Schism…
The Anthropomorphism of Christian Theology, Philosophy and Metaphysics
anthropomorphism
/ˌæn.θrə.pəˈmɔː.fɪ.zəm/
the showing or treating of God, animals, and objects as if they are human in appearance, character, or behaviour
schism
/ˈsɪz(ə)m,ˈskɪz(ə)m/
a split or division between strongly opposed sections or parties, caused by differences in opinion or belief
Primacy of Human Consciousness
the axiom of the centrality of human consciousness in understanding and shaping reality
Primacy of Existence
the axiom that existence exists — the universe exists independent of consciousness — that things are what they are — that they possess a specific nature, an identity
solipsism
so·lip·sism
a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing
extreme egocentrism
[LINK]
Let’s begin with a series of questions.
How did Western Civilisation end up adrift in the third decade of the 21st Century in the philosophical cul-de-sac of Modernity that was in the advance stages of being deconstructed by Post-Modernity? [ LINK ] [LINK]
“The political class that emerged in Europe after the Cold War have become excessively ideological and committed to narratives to socially construct new realities. The Europeans’ embrace of postmodernism entails questioning the existence of objective reality as our understanding of reality is shaped by language, culture and unique historical perspectives. The postmodernists therefore often seek to change narratives and language as a source of political power. If reality is a social construction, then the grand narratives can be more important than facts. Indeed, ideological narratives must be defended from inconvenient facts”…
— Glenn Diesen
[LINK]
One that reflected both a crisis of Modernity [LINK] and Post-Modernity [LINK].
Why was Marxism now endemic across Western Civilisation? [ LINK ] [LINK]
“Western society realises the essence of Marxism: radical atheism and materialism, internationalism and universal non-belonging, the primacy of praxis and the death of philosophy, the domination of production and the universal manipulation of nature”…
— Augusto del Noce
A Modern and Post-Modern Society [LINK] that had increasingly entered the Theatre of the Absurd [LINK] [ LINK ].
A Modern Sophism, and one that was gradually being replaced by a Globalist Nietzschean Will to Power.
Why did Truth need to be increasingly managed? [LINK] — a new totalitarianism. [LINK]
Why was Western Civilisation increasingly shaped by a Globalist Secular Progressive Liberal Orthodoxy? [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
“The French Revolution gave rise to ideas which led beyond the ideas of the entire old world order. The revolutionary movement which began in 1789… gave rise to the communist idea which Babeuf’s friend Buonarroti re-introduced in France after the Revolution of 1830. This idea, consistently developed, is the idea of the new world order ”…
— Karl Marx
Why was the modus operandi of attempting to transform (via praxis ) the social, economic and cultural nature of Society to create a New World Order — an infinite error — an ontological philosophical error — a modern & post-modern philosophical interplay that combined idealism with materialism into a thesis, antithesis leading to an “apparent” reflexive[LINK] progressive evolutionary synthesis.
Embracing Maoist [LINK], Stalinist [LINK] and Marxist [LINK] techniques of manipulation known as Dialectical Materialism [LINK].
“Marx’s idea is that materialism, in order to be consistent must forgo presenting itself as a philosophy of comprehension and must interpret thought not as revelation but as activity that transforms reality”…
— Augusto del Noce
Why was transcendental metaphysics and realism, which recognises an independent objective reality, being increasingly dismissed by the intellectual orthodoxy?
Replaced by a Primacy of Human Consciousness (e.g. Modern Gnosticism, a Nietzschean Perspectivism , Umwelt ) and a Primacy of Man (e.g. Theology of Marxism).
Medieval Scholastics: Synthesis of Theology, Metaphysics and Philosophy — Philosophy of Thomism
“Reason in man is rather like God in the world”…
— Thomas Aquinas
The intellectual history of Western Civilisation can be considered as the integration of ideas emanating from Judeo-Christian Theology, Ancient Greek Philosophy and Roman Law & Governance.
Ideas that by the 12th Century in Europe were beginning to be synthesised by Medieval Scholastics into a Metaphysics and Philosophy that combined Christian Theology and Ancient Greek Philosophy. [LINK]
A theological and philosophical framework that reflected the symbiotic relationship between the Contingent Being of Man (Created) and the Necessary Being of God (Created), grounded in a Univocity of Being (John Duns Scotus).
A City of Man that sat within a City of God [LINK] and Divine Order — a Hierarchy of Things. [LINK]
The nature of Reality was being understood and explored through the relationship between Conscious Man, the Natural World and God.
Combining the physical and metaphysical.
Combining the immanent and transcendent.
Combining the temporal and eternal.
Combining the contingent and the necessary.
With a Final Cause (Aristotle) being God (the Creator).
The philosophical system of Saint Thomas Aquinas, known as Thomism[LINK], illustrated this synthesis.
It combined Christian Theology and the philosophy of Aristotle (Logic and Metaphysics) interpreted through a Metaphysical Realist Framework.
The intelligibility (via Reason) of the Universe reflected an Order of Things (i.e. God (Divine Being and Final Cause), Man (Rational Creature and Conscious Being) and Natural World (Created Order and Cosmos)).
“There is an eternal and unchangeable order of truths and values, which we can come into contact with using intellectual intuition”…
— Augusto del Noce
Man participates in Reality [ LINK] and has the capacity to bring a sense of coherence to his understanding and his actions — a breath of Being [LINK].
The Emergence of Medieval Nominalism (William of Ockham): A Philosophical and Metaphysical Schism — A re-orientation towards the Primacy of Man and Primacy of Human Consciousness
“In short, there was a tidal wave of nominalism. Descartes was a nominalist. Locke and all his following, Berkley, Hartley, Hume, and even Reid, were nominalists. Leibniz was an extreme nominalist, and Remusat who has lately made an attempt to repair the edifice of Liebnizian monadology, does so by cutting away every part which leans at all towards realism. Kant was a nominalist; although his philosophy would have rendered compacter, more consistent, and stronger if its author had taken up realism, as he certainly would have done if he read Scotus. Hegel was a nominalist of realistic yearnings; I might continue the list much further, Thus, in one word, all modern philosophy of every sect has been nominalistic”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
19th–20th Century American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (America’s Aristotle) was highly critical of Nominalism [LINK].
A metaphysical doctrine that denies the real, independent existence ofuniversals, asserting instead that only individual particulars exist, and that general terms are merely linguistic conventions.
Peirce considered this position deeply flawed, logically, epistemologically and ontologically.
For him, Nominalism severed the possibility of real meaning and objective knowledge, reducing truth to subjective opinion & experience [LINK] or mere utility [LINK].
In contrast, Peirce’s realism affirmed that universals — such as laws, relations, and possibilities — have real ontological standing, even if they are not spatio-temporal objects.
The apprehension of Thirdness, as he called it in his triadic phenomenological metaphysics, was essential to the intelligibility of experience, inference, and communication.
“To be a nominalist consists in the undeveloped state in one’s mind of the apprehension of Thirdness as Thirdness. The remedy for it consists in allowing ideas of human life to play a greater part in one’s philosophy. Metaphysics is the science of Reality”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
In his view, it contributed to the Cartesian isolation of the mind from Reality, the Kantian limitation of knowledge to phenomena, and the posthumous (Peirce) collapse of objective meaning in Post-Modern relativism.
“Now subjectivism reduces all science to the knowledge of one individual, the Ego — which, as just shown, is no science at all. If its fundamental definition of knowledge means anything, or is faithfully adhered to, subjectivism teaches that the intelligent subject has no intelligence save for itself — has no warrant for believing in the existence of anything save itself — knows nothing but the inexplicable order of its own sensations and thoughts. It reduces all existence to an unrelated One, while of an unrelated One no science is possible. In a word, subjectivism if logical, annihilates science at a blow”…
— Francis Ellingwood Abbot
Peirce diagnosed these trends as symptoms of an intellectual degeneration: the withdrawal from a shared, knowable reality in favour of solipsistic [ LINK ] or utilitarian [LINK ] frameworks.
The denial of universals undermines the very possibility of scientific inquiry, ethical normativity (e.g. Moral Laws, Divine Order), and communal rationality (e.g. Universality of Reason).
“Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature’s, he has no chance of understanding nature at all”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
For Peirce, logic, mathematics, and science all depend on the reality of general principles — laws and tendencies — that cannot be reduced to individual facts or sensations.
“But you will mark the limitation of my approval of Ockham’s razor. It is a sound maxim of scientific procedure. If the question be what one ought to believe, the logic of the situation must take other factors into account. Speaking strictly, belief is out of place in pure theoretical science, which has nothing nearer to it than the establishment of doctrines, and only the provisional establishment of them, at that. Compared with living belief it is nothing but a ghost. If the captain of a vessel on a lee shore in a terrific storm finds himself in a critical position in which he must instantly either put his wheel to port acting on one hypothesis, or put his wheel to starboard acting on the contrary hypothesis, and his vessel will infallibly be dashed to pieces if he decides the question wrongly, Ockham’s razor is not worth the stout belief of any common seaman. For stout belief may happen to save the ship, while Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem would be only a stupid way of spelling Shipwreck. Now in matters of real practical concern we are all in something like the situation of that sea-captain”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
[ LINK ]
Tracing its origins, Peirce linked Nominalism [LINK] to the late Medieval Scholastic William of Ockham, whose Occam’s Razor [ LINK ] eliminated entities deemed unnecessary for explanation.
Ockham’s methodological minimalism, while valuable in some respects, led to the metaphysical rejection of real universals and set the stage for centuries of conceptual reductionism [LINK ].
Peirce saw this historical shift as a turning point: the decline of the realist tradition upheld by thinkers like Duns Scotus [ LINK ] and Thomas Aquinas, and the rise of a modern worldview that privileges empirical fragments over intelligible wholes.
Hence, the increasing compartmentalisation of knowledge by the Modern University into Faculties and more & more increasingly specialised disciplines.
In constrast, Peirce sought to revive Scholastic Realism in a scientifically rigorous and pragmatically grounded form, proposing that the real is not merely what is actual, but what would be revealed in the long run by open inquiry [LINK] governed by reason [LINK], community [LINK], and love of truth (Agapism).
“For what is it for a thing to be Real? [ — ] To say that a thing is Real is merely to say that such predicates as are true of it, or some of them, are true of it regardless of whatever any actual person or persons might think concerning that truth. Unconditionality in that single respect constitutes what we call Reality”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
The Emergence of a Theological Schism (Martin Luther): The Anthropomorphism of Christian Theology — A re-orientation towards the Primacy of Man and Primacy of Human Consciousness
“ The Protestant Reformation as we know it began in earnest [after Luther’s disappearance to the Wartburg Castle], as what had been therefore limited to the printed page began spilling out into the churches, palaces, guild halls, households, streets, and battlefields of a civilisation no longer bound by a common faith” …
- Carlos M. N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1650
20th Century German Intellectual Paul Hacker’s academic focus was in linguistics and philology (history of language), including the study ofIndology (academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent), comparative linguistics, Slavic languages, English, and French.
He is considered to be his generation’s most influential German Indologist, teaching at both the University of Bonn and the University of Münster.
In 1962, he converted from Lutheranism to enter the Catholic Church.
His seminal work Faith in Luther: Martin Luther and the Origin of Anthropocentric Religion [ LINK ], published in 1970, explored the theology of 15th-16th Century German Priest and Theologian Martin Luther and his ideas that were central to the the Protestant Reformation [ LINK ].
Hacker’s overarching thesis is that Martin Luther’s Theology represents a radical anthropocentric re-orientation in Christian intellectual thought.
A reframing of Christian Faith away from the theocentric, ecclesial, and sacramental reality grounded in the objective authority of a unified**** Apostolic Catholic Church (i.e. the Church mediates God’s grace & communicates divine truth and the seven sacrements (e.g. Baptism, Eucharist (Transubstantiation), Confession etc.) that reflect a real participations in divine life, to an inward, subjective and existential experience of the individual believer and plural, localised ecclesial communities.
***The unity of doctrine and practice was maintained through Church Councils, the Papacy, and the Magisterium
“A simple man with Scripture has more authority than the Pope or a council”…
— Martin Luther
A theological shift that in retrospect is not unlike the emergence of William of Ockham’s Metaphysics of Nominalism (refer to above earlier discussion ), where Man’s understanding of Reality is re-orientated towards a Primacy of Human Consciousness — Conscious Self — Ego.
A Primacy of Man and Primacy of Human Consciousness.
In hindsight, this shift in orientation represents the emergence of an even more profound schism in Christianity than the Great East-West Schism in 1054 [LINK].
[LINK]
Luther’s ideas were a decisive rupture in Christian Theology that not only challenged Catholic understanding of Faith as divinely infused virtue mediated through the Church, but also provided the axiomatic intellectual foundation for Religious individualism, subjectivity, and fragmentation that ultimately sowed the seeds for a growing secularism.
In doing so, Hacker’s critique becomes seminal in understanding the erosion in our Theological, Philosophical and Metaphysical sense of coherence (e.g. refer to Thomism Philosophy and refer to Rosmini’s Triadic of Being & Duns Scotus Univocity of Being ).
“John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308) was a philosopher theologian who in many ways paralleled Bonaventure’s ideas and also developed the doctrine of the univocity of being. Up to that point the philosophers said God was a Being, which is what most people still think today. Both the Dominican Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan Duns Scotus said Deus est ens, God is being itself. The Dominicans said everything other than God participated in being only by analogy and by attempts to make connections, but it was not really the same being as God’s being. Yet Scotus believed we can speak “with one voice” (univocity) of the being of waters, plants, animals, humans, angels, and God. We all participate in the same being. God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4), and thus reality is one too (Ephesians 4:3–5).
This gives us a foundation for understanding the sacredness of everything and our connection with everything. We are already connected to everything — inherently, objectively, metaphysically, ontologically, and theologically”…
— The Univocity of Being: A Foundation for Understanding Sacredness
Refer — The Univocity of Being: A Foundation for Understanding Sacredness [ LINK ]
A growing intellectual cognitive dissonance that is becoming more & more self-evident [ LINK] as the reflexive [LINK] philosophical axioms of Modernism [ LINK] ultimately were deconstructed by Post-Modernism [ LINK].
A World where the Primacy of Human Consciousness (e.g. Nietzschean Perspectivism, Cartesianism, Modern Gnosticism, etc) and the Primacy of Man(e.g. Theology of Marxism) increasingly displaces the :
- relational foundational role of Being ( this Being ( Dasein) relationship to Being ( Sein) — Heidegger [LINK]- and — Contingent Being of Man and Necessary Being of God (a Univocity of Being — John Duns Scotus [LINK]) as the teological groundof illumination) [LINK];
- Primacy of Existence [ LINK]; and
- Primacy of a Divine Order [LINK], Ecclesial Authority [ LINK ] and the very notion of objective truth ( i.e. Realism and Transcendental Metaphysics) [LINK].
“The primacy of existence (of reality) is the axiom that existence exists, i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an identity. The epistemological corollary is the axiom that consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists — and that man gains knowledge of reality by looking outward. The rejection of these axioms represents a reversal: the primacy of consciousness” …
– Ayn Rand
In the Orthodox Catholic tradition, the understanding of faith is grounded in the ontological and epistemological primacy of the Church as the divinely instituted and spirit-bearing Body of Christ, established by Christ himself, and continuously sustained through the unbroken communion of Apostolic succession and the living Church. [LINK]
Faith, according to this tradition, was not merely a subjective attitude or psychological disposition but a supernatural virtue that united the intellect and will of the believerto the objective truth revealed by God and taught by the Catholic Church’s Magisterium. [LINK]
As St. Thomas Aquinas articulated, faith was fides qua (the subjective act of believing) directed toward fides quae (the content of belief), with both sustained by grace and mediated through the Church.
In this sense, faith had a relational, communal, ecclesial, and sacramental dimension — inseparable from the Church as the interpretative and sacramental locus of divine truth. [LINK]
“if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth”…
— 1 Timothy 3:15
Faith is not an isolated, private act, but one that is nurtured and sustained within the life of the Church. [LINK]
The sacraments are visible signs of grace, through which faith is deepened and made incarnate.
For example, the Eucharist in particular is central to this understanding — faith is most fully expressed through communion with Christ in his body and blood ( i.e. transubstantiation [LINK]), which presupposes communion with the Church.
The Church is not just a human institution, but the living continuation of Christ’s Incarnation — the Body of Christ in history.
“Indeed, it is to the Church herself that the “Gift of God” has been entrusted…. In it is in her that communion with Christ has been deposited, that is to say: the Holy Spirit, the pledge of incorruptibility, the strengthening of our faith and the ladder of our ascent to God…. For where the Church is, there also is God’s Spirit; where God’s Spirit is, there is the Church and every grace”…
- St. Irenaeus
[ LINK ]
Scripture is interpreted within the Church, not independently.
The Orthodox Church does not separate Scripture from Tradition, as Divine Truth is mediated through the living Tradition of the Church — embodied in the liturgy, the Priests, the Ecumenical Councils, and the sacramental life.
In contrast, as Hacker illustrates, Martin Luther’s theology places the locus of religious truth within the inner man — a deeply personal, interior existential relationship with God that bypasses external mediators such as the Church, sacraments, and priesthood.
Luther’s doctrine of sola fide (faith alone) [LINK] and sola scriptura (scripture alone) [LINK] reorients religious authority, placing it within the individual’s own reading of Scripture and inner conviction of justification.
This inward orientation is what Hacker describes as an “Anthropocentric Religon” where one centres on a primacy of human consciousness and the experience of the individual rather than viewing the individual within the context of the communal, sacramental, and hierarchical structure of the Church.
Therefore, the Reformation not only represents a Theological Revolution but also an Anthropological one.
A re-orientation of Christianity from a Theocentrism to Anthropocentrism.
Hacker’s insight into the Protestant dissolution of objective ecclesial authority reveals how the Reformation inaugurated a new epistemology of faith — one grounded in the inner world of human consciousness rather than viewing the individual with the context of the communal, sacramental, and hierarchical structure of a Unified Church.
The loss of a unified, authoritative Church led to an explosion of doctrinal interpretations and denominations.
Without a central Magisterium, Protestantism fractured into thousands of competing Churches, each claiming scriptural legitimacy.
Religion is no longer grounded in a universal ecclesial structure, but in the private interpretation of Scripture and the primacy of individual conscience.
This proliferation reflects not merely theological diversity but a deeper philosophical shift.
The fragmentation did not remain confined to Religious pluralism; it sowed the seeds for secularism and atheism.
Once faith became a matter of personal conviction detached from institutional mediation, a legitimation crisis [LINK] was inevitable, where it lost its claim to public and universal authority.
The secular Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason (Temples of Reason [LINK] and Cult of Reason [LINK]) and individual autonomy finds its theological antecedent in Luther’s subjective faith.
The trajectory from Lutheran interiority to modern secularism is not accidental but genealogical.
As outlined in Adrift — The Crisis of a Post-Nietzschean Modernity and Post-Modernity [LINK], the consequences of this Anthropocentric re-orientation are profound and far-reaching.
Not only leading to a Crisis in Theology [LINK] but also extending to a Crisis in Philosophy [LINK] & Metaphysics [LINK], which was increasingly leading to the Self-Destruction of Western Civilisation [LINK].
A re-centring of Reality around the autonomous self — Philosophical (i.e. Nominalism[LINK], Marxism [LINK], Idealism [LINK], Nietzschean Perspectivism [LINK], Modern Gnosticism [LINK], Umwelt [LINK] etc), and Theological [LINK] — culminates in the modern rejection of transcendent order.
A gravitational pull towards Post-Modern Relativism [LINK], Secularism [LINK], Marxism [LINK], Nihilism [LINK], Nominalism, Materialism, Idealism [LINK] and Dialectical Materialism [LINK].
Marxist theology [LINK], which finds modern expression in liberation theology and various progressive Christian movements, reflects a complete reversal of traditional theocentrism.
The emergence of Trans Humanism [LINK] and a Promethean Impulse [LINK] — Modernity’s attempt to deconstruct the Triadic of Being [LINK].
Namely:
- The attempted liberation of Man from God (Nietzsche — Death of God — Marx — Theology of Marxism — Modern Gnosticism) and a Divine Order;
- The attempted liberation of Man from Nature ( Technology Society — Technology System — Instrumental Reasoning — Legal Positivism (anchored in Marxism); and
- The attempted re-invention of Man’s Being and the creation of a new self for himself (Übermensch, Gnosis, Trans Humanism, AGI) — a new World Order.
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo”…
— Karl Marx, Works of Karl Marx 1843 A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
[ LINK ]
Man becomes not the image of God [LINK ] but the measure of all things.
History [LINK], not providence ( e.g. Aristotle’s Final Cause), becomes the locus of salvation; the liberation of man replaces spiritual redemption.
The Marxist reinterpretation of Christian eschatology transforms the Kingdom of God into a human-made utopia (or increasingly a dystopia).
In this theological inversion, one can trace the final consequences of Luther’s anthropocentric revolution.
Where faith was once the gift of God mediated through his Church, it becomes a human project aimed at social emancipation.
Hacker’s thesis thus finds its ultimate confirmation in the contemporary collapse of religious transcendence into political ideology.
“Totalitarianism can be defined only as the reduction of all values to political values”…
— Augusto del Noce
In closing, Paul Hacker’s Martin Luther and the Origin of Anthropocentric Religion offers not only a theological critique of the Reformation but a profound analysis of the modern & post-modern human condition that is symptomatic of a broader Theological, Philosophical and Metaphysical crisis.
By shifting the centre of faith from the Apostolic Church to the individual consciousness, Luther inaugurates a theological revolution that fragments Christian unity, undermines ecclesial authority, and sets the stage for the secularisation of religious thought.
The explosion of Protestant Christian denominations, the rise of secularism and atheism, and the emergence of Marxist theology all bear witness to the long-term effects of this anthropocentric turn.
In dethroning the Church as the guardian of Divine Truth and enthroning the self as its arbiter, modern man has lost not only his theological unity but the very sense of the sacred [LINK].
Peirce’s criticism of the Metaphysics of Nominalism [LINK] and Hacker’s thesis of an anthropomorphic Theological turn [LINK] are reminders of how the redefinition of reason and faith can transform the very structure of human perception of Reality.
Ideas have consequences [ LINK] noting the cultural war on absolute Truth [LINK].
“If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind”…
— Wilhelm von Humboldt
.
