Reply #367: Noted and appreciated. It's key to consider that the OP -- [View All]

[saltpoint]

-- took objection to my use of the term 'magic' or 'magical' used as an adverb in reference to any trans-human act. Darwin might have dismissed it in harsher terms; I will open the possibility that things unknown occur unbidden from some place in the human consciousness from which some draw inspiration, including religious inspiration.

Nevertheless with no reliable documentation for the life of this particular figure, my nephew's version is as good as anyone else's, my waiter or waitress next Friday's matches Niebuhr's, and some yet-undiscovered 'gospel' lies waiting in a ceramic jar in a Middle Eastern cave.

Re biographies of Martin Luther: I try hard to side with those opposing oppression and hypocrisy, for which Luther is given serious and mostly deserved credit. But after spending several pages with the man, I start siding with the Roman Catholic Church. Luther's significant truths do not (for me at least) eclipse his inexcusable egotism and tendency toward violence. A professor friend of mine considers the Protestant Reformation essentially a "landgrab" by the northern "Lutheran" princes.

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