Renascentes Musae: Luther and Hercules

05 September, 2012

Luther and Hercules

Lutheranism & the ClassicsII (L&CII), "Reading the Church Fathers," is only a few weeks away. But there's still time to register. You can even do it online here.

There's a lot that L&CII means. But it also means we can officially start talking about L&CI. Now, supposing you planned on making it to L&C II but very much regretted having missed L&CI. What could you do?

Due to the good offices of our friends at Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology and its kind editor, Michael Albrecht, the proceedings of L&CI are available for all to read. Oh, to be sure, you'll miss Carl Springer's wry manner as he recounted the name and epithet of the great Viking Ragnar Shaggypants. You'll have to imagine, as you read, the booming voice of John Nordling explaining how to sing modern American Jesus-camp songs in ancient Greek (χαίρετε, κτλ). And you'll need nothing to restrain you when tempted by Diane Johnson's siren-voiced reading of Johannes Posselius' heroized, versified Gospel lectionary. Viva voce was great. But, as I say, if you missed it, you can read it in Logia. The editors inform us there are still copies. If your bent is modern, the ever-enterprising Logia continues to come out with ways to access that important journal electronically.

The one thing the Logia XXI.2 (Eastertide 2012) has in scads over the live event? Its cover depicts Lvthervs Germanicvs as Hercvles, clad in the pelt of the Nemean lion. He is Hercvles redivivus--Hercules resurrected--this time doing battle not against the Stymphalian birds, not against the Hydra (nine heads), but against the seven-headed beast (Rev. 13), known in the German cartoons of the day as das siebenhauptige Papsttier. Luther qua Hercules' battle entailed not only retrieving Scripture from Nicholas of Lyra, but the entire academic method lassoed to idiosyncratic readings of Aristotle, represented here by the papal beast. For his efforts Luther was credited with extirpating all that was good, including the good arts. Wrongly as, it turns out--rebuttal, Kopff, in the aforementioned volume. In the church of the Reformation Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Vergil--all had their place in court. The Wittenberg Reformation just put the Queen back on her throne. But this was no corporate downsizing. The Queen retained her courtiers in Wittenberg. Without the arts, Luther said, no theology.

Oh, and did I mention that Logia XXI.2 contains nearly all the papers from L&C I? So if you missed it, it's not too late.

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How you say 'dat?

Renascentes Musae (reh-nah-SKEN-tays MOO-sigh). That's right. Reh-nah-SKEN-tays MOO-sigh. "The rebirth of the Muses," or, literally, "the Muses in the process of being re-born." That was Reformation-Era code for the kind of university reform that accompanied the Reformation, a revitalization of higher education that eschewed the scholasticism of the Late Medieval world for a bracing encounter with the classics, the literae humaniores, of both the pagan and Christian world, along with the intellectual tools needed for such study: the ancient languages (classical Greek, classical Latin, and Hebrew), rhetoric & dialectic. This blog is devoted to searching for and articulating a theologically faithful and intellectually responsible rationale for Lutheran higher education on the basis of Wittenberg Christian Humanism and to imagining what renascentes Musae might look like in 21st-century North American confessional Lutheranism. Need we mention it? Opinions expressed by an individual author are not necessarily those of all authors. Not only that--if we can't vouch for one another's opinion--it goes without saying that authors also speak on their own behalf and do not necessarily reflect the views of the institutions that employ them.