Theology Catholic

Some Paracelsian alchemists, especially Heinrich Khun rath (ca. 1560-1605) and Stefan Michelspacher (active ca. 1615-23), were objects of persecution on the part of hoth Lutheran and Catholic authorities. Khunrath was an alchemist from Saxony, the heartland of the Reformation, but his theological stance was characteristic of the second generation of Protestants who felt that Luther s work had been left incomplete and that another religious reform was essential. In Khunrath s ideas this would take the form of a Lutheranism that could accommodate an autonomous personal piety. To express their Lutheran piety intellectually the alchemists employed the terms of Paracelsian theosophy, while they found an emotive outlet in the mystical experience of the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. They felt themselves to be inspired (literally breathed ) by the Spirit, a force that they identified with alchemical pneuma. Khunrath called himself an enthusiast, hlled with the presence of the divine. 

Like other Lutheran Spirituals such as Arndt, Franckenherg speaks in Pauline terms of the old natural and carnal man, who must be put off and crucified. Antichrist is the Reason of the Old Blind Fleshly Birth. The theological arguments aimed against the Roman Catholics are based on reason and on individual interpretations of the Scriptures. Their exponents have to be awakened to the guidance of the spirit, the Mind of Christ and to Christ himself within you. ... 

While wishing to show no disrespect, as a professor in a Catholic University, it has often seemed to me that the modern art of molecular modelling for proteins, and perhaps particularly for protein-protein interactions might best be accomodated in the curriculum as an interfaculty course with the title Molecular Theology. ... 

At the core, LSD enables the users to transcend ordinary reality and feel religious effects. Aldous Huxley described the experience with a term from Catholic theology, "gratuitous grace. He wrote Father Thomas Merton about similarities perceived by one user to spontaneous mystical experience ... 

Beauregard, David N., Catholic Theology in Shakespeare s Plays (Newark, DE Delaware University Press, 2008)... 

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