a person with a name and a will, acting, speaking, giving grace, withholding grace, sustaining the world by his power and directing it till doomsday. This was the living God of the Old Testament, where Luther always felt most at home.
Aristotle's God never spoke, never listened, never comforted, never judged, never interfered with the orderly course of nature. Throughout his life when Luther condemned reason, we may find lurking under the surface of these condemnations the agony that reason created for anyone yearning for the Christian meaning that Luther wished to impose on his universe, the cosmos of the spirit where he floundered around, looking for certainty. Luther was not alone in his dislike of Aristotle. Almost two centuries earlier, the Italian poet Petrarch that he had read all of the Aristotle's "moral works," including the etics. He had admired Aristotle's ability to classify and define, but reading Aristotle had been finally disappointing: "It is one thing to know, another to love; one thing to understand, another to will. He teaches what virtue is; I do not deny that. But his lesson lacks the words that sting and set afire and urge towards love of virtue and hatred of vice or, at any rate, does not have enough of such power." Luther put the case against philosophy in divine things more bluntly. Philosophy cannot give a god who cares, he said. Metaphysics in sacred knowledge is "like a cow looking at a new gate."
(R. Marius, "Martin Luther: the Christian between God and Death." Belknap, 1999, pp. 73-75.)
Відповіді
2006.11.12 | harnack
Re: Панові Гарнаку: Ваш улюбленець Арістотель і Лютер
Luther put the case against philosophy in divine things more bluntly. Philosophy cannot give a god who cares, he said. Metaphysics in sacred knowledge is "like a cow looking at a new gate."Лютер гадав, на старозаповітськім рівні міркування та апологетики, що Бога треба тягати за чуба та за пейси, бо інакше Всемогутній не дбатиме й не любитиме нас (а дбати й любити нас - є таки його бізнес). Будучи невігласом - Лютер також гадав, що філософія та Арістотель повинні дати Бога за образом Лютера. Арістотель пильно дбав про свій людський бізнес, знаючи достеменно, що пан Бог не схибне дбати про свій Божий бізнес. (А. десь каже, що Бог є любов!). Лютер хотів повчити таки самого Бога як любити (бач його Бог не осінив пана Арістотеля секретом старозаповітської любові), а філософів навчити тільки Лютерові доступну природу любові Бога. Що за досконала пара: Бог + Лютер! Що за гординя! Більше через тиждень, бо конференція на карку!
2006.11.12 | Георгій
Але ось що Маріус пише далі
harnack пише:> Лютер гадав, на старозаповітськім рівні міркування та апологетики, що Бога треба тягати за чуба та за пейси, бо інакше Всемогутній не дбатиме й не любитиме нас (а дбати й любити нас - є таки його бізнес). Будучи невігласом - Лютер також гадав, що філософія та Арістотель повинні дати Бога за образом Лютера. Арістотель пильно дбав про свій людський бізнес, знаючи достеменно, що пан Бог не схибне дбати про свій Божий бізнес. (А. десь каже, що Бог є любов!). Лютер хотів повчити таки самого Бога як любити (бач його Бог не осінив пана Арістотеля зі секретом старозаповітської любові), а філосовів навчити тільки Лютерові доступну природу любові Бога. Що за досконала пара: Бог + Лютер! Що за гординя!
(ГП) Все так, але є і інший аспект... Ось що Маріус пише далі в тому ж розділі ("Years of Silence" - мається на увазі проміжок в житті Лютера від його вступу до ордену августинців до появи його "Дев"яноста п"яти тез"):
"In many ways, Staupitz (духовний наставник Лютера в часи його життя в Ерфурті, у 1506 -1512, до його остаточного поселення у Віттенбергу --ГП) comes down to us as a typical adherent to the "via moderna" that emphasized the almighty power of God amid deepening cultural perceptions of chaos of the world. God's omnipotence became a canon of faith, something to be believed because the untidy, tragic mess of the cosmos could be explained only by an all-powerful God acting beyond any human comprehension. The righteous suffered; everything was uuncertain and unstable; the mystery deepened, but God's power was thereby paradoxically affirmed. Yet how could one serve and love a God who seemed so arbitrary, so beyond the ken of human comprehension?
Staupitz told him that God must reduce the stubborn to obedience, and years later when Luther saw the confusion of some of his adversaries, he made Staupitz's words sound like the conventional wisdom of Job's comforters: God punishes the wicked. Wait long enough, and you will see God's purposes vindicated when the wicked suffer. Yet IN OTHER WRITINGS, LUTHER CAME FACE TO FACE WITH THE REALITY THAT THE JUST SUFFER AND THE GODLESS TRIUMPH IN THIS LIFE, that good and bad alike die. It seems posible to imagine that Staupitz's words - recalled by Luther as a shifting between present and past and a flood of mingled German and Latin - CALLED UP A DEEPER CHRISTIAN WISDOM. That is, WE ARE HUMBLED BY OUR INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND THE WAYS OF GOD, AND THE HARD HEADS WHO MIGHT OTHERWISE TURN THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN (від Савонароли до нацистів, комуністів і Дж. "Даб"я" Буша --ГП) ARE RESTRAINED, MADE TO PAUSE BEFORE THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF DESTINY. The message of Staupitz might then have been that the very mystery of creation acts as a resrtaint to evil. We do not know why the world is as it is; we should step lightly and trust God, for what else can we do?"
(Op. cit., pp. 76-77; капіталізація моя. --ГП)
>Більше через тиждень, бо конференція на карку!
(ГП) Щасти Вам там, чекатиму!