Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Sunday, August 25, 2013

August 26, 1824: Karl Marx Baptized as a Lutheran


On August, 26, 1824, Mr. Karl Marx and his siblings were baptized as Lutherans. But, was there catechetical work leading thereto? Looks entirely like a professional and political deal with few inquiries and few follow-ups?

Mr. Marx was born on May 5, 1824 in Trier, Prussia. His father was an attorney from a long line of Jewish scholars. A Prussian decree prohibited Jews from prominent legal positions. Baptism was the solution.  


Marx graduated with a doctorate in philosophy from Jena University. He was an editor in Paris and Brussels and, later, in England.

Marx wrote poetry. The themes were dark: apocalyptic, dark, savage, hateful and dealt with “suicide pacts” and “Satan.” “We are the apes of a cold God.” “Everything that exists deserves to perish.”

Marx had disdain for religion, that “opiate of the masses.” “Religion is the illusory sun around which man revolves until he begins to revolve around himself.”

Fruits? Smoked and drank heavily. Incompetent with finances, including spending and borrowing. However, a substantial inheritance enabled him to live on an annual income three times that of a skilled workman. A daughter “died from an opium overdose” and another daughter killed herself with a “suicide pact.”

The great "materialistic atheist," or "idolater of materialism," lived as he died: in hate and contempt, knowing God but strenuously repressing the general revelation from and through his twisted and depraved imago Dei. He was in bondage and slavery, but the periodic streams of light inescapably shon in the darkness, inescapably (Rom.1.18-32). 


Brings to mind Bruder Martin's Bondage of the Will.

Others would pick up his philosophical atheism and institutionalize it, murdering millions as it went. It was ruthlessly anti-Christian, fueled by extremely bad actors and bad angels on the international scene of the 20th century, perhaps the most odious century of humanity's history...the century of fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, Communism and our own infamous abortion-holocaust ("bad angels" as Mr. Reymond calls them in his Systematic Theology).

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