God's country ?

@divegeester said
Oh I see Korea is also “God’s country” now is it, how convenient for you.

Do you feel that God should help the Koreans with their genetically impaired intelligence? [sic]

Wait... Do you honestly think I have some personal philosophy like oh man I just gotta live in 'God's country!'

Do you think I look at the map and I am dividing these places up like that...?

That's... a bit unripe of an idea. You might want to leave that out in the sun a while longer.

@philokalia said
Wait... Do you honestly think I have some personal philosophy like oh man I just gotta live in 'God's country!'

I asked you why you don’t live in America (God’s country) and you answered with a claim that there is more than one “God’s country” presumably the one you currently live in, I.e. Korea.

@philokalia said
It is quite interesting that Spain would be mentioned here: they did, after all, claim to be more or less the representation of Catholicism and thus the representation of God's will on Earth for much fo the 16th and 17th centuries.

However Spaniards view themselves now is not my business.

But it would be hard to imagine that [i]there are not some very strong Cathol ...[text shortened]... hat they simply think their own country is a great, blessed place among other great, blessed places.

Regardless of Torquemada and his Inquisition?

@divegeester said
Many countries have contributed to the collective good of the world but they don’t use their achievements to somehow support a wider claim that their country is “God’s country” and is somehow specially blessed by him about other other countries. Only the religious zealot countries seem to do this, the extremists Islamic countries for example.

Yes.

Today, in 2019, America is far from "God's Country".

@divegeester said
I asked you why you don’t live in America (God’s country) and you answered with a claim that there is more than one “God’s country” presumably the one you currently live in, I.e. Korea.

But these things are not actually connected.

And sure, I think that Korea can be unironically called God's country even though less than half of Koreans are Christians.

Why not?

In some figurative, poetic sense, sure. A lot of amazing things have happened for Christians and for regular people here.

@suzianne said
Regardless of Torquemada and his Inquisition?

Yes, of course.

Why not?

If we are talking about it figuratively, why can't many countries be thought of as God's country in spite of some flaws.

Of course, if we are talking about it literally, then how could any country really hope to be God's country in the sense that it would be near flawless.

@philokalia said
Yes, of course.

Why not?

If we are talking about it figuratively, why can't many countries be thought of as God's country in spite of some flaws.

Of course, if we are talking about it literally, then how could any country really hope to be God's country in the sense that it would be near flawless.

Do you think any country, demonstrating itself to be a cesspool of evil, could, literally or figuratively, be considered "God's country"?

@philokalia said
And sure, I think that Korea can be unironically called God's country even though less than half of Koreans are Christians.
Why not?
In some figurative, poetic sense, sure. A lot of amazing things have happened for Christians and for regular people here.

In addition to your home country of America and the country you currently live in, South Korea, how many other countries qualify to be called “God’s country” and why?

@suzianne said
Yes.
Today, in 2019, America is far from "God's Country".

What are you saying “yes” to in my post?

@suzianne said
Do you think any country, demonstrating itself to be a cesspool of evil, could, literally or figuratively, be considered "God's country"?

If something is a cesspool of evil, it can't actually be God's country though, right?

Do you have some numbers or something on Torquemada and the Spanish inquisition you would like to present?

I was recently reading about this a bit...

Here are some quotations from J. H. Elliot's Imperial Spain: 1469-1716 which can perhaps help contextualize some aspects of the Inquisition:

"A growing number of conversos, however, were now reverting to the faith of their fathers, and their defections were a source of deep concern to the genuine converts, who were afraid that their own position would be jeopardized by the back-sliding of their brethren. It may therefore have been influential conversos at Court and in the ecclesiastical hierarchy who first pressed for the establishment of a tribunal of the Inquisition in Castile – a tribunal for which Ferdinand and Isabella made formal application to Rome in 1478. Permission was duly granted, and a tribunal of the Holy Office was established in Castile. Placed under the direct control of the Crown, it was run from 1483 by a special royal Council – the Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisición – and its task was to deal not with the Jews, nor with the Moriscos, but with New Christians who were suspected of having covertly returned to their old beliefs" [75]

"This formidable body was in fact created to solve a specifically Castilian problem. While there were many conversos also in the Crown of Aragon, they were not a source of concern to the authorities like their brothers in Castile." [75]

(Page numbers are in brackets)

So, here we have a historian talking about how the Inquisition was instituted perhaps largely by Jewish converts (conversos) for the purpose of getting at other Jewish people who were backsliding into Judaism.

Elliot also provides further insights into the motives that had a decided political nature to them as well. It is important to remember that the Spanish lands were divided into separate crowns -- Castille and Aragon, and that it can be broken up further with places like Catalonia, Andalusia, and Galicia also being very separate in nature. Let us also remember that Portugal was partly integrated for a period.

The challnege for keeping this all together was quite real:

"The imposition of the new-style Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon as well as in Castile is often regarded as a move by Ferdinand to increase his political control over his Aragonese possessions. It is true that the Inquisition was the one institution, apart from the monarchy itself, common to the possessions of Spain, and that in this sense it did to some extent serve as a unifying organ. But it has yet to be proved that Ferdinand saw in it a weapon for destroying local autonomy and furthering the process of centralization. The conventional emphasis on Isabella's piety makes it easy to overlook the strong religious strain of her husband, a fervent devotee of the Virgin, an ardent supporter of ecclesiastical reform in Catalonia, and a man whose messianic brand of religion gave him many of the attributes of the converso" [76]
And even more on this theme that it was a tool to increase centralization and ensure unity: "Yet while the establishment of the Inquisition was primarily a religious measure designed to maintain the purity of the faith in the dominions of the kings of Spain, its importance was by no means restricted to an exclusively religious sphere. In a country so totally devoid of political unity as the new Spain, a common faith served as a substitute, binding together Castilians, Aragonese, and Catalans, in the single purpose of ensuring the ultimate triumph of the Holy Church. Compensating in some respects for the absence of a Spanish nationhood, a common religious devotion had obvious political overtones, and consequently a practical value which Ferdinand and Isabella were quick to exploit. There was no sharp dividing-line between religious and political achievements, but, rather, a constant interaction between the two, and every political or military triumph of the new dynasty was raised to a new level of significance by a natural process of transmutation into a further victory for the Faith."
"In the constant interplay between politics and religion, the establishment of an Inquisition throughout Spain had obvious political advantages, in that it helped to further the cause of Spanish unity by deepening the sense of common national purpose."[76]

This generally culminates with the expulsion of Jews and some of the Morisco population...

But there's more, of course:

"But they were also victims of the particular situation inside Spain, where the intermingling of Christians, Jews, and Moors had created religious and racial problems of unparalleled complexity and had prompted the organization of a tribunal dedicated to a solution along the only lines that seemed feasible – the imposition of orthodoxy. The Spanish Inquisition, operating in a land where heterodox views abounded and where the new heresies might therefore easily take root, was naturally terrified at the least hint of subversive practices, and dared not tolerate even the slightest deviation from the most rigid orthodoxy, in the fear that any deviation would open the way to greater heresies. For if the friars who ran the Inquisition were animated by hatred of alien beliefs,they also acted under the impulse of fear. The Holy Office was essentially the product of fear – and inevitably, being the product of fear, it was on fear that it flourished. In the 1530s and the 1540s it transformed itself into a great apparatus operating through delation and denunciation – a terrible machine that would eventually escape from the control of its own creators and acquire an independent existence of its own. Even if, as seems probable, most Spaniards had come by the middle of the sixteenth century to consider the Holy Office as a necessary protection – a ‘heaven-sent remedy’, as Mariana called it – this does not necessarily imply that they were not terrified of it. Fear bred fear,and it was a measure of the propaganda success of the Inquisition that it persuaded the populace tofear heresy even more than the institution which was designed to extirpate it." [145]

"The features of the Inquisition most notorious in popular accounts of its activities were often less exceptionable in the contemporary context than is sometimes assumed. Torture and burning for thesake of one's beliefs were not, after all, practices exclusive to Spain; and – even if this was scarcely a source of much consolation to the victims – the methods of torture employed by the Holy Office were on the whole, traditional, and did not run to the novel refinements popularly imagined. Great care was taken to ensure a ‘just’ verdict, and the death sentence appears to have constituted only a small proportion of the many sentences given. Unfortunately it is impossible to discover the total number of victims burnt for heresy. The figures were probably high for the first years of the tribunal's life – the chronicler of the Catholic Kings, Hernando de Pulgar, speaks of nearly 2,000 men and women – but seem to have dropped sharply in the sixteenth century." [145-146]

So, generally speaking, 2,000 dead and certainly many others were affected. Perhaps the number goes higher, but Elliot never hints at a greater number than this one that is recorded, and says that it is a mystery.

It also appears that it was a political tool meant to enforce orthodoxy and defeat regionalism within the country...

But I do no tknow.

Is this the cesspool of evil that renders centuries of Spanish history untouchable?

@philokalia said
If something is a cesspool of evil, it can't actually be God's country though, right?

Your not answering the question for some reason. I’m asking you how you have so far managed to only identify your home country and the country you reside in as being qualified as “God’s country” and if there are any other counties that fit your criteria?

@divegeester said
Your not answering the question for some reason. I’m asking you how you have so far managed to only identify your home country and the country you reside in as being qualified as “God’s country” and if there are any other counties that fit your criteria?

I was actually just talking with Suzianne and not attempting to answer your question.

No, I am not going to conduct some survey of countries to determine which can theoretically be referred to as God's country.

I think God's country is poetic, personal language, and I will just let anyone employ it however they want, and I will not read into it much unless they want me to.

I am defending only the idea that we can call places God's country and have such positive sentiments for them.

@philokalia said
I was actually just talking with Suzianne and not attempting to answer your question.

You were indeed my mistake.

@philokalia said
I think God's country is poetic, personal language, and I will just let anyone employ it however they want, and I will not read into it much unless they want me to.

I am defending only the idea that we can call places God's country and have such positive sentiments for them.

You say the notion of seeing oneself as living in "God's country" is something couched in "poetic, personal language".

Do you not think it reveals a kind of Christian narcissism and not-very-Christian jingoism too, by which I mean, out there in the real world of what is said from pulpits and by purveyors of retail religion [i.e. putting romanticism and poetry aside]?

With Christians ostentatiously claiming to have a 'personal relationship' with Christ or God, doesn't the whole notion of declaring their own country to be somehow differently blessed by "God" amount to a kind of dodgy mix of elevating consumerism and materialism [the trappings of being blessed] and, as far as any semblance of theology on the table is concerned, isn't it rather akin to the counting of angels on the head of a pin?

@philokalia said
No, I am not going to conduct some survey of countries to determine which can theoretically be referred to as God's country.
I think God's country is poetic, personal language, and I will just let anyone employ it however they want, and I will not read into it much unless they want me to.
I am defending only the idea that we can call places God's country and have such positive sentiments for them.

So basically all your pontificating on this topic is just empty rhetoric.

It remains out there that you only regard America, your country of origin and South Korea, your country of residence as being those qualified by your “poetic” license to be “God’s Countries”