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Monday, November 11, 2019

Picking a faith-tradition

It's really simple. I have a threefold criterion (or three criteria, if you wish to be annoyingly pedantic): any candidate that drives a wedge between the good, the true, and the beautiful can be preemptively discounted:

1. Lutheranism drives a wedge between the good and the true, on the one hand, and the beautiful, on the other. The mother tongue of Lutheranism is the world's ugliest language. So you have to believe God is a prankster to be Lutheran.

(Don't talk to me about Bach, Handel, Pachelbel, Mendelssohn, and Brahms cuz that would be distracting!)

2. Like Lutheranism, Catholicism drives a wedge between the good, the true, and the beautiful, but in the opposite direction. It gets high marks for beauty (Latin, Italian), but flunks out on the good and the true.

3. Calvinism has the beautiful (Latin/French/Italian/English a la Calvin, Nicole, Turretin, Zanchi, Peter Vermigli, Bunyan, Cowper) in union with the good and the true. 

So by process of elimination, Calvinism is the winner! 

7 comments:

  1. What about Pentecostalism? Is speaking in tongues beautiful?

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    Replies
    1. Isn't that the language of angels? :-)

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  2. I think German sounds nice. Especially by beautiful women.

    Arabic hands down is the world's ugliest language. Allahu Ackbar even sounds evil and satanic.

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  3. Well, when you add a beautiful woman (e.g. Marlene Dietrich), that changes everything! :-)

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  4. Help, I don't know how to interpret this post without the labels.

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    Replies
    1. I'm slipping in my dotage. Label on the way

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    2. I almost fell out of my chair. Nice.

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