people of royal blood or status.
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Royalty
In America, royal families, kings, queens, princes, and princesses do not exist. Yes, we have political dynasties, entertainment luminaries, and cultural aristocrats, yet we have no king nor queen as Head of State.
Some might tap the Kennedys or the Kardashians as America’s version of the British monarchy, but it would depend upon who you ask. Yet, if you had no knowledge of America and found yourself visiting our great land for the first time, you would be hard-pressed to support my opening thought; most actually believe they’re royalty.
In truth, 21st-century man has knighted himself with a title far more significant than any real-life royal family could aspire. In Western culture and almost every society throughout the world, man is supreme, anointed as god and the authority on all things imaginable.
And though New Zealand recording artist, Lorde, – I love Lorde – cracked the code by revealing that some of us “crave a different kind of buzz” with her 2013 mega-hit, “Royals,” it seems her claim that not everyone aspires to be royalty is not a reach. My issue is I rarely meet these breathtaking souls. The fact is many of us in America love the limelight. Even a pop star from New Zealand.
With complete vanity, we’ve incorrectly cast ourselves upon the throne of the all-knowing. We’ve crowned ourselves like a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting. Regrettably, the throne is too large and the crown too heavy for one individual to entertain. To be sure, our heads are big enough to accommodate any and all decorative bands, but our necks and shoulders are too weak to sustain such responsibility.
As a society, we took the easiest and most seductive route when choosing the Humanist path. It was a choice providing man free rein to inexcusably exercise human reason and common sense to supplant God as a sovereign and supreme being. We’ve extinguished God from almost every segment of society at our expense. Such is the fate of a secular society and its humanist population.
Humanism, defined as “a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good” is nothing new.
Some could say the humanist line of thinking began with Adam and Eve and their decision to eat from the tree of “the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2–3). At this moment, man bought into Satan’s lie of being equal to God (Genesis 3:5). God supports this truth later in the third chapter of Genesis: “And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken” (Genesis 3:22–2, NIV).
In the end, both Adam and Eve had an opportunity to trust and obey God, or trust and obey themselves. They choose the latter, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Humanism was the supreme intellectual movement of the Renaissance Period. This cultural rebirth began in Italy during the latter part of the 14th century and lasted until the 17th century, as it spread across Europe. “Some of the greatest thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists, and artists in human history thrived during this era, while global exploration opened up new lands and cultures to European commerce.”
Those who supported humanism placed their faith in ancient Rome and Greece’s classic culture and promoted the rediscovery of literature, art, and classical philosophy. The belief was that increased learning in these areas would provide a “cultural rebirth” after the “barbarous” and decadent Middle Age period.
The Renaissance Period was a “self-fulfilling faith” that is “credited with bridging the gap between the Middle Ages and modern-day civilization.” It was also a campaign that placed man in the “center of his own universe.”
The greatest star in the Renaissance Period was an Italian painter, architect, and inventor named Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). The man, known as the “Renaissance Man,” who painted The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, had a profound and lasting impact on the golden age of man. There were other great thinkers, statesmen, and artists during this time, brilliant individuals like Descartes, Galileo, Dante, Machiavelli, Milton, and Shakespeare, but none are more attached to this period than da Vinci.
Interestingly enough, another movement was afoot in Northern Europe that overlapped the Renaissance Period in Southern Europe. It was a movement that believed the Bible and God Himself were the “sole source of spiritual authority,” not tradition, the church, nor man.
This period, known as the Reformation, was a movement of primary significance within Western Christianity during the 16th century in Europe, and one that “posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in particular to papal authority, arising from what were perceived to be errors, abuses, and discrepancies by the Catholic Church.”
If da Vinci was the face of the Renaissance Period, then Martin Luther was his equal where the Reformation is concerned. “Historians usually date the start of the Protestant Reformation to the 1517 publication of Martin Luther’s ‘95 Theses.’ It’s ending can be placed anywhere from the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, which allowed for the coexistence of Catholicism and Lutheranism in Germany, to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War.”
Martin Luther (1483–1546), an Augustinian monk and university lecturer in Wittenberg, Germany, composed his “95 Theses” and pinned them “to the door of his Catholic Church, denouncing the Catholic sale of indulgences—pardons for sins—and questioning papal authority.” Martin’s aggressive response to the corrupt Catholic Church led to his ex-communication and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
All was not lost. Martin’s message found immediate and widespread reach due to the invention of the printing press in 1436. “Luther wasn’t the first theologian to question the Church, but he was the first to widely publish his message.” Thanks to the printing press and the power of Luther’s timely message, he became the world’s first best-selling author.
In just fourteen days, Luther’s German translation of the New Testament sold five thousand copies. “From 1518 to 1525, Luther’s writings accounted for a third of all books sold in Germany and his German Bible went through more than 430 editions.” Because of this mass distribution, German peasants far and wide could read the New Testament in German, making it possible for Lutherism to become the state religion throughout Germany, Scandinavia, and the Baltics.
Later, Martin Luther said, “‘Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.’” In the most definite terms, the Reformation was about removing man as supreme and sovereign within the church; the printing press had as much to do with this dynamic as Martin Luther himself.
In today’s culture, da Vinci remains an iconic figure, and rightfully so. There is no debating or doubting his accomplishments.
The same admiration and notoriety are less evident for the leader of the Reformation. If you were to ask someone about Martin Luther, many would incorrectly speak to his incredible civil rights accomplishments of the 1960s. Such is the fate of the individual who questions man’s authority and sovereignty.
In the end, with the Renaissance and Reformation, we have one movement that made man the supreme authority of the universe and one that praised God and His infallible Word. Martin Luther’s life work fought to place God in his rightful position as the sovereign over all things, including man and the church.
The truth is Western culture continues to chip away at the importance of God and the individuals who support God’s absolute sovereignty.
And much in the same way as 500+ years ago, 21st-century Western civilization praises man above all others. Unfortunately, supreme royalty, authority, and absolute power now reside with man, not his maker.
Man is now God.
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.//. Artwork: The Vitruvian Man is a drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1490. Inspired by the writings of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, the drawing depicts a nude man in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and inscribed in both a circle and square
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