The last Christendom notes and more Worldview notes

Sarah Bacon

History of Christendom

Week 25

The American founders, from the earliest Pilgrims and Puritans all the way through to the patriots of the revolutionary age, believed that their task was to take the great legacy of Christendom and plant it in a new land, where it might flourish, unencumbered by the political machinations that had somehow begun to strangle that vision in the motherlands. As a result, the American experiment in liberty was one of decentralization and covenantal connection, where the ideas of chivalry reigned and where the distinction in the culture was so pronounced that visitors from Europe could hardly believe that these settlers were actually transplanted from the mother country.

The colonists came and set up, making their independent rules apart from a tyrannical ruler. They were all Calvinists so it could be said that John Calvin was the grandfather of America. The way they lived and settled was all due to their worldview. Population went from 102 down to 53. They came over in 1620, but by 1625 they had a printing press and had printed the Ainsworth Psalter. In 1635 the Boston Latin School was established. A year later, Harvard College was set up and started along with 14 publishers and 9 libraries.

There is a connection between liberty and well-read, also slavery and illiteracy/ignorance. If you read well, you will be intelligent and educated so you will not tolerate being held down and oppressed. Educated people are easy to lead but difficult to fool; they understand how essential unity is. Knowledge, understanding, and wisdom are key to liberty. Smart thinkers press for reformation and true freedom with a future hope.

The classics are a Christian’s leadership legacy. We are called to read and take it a step further, to think about it conceptually and analytically in a new way. To read well is to read deep and wide. Deep into subjects and wide as in many authors and subjects. To read much of many. We think first presuppositionally and then holistically.

Our culture today:

Modern American culture is all about the least common denominator, making everyone equally dumbed down. One way they can do that is with “No Child Left Behind” which is really No Child Gets Ahead. They are kept as smart as the dumbest of them and so are dragged behind where they ought to be. This is socialism at its best.

Technology is good in its place, but when it gets in the way of good reading then it is a problem and a distraction. We are in a war where substance cannot stand up against the distractions of the moment.

Where we are going in this culture is sad…where there is an erosion of epistemology, a corruption of ontology and a subjugation of theology. Simply put: a decrease of knowledge, a mismanagement of living, and an enslavement of religion.

The worldview effect of the war on Christendom was the end of Parliament’s salutary neglect, the establishment of Parliament as king, the economics came first over the right of freedom, and forced submission to a tyrannical Mahat system.

Worldview notes:

Cosmic Humanism

With Transcendentalism and Romanticism we see that because everyone is “god” then everyone is equal. We see this in the 1800’s with the war for the abolition of slavery. If someone is a slave then they are not equal with the slave-master. The Cosmic Humanist is pantheistic, subjective, and under positive law. The Secular Humanist is deistic, objective, and under natural law. Cosmic Humanists are focused on the inward and looking within. Their epistemology is intuition and mysticism. The humanist’s epistemology is reason and the Christian’s epistemology is revelation.

The ethics of a Cosmic Humanist is relativism…all is opinion and there is also situational ethics, that everyone has their own ethics with each situation. If everyone is God, then everyone should be able to create their own laws or ethics.

Biology for them is that man begins with a spark of divinity and throughout his life he is growing it more and more till he comes to see his goodness and at that point they are at the epitome of their divinity. It is a sudden leap of this revolutionary evolution to where we have the light bulb turned on and we are opened to our godness. We each have our own experience of awakening and our psychologist is our high priest to guide us to this great awakening.