On names

And flames

If everything was done correctly, Luthknight.substack.com now redirects to Aelthemplaer.substack.com

There are many reasons for a change of name. Luthknight was short and simple, but it was the tail-end of a chapter of my life that was dying. Luth, because I liked Liberty, and Knight because I liked to fight. But, as I’ve aged, both of these things have died in me. I have needed a new word for some time…

Most people assumed Luth was because I was Lutheran. Truth be told, I hadn’t been in a Lutheran church in over half a decade - truth be further told I had only gone to one for a few months at all. I was raised Catholic, and my loyalties have always been towards tradition. I have joked in this blog about becoming Lutheran in the past, but I just couldn’t bring myself to. I liked the idea of Lutheranism, but not the fruits of it. Schism might look nice at first, but once something departs from the historic faith, it is predetermined to end up in all kinds of weeds. Am I wrong? Has it not?

In a strange twist in my Seven year adventure through Protestantism, I ended up going to Tim Keller’s Redeemer - which I had been going to since Obama was president. I liked that church. I still like it and recommend it to Protestants. People have criticisms of its whimsical theology and lack of clear condemning of sin. I do too. But if you put the effort in becoming a member of that church and get to talk with the pastors, they will be clear to you about what is sin and what it does. Even though I haven’t been to that church in many months, I do plan on going to Tim’s memorial service. He was a flawed man, but he was a Christian.

Yet so, the pandemic put some serious questions in my head about Protestantism in general. I take the Eucharist too seriously, and Protestants do not - rather, they don’t seem to anymore.

Having been raised Catholic, I have been back in the only place I felt comfortable with, and have been going back to the same church I was raised in, since the Pandemic began. In the course of those three years - and writing this blog - that return had been hinted at on and off again with various degrees of struggle, but with the recent revelations of Lutheran churches in America being essentially paedophilic and corrupt, and the growing split in Presbyterianism to face the culture, I found myself rather sure of my on-again off-again Catholicism. Better an Antichrist in Rome, than an Antichrist at home, I suppose.

(I don’t think the Papacy has had an antichrist for several centuries, btw)

Luther, if you don’t know, was born Ludder and changed his name to Luther after learning Greek. Luther was a common Greek name given to freed slaves. You can equate it to the last name Freeman in English. It comes from the Greek ἐλευθερία, which is a personification of liberty. Luther chose that name because he felts free from his guilty conscious when he interpreted Romans to indicate Faith justifies a man.

Do note, justifies. Not saves. The devil believes in God, but is not saved from that faith. You have to ask God for the grace of salvation, for it is a gift. Don’t forget to. (Ephesians 2)

I have had problems with the word “Liberty” for some time, as it is not a far jump to the realm of granting yourself permission to do any number of awful things. Liberty without Christian discipline is synonymous with sin. So, after some time searching for a better word, I found the phrase Alethea to be quite nice. This word, in Greek ἀλήθεια, means truth - or rather, something akin to this. If you know your Greek, you know the A- at the start of that word is a negation. Meaning the word is doing a work on a theme. Lethe, that being the root word, means Annihilation.

To come to Truth is to be negated from annihilation.

Lethe is derived from the River Lethe in Hades. You are probably familiar with the river Styx thanks to various films featuring it, but Styx is not the only river. The river Lethe is where souls go to forget themselves. To be stripped of their personality and being. To be annihilated. It is a river of forgetfulness and oblivion. To drink from it is to die a spiritual death after having died a physical one. Likewise, to be negated from this might be understood to be a kind of spiritual resurrection - Lord willing, both spiritual and physical.

It is an English linguistic trend to collapse Greek and Latin words to fewer syllables, as the Anglo is a man of sharp utterances, so I took Alethia and utilized Æ, a less common negation prefix, to render Ælþ. This is basically the Anglish version of Alethia by my estimates. If not, it sounds nice anyway.

I’m also keeping Templar in the name because, like the real Templar order, I have gradually moved from being a fighter to an investor. I suppose that’s in keeping with the spirit of that respectable order.

And so, that is why I’ve gone by Ælþemplær for some time on Twitter now, and will be changing this blog name to that. If you are hard at remembering, I have also claimed the title

Ælþ

which can be reached by typing substack.com/@Aelth for shorthand.

For a desire to be un-annihilated from the times we live in. May Christ enable it.