If Luther were Alive today...

In 1905 Max Weber wrote about the Protestant work ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, arguing that it was the impact of Luther’s Reformation in dignifying work, and encouraging thrift and the accumulation of wealth, that gave rise to the development of capitalism in our day.

Whether or not his thesis, and in particular, its view of the essential differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in regard to economic realities, holds water, the early 21st century reality is that the faultlines in regard to countries that are managing to hold together, and countries that are plunging further and further into debt seems to run very roughly between north and south, between what is traditionally Catholic Europe and Protestant.

In an article on the BBC news website, Chris Bowlby remarks on the different values held in Northern and Southern European countries and their overall approaches to saving and going into debt. The German word for debt, he says, is  “schuld”, which is the same as the word for “guilt” or “sin” . Quoting another commentator, Stephan Richter, he wonders back to the Reformation as to what difference it would have made, had Luther been alive today, and a political force in the Eurozone crisis. After all, the papal indulgences themselves of the 16th Century, were a form of fiscal management to get out of a crisis,  and a solution that was based, not so much on the concept of indebtedness, but of guilt and the need for forgiveness.

"Too much Catholicism" suggests Richter, "is detrimental to a nation's fiscal health, even today in the 21st Century". Worth thinking about...


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18789154

The God Particle

My browsing of the news media today came up with this little story about something that has been nicknamed the “god particle”, properly named the Higg’s boson. I think “god particle” has more of a ring to it. It is a sub atomic particle that scientists in that rarefied world of particle physics have been spending the last several years and about 8 billion euros trying to prove it exists. Because, if it were to exist, then a lot of other sub atomic phenomena would fall into place like a jigsaw. It would appear from today’s news stories that they have pretty much arrived at that conclusion.

What interests me, though, and much of the other media I’ve been reading, as well, is the nickname that it has acquired along the way. Given originally by the American physicist in the title of his 1993 book “The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?”, it has been rejected as a misnomer by other scientists as being misleading in regard to the particle’s ultimate importance.

For me, the name appears at first, a contradiction in terms. How can you reduce the term “god” to that of a sub-atomic particle. On the other hand it also appears to me as strangely faith affirming.  For, if, for particle physicists the way things are and function in the universe, brings them to “believe” in the existence of a tiny object yet to be discovered, why not, by the same token, is it not reasonable for the average Joe, looking around at the design and purpose in this wonderful world of ours, to believe in the existence of an intelligent God who put it all together in the first place. Even though he can’t see or measure that God by the normal rules of scientific discovery.

I’ll let Alistar McGrath tell it better than I’m doing (article below). Suffice to say that I’m glad my faith is in a personal, all loving and communicating God who created and desires a relationship with me, and has communicate His plan and purpose for time and eternity in the Bible, than in some infinitesimal particle.  

www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8956938/Higgs-boson-the-particle-of-faith.html