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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Bible for Grown Ups
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
So for you, hatless, Christianity should just be a philosophy and a moral framework for the experience of the material world? There should no considering of the possibility of transcendence attached to it since that cannot be proven materially or mathematically? Oh, yeah, and those of us who like our Christianity with a dollop of mystery are committing violence against people with your world view. Great. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Too many responses, and too many misunderstandings of what I'm saying. I don't know where to begin.
The common understanding I've spoken of is simply the current materialist, physical, biological, historical model of the world and how it works...
I think this can be described as a common worldview.
Except that it's not. Again, not even close. No matter how many times you insist that it is. This very thread has demonstrated that there is a whole spectrum of beliefs. Some hold that ONLY those things that you described are real-- the material, observable, measurable world confirmed by scientific discovery. Some hold that ONLY the spiritual realm is real and some or all of the material world is an illusion (this is a minority view in the West). And many, many people-- not just Christians, but people of all sorts of religions, both organized and informal-- hold some mixture of the two-- that there is both a material and a spiritual realm, that may or many not overlap entirely or partially. In many parts of the West, that "mixed" worldview is probably the norm, although there are so many variations it would be hard to say any one of these is the majority.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
We have no difficulty talking about, say, how to tackle the Zika virus, because there is a well established understanding of epidemiology. There are no significant voices talking about sympathetic magic as a possible solution.
Apparently you haven't encounter the anti-vax movement.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
If a car goes wrong, what percentage will do anything other than get the services of a mechanic?
I have known a great number of people, both Christians and non-Christians, who have engaged in prayer in these circumstances. I know of one who claimed a miraculous "healing" of their car while they were holding a key portion of their disabled engine in their hand. Of course, you would dismiss their account, perhaps rightly. But it is undeniable that there are, in fact, people who respond to such problems in some spiritual manner.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
They don't bring, say, astrology into the debate.
There are people who will bring astrology into such a debate, they just don't happen to be in the majority. And yes, they are IMHO, mockable-- but they are not invisible, at least not in my part of the world.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
In academia, subjects like history and economics where there are plenty of energetic disagreements, nonetheless find it possible to have a meeting of minds within a common language.
Have you spent much time in academia? There is very little "meeting of minds", especially when there is an energetic disagreement.
People in the same field do speak a common language-- use similar technical terms in similar ways. That does not mean they share the same worldview. It is quite clear, for example, that Stephen Hawking and John Polkinghorne do not share a "common worldview", even though they are both in the same field of study and no doubt agree on very many things within that field.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
When Christians take a crude view of the Virgin Birth of the sort that would make a geneticist whimper, and defend it by saying, well, God can do anything, that, I think, is a problem.
Perhaps, but you'll have to do a lot better than you've done here to convince me or most Virgin-birth-believing Christians that it's a problem. Building your argument on the demonstrably false premise that there is a "common worldview" that excludes the miraculous is not going to do it. So if that is your goal then perhaps you should try another tact. Gaining a better, fuller understanding of the diversity of beliefs in the society immediately outside your front door would be a good start.
[ 27. September 2016, 00:19: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
For what it's worth, the fact that something is a/the accepted worldview has nothing to do with its actual truth. AFAIK every commonly held worldview up to the present has had its spectacular errors. Why should the present day be any different?
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
For what it's worth, the fact that something is a/the accepted worldview has nothing to do with its actual truth. AFAIK every commonly held worldview up to the present has had its spectacular errors. Why should the present day be any different?
Well said Lamb Chopped. That gets two ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
Hatless, I have to ask - do you believe in the Incarnation? ISTM that if you do, you have already accepted the violation and everything else is straining at gnats.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Looks like a case of Spongiform Theolopathy.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
So Dafyd, do you think we are unable to choose values; that they are simply given to us by our broad philosophical anthropology? Why, then, do we disagree about values so much?
Again, you're making the concept of 'choosing' central.
Do you think we are unable to choose beliefs? I think it's about as sensible to talk about choosing values as it is to talk about choosing beliefs. Less sensible: on what basis would we choose values in any case? It makes some sense to talk about choosing a political party on the basis of our values. But if our values are up for choice, on what basis would we choose between them?
The epistemic traffic between values and philosophical anthropology runs in both directions.
(That said, I'm not happy with the metaphor of 'values' either. I think it would be constructive to make an effort to abandon that metaphor as a way of talking about normative goods.)
Why do we disagree about values? We have different views of what the human being is. We have different interests based on class, race, gender, orientation, and we (especially those of us who are in one way or another privileged in those ways) confuse our interests with our goods. And so on. There's no puzzle here unless you have a neoliberal worldview that conflates interests and choices.
quote:
I don't, incidentally, see poetry as a way of choosing values, but as a way of communicating them, and of expressing them potently so that, perhaps, we or others might choose them, or live by them with more commitment.
The same goes for prose. There are a couple of things that can be better expressed by poetry: foregrounding the beauty of skilled craftsmanship on the one hand, foregrounding the role of language in expression and the way our language makes some thoughts easier than others on the other. Not that prose can't do those but it doesn't as insistently impose them on our attention. But otherwise, largely, no. Poetry is not a form of magic.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
This discussion reminds me of Scot Atran, who argues in his book 'In Gods We Trust' that religions often contain counter-intuitive ideas.
He cites various reasons for this, one being that many religions are costly, and believing in something irrational is part of that cost. It's not meant to be an easy ride. (I would connect that with erosion of the ego, but I don't think Atran goes with that).
But there are other reasons, for example, being memorable, storing important cultural information, and being hard to fake.
I think Atran worked mainly in tribal areas, so his thesis may not be appropriate to religion in Europe and US. I don't know.
Although you could argue that religion becomes irrelevant, not because it is counter-intuitive, but because it no longer stores the vital cultural stuff.
[ 27. September 2016, 10:46: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by hatless:
When Christians take a crude view of the Virgin Birth of the sort that would make a geneticist whimper, and defend it by saying, well, God can do anything, that, I think, is a problem.
You do realize that ancient people knew perfectly well where babies come from right? Modern genetics in no way makes the virgin birth harder to believe than it was in the first century. In fact, given artificial insemination, I would think the virgin birth is easier to believe. Of course, if one not conceived through sexual intercourse cannot be totally human as was implied up thread, then modern science is creating monsters. I see no reason why Christians should change what we preach to appease our cultured despisers. When that has been done in the past, bad things happened.
quote:
originally posted by hatless:
It does.
"It does" is not a valid answer to a question that begins "how does."
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
So for you, hatless, Christianity should just be a philosophy and a moral framework for the experience of the material world? There should no considering of the possibility of transcendence attached to it since that cannot be proven materially or mathematically? Oh, yeah, and those of us who like our Christianity with a dollop of mystery are committing violence against people with your world view. Great.
Let's say yes to mystery and wonder, but not locate them in some outside-breaking-in God, but in the natural world itself. Don't look for the supernatural, but see how that natural is super!
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Too many responses, and too many misunderstandings of what I'm saying. I don't know where to begin.
The common understanding I've spoken of is simply the current materialist, physical, biological, historical model of the world and how it works...
I think this can be described as a common worldview.
Except that it's not. Again, not even close. No matter how many times you insist that it is. This very thread has demonstrated that there is a whole spectrum of beliefs. Some hold that ONLY those things that you described are real-- the material, observable, measurable world confirmed by scientific discovery. Some hold that ONLY the spiritual realm is real and some or all of the material world is an illusion (this is a minority view in the West).
You don't say? quote:
And many, many people-- not just Christians, but people of all sorts of religions, both organized and informal-- hold some mixture of the two-- that there is both a material and a spiritual realm, that may or many not overlap entirely or partially. In many parts of the West, that "mixed" worldview is probably the norm, although there are so many variations it would be hard to say any one of these is the majority.
People have different opinions, of course, and special beliefs if they are religious, which they often struggle to articulate in the modern world, because they don't really fit with the common world view, and have to be seen as exceptional, and have special exemptions for them. People compartmentalise their thinking, for instance.
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
We have no difficulty talking about, say, how to tackle the Zika virus, because there is a well established understanding of epidemiology. There are no significant voices talking about sympathetic magic as a possible solution.
Apparently you haven't encounter the anti-vax movement.
I certainly haven't, here in the UK, but aren't the anti-vaxers really just a form of conspiracy theorists? (There's an interesting spiritual dimension to conspiracy theorising, but that's another story.)
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
If a car goes wrong, what percentage will do anything other than get the services of a mechanic?
I have known a great number of people, both Christians and non-Christians, who have engaged in prayer in these circumstances. I know of one who claimed a miraculous "healing" of their car while they were holding a key portion of their disabled engine in their hand. Of course, you would dismiss their account, perhaps rightly. But it is undeniable that there are, in fact, people who respond to such problems in some spiritual manner.
It's an interesting one. I have come across some people who have prayed for a car to start and when it does they see it as an answer to prayer. Is there, perhaps, something else going on? A dead car is a horrible thing, and the thought of the repair bill deeply depressing to someone without much money. The cough of an engine firing up is a true joy in such circumstances, and the despair and joy are good subjects for prayer. I suspect people really know that this is what they are doing, and the prayer is not intended as an alternative to good maintenance.
I've never known anyone try to repair bodywork by prayer. Why is that, do you think? Isn't it the incomprehensibility of the insides of a car, and our helplessness sitting there turning the key and trying to catch the moment with the throttle that leads people to prayer? Not a world view where God intervenes, or they would try prayer to get rid of dents and rusty holes.
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
They don't bring, say, astrology into the debate.
There are people who will bring astrology into such a debate, they just don't happen to be in the majority. And yes, they are IMHO, mockable-- but they are not invisible, at least not in my part of the world.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
In academia, subjects like history and economics where there are plenty of energetic disagreements, nonetheless find it possible to have a meeting of minds within a common language.
Have you spent much time in academia? There is very little "meeting of minds", especially when there is an energetic disagreement.
Energetic disagreement is the meeting of minds. When they don't meet there is silent incomprehension. Think of an Amazonian tribe's first contact.
quote:
People in the same field do speak a common language-- use similar technical terms in similar ways. That does not mean they share the same worldview. It is quite clear, for example, that Stephen Hawking and John Polkinghorne do not share a "common worldview", even though they are both in the same field of study and no doubt agree on very many things within that field.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
When Christians take a crude view of the Virgin Birth of the sort that would make a geneticist whimper, and defend it by saying, well, God can do anything, that, I think, is a problem.
Perhaps, but you'll have to do a lot better than you've done here to convince me or most Virgin-birth-believing Christians that it's a problem. Building your argument on the demonstrably false premise that there is a "common worldview" that excludes the miraculous is not going to do it. So if that is your goal then perhaps you should try another tact. Gaining a better, fuller understanding of the diversity of beliefs in the society immediately outside your front door would be a good start.
[/QB][/QUOTE]You've pointed to a bit of variety, but that doesn't dent my decision to continue speaking of a common world view. I think that's precisely what we have.
Documentaries don't have to explain their starting assumptions at the beginning, they just get going. We all know where they are coming from, because we are (nearly) all coming from the same place. If I watch a film, unless it's some zombie or Sci-fi thing, all the characters will understand the world in pretty much the same way I do (with the exception that they won't mind being shot or punched as much as real people do). You can find some books and films with magical realism, but it's a small number, and of course, it's fiction.
I can see that I've upset you and a lot of people, and that wasn't my intention. I don't think I lead a particularly sheltered existence. I will go to work tomorrow as part of a multi-faith chaplaincy team in a large mental healthcare charity specialising in treatment resistant patients. I will have conversations with some people with very strange worldviews, and I will find once again how near in understanding my Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Muslim colleagues are.
I believe the church has gone up a blind alley, unable to articulate the faith without using dead categories of thought. Bonhoeffer called it the death leap back to the Middle Ages. It sells God short, who should always be sought in the centre, not the edges, not in weird events or flaky car ignition systems, but in economics and politics and technology.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Hatless, I have to ask - do you believe in the Incarnation? ISTM that if you do, you have already accepted the violation and everything else is straining at gnats.
The Incarnation is a tool or theme that I use as I think about my faith. It's a way of expressing the significance of Jesus Christ. But when you ask if I believe in it, I wonder what exactly you have in mind, and what a yes would be tying me to.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
So Dafyd, do you think we are unable to choose values; that they are simply given to us by our broad philosophical anthropology? Why, then, do we disagree about values so much?
Again, you're making the concept of 'choosing' central.
Do you think we are unable to choose beliefs? I think it's about as sensible to talk about choosing values as it is to talk about choosing beliefs. Less sensible: on what basis would we choose values in any case? It makes some sense to talk about choosing a political party on the basis of our values. But if our values are up for choice, on what basis would we choose between them?
The epistemic traffic between values and philosophical anthropology runs in both directions.
(That said, I'm not happy with the metaphor of 'values' either. I think it would be constructive to make an effort to abandon that metaphor as a way of talking about normative goods.)
Why do we disagree about values? We have different views of what the human being is. We have different interests based on class, race, gender, orientation, and we (especially those of us who are in one way or another privileged in those ways) confuse our interests with our goods. And so on. There's no puzzle here unless you have a neoliberal worldview that conflates interests and choices.
quote:
I don't, incidentally, see poetry as a way of choosing values, but as a way of communicating them, and of expressing them potently so that, perhaps, we or others might choose them, or live by them with more commitment.
The same goes for prose. There are a couple of things that can be better expressed by poetry: foregrounding the beauty of skilled craftsmanship on the one hand, foregrounding the role of language in expression and the way our language makes some thoughts easier than others on the other. Not that prose can't do those but it doesn't as insistently impose them on our attention. But otherwise, largely, no. Poetry is not a form of magic.
I'm intrigued by this idea of choosing or not choosing. I don't think I did choose my values. They are very similar to my father's, and my desire to be like him. They are influenced by things I find attractive in others, often for reasons I can't readily express.
I think I can empathise to some extent with people who see the world in terms of honour and shame, so there is a little bit of this in me, an echo of the feelings they might experience, but we seem to be different. So values are not chosen like clothes, but are part of our identity, like being right-handed or shy.
I agree that values is an awkward term. It's very economic, and it just gives us the one metaphor for something that is rich and complex. But sticking with it for a moment, I think there are different values amongst people who share a lot in terms of understanding, experience, environment, generation and social position. Political opinions, for instance, are partly explained by self-interest, but plenty of people go against their apparent self-interest. Where is this variety coming from? If it's not choice, it's certainly something personal.
I think that a form of magic is precisely what poetry is.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:
originally posted by hatless:
When Christians take a crude view of the Virgin Birth of the sort that would make a geneticist whimper, and defend it by saying, well, God can do anything, that, I think, is a problem.
You do realize that ancient people knew perfectly well where babies come from right? Modern genetics in no way makes the virgin birth harder to believe than it was in the first century. In fact, given artificial insemination, I would think the virgin birth is easier to believe. Of course, if one not conceived through sexual intercourse cannot be totally human as was implied up thread, then modern science is creating monsters. I see no reason why Christians should change what we preach to appease our cultured despisers. When that has been done in the past, bad things happened.
Ancient people seem to have had somewhat different ideas to us. Even Darwin didn't know precisely where babies come from.
There is an rule in Leviticus against remarrying a Jewish wife you had previously divorced if in the meantime she has been married to a foreigner. It doesn't not apply if the genders are reversed. There is a radically different view of genetics inside that. quote:
quote:
originally posted by hatless:
It does.
"It does" is not a valid answer to a question that begins "how does."
The question was 'How does this not apply to the resurrection?'
'It does', meaning 'it does apply', seems a reasonable answer.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I think that a form of magic is precisely what poetry is.
If by magic you mean a way of expressing values potently, then tabloid headlines and the political rhetoric of Mr Donald Trump are far more magical than any poetry.
I would like to say that poetry is the antidote to magic. Unfortunately the history of poets in the twentieth century is not encouraging to that idea. Any poem can be read as magic. But one of the criteria of good poetry is to be more rewarding when read as anti-magic.
If you read poetry as a form of magic, then if you turn to King Lear all you'll see is a contrived morality tale. If you read it as anti-magic, then you see what all the fuss is about.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
There is an rule in Leviticus against remarrying a Jewish wife you had previously divorced if in the meantime she has been married to a foreigner. It doesn't not apply if the genders are reversed. There is a radically different view of genetics inside that.
Say what?
Could you give me chapter and verse on that one?
Because the only thing I can remember was a law saying that a man might not divorce his wife, watch her marry and divorce some other man (ethnicity not specified), and THEN remarry her again. The point being, I assume, to discourage men from handing women around with as much thought as the mashed potatoes bowl at Thanksgiving. Or to be a bit less snarky about it, to force them to give some thought to whether they really want to divorce in the first place and risk losing her permanently.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
(lots of responses to my comments that seem to be totally missing the point...)
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
...then finally getting to the point:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
You've pointed to a bit of variety, but that doesn't dent my decision to continue speaking of a common world view. I think that's precisely what we have.
This doesn't seem to be a view shared by anthropologists or sociologists. Indeed, the whole point of having a technical term like "worldview" is to describe/explain/understand the various and competing worldviews existing within a society. If we all or even most of us share a "common worldview" there's really not much need for the term in the first place. If the only vegetables in existence were peas, we wouldn't need the broader term "vegetable", we'd just have "peas".
Honestly, to suggest that there is only one or even primarily one "common worldview" in contemporary society seems to me to represent a distinct lack of basic observation.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I can see that I've upset you and a lot of people, and that wasn't my intention.
I won't speak for anyone else, but you haven't "upset" me. There's nothing to be upset about. You are, quite simply, wrong. But nothing upsetting about it.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I believe the church has gone up a blind alley, unable to articulate the faith without using dead categories of thought. Bonhoeffer called it the death leap back to the Middle Ages. It sells God short, who should always be sought in the centre, not the edges, not in weird events or flaky car ignition systems, but in economics and politics and technology.
If that's what you want to talk then why not just talk about it? Instead of inventing a false consensus, why not simply talk about where you think the church has gone down a "blind alley"? Is it, in fact, our "worldview" (i.e. the presumptions we hold about the make up of reality and the sources of authority we hold for determining that)? Or is it something else? What makes it a "blind alley"-- or a "death leap"? (And while we're on that, can you supply a bit more detail for your Bonhoeffer quote-- which book, what ch or pg? I'm not recognizing the context of the quote you're alluding to...)
All of which one can do, and perhaps profitably so, without assuming some grand social consensus which probably never existed but certainly is not in existence today.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
There is an rule in Leviticus against remarrying a Jewish wife you had previously divorced if in the meantime she has been married to a foreigner. It doesn't not apply if the genders are reversed. There is a radically different view of genetics inside that.
Say what?
Could you give me chapter and verse on that one?
Because the only thing I can remember was a law saying that a man might not divorce his wife, watch her marry and divorce some other man (ethnicity not specified), and THEN remarry her again. The point being, I assume, to discourage men from handing women around with as much thought as the mashed potatoes bowl at Thanksgiving. Or to be a bit less snarky about it, to force them to give some thought to whether they really want to divorce in the first place and risk losing her permanently.
The rule in Leviticus can be found at Deuteronomy 24:1-4. You're right that it doesn't specify ethnicity. I think I read a version where it talks about the woman leaving the land or nation, which I suppose could be a way of reading the reference to house.
That bit isn't so important. I think that this law reflects the widespread belief, up to and including Darwin, that some essence or influence from the male remains after a conception and birth and may be manifested in subsequent conceptions and births with a different male partner.
It's an aspect of what on these boards we have sometimes called the grow-bag understanding of conception. The man provides the seed, and the woman's womb the place where it grows. The extra aspect is that something of the male 'seed' or inheritance remains in the female. There was a famous case in Darwin's time of a horse being mated with a zebra, unsuccessfully, I think. But a later foal from a mating with a proper horse was born with stripes.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
The Bonhoeffer reference comes from Letters and Papers from Prison from a letter to Eberhard Bethge dated 16th July, 1944. (p. 129 in my SCM Press 1981 p/b Abridged Edition).
In the letter (ISTM) he is working on his thinking about what it means to live in a world which has done away with the idea of God as a working hypothesis. His criticism of Barth and others is that they, he says, seek to assert the authority of the church or the authority of revelation in the scriptures. It is an attitude of "We believe this because it is the teaching of the Church" or "We believe this because it is what the Bible teaches" which he resists as being a leap of death into the Middle Ages.
It would be interesting to see how he would engage with the rather different discussions about the interface between science and religion which have emerged during the second half of the 20th century.
Interestingly in the context of this thread, Bonhoeffer's response to the intellectual climate as he sees it appears to be strongly rooted in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ.
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Hatless, I have to ask - do you believe in the Incarnation? ISTM that if you do, you have already accepted the violation and everything else is straining at gnats.
The Incarnation is a tool or theme that I use as I think about my faith. It's a way of expressing the significance of Jesus Christ. But when you ask if I believe in it, I wonder what exactly you have in mind, and what a yes would be tying me to.
I have in mind the idea that Christ was God in some sense that isn't true of me, you or Jeremy Corbyn.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
There is an rule in Leviticus against remarrying a Jewish wife you had previously divorced if in the meantime she has been married to a foreigner. It doesn't not apply if the genders are reversed. There is a radically different view of genetics inside that.
Say what?
Could you give me chapter and verse on that one?
Because the only thing I can remember was a law saying that a man might not divorce his wife, watch her marry and divorce some other man (ethnicity not specified), and THEN remarry her again. The point being, I assume, to discourage men from handing women around with as much thought as the mashed potatoes bowl at Thanksgiving. Or to be a bit less snarky about it, to force them to give some thought to whether they really want to divorce in the first place and risk losing her permanently.
The rule in Leviticus can be found at Deuteronomy 24:1-4. You're right that it doesn't specify ethnicity. I think I read a version where it talks about the woman leaving the land or nation, which I suppose could be a way of reading the reference to house.
That bit isn't so important. I think that this law reflects the widespread belief, up to and including Darwin, that some essence or influence from the male remains after a conception and birth and may be manifested in subsequent conceptions and births with a different male partner.
It's an aspect of what on these boards we have sometimes called the grow-bag understanding of conception. The man provides the seed, and the woman's womb the place where it grows. The extra aspect is that something of the male 'seed' or inheritance remains in the female. There was a famous case in Darwin's time of a horse being mated with a zebra, unsuccessfully, I think. But a later foal from a mating with a proper horse was born with stripes.
IMHO that kind of thinking doesn't show up in the Bible (the "something of the male seed remains" bit). To the best of my knowledge, the only person barred from marrying any woman of any history that he chose (okay, bar incest or adultery committed with one another!) is the high priest. He must marry an Israelite virgin*--not a widow or divorcee. Everybody else, including ordinary priests and kings, can marry whomever the hell they like. Which is not what one would expect in the case of a country where "the seed remains" was their theory of genetics.
The high priest thing is interesting, and could conceivably be used to support your idea. However, that sort of falls apart in the absence of a similar restriction on David's line later, or on ordinary priests and Levites, for whom lineage was all-important too. I suspect it has more to do with the doubly-set-apart status of the high priest, which also prevented him from attending even his own family's funerals, also unlike everybody else.
No, the passage you mention goes on to say "Would not the land be utterly defiled?" The objection seems to be a moral one (land is also said to be defiled by unpunished murder and by idolatry AFAIR). Marriage is not something to be picked up and set aside like embroidery, or handed from person to person like a newspaper. Though the rhetorical question God poses there ("And would you now return to me?") suggests that God is willing to forgive even that and take Israel back.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
The Bonhoeffer reference comes from Letters and Papers from Prison from a letter to Eberhard Bethge dated 16th July, 1944. (p. 129 in my SCM Press 1981 p/b Abridged Edition).
In the letter (ISTM) he is working on his thinking about what it means to live in a world which has done away with the idea of God as a working hypothesis. His criticism of Barth and others is that they, he says, seek to assert the authority of the church or the authority of revelation in the scriptures. It is an attitude of "We believe this because it is the teaching of the Church" or "We believe this because it is what the Bible teaches" which he resists as being a leap of death into the Middle Ages.
It would be interesting to see how he would engage with the rather different discussions about the interface between science and religion which have emerged during the second half of the 20th century.
Interestingly in the context of this thread, Bonhoeffer's response to the intellectual climate as he sees it appears to be strongly rooted in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ.
That's helpful, thanks.
And yes, that does sound very much like Bonhoeffer-- and as true and relevant today as it was then. His point, of course, would seem to be the complete opposite of what you appear to be arguing here.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
I'm not quite sure what I am arguing, or what I appear to be arguing. You're not mixing me up with Steve Langton are you?
[Typos]
[ 28. September 2016, 14:52: Message edited by: BroJames ]
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Greatest I am
Shipmate
# 18671
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Sounds rather simple-minded.
If large chunks of the human race hold particular opinions, it's rarely wise to just dismiss them all as not being grown-ups, or to assume that they have no foundations for their beliefs.
A single explains-everything-for-you book is unlikely to have the depth of a frog pond in August.
Isn't faith described as not having a logical or reasonable foundation for that belief?
Is that not why Martin Luther said ---
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”
If not, please define faith for us please.
Regards
DL
[ 28. September 2016, 15:19: Message edited by: Greatest I am ]
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
Please refer please to the Book of Hebrews please.
PS, that's in the Bible.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Greatest I am:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Sounds rather simple-minded.
If large chunks of the human race hold particular opinions, it's rarely wise to just dismiss them all as not being grown-ups, or to assume that they have no foundations for their beliefs.
A single explains-everything-for-you book is unlikely to have the depth of a frog pond in August.
Isn't faith described as not having a logical or reasonable foundation for that belief?
Is that not why Martin Luther said ---
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”
If not, please define faith for us please.
Regards
DL
No, that's not why Luther said those things.
To explain what he meant, I'd have to give you a multi-hour seminar in the context of his time. (To everybody else--Luther was fond of hyperbole, and not at all fond of people introducing non-biblically-based arguments into theology.)
As for defining faith--why should I? Give me a reason besides your command.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Greatest I am:
Isn't faith described as not having a logical or reasonable foundation for that belief?
Not by me it isn't. I wouldn't say that faith is necessarily about believing things which are illogical or irrational, rather that it's about believing in something which could logically or rationally be true, but which cannot be proved to be true by logical or rational means. (Actually, I really want to say that faith is not primarily cognitive and factual so much as about putting trust in a person.)
[ 28. September 2016, 16:54: Message edited by: BroJames ]
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
I'm not quite sure what I am arguing, or what I appear to be arguing. You're not mixing me up with Steve Langton are you?
[Typos]
Hatless, actually. My apologies
[ 28. September 2016, 21:19: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Hatless, my apologies but Lamb Chopped, as she so often is, is right on the prohibition on marrying the same wife twice. It's regarded as pollution of the land. There's nothing about foreigners. Nor is there anything about any belief in a residual genetic influence of the husband who first covered the wife.
Scripture doesn't give a fuller reason, but I think somewhere there's a rabbinic gloss about the disgustingness of lending one's wife to another. So, I suppose, if divorce was allowed as a concession to human weakness, it had to be final and irrevocable. Remember that theoretically, there was no need to have divorce for adultery because the wife got stoned.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Hatless, my apologies but Lamb Chopped, as she so often is, is right on the prohibition on marrying the same wife twice. It's regarded as pollution of the land. There's nothing about foreigners. Nor is there anything about any belief in a residual genetic influence of the husband who first covered the wife.
Scripture doesn't give a fuller reason, but I think somewhere there's a rabbinic gloss about the disgustingness of lending one's wife to another. So, I suppose, if divorce was allowed as a concession to human weakness, it had to be final and irrevocable. Remember that theoretically, there was no need to have divorce for adultery because the wife got stoned.
Why would it be pollution of the land to remarry?
In fact the OT society was quite keen on handing women round in Levirate marriage, and believed a marriage to the dead husband's younger brother could provide children for him.
The law in Deuteronomy is definitely about not remarrying a former wife after an intervening marriage and, like Levirate marriage, makes no sense without a different understanding of conception and gestation.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Why would it be pollution of the land to remarry?
In fact the OT society was quite keen on handing women round in Levirate marriage, and believed a marriage to the dead husband's younger brother could provide children for him.
The law in Deuteronomy is definitely about not remarrying a former wife after an intervening marriage and, like Levirate marriage, makes no sense without a different understanding of conception and gestation.
As for why remarriage-after-another-marriage should pollute the land--hey, I can't tell you that except by referencing their culture, which says the same thing about idolatry and unavenged murder. You'd have to ask an ancient Hebrew. But it appears that they considered any major sin to pollute the land, and in the prophets, such things were said to result in the land "vomiting you out" into exile. Since the land was believed to belong to the Lord and not the people, and was his gift to them, it makes sense that any major infraction of the law of the Lord would be considered to have a bad effect on the land, his gift.
As far as the "quite keen on handing women round in levirate marriage," that's precisely what levirate marriage is designed to avoid. A levirate marriage doesn't just benefit the deceased husband's family by providing him with a legal heir. It benefits the woman by providing her with a culturally-sanctioned means of ongoing financial support so she doesn't lose husband and home in a single blow--particularly dangerous in a patriarchal culture where most land and businesses are held by men, and where she may not be able to find a second husband easily given the fact of her childlessness (which was usually blamed on the woman, and might well scare off suitors). Mosaic law and pre-Mosaic culture give her a strong entitlement to the levirate option, and put pressure on the possibly-reluctant bridegroom to agree to it or face permanent public shaming. We see this in action in the case of Judah and Tamar, and also in the book of Ruth.
I'm sorry, but I just don't see any evidence for your idea that they believed a woman could become pregnant from a deceased husband. The levirate was a legal arrangement, and they knew perfectly well that any children born of the new marriage would be biologically sired by the brother, not the deceased husband. If it were otherwise, why would Onan have bothered with birth control? And why are Perez and Zerah always spoken of as Judah's sons, when Tamar had had two husbands of that family before him?
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
Then Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her; raise up offspring for your brother.’ Genesis 38:8
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Yes indeed. He did NOT say: "Financially support your sister-in-law but stay out of her bed (sex isn't necessary anymore, your brother took care of that!) until she has a child."
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
Look, if you want proof that the ancient Hebrews had a dodgy grasp of genetics, you just need to cite that passage where Jacob breeds spotty sheep by feeding them in front of spotty strips of cloth. But none of that proves that they didn't know a man and a woman were both necessary for conception!
As someone else has already said, the proof that they knew about the birds and the bees is precisely the fact that Jesus' conception is supposed to be miraculous! If they thought parthenogenesis just happens once in a while then it wouldn't be a miracle would it!
Honestly, I can genuinely see reasons for doubting the Virgin Birth but this isn't one of them.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
Yes, see, Onan knew where babies came from.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Yes. So a) he was aware that children normally result from sex-with-seed, and b) he was also aware that his father Judah was expecting him to have sex-with-seed (coitus non-interruptus?) with Tamar in order to do the necessary to bring about pregnancy. Onan is notable because he is subverting the clear expectation of his culture, which is that you will have coitus-non-interruptus NOW precisely in order to bring about the birth of a child for your dead brother, who has no other way of getting a legal heir. The reason Onan is villainized is because he refuses to do what everybody knows is necessary.
If the culture believed that it was possible for a woman to get pregnant from a previous sexual encounter (as in, more than a menstrual cycle intervening), there would be no need for levirate sex. Just continue to keep the woman around until eventually she gives birth to the long-delayed biological son of her dead husband.
The presence of the Onan story, and in fact of the whole levirate cultural thingy, demonstrates that they knew a man out of the sexual picture for more than a menstrual cycle wasn't going to be siring any babies with that woman.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
Indeed the child of the dead man's widow counted as the dead man's child, took his inheritance, and was responsible in due course for her care in her old age. That's why the nearer kinsman in Ruth wasn't that keen on getting the field when he discovered that it would also include caring for Ruth and probably Naomi too, and that it wouldn't effectively form part of his estate. But this legal fiction did not mean that they believed the child was biologically the child of the dead man. That seems to me to be an extraordinarily literalistic reading of the text.
Onan knew the child would not be treated as his heir, and he didn't want that.
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
But, the story is based on a legal point - Er had died without an heir, Onan was to sleep with Tamar to provide Er with an heir. When Judah died, his wealth would have passed to his sons, with Er dead without an heir then that share of the inheritance would pass to Onan. By spilling his seed, Onan prevents Er having an heir and ensures he will inherit when Judah dies. The only reason he spills his seed is because he knows that if he doesn't then Tamar may become pregnant.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
And anyway, all this Old Testament stuff is irrelevant to what St Luke would have thought. The guy was a physician and his grasp of Greek was pretty good. Therefore, he most likely knew about Greek medicine. We don't have to guess about Greek medical beliefs - enough Greek medical texts have survived. And though they had some strange ideas about conception, none of them thought a father wasn't strictly necessary.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
The law in Deuteronomy is definitely about not remarrying a former wife after an intervening marriage..., makes no sense without a different understanding of conception and gestation.
But that understanding makes even less sense of that law (though it would make sense of in family marriage*). In that there isn't the prohibition against marrying a divorcee/widower which is what's needed. If that were the argument then the remarryer would be the better rather than yet a third contributor (fourth if the woman counts ).
And generally where bio is dodgy, I get the impression that the mother get neglected.
*though so would other ideas.
The other story that needs some sense of biology, is David & Uriah.
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
They didn't think you could get pregnant without sex with a man, and they knew it was the semen that was important, but there seems to have been a widespread belief, reflected in the passages we've been looking at, that some part of the semen remained in the woman (in her blood, it was assumed) and would be expressed, presumably to a diminishing degree, in subsequent births.
As others have said, this is barely relevant to the topic.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
there seems to have been a widespread belief, reflected in the passages we've been looking at, that some part of the semen remained in the woman…
I profoundly disagree that the passages you have cited reflect such a belief.
That represents a fundamentalistically literalist reading of the text, not justified by the text itself or, as far as I know by, any other evidence in the text or from our (limited) knowledge of the culture. It makes no contribution to any understanding we might or might not have about beliefs about the begetting of children either at whatever date the text came into being or in C1st BCE. It has nothing to contribute one way or the other to any discussion about what people might have believed about the claimed virgin birth of Jesus. You're right, therefore, that it's very tangential to the thread.
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Hatless, I have to ask - do you believe in the Incarnation? ISTM that if you do, you have already accepted the violation and everything else is straining at gnats.
The Incarnation is a tool or theme that I use as I think about my faith. It's a way of expressing the significance of Jesus Christ. But when you ask if I believe in it, I wonder what exactly you have in mind, and what a yes would be tying me to.
I have in mind the idea that Christ was God in some sense that isn't true of me, you or Jeremy Corbyn.
That's OK then. I believe in the Incarnation very enthusiastically.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
They didn't think you could get pregnant without sex with a man, and they knew it was the semen that was important, but there seems to have been a widespread belief, reflected in the passages we've been looking at, that some part of the semen remained in the woman (in her blood, it was assumed) and would be expressed, presumably to a diminishing degree, in subsequent births.
Compare with the belief of the ancient Modenwestennas that two people can swap a child's existing DNA with their own via a ritual called 'adoption'. Upon signing what were called 'adoption papers' it was believed that they became the parents of the child.
Seriously, child is not solely a biological category in any society. It is a cultural category just as much. To claim that the OT writers had an essentially biological understanding of whose child is whose in these texts, and that this esssentially biological understanding is faulty, is a naive eisegesis. A self-proclaimed anti-realist particularly ought not to make that interpretation.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
The Bonhoeffer reference comes from Letters and Papers from Prison from a letter to Eberhard Bethge dated 16th July, 1944. (p. 129 in my SCM Press 1981 p/b Abridged Edition).
In the letter (ISTM) he is working on his thinking about what it means to live in a world which has done away with the idea of God as a working hypothesis. His criticism of Barth and others is that they, he says, seek to assert the authority of the church or the authority of revelation in the scriptures. It is an attitude of "We believe this because it is the teaching of the Church" or "We believe this because it is what the Bible teaches" which he resists as being a leap of death into the Middle Ages.
It would be interesting to see how he would engage with the rather different discussions about the interface between science and religion which have emerged during the second half of the 20th century.
Interestingly in the context of this thread, Bonhoeffer's response to the intellectual climate as he sees it appears to be strongly rooted in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ.
That's helpful, thanks.
And yes, that does sound very much like Bonhoeffer-- and as true and relevant today as it was then. His point, of course, would seem to be the complete opposite of what you appear to be arguing here.
Could you explain why you think Bonhoeffer and I are taking opposite sides?
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
They didn't think you could get pregnant without sex with a man, and they knew it was the semen that was important, but there seems to have been a widespread belief, reflected in the passages we've been looking at, that some part of the semen remained in the woman (in her blood, it was assumed) and would be expressed, presumably to a diminishing degree, in subsequent births.
Compare with the belief of the ancient Modenwestennas that two people can swap a child's existing DNA with their own via a ritual called 'adoption'. Upon signing what were called 'adoption papers' it was believed that they became the parents of the child.
Seriously, child is not solely a biological category in any society. It is a cultural category just as much. To claim that the OT writers had an essentially biological understanding of whose child is whose in these texts, and that this esssentially biological understanding is faulty, is a naive eisegesis. A self-proclaimed anti-realist particularly ought not to make that interpretation.
This tangent refuses to die!
I'm not making any claim about the meaning of child. I know that there was a belief before modern genetics that some part of the male principle persisted in the female and could be expressed in subsequent matings with different males, and I'm suggesting that a law in Deuteronomy and levirate marriage might be evidence that some at least in ancient Israelite society held that view.
The bigger point is that there were numerous different understandings of conception and inheritance in biblical times, and we mustn't assume that Matthew and Luke's understanding of these matters, and the way they framed their ideas of the Virgin Birth on the one hand, and what seems obvious to people today (with our identical world views) on the other, are similar.
[ 29. September 2016, 22:59: Message edited by: hatless ]
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My crazy theology in novel form
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I have in mind the idea that Christ was God in some sense that isn't true of me, you or Jeremy Corbyn.
That's OK then. I believe in the Incarnation very enthusiastically.
Well ISTM the Incarnation, with or without the Chalcedonian definitions, is already, in your terms, an example of the outside breaking in.
ISTM the dichotomy you describe already has a name in classical theo-speak: it is the Scandal of Particularity. The idea that an infinite God was bound in a particular man in a particular time and place. And this Scandal isn't a theological obscurity but lies at the heart of Christianity.
So classical theologians agree that God is the ground of our being and the Prime Mover - which corresponds to your 'nature is super' - but also, although the 'old man on a cloud' stuff that the ex Bishop of Woolwich objected to isn't literally true, it's nonetheless somehow a fitting image for God - which I think corresponds to your 'super-natural'. Just as God is the God of generalities - such as the Imago Dei in each of us - He can also be the God of particularities - the Incarnation. And in the same way, if He is the God of general scientific laws, He can also be the God of specific events, such as miracles.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
hatless wrote: quote:
The bigger point is that there were numerous different understandings of conception and inheritance in biblical times, and we mustn't assume that Matthew and Luke's understanding of these matters, and the way they framed their ideas of the Virgin Birth on the one hand, and what seems obvious to people today (with our identical world views) on the other, are similar.
Is there any chance that you could point us to some source that gives evidence for this assertion about the understanding of conception (relating to the retention of the male seed), hatless? I've not heard of it, and if it exists it needs to be shown that it was believed within the community we are talking about.
There are papers on this subject, as I pointed out in another recent post. And FWIW, they don't conclude that the dominant belief was that the woman merely acted as an incubator. That would more realistically describe the medieval view, which is sometimes called sub-Aristotelian. (Aristotle believed that conception required two active principles - the seed from the man and the menstrual blood from the woman).
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
So, hatless, how does Incarnation work without being physically conceived by the Holy Spirit? And if that's impossible how can dead meat be resurrected?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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