I read your post from 15 July 2018 (
http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/july2018/dougl715-1.htm)
and I am not amused.
First, you misrepresented the quote as entirely belonging to Dr.
Schlossberg without identifying your own modifications to the
quote. This is not honest scholarship. The actual quote from Dr.
Schlossberg is, "When once a man lavishes theological
distinctions upon himself, he is less likely to suspect that
there exists a standard of behavior more exacting than his own
or that a righteous judge is observing his action." ("Idols of
Destruction", Herbert Schlossberg, Thomas Nelson Publishers,
1983, p40.) You parenthetically inserted "(Dr., Pastor, Bishop,
Teacher)" and did not claim the modification you made to the
quote.
Second, this mutilated quote twists what Dr. Schlossberg was
saying to imply something that he was not saying. Dr.
Schlossberg begins chapter two of the book, entitled "Idols of
Humanity", by describing how that from the temptation in the
garden of Eden and continuing throughout world history there
have been many who have used self worship to elevate themselves
to a level of deity. The next step of self adulation is to apply
"theological distinctions" or labels of deification, meaning
that one labels oneself with attributes rightly belonging only
to God. The final step of self worship is to believe that one is
the final, ultimate measuring stick of righteousness and
forgetting "that a righteous judge is observing [one's]
actions". The order which Dr. Schlossberg builds his argument
is: 1.) self worship; 2.) self deification; and, 3.) declaration
of self as ultimate authority over any and all other peoples
and/or gods.
I am simply bewildered how one can read what Dr. Schlossberg
wrote and conclude that labels of learning/knowledge are equal
to or tantamount to labels of deification (attributes of God or
"theological distinctions"). Dr. Schlossberg was neither
explicitly nor implicitly expressing this idea. I'm sure he
would be aghast at such a convoluted expression of his writing.
Third, you take a quote from Dr. Schlossberg's writing and
attribute it to Arnold Toynbee (it is actually from Arnold J.
Toynbee, the nephew of Arnold Toynbee). This is less than
dishonest scholarship because the quote is Dr. Schlossberg's
summary of what Toynbee wrote in "A Study of History", volume
12, p488: "Self-worship in the first person plural - nahnlyah
('nosism') as it is called in Arabic - has been one of the
commonest - indeed, most commonplace - of all mankind's
religions ever since Man learnt how to mobilize his collective
power by means of political organization. This has been the
paramount religion of the Egyptiac and Andean worlds; of Umma
and Uruk and Ur; of Sparta and Athens and Rome; of Venice and
Milan and Florence of France and England and Germany."