The Enigma of Dark Matter

Like the previous lecturers on 70 years of CERN (here and here), Prof. Marc Schumann initially harped on the Standard Model but then entered the topic by explaining the cosmic microwave background.

 

After the Big Bang, the universe cooled down to 2.7 K. Yet an afterglow of the hot Big Bang can still be detected.

The measurements of this cosmic microwave background can only be reconciled with theoretical calculations by assuming the existence of Dark Matter.

Dark Matter not only exists but also shapes the universe. This property can also be simulated.

Therefore, we are looking for invisible and cold matter that does not or hardly collides and is stable. Dark Matter is "dark" because it doesn't emit or absorb light or interact otherwise. Why should DM interact with a detector?

Many theories of Dark Matter, including those that modify the general theory of relativity  (the gray area on the right in the diagram), allow experiments and calculations to agree without the assumption of DM.

Since we cannot make any statement about the mass and type of DM, we must search for it in the entire energy spectrum. Experiments are currently conducted at the CERN LHC to detect dark matter in the energy range from keV to 7 TeV. In the lower energy range - Red Baron read zeV for the first time - Dark Matter should be ultralight.

One detector in which the University of Freiburg is involved is the XENONnT, located deep under the Italian Massif Central Grand Sasso. Measurements have been taking place there since 2020. Liquid xenon gas is an excellent scintillator and can be easily ionized.

XENONnT is an upgrade of the XENON1T detector. Prof. Schumann presented the audience with a world record for the new detector. It has the lowest background of all other DM detectors. The double beta decay of ¹³⁶Xe with a half-life of 2.1 × 10²¹ years and the neutrino double electron capture of ¹²⁴Xe with a half-life of 1.8 × 10²² years are clearly identified.

No significant Dark Matter signal has yet been found:
- in the XENONnT detector
- in the particle detectors at CERN
- in the IceCube detector at the South Pole

Outlook

The existence of Dark Matter proves that previously unknown physics must exist.
Detection of DM and measurement of its properties are among the most important open questions in particle physics.
More sensitive (larger) experiments are already being planned.
- Broad scientific program also beyond Dark Matter
Additionally
- further Dark Matter candidates
- alternative approaches, new strategies

95 % of the universe is dark 

27 % of it is Dark Datter
-> does not absorb or emit light

We do not know what DM is

Various methods for searching: 

 -> scattering from atomic nuclei
-> production at the accelerator, e.g. CERN
-> Search for annihilation products

Challenge: minimizing background signals

So far, Dark Matter has not been found.

-->The search continues!

*

Open Questions in Particle Physics

Prof. Heidi Rzehak gave the second* lecture at Freiburg University to celebrate CERN's 70th anniversary. She addressed the Open Questions in Particle Physics but first used half of her time to explain the Standard Model of particle physics.

*For the first one, see here  

Click to enlarge

Here are the building blocks of the Standard Model quarks and leptons. The intermediate bosons Z and W were discovered at CERN. 

The Higgs boson H was the missing particle to complete the Standard Theory and Model. The extremely long Lagrange formula on the right side allows the calculation of the building blocks presented on the left side.

©CERN

Physicists use a mathematical shorthand of the formula, in front of which the Nobel Prize winners François Englert and Peter Higgs discuss.

Experimental physicists and theorists work together. A classic example is the discovery of the neutrino. The electrons emitted during β-decay show an energy spectrum, whereas a constant energy was expected.

The famous Wolfgang Pauli postulated the existence of a new particle in a letter to his physics colleagues in 1930:

As the bearer of these lines, whom I ask you to listen to graciously, I will explain to you in more detail, given the "wrong" statistics of the N and Li-6 nuclei, as well as the continuous beta-spectrum, I have fallen back on a desperate way out to save the "alternating theorem" of statistics and the energy theorem. Namely, the possibility that electrically neutral particles, which I will call neutrons, could exist in the nuclei, which have spin 1/2 and follow the exclusion principle, and also differ from light quanta in that they do not travel at the speed of light. The mass of the neutrons would have to be of the same order of magnitude as the electron mass ...

This was the theoretical prediction of the "small neutron," the neutrino, as Enrico Fermi named it in 1932, to distinguish it from the neutron. A neutron actually decays into a proton, an electron, and an (electron) neutrino:

                                                   n0
 → 
p+
 + 
e−
 + 
ν
e

Since CERN's beginnings, neutrino physics has been an important research branch at the lab.

But now to the open questions of physics. 

One problem in astrophysics is the necessity of Dark Matter (DM). Its existence reconciles experimental results (upper curve) with theoretical calculations (lower curve).

The observed residual radiation from the Big Bang provides a second argument for the existence of Dark Matter. Only when adding the "correct" amount of DM, i.e., 25%, will an agreement between theory and experimental results be reached.

After merging weak and electromagnetic forces into the electro-weak interaction at 100 GeV in the 1960s, physicists asked themselves whether combining other forces at higher energies was possible.

If we add the strong interaction, we reach the Grand Unification Theory (GUT) at 10¹⁵ GeV; when we include gravity, it should coincide with the other forces at 10¹⁹ GeV, reaching the point of the Theory of Everything (TOE). Both energies are far beyond the reach of future accelerators.

The question of why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe remains unanswered.

One possible explanation is the violation of CP symmetry, but the experimental results observed so far are insufficient to explain the difference between matter and antimatter.

Summary

• Standard Model + General Theory of Relativity = Theory of almost everything 

Standard Model, remarkably well confirmed by the results of the Collider Experiments

 • Standard Model leaves questions unanswered. 

       • What is Dark Matter? 

       • Why is there more matter than antimatter in the universe? 

             ―> Why do we exist? 

 ―> Search for physics beyond the Standard Model

• Experimental tests of possible extensions 

       ―>Important hints for further ideas

―> It remains exciting!

For the question, Why do we exist? See here.

*

Erasmus and Luther

Both were brought up as austere Augustinians, but here is the 53-year-old canon, the ascetic intellectual Bible scholar guided by reason, and there is the 36-year-old monk, the sanguine quick-tempered preacher guided by the Holy Spirit. Erasmus was a biblical biographer, while Luther was a Bible exegete.

The contrast could not have been greater, and for years, the two gentlemen were raking each other on theological questions.

Erasmus called for constant intellectual questioning of the Bible - being a work of man - by laypeople and clergy alike. He hoped that unbiased discussions about the Bible as a historically shaped text would lead to sensible reforms of theological teachings and religious practices if new generations of Church officials who had learned to read the Bible and, in fact, all religious literature - including Jerome and Augustine - in a modern way, set the tone.

On the other hand, Luther used the Latin version of Erasmus's Novum Instrumentum, looked the people in the mouth, and translated the text into German in a lord of the manor's manner. Filled with the Holy Spirit, hiding on the Wartburg, he threw the inkwell at the devil against the wall and created a masterpiece of the German language. Plagued by the same translation difficulties as Erasmus, he invented many new German words, such as Landpfleger (governor).

While Roman 3:28 reads in Erasmus's text, "For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law," Luther translated, "So halten wir es nu, das der mensch gerechtfertigt werde, on (ohn) zu tun der werck des gesetzes alleyn durch de glawben (This is how we hold it now, that man may be justified, without doing the work of the law alone through faith)."

 In his translation of the Bible into German, Luther's driving force was: How do I best convey the verity of the Gospel? In his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen (Epistle about Translation), he clearly states that translation means transmitting evangelical truth. So, he justifies the addition of "alone" because, for him, translation implies the transmission of (his) evangelical truth, "Also habe ich hie Roma. 3. fast wol gewist, das ym Lateinischen und krigischen text das wort ‘solum‘ nicht stehet, und hetten mich solchs die papisten nicht dürffen lehren. War ists. Dise vier buchstaben s o l o* stehen nicht drinnen, welche die Eselsköpff ansehen, wie die kü ein new thor (Thus I have here Roma. 3. and well knew that the word 'solum' is not in the Latin and Greek texts, and that the papists were not allowed to teach me this. That is the case. These four letters s o l o are not in it, which the donkey heads regard like an ox standing in front of a new gate)." 

*Luthers bases his faith on three solas: sola scripture, sola gratia, sola fide

In his book On History, Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Heinrich Heine explains Martin Luther and the Reformation to the inhabitants of his host country, France, "As with the Reformation, people in France have somewhat wrong ideas about its hero Luther. The apparent cause of this misconception lies in the fact that the reformer is not only the greatest but also the most German man in our history; that in his character, all the virtues and faults of the Germans are united most magnificently; that he also personally represents the wonderful Germany ... Neither the delicacy of Erasmus nor the mildness of Melanchthon would have brought us as far as the sometimes divine brutality of Brother Martin.

In 1949, Thomas Mann - by then an American citizen - published an essay titled Die drei Gewaltigen (The Three Mighty Ones) in which - four years after the end of World War II - he blasts Germaness.

Referring in his article to Martin Luther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Otto von Bismarck Mann wrote the most apt characterization of the reformer, whereby he shamelessly made use of Heine's text.

©NYT

Here is the part about Luther copied from the full article titled strangely "Goethe: 'Faust and Mephistopheles'" that appeared in the NYT in 1949 on June 26. The translation retains Mann's typical long sentences:

Martin Luther, the Reformer, was a product of the sixteenth century; the man who shattered the religious unity of Europe, a rock of a man, a man of destiny, a harsh, vehement but profoundly spiritual eruption of the German character. He was an individual both uncouth and delicate, sensual and sensitive, impulsive and impelled, revolutionary and reactionary, imbued with peasant energy: a theologian and a monk, but an impossible monk - "for a man cannot, by nature desire, dispense with a woman." Perpetually wrestling with the devil, holding a superstitious belief in demons and changelings, he reverted from the Renaissance to the Middle Ages.

Though theologically sober, he enjoyed life, as he proved by his love of wine, women, and song, by his proclamation of "evangelical liberty." Pugnacious, cantankerous, a mighty hater whole-heartedly prepared to shed blood, he declared that the pestilence of the earth, the cardinals, the popes, and the canker of the Roman Sodom, must be assailed by force of arms, that mankind must wash its hands in blood. A militant advocate of the individual, he defended man's immediate access to God and his spiritual subjectivity against the objectivity of clerical dominance. At the same time, he educated his followers to submit to divinely ordained authority and urged that the rebellious peasants be beaten, throttled, run through with the sword.

Totally lacking in sympathy for the humanism of his day, even German humanism, he grew all the more deeply absorbed in German mysticism. Stubbornly orthodox, he seceded from the Church only to found a rival church with a rival dogma, with new hieratic scholasticism and new charges of heresy. Not only anti-Roman but anti-European, furiously nationalistic, and anti-Semitic, Luther was also deeply musical, a gift that helped him mold the German language. Thousands of copies of his translation of the Bible, a literally feat of the highest order, were circulated among the people by means of the newly invented printing press.

As much as a product of his ear for music as of his ear for the devout cadences of mysticism, this translation created the German written language and gave literally unity to a religiously and politically dismembered land. What happened after and because of Luther, what Erasmus predicted - horrible bloodshed in religious conflicts, Eves of St. Bartholomew (war for thirty years,) Germany depopulated and culturally retarded - twice as much as this bull-necked barbarian of God would willingly have shouldered. "Here I take my stand I cannot do otherwise."

My German readers may like to read the ultimate verdict on Die göttliche Brutalität des Bruder Martin here.


Erasmus had read an anthology of reprints of four ultra-short, pointed sermons by the Saxon professor of theology on indulgences, repentance, the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and ex-communication. The volume also contained the 95 theses with Luther's justification.

Erasmus was anything but fascinated by Luther's dogmatic statements. Conversely, Luther was not at all impressed by Erasmus' empirical research reports, which he considered irrelevant as a dogmatist. Luther's doctrine is alien to Erasmus.

Luther's annotations in his copy of the Novum Instrumentum.
He accuses Erasmus, "Du bist nicht fromm (you are not pious)."

In his letters to friends, Luther is remarkably hostile from the outset, "What bothers me about Erasmus, this highly educated man, is that in his interpretation of the letters of the Apostle Paul, he understands justification as performing good works following religious law or from an inner sense of justice, as ceremonial, as formal rituals ... As for original sin, he does recognize it, but he does not want to admit that the apostle is talking about it in the Epistle to the Romans. Let him read Augustine!"

In March 1517, Luther wrote to a theological friend in Erfurt, "I am reading Erasmus, and my enthusiasm for him is waning daily. I fear that he does not emphasize Christ enough and God's grace. A person is not immediately a wise Christian if he is a Greek and Hebrew scholar."

In another letter, written after the publication of his sensational 95 theses, Luther argues, "There is so much in Erasmus that, in my opinion, is alien to the knowledge of Christ ... One thing is certain: you cannot penetrate the Holy Scripture with either zeal or reason ... Give up all hope. Trust in God alone and in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Believe me, I have experienced these things. And then, when humble despair has taken hold of you, read the Bible from beginning to end."

When Luther was threatened with being condemned as a heretic in 1519, he smeared honey around Erasmus's mouth, the supposed friend of Pope Leo X, "Greetings. So often do I talk with you and you with me, Erasmus, our pride, our hope – and yet we do not know each other... And so, my Erasmus, dear man: recognize, if it seems reasonable to you, also [me as] a brother in Christ... But remember that you cannot always read learned letters. Sometimes, you too must be weak with the weak."

In May of the same year, Erasmus replies to this letter from Leuven, "Warm greetings, dearest brother in Christ. I have no words for the tragedies your books are causing here. There are people here who cannot be dissuaded from the completely unfounded suspicion that your texts are written with the help of my works and that I am the standard bearer of your, as they call it, party."

Having hoped to get support from Erasmus in his struggle with the Church, Luther feels betrayed and is seething with rage. What began as an intellectual pen friendship turned into personal contempt.

Luther ranted, "Whoever crushes Erasmus is killing a bug, and even dead, it stinks more than it does alive," and "Erasmus is a devil incarnate."

Erasmus was utterly amazed at Luther's outrageously coarse invectives against him when he came across a letter from the reformer in early 1523. In it, he is dismissed as a penman who knows everything about eloquence but has no idea about the truth, a foolish thinker who boasts of his scholarship but is devoid of any spirit. Erasmus is a man without faith. He deserves to be ignored.

Disappointed and worried, Erasmus wrote to none other than Luther's sovereign, Duke Frederic of Saxony, "Luther, there is no denying it, started out with the very best of intentions. If only he had conducted such an important matter with a moderate voice and language and not spoiled his good work with unbearable evil!"

Erasmus clings to his humanist ideals and, in 1524, published his work De libero arbitrio Diatribe sive collatio*

*On Free Will, Discourses and Comparisons

No topic is more difficult to penetrate in terms of faith than the question of free will because it concerns intangible things like fate and chaos, divine predestination, and personal responsibility.

The grace of God alone is not enough for the salvation of souls. God gives the directive, i.e., his grace, and grace is the power by which a rational person can turn to or away from that which leads to the soul's eternal salvation. As St. Augustine said, "God knows everything, but he does not interfere." After all, predestination is the cruelest thing there is.

Therefore, people can trust that goodwill is God's grace and that they can always count on God's incomprehensible mercy.

God is never happy or angry. Only in the human words of the Bible is God wrathful or gracious, hard-hearted or gentle, full of resentment or mildness. Evangelists and apostles could not grasp the divine plan other than in earthly human words and then proclaim it to others.

Luther is not above these human words as a teacher when he claims that the implacable God rewards the good that he does in people with his love and punishes the evil that he – or was it Satan – does in people with his wrath.

Luther imagines that the Holy Ghost has inspired his infallible divine insight. In reality, his understanding of the text is blind to literary conventions. However, teacher Luther is unwilling to read the Bible more sophisticatedly to form a more humble opinion.

©Wikipedia

Luther did not reply to Erasmus but in December 1525 with his essay De servo arbitrio*.

*On the Enslaved Will

For the reformer, reason is nothing less than the enemy of faith, "Denn sie ist vom teuffel besessen von anfang der welt her, da sie ym paradies wolle Gott werden und greyff nach der ehre, die hie Gott Christo alleyne zueygnet, … darauff veharrt sie noch ymer, und ficht widder diese wort (For it [the reason] has been possessed by the devil from the beginning of the world, since in paradise it wanted to become God and seized upon the honor that God attributes to Christ alone, ... reason still persists in this and fights against these words.)"

Luther justified his delayed response to Erasmus's writing by saying that weariness, displeasure, and contempt, i.e., my judgment of your writing, have inhibited the urge to respond.

Erasmus could put anything into beautiful words; Luther wrote, "But these beautiful words are dead words, without spirit. With such precious adornment of eloquence, only filth is presented in terms of content, as if one were to serve excrement in golden or silver bowls. By God's grace, truth is granted only to the man who is a second Paul," as Luther knew himself to be.

Ultimately, human inadequacy prevails, and therefore, free will is nothing. Although we reluctantly recognize by virtue of natural human understanding that we are not created by our own will, by necessity, we do not do anything at all by our own free will. But as God has foreknown and operates according to his infallible and unchangeable decision and power, it is clear that free will is nothing ... even if obscured by the reputation of all the learned men who taught differently for so many centuries.

Even though Erasmus noticeably takes a position against Luther here, he does not want to be seen as anti-Protestant: he refuses Catholic appeals to distance himself more clearly from Luther.

The Cologne nest of inquisitors generated the glorious slogan that Erasmus had laid the egg that Luther had hatched – "Whereby the latter would undoubtedly have been sitting on a cuckoo's egg," Erasmus countered angrily in one of his letters. But the dark realization is dawning on him that he has become the involuntary architect of the schism.

Back in Basel, he wrote to Pirkheimer, "I am a heretic for two parties. I am condemned as an Arian by the anti-Lutherans because I want to let Christ be a human being. I am condemned as a Pelagian by the pro-Lutherans because I have faith in the free will of man ... Should I not count myself lucky about the harsh judgments of the world's theologizers?"

This ends my tetralogy about Erasmus.
*

CERN 70

Today, September 17, CERN, my former employer in Geneva, commemorates its 70th anniversary, although the Organisation will only turn 70 on September 29.

The original CERN premises where the celebration takes place today

Having just returned from my annual class reunion in Hamburg, I didn't feel like continuing to Geneva. Traveling is not so easy anymore at my advanced age.

On October 1, an official ceremony with invited heads of state will honor CERN's legacy and look toward an inspiring future of science and innovation.

Science is a driver of progress and a glue connecting people worldwide. Following the devastations of the Second World War, CERN's founding fathers knew that Europe's social and economic recovery required investment in fundamental research.

CERN still stands for scientific and technological excellence, cross-border collaboration, knowledge sharing, and its unwavering commitment to scientific excellence, training, and education. Knowledge and technology are crucial for a sustainable future for humanity and the planet. We should not forget that the World Wide Web was also developed at CERN.

Although Red Baron regrets missing today's festivities at CERN, he is not fully decoupled. Freiburg's university has set up a program of three lectures and an exhibition I will attend. 

Yesterday's lecture on CERN: Fundamental Questions, Fascinating Experiments by Prof. M. Schuhmacher sounded promising.

When Red Baron arrived at the lecture hall, Prof. Karl Jakobs was scheduled to give the talk. Explaining the Standard Theory of particle physics, he frequently said, "This you learned in school." Had the listeners really? I looked into many blank faces of an older generation that sometimes boasts, "In school, I didn't understand anything in physics." The lecturer knew this, so he emphasized CERN's technical aspects and achievements.

You read about Prof. Jakobs's lecture in a previous blog. So, I limit my report by showing you only three slides:

Physics research spans from 10^-18 to 10²⁵ meters, i.e., 43 orders of magnitude.

Click to enlarge

It was a glorious day when the Higgs particle was announced. This time, July 4 was not only an American holiday but a day to celebrate in Europe. From left to right: 

From left to right in the fully packed CERN Auditorium: Director General Rolf Heuer turns his head to the screen. In the middle is Fabiola Gianotti, Director of Research, now CERN's DG. 

Announcing the Higgs with a glimpse of doubt on German national television. 

The fathers of the Higgs and Noble Prize winners of 2013, François Englert and Peter Higgs

Prof Jakob's lecture summary, with the decisive plot showing that the Higgs field generates leptons as light as muons and quarks as heavy as the top quark.

*

Novum Instrumentum Omne

In 1516, in the first edition of his new translation of the New Testament, Erasmus chose the programmatic title Novum Instrumentum Omne* because he intended it to serve the entire scholarly world as a scientific tool.
*Novum Instrumentum omne, Diligenter ab Erasmo Roterdamo recognitum & emendatum, non solum ad graecam veritatem, verumetiam ad multorum utrisque linguae codicum... emendationem & interpretationem, praecipue, Origines, Chrysostomie, Cyrilli...

Erasmus's masterpiece, celebrated by humanists* of the time as an outstanding achievement, earned him the accusation of heresy from the Old Church. 

*Such as Johann Reuchlin and Willibald Pirkheimer

Erasmus received dozens of reprimands for alleged errors regarding the infallibility of the Holy Spirit, the infallibility of the Vulgata, and the infallibility of Augustine. He had to defend himself against accusations that he had gone astray in his faith, although he explicitly placed all his literary work under the Church's authority.

The reformers, on the other hand, accused him of not taking their side. Erasmus became stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Many scholars of both faiths took issue less with the new text than with Erasmus's explanations of his translation. The Novum Instrumentum reconstructs the original ideas of simple apostles like Paul, documented just twenty years after Christ's death: "The evangelists and apostles make it clear in every sentence that they are human beings who can succeed in word creations and make language mistakes. That, however, is not a problem because the essence of the Bible is not in the words but in the message. Words and letters did not come down from heaven, but are pillars made of clay by human beings to support the heavenly vault of the good news".


Holy Spirit

With this argumentation, Erasmus challenged the learned Dominican theologian and vice-chancellor of the University of Ingolstadt, Johann Eck, who had already taken up a position against Luther.

The following passage about Eck from Sandra Langereis's Erasmus biography Bärbel Jänicke translated from Dutch into German while Red Baron translated it from German into English. This means that the text is subject to double fuzziness. I only hope that very little of the lively style of the original is lost in translation:

"Why did Erasmus note in Novum Instrumentum that the evangelists sometimes made mistakes when they quoted the Old Testament prophets by heart? This is not possible, "A Christian could not think that." Because evangelists cannot err.

The evangelists do not draw from memory; they are inspired by the Holy Spirit. They do not look up the Bible, either; the Spirit ensured they did not have to. They did not think at all; the Spirit thought for them. As if the evangelists had pored and labored over the Scripture like ordinary people! When the evangelists are wrong, the Holy Spirit is wrong. If one followed Erasmus, the authority of the entire Holy Scripture would be undermined.

And why did Erasmus ironize that the Evangelists did not learn their clumsy Greek from Demosthenes? The Evangelists spoke in all tongues. The Evangelists did not need to learn their Greek from Demosthenes or anyone else; the Holy Spirit breathed the Greek language into them. As if the Evangelists had spoken and written like ordinary people! When the evangelists made linguistic mistakes in Greek, then the Holy Spirit is wrong."

Interestingly, both Eck and Luther, fierce opponents, invoke the Holy Spirit to defend their cause in their theological arguments.

Erasmus's answer was clear: "There are no infallible texts. There are no infallible gospels, no infallible church fathers. Perhaps it is not for you or me, or even for Augustine, to claim human knowledge about the exact workings of the Holy Spirit."

Here, I present three translations from the Greek Originals that provoked theological discussions and still do today. The first one concerns the original sin.


Original Sin

In the Latin Vulgata, Luther read like every other Bible reader that according to the Apostle Paul in Romans 5:12, "Just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people because all sinned."

Froben's magnificent edition of Paul's letter to the Romans in Greek and Latin

But Erasmus realized that the simply educated apostle had clumsily expressed his train of thought. So, in his explanatory notes of his Novum Instrumentum, Erasmus suggested that Paul, using a crooked subordinate clause introduced by two difficult-to-translate Greek words, probably meant "inasmuch as all people have sinned," i.e., the apostle had not said a word about original sin inherent in all people.

However, Erasmus did not adopt his hypothesis in the Novum Instrumentum of 1516; instead, he translated Paul's words as literally as possible so that his Bible readers would not fail to notice that the apostle had tinkered and chosen wooden wording. As it stood, it did not allude to original sin. Erasmus's Bible readers were left to form their own opinions by critically considering his arguments for and against the proposed translation of "inasmuch" in the notes.

It was only in 1519 that Erasmus replaced the literal translation of Paul's cumbersome choice of words with "inasmuch." Given the many letters from readers, Erasmus had reason to trust that they would read the arguments for and against his translation decision, which implied that Paul could not have alluded to original sin.

Luther was convinced that Paul was indeed alluding to original sin and introduced his truth into the German Bible. Readers of the Luther Bible learn that sin and death came upon all people "while they had all sinned." This was not a translation of the original Greek text but an interpretation of Augustine's doctrine of original sin.

Luther's dogmatically motivated translation is not an isolated case. Each conveys the reformatory's message based on Augustine. Luther filled his copy of the Bible with dogmatic commentaries to emphasize his personal message.

While Erasmus emancipated his Bible readers, Luther made them docile again in his German translation.


Trinity

The second controversy concerns the so-called Johannine Comma (Latin: Comma Johanneum), an interpolated phrase in verses 5:7–8 of the First Epistle of John.

Here is the passage. The Comma in square brackets and italicized is not part of the oldest Greek and Latin manuscripts. The words that introduce the Trinity - a central belief of the Church - are later additions.

7 For there are three that bear record [in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.] [8 And there are three that bear witness in earth], the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood, and these three agree in one.

As Erasmus wrote in his Novum Instrumentum, the original version, "For there are three that bear record, the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood, and these three agree in one," he was accused of Arianism. By banning the only biblical testimony to the Trinity doctrine from Scripture, Erasmus was accused of leading the reader into the heretical doctrine that the Son of God is not divine.


Λογος

The third discussion concerns Erasmus's interpretation of the beginning of the Gospel of John. It is about the translation of the Greek word λογος. In the Novum Instrumentum of 1516, we find the well-known text: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

In the Novum Testamentum of 1519, however, Erasmus's readers read, "In the beginning was the message, and the message was with God, and this message was God." There was great enthusiasm but also fierce criticism.

Did Goethe know about this controversy when he tried his hand at translating λογος in his drama Faust:

'Tis written: "In the Beginning was the Word."
Here am I balked: who, now can help afford?
The Word?—impossible so high to rate it;
And otherwise must I translate it.
If by the Spirit I am truly taught.
Then thus: "In the Beginning was the Thought"
This first line let me weigh completely,
Lest my impatient pen proceed too fleetly.
Is it the Thought which works, creates, indeed?
"In the Beginning was the Power," I read.
Yet, as I write, a warning is suggested,
That I the sense may not have fairly tested.
The Spirit aids me: now I see the light!
"In the Beginning was the Act," I write.

The criticism of Erasmus's new translation of the New Testament did not stop. He complained, "In Rome, they call me Errasmus. As if Italians were never wrong!"

Erasmus sent letters to his supporters that the Cologne Dominican theologians, in particular, posed a real danger to humanities and were not worth a shot of powder as inquisitors. He wrote to Reuchlin, "Let us turn our thoughts to Christ, my dear Reuchlin, and devote ourselves to honorable scholarship while ignoring that rabble in Cologne."

Volume I: Novum Testamentum

Almost out of defiance, Erasmus threw himself zealously into a radically revised edition of the Novum Instrumentum, which he unhesitatingly called the Novum Testamentum. "A thankless task," he wrote to his friends. "while rejuvenating the Bible, I am aging twice as fast, with all the brooding and staring in the dark winter months."

Volume II: The Annotations

In March 1522, the Novum Testamentum was available hot off the press at the Frankfurt Spring Fair in two expensive volumes in folio format and – without the annotations – in a cheaper volume in a portable pocket format: an attempt by Froben to attract a broader readership.
*

Sarcopenia

Age begins with immobility.

Red Baron's equilibrium is greatly disturbed. So, I had to give up cycling and sold my e-bike one year ago. Instead, I walk intensely for at least 30 minutes a day.

According to experts, this is not sufficient to fight sarcopenia. In fact, my weight has decreased over the years, and I have developed a slight belly. My doctor told me, "You can't get rid of that belly." Since the density of muscle at 1060 kg/m³ is higher than that of belly fat at 920 kg/m³, this is a typical sign of muscle loss.

Sports science knows muscle training is highly effective as a therapy against sarcopenia. Regular visits to the gym combined with balance training and a protein-rich diet have the most significant effect on quality of life for people with age-related muscle loss.

For years, Red Baron has been trying to counteract sarcopenia with Kieser Training. I work my muscles twice a week for 90 minutes, doing 14 exercises, many specifically to strengthen the legs. Mind you, the pre-printed training plan only allows for a maximum of 10 exercises per session.

Yet, over the last few months, I've become increasingly wobbly. When I read an expert's statement, "The older you are, the more strength training you need," I decided to train three times a week.

And I was surprised. My scales, which "measure" total weight as well as various components such as fat, water, and muscle mass, have been showing a decrease in fat percentage and a simultaneous increase in muscle mass for a month now.

Still, Red Baron doesn't expect miracles.

*

Ablöse

is translated into replacement, e.g., in the military, changing a guard. In this blog, Ablöse means the full repayment of a debt. The term was recently frequently used in the German press when discussing the repayment of obligations that go back to Napoleon's time. Once again, Napoleon is to blame for everything*.

*Famous German film comedy of 1938 by Curt Goetz: Napoleon ist an allem schuld.

Even though the state tax offices collect the church tax - in 2021, around 6 billion euros for the Protestant Church and 6.7 billion euros for the Catholic Church - State and Church are separated in Germany.

©ZDF

Still, the German state and states also pay more than 600 million euros annually to the two Churches as state benefits. Why?

Let's go back in history.

During the Napoleonic Wars, France took over the territories on the left bank of the Rhine. Prussia, Bavaria, and Baden-Württemberg, in particular, suffered territorial losses. The affected princes demanded compensation.

This was when the Imperial Estates turned their attention to the gigantic assets of the Churches. The idea of expropriating Church lands and awarding them to the princes who had suffered territorial losses was obvious.

At its last session on February 25, 1803, the Permanent Diet passed one of the last laws of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Red Baron visited the modest meeting room in Regensburg in 2020.

The negotiated treaty known as the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss stipulates, among other things: All goods of the founded monasteries, abbeys, and convents ... whose use has not been formally determined in the previous decrees, are left to the free and full disposition of the respective sovereigns, both for the purpose of expenditure for worship, teaching and other charitable institutions, as well as to facilitate their finances.

The papal nuncio in Vienna was surprised, "Even Jews stand up for their rights*; only the bishops remain silent. "
*in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Shylock is standing for his bond

This secularization deprived the Churches of substantial assets and income. In Germany, state benefits have compensated these for over 200 years. Since the foundation of our Federal Republic in 1949, a sum totaling 19.6 billion euros has been paid up to 2021.

These payments are rightly criticized because all taxpayers pay to the Churches, "The state benefits are an absurdity for those distanced from the Church," says a church law expert, "State and Church are clearly not separated here."

Constitutional law expert Bodo Pieroth demands: "Bundestag (parliament) and the government should remember that they must represent the interests of all citizens, including the non-denominational majority. They and numerous Church members no longer sympathize with continuing the anachronistic state benefits."

As a declared constitutional demand, the goal of abolishing state benefits has been around for a long time.

In fact, already the Weimar Constitution of 1919 stipulated the replacement of state benefits in Article 138: "State legislation shall replace state benefits to religious societies based on law, treaty or special legal titles. The principles for this shall be laid down by the Reich."

Nothing happened except that the constitutional article was adopted when Germany's Basic Law was passed in 1949. State benefits continued to be paid.

Experts largely agree that the two Churches have now been amply overcompensated, but all initiatives in the Bundestag to replace them have failed so far.

The Christian Democrats' religious policy spokesperson said, "You can get the impression that neither the Churches nor the federal states are in any particular hurry to replace the state benefits."

©DW

State benefits have increased since the founding of the Federal Republic. This is due to the development of pay scales in the public sector. When salaries rise, so do the so-called endowments to the clergy financed by the federal states via state benefits.

Our government wants to end the annual payments and has enshrined this plan in its coalition agreement. Still, the federal states have opposed its current proposal to replace them, saying it is far too expensive.

Indeed, more than ten billion euros are in the offing as an Ablöse sum, which corresponds to 18.6 times the previous annual payments.

Replacing state payments has been a constitutional mandate for more than 100 years! In the spirit of the strict separation of Church and State, there is no way around an Ablöse as compensation for the Churches.
*

Erasmus in Freiburg

In her book Erasmus, The Biography of a Free Thinker, Sandra Langereis writes little about Erasmus's stay in Freiburg. Let me fill in the missing information.

In April 1529, as the riots against followers of the Old Faith intensified in Basel, Erasmus fled to the Catholic city of Freiburg. The 62-year-old Erasmus, reverently known as the Prince of Scholars, initially stayed in the Haus zum Walfisch (House of the Whale), built by King Maximilian's treasurer Jakob Villinger. The building is now home to the Municipal Savings Bank.

Haus zum Walfisch on Franziskanerstraße

Shortly after he arrived in Freiburg at the beginning of May 1529, Erasmus wrote enthusiastically to his long-time pen pal Willibald Pirckheimer in Augsburg, "At last, I have changed the clod, the Rauraker* has become a Breisgauer ... The little journey went better than I had expected. The city council showed me all their kindness of their own accord, even before King Ferdinand recommended me by letter. I was given a princely house built for Emperor Maximilian but remained unfinished... and then a letter later: Ubi bene ubi patria, as the saying goes. So, I can enjoy the friendly climate here for a year if Mars doesn't drive me away." 

*Augusta Rauraca, the Roman, i.e.. the Latin name for Basel

However, he was mistaken in assuming that he would only stay in Freiburg for a year and that Emperor Maximilian once chose the Haus zum Walfisch as his retirement home.

Erasmus believed that the town would let him live in the Haus zum Walfisch free of charge. He was furious when the mayor sent him a bill of 30 guilders for the rent at the end of the year. 

The memorial plaque for Erasmus at the Haus zum Walfisch contains a correction.
He lived here from 1529 to 1531, not until 1535, as initially stated.

So it was not Mars, the god of war, who drove Erasmus out of his domicile on Franziskanerstraße but trouble with the city. In 1531, he bought the house Zum Kind Jesu (To the Child Jesus) on Schiffstraße 7 as his new residence for 600 Rhenish guilders, which he paid in cash with coins he had saved in Basel.

Haus zum Kind Jesu on Schiffstraße 7 before the bombing of Freiburg.
There is a picture of Erasmus on the façade (©Peter Kalchthaler)

The house purchase contradicted the city charter, according to which only Freiburg citizens were allowed to acquire property. Four years after arriving in Freiburg, Erasmus finally entered his name in the university register as a professor theologiae to legalize the purchase. From then on, he lived as an academic citizen in a privileged house exempted from taxes.

When Rector Paulus Getzonis joyfully announced to the members of the Senate in 1533 that Erasmus had been accepted onto the university's register, he had no idea that Erasmus would neither lecture at the Albertina nor attend the Senate meetings. From the outset, he accepted and possessed the dignities but rejected the burdens.

Yet the city and university continued to court the great humanist, who spread his wings and found, "Theology is pursued here more weakly than I would like, and the study of languages flourishes mediocrely. Although the university is well equipped, it is poorly attended and has more honorable students than numerous ones."

Instead of being seen at the university, Erasmus had been working since 1533 on his Liber de sarcienda ecclesiae concordia, deque sedandis opinionum dissidis, cum aliis nonnullis lectu dignis*, in which he describes Europe as a unified populus Christianus (Christian people) which also inhabits an eadem domus (shared house), in ecclesia (the Church). He considered the differences between Catholics and Lutherans to be bridgeable and, like many of his contemporaries, hoped for a general, unifying council that would create a concordia fidei in a concordia caritas. This would require reforms in the education of the clergy, reforms in morals, and reforms in the church.
*Book on the restoration of ecclesiastical harmony and the elimination of differences of opinion

As the schism progressed, Erasmus felt that the religious cohesion of Europe by the Roman Church was waning. Instead, he foresaw the emergence of pro-national structures, "One tribe is driven to battle with another tribe, city against city, faction against faction, ruler against ruler ... The Englishman is the enemy of the Frenchman for no other reason than that he is French. The Scot is the enemy of the Briton for no other reason than that he is a Scot. The German is the enemy of the Frenchman, and the Spaniard is the enemy of both. The various faiths wear themselves out in a narcissism of slight differences. They practice reinforcing their contrasts."

With all his efforts, Erasmus could not heal the disease of schism.

In Erasmus's new domicile on Schiffstraße, renovation work was pending, so he had to deal with blacksmiths, stonemasons, carpenters, plumbers, and glaziers. He wrote in a letter in 1531, "You know this sort of people; it is so disgusting that I would instead occupy myself for a full three years with scientific work, however unpleasant, than be plagued with this kind of worry for a single month." Craftsmen yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

He continued to grumble about Freiburg, "The city is pretty, but not populated enough, "and furthermore, "the town is small, and the inhabitants are superstitious."

He only found the 68-year-old Huldrichus Zasius worthy of praise, "I have never seen anything in Germany that I have admired as much as the character of Ulrich Zasius. He is sincerity itself, not just sincerity towards his friends. Physically, he is aging, but it is hard to believe how mentally he is still quite fresh; his sharpness of judgment and memory have not suffered in any way. I have never noticed such quick-witted, witty, apt, and well-extemporized speech, even from an Italian. The speech flows sweeter than honey over his lips. I expected to find a lawyer, an excellent one, to be sure, but only a lawyer. But what is there in the mysteries of theology that he has not examined and thought through? In what part of philosophy is he not fully versed? Is there any book of the Old and New Testament that he has not opened, perused, absorbed?"

Erasmus's high regard for Zasius can probably be traced back to the Freiburg Lenten controversy of 1523. You may read the story here.

Erasmus's rejection of Freiburg culminated in the remark, "I would rather live among the Turks."

Ultimately, he secretly left Freiburg for Basel in 1535, where he died a year later.
*