D*cks and Doctrines
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
Ok, on the 'Humanity of Christ' thread it was established that Luther's doctrinal position on celibacy had changed before he engaged his dick.
I accept that.
The doctrine came first (pun intended).
Oh dear, dear, dear, I'll never get to heaven now ...
This raises another question, if I can resist salacious comments about disentangling our dicks from our doctrines - and that's the extent to which our doctrinal positions suit our proclivities.
I'm not saying they did in Luther's case. He put himself at considerable risk and it would appear that he didn't shack up with Katherine at the earliest opportunity.
But I am left wondering in broader and less physical terms, to what extent our 'choices' in the theological sense are determined by what we may, consciously or unconsciously, feel is better for us.
I place 'choices' in inverted commas because some Shipmates feel that they didn't actually 'choose' whatever doctrinal position or church affiliation they hold.
By all accounts, conversion between one religion and another is statistically rare in global terms. More often than not, people stay within the boundaries they were born within. In Christian terms that may still involve changes of address or church affiliation but rarely conversion to another faith.
Of course, we can't disaggregate all our motives and intentions. It would be impossible to do so, and probably even harmful. We'd be picking and unpicking things ad infinitum instead of getting on with life.
But I'd be interested in people's thoughts on this one.
I don't intend for this to become a thread on Luther's love-life. He was a human being like all the rest of us. Move along, there's nothing to see that many of us won't have seen already.
But the broader issues may be something to discuss.
I accept that.
The doctrine came first (pun intended).
Oh dear, dear, dear, I'll never get to heaven now ...
This raises another question, if I can resist salacious comments about disentangling our dicks from our doctrines - and that's the extent to which our doctrinal positions suit our proclivities.
I'm not saying they did in Luther's case. He put himself at considerable risk and it would appear that he didn't shack up with Katherine at the earliest opportunity.
But I am left wondering in broader and less physical terms, to what extent our 'choices' in the theological sense are determined by what we may, consciously or unconsciously, feel is better for us.
I place 'choices' in inverted commas because some Shipmates feel that they didn't actually 'choose' whatever doctrinal position or church affiliation they hold.
By all accounts, conversion between one religion and another is statistically rare in global terms. More often than not, people stay within the boundaries they were born within. In Christian terms that may still involve changes of address or church affiliation but rarely conversion to another faith.
Of course, we can't disaggregate all our motives and intentions. It would be impossible to do so, and probably even harmful. We'd be picking and unpicking things ad infinitum instead of getting on with life.
But I'd be interested in people's thoughts on this one.
I don't intend for this to become a thread on Luther's love-life. He was a human being like all the rest of us. Move along, there's nothing to see that many of us won't have seen already.
But the broader issues may be something to discuss.
Comments
The original Luther discussion was in the context of people(in general, not neccessarily the Ship) saying that Luther denounced celibacy simply because he wanted to get married, but on the thread you established that this is false, and he in fact had denounced it before he ever thought of getting married?
Hence my attempt to move the discussion to broader and more general issues leaving Luther to his happy marriage and, one hopes, his heavenly reward.
The question I have is to what extent our espousal of any doctrinal position can be a matter of self-interest.
In short, eternally punishing individual people for what amount to temporal victimless crimes seems ineffably cruel, and I for one see no reason in endorsing, let alone worshiping a deity that engages in such behavior.
I think the harm principle is a big one for me.
I often say that back when I was a teenager, growing up in a boring mainline church with friends who were evangelical, I'd generally assumed that homosexuality was somehow immoral far as God was concerned, but I couldn't understand, even growing up in a very heteronormative small town, why anyone found the practice so upsetting. Granted, I had no actual experience with sex at the time besides being lonely and straight, but it seemed like punishing two people for consensual sexual acts felt cruel and unusual. And that was even allowing that naive little straight me might have found such actions unpleasant to contemplate. Sex, within the bounds of consent, is pretty harmless, right? And everyone has sex for fun. I wasn't that naive.
I've always been strictly monogamous in my own life, though in hindsight that's as much driven by risk-avoidance as piety. And deep down, I think that's why a lot of evangelicals tell their sons and especially daughters to avoid premarital sex. Unwanted babies are expensive and STI's are awkward. You don't need to pile God's condemnation on top of that. Bringing children into the world when you're not able to provide for them is terrifying enough as it is.
Plus I've always been socially awkward enough in person that getting a partner was enough work. No sense risking that on stupid behavior.
So, I'm not sure it's entirely self interest that led me to conclude that the categorical condemnation of homosexual behavior just didn't make any sense. I'm not gay. But maybe on a deeper level I don't wish to see that kind of suffering, and I do not wish to endorse a God who is ineffably cruel and capricious. I have enough hate for the cruel, capricious operation of material reality as it is. If that's God, then God is the author of hell. And such a God is no God to me. It is no God of grace, it is no God of mercy, and it is no God of compassion. It's merely caprice. And maybe, on some level, the point of being religious is to reject that we must be governed merely by the capriciousness of reality-as-we-know-it. Let us not be "worldly."
I realise this is not your main point but just wanted to jump in to disagree. Interesting thoughts but by evangelical parents extolling premarital abstinence (rather than contraception, as most other parents would nowadays) it actually increases the risk of their kids getting pregnant or getting STIs....as when some of these kids do let their 'dicks drive their doctrines', as will inevitably happen for at least some, they will be the ones having unprotected sex with all the consequences.
Which doesn't mean it is right, of course.
And I think it is perfectly natural to want to protect our children from the murky reality of adulthood and sex. To want them to be permananty the innocent, lovely children we image them to be.
Once again, that doesn't make it right. We need to accept that they will grow up, have sex, make some of the mistakes we did.
And in contrast to the Determininsm thread, you've moved the criteria from liking our beliefs to feeling our beliefs are "better" for us. Which covers a wide range of possibilities. Maybe what Luther gave us were beliefs for people who don't like themselves.
I've heard it posited that extreme forms of Calvinism can appeal to people who 'hate themselves.'
Whether or not that is the case, I'm not sure it applies to Luther's take on things. I can see it applying to hair-shirt forms of asceticism.
Perhaps there are elements of that across the board.
It seems unavoidable, and can crop up in ways that may not seem immediately connected or obvious. To take another example from Martin Luther, how connected is his doctrine of sola fide to his well known anti-Semitism? Was Luther an anti-Semite because his theology led him to believe that the Jews were a literally damnable people? Or did his anti-Semitism lead him to adopt a theology that cast all practicing Jews outside of God's grace? As with a lot of these situations, it's almost impossible to pick out one thing as the cause and the other as an effect. They usually synergistically feed off each other.
I would agree that evangelical teachings on sexual praxis are incredibly stupid, and also ground up in control. But the fact that they are most stupidly trying to achieve something, or acting on anxiety, does not mean that the anxiety they're acting on isn't real or that their motivations aren't genuine.
Though there is another thread there, which is that parents want to assert parental control through these doctrines. Giving teens honest information is giving them independent agency and responsibility, and I suspect a lot of parents really aren't comfortable with that, so they lean hard on a doctrine of sexual ethics that encourages children to simply be under the control of their parents as much as possible.
And there you have it! Another example of humans putting their fingers on the scale of "biblical" ethics to suit their unconscious self interest! Well played!
Hmm ... interesting but given that RC and Orthodox Churches which don't espouse 'sola fide' have been -and still can be in the case of some Orthodox - highly anti-semitic, then I'd not want to push the connection too far.
His dealings with every other group can be viewed through that prism. From those with the Catholic Church, to other reformers like Zwingli and finally the Jewish community. I don't think it was down to any particular doctrine, but basically to type of person he was and he became.
That opinion does not, of course, change anything about whether God does or does not in fact engage in such behavior.
No, but it does make Christianity impossible, because one cannot love an unlovable God.
Don’t know about impossible. It’s probably worth looking at Faber’s hymn My God how wonderful Thou art.
Can love really be born out of fear? Like you, I don’t relate to that. But it seems others did and maybe still do.
Couple of things spring to mind - firstly I've always parsed that hymn as being awed by God's - enormousness? - but at the same time seeking a loving connection. I don't see anything in there pointing to God acting in a manner that denies love and arbitrarily condemns. It feels more like the fear I might have of being on Crib Bigog in a gale than the fear I might have of a masked man pointing a shotgun at me.
I don't think a love borne out of fear can be real. God the cosmic domestic abuser gathering his followers through a kind of Stolkholm Syndrome? I can't see it.
The Stockholm Syndrome comment hits the nail on the head.
The evidential basis of which is poor to non-existent.
I’ve met too many folks frightened of their own shadows to discount the negative impact of fear of God.
Genuine question—what kind of Christianity were you taught, and/or believe in now?
Also, hugs.
Heh. Interesting and difficult to answer questions.
Taught by whom?
Back in Primary School I was taught the Bible stories - well, sanitised versions of the sanitisable ones - the Nativity, Joseph and his coat, Easter... I remember thinking I was the only one who didn't believe in God at the time. I can't remember when I came to that conclusion - 7 or 8 perhaps.
Fast forward six or seven years and I'm studying Mark's Gospel for O Level and I got a sort of "Jesus bridges the estrangement between God and humans" which made a whole lot of sense at the time because something sure as Hell was blocking any sense of God's presence for me so I took the plunge. Memory is a little hazy about exactly what I believed at that point.
Shortly after I went off to University and that's where I started being really taught stuff in detail. I fell in with a Charevo Christian Union. Now this was highly seductive, promising the sense of God's presence that should be, well, present, now I was a Christian, according to what I'd understood.
Thus began my disillusionment. Not consciously, not at first, but the cracks were there. The soteriology I was learning was stark and clear - everyone's a sinner, sinners deserve Hell, everyone goes to Hell unless they repent, accept Jesus, etc. etc.. I believed that was Christianity and became very critical of liberal theology that watered down that message. The Charismatic side of what I was being fed made the genuine conversion and spiritual status of non-Charismatics very questionable too. "High and Dead" was how we saw mainstream Anglican churches.
But in time the cognitive dissonance beat me down. It didn't work. I came across YECcies - the first time I did I was one for about two days until I came to my senses - ironically set right by an otherwise pretty solid conservative Charevo. Later, YECcies were an obvious fault line - they started to be the majority of the Charevos I knew and I knew damned well they were utterly wrong about that - so what else were they wrong about? Sexuality was an obvious one - I'd never been able to work out why God apparently hated LGBT+ people so much - oh, it wasn't put that way, but that's really what it was. The line was that God loved LGBT+ folks and wanted to save them from their sinful desires, but those desires were only sinful because he'd decided they were, for no rationally discernible reason.
So then really everything was up for grabs.
What do I believe now? Wrong verb, I think. I hope and fear more than I believe. I hope that God is real and is Love - not Love redefined out of all recognition, but actual Love. I fear that God exists and is exactly how I believed he was when I was 19.
I’m pretty sure all sins are only sinful because God has decided they are. That’s kinda what sin is. Hell, that’s kinda what being God is all about.
As for rational discernment, who are we to put our puny, flawed, human reasoning above the Word of God, as if the latter is subject to the former rather than the other way around? God doesn’t have to justify Himself to us - that’s what the whole book of Job is about.
I cannot believe that. God forbids murder because it is evil. It does not become evil because God has arbitrarily decided it is, and he could just as easily declared it mandatory to murder someone every Tuesday morning or face his wrath.
I don't buy divine command theory any more than @KarlLB . "On these hang all the law, and the prophets". All "sins" are a violation of one or both of the great commandments; everything else is exposition.
I can go with Marvin's statement, but only from the other way up - that when I tried to be an atheist, I could find no good reason why any moral choice was more than a matter of opinion (or even style). Trying to make some choice or other mean something really meant violating the bare terms of my attempted atheism. Murder being evil chimes with something in our hearts, and (for me) this is one of the ways in which the image of God is imprinted on us. I know that's very convenient and post-hoc for a non-believer.
Thus it's good to be generous not because God just decided to penalise people who keep all their stuff, but because creaturely generosity imitates God's creation and love.
This sounds to me like you’re suggesting the concepts of good and evil exist independently of God, and that God is somehow subservient or subordinate to them.
The question there is simply “what does it mean to love someone?”
"Murder is wrong" is a pretty baseline ethical statement.
I've always thought you're closer to God when you find the kinds of thoughts that don't require someone to beat them into you with threats of violence.
Is it holier to be a thug enforcing arbitrary and capricious moral rules?
Morality is just a matter of opinion. The only question is whose opinion should hold sway. If God is not real, then it comes down to who can command enough of the machinery of state to enforce their own moral code, be it via dictatorship or via winning an election. If God is real, then it’s His opinion that rules because He is the ultimate King, the ultimate ruler of everything.
You say that murder being evil chimes with something in our hearts as if that’s a universal truth, but there are hundreds of thousands of murders every year, and therefore at least that many people who don’t agree that murder is such a universal evil.
I cannot imagine God could decree murder good any more than he could create a square circle. Morality is more than a list of actions and an arbitrary assignment of them to 'good' or 'bad'. As has been said, in Christianity, everything hangs on loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself. While there can be some wiggle on exactly what that means in practice, if "love" has to be so redefined that in another possible universe it can include murder, then it's moved so far from what we generally understand the word to mean that Scripture is totally misleading us by using the word.
Wow. I need to reread and digest this, but you have my prayers, absolutely. And vast numbers of hugs!!!
Yeah, but in orthodox theology good and evil don't just exist because God 'said so', but rather that God 'saying so' is an unfolding of his absolute holiness and righteousness.
Agreed. My understanding is that what we call “goodness” is a reflection of God’s nature, which is Love (loving God and one’s neighbor sums up the Law), and that He can no more make murder (actual murder—not all killing is murder) morally right than make 2 + 2 = 5. Or hatred of other people, for that matter.
This times a million! ❤️
In the OT He repeatedly decrees genocide and calls it good! Hell, he personally wiped out virtually all life on earth in the great flood! Then there was that whole Passover thing which is still considered worthy of celebration to this day.
That's the problem right there. Genocide is murder and God has already said murder is evil in the 10 commandments. Where's the consistency? Why do you think most Christians do not take the genocide passages or flood narratives at face value? This is why this whole question exists.
There's a grim quote from a sci fi* that comes to mind: With scarcity, the circle of civilization contracts into tribes, peoples, families, even down to "me." And I think that - generally speaking - "murder" means "to kill another person."
It is very clear that in many times and places, inside and outside the Bible, there have been cultures that deemed "other people" to be non-persons. It's mere killing to kill a non-person.
I learned a while ago not to put too much certainty on the text and to appreciate the Bible as, to an extent, a product of history, and sometimes a very naive one. It makes it easier for me to sort of forgive the bloody bits. I also look at current events and am reminded that "nation building is forever a horrifying process." It seems like everywhere you look, historically, there's a bloodbath around the time a big nation gets founded. America is no exception. Neither is England. Israel's may be regarded as a cautionary tale. So is ours.
I'm not proud of that. And I'm not sure I have an answer for it besides to try to be merciful, because nobody deserves what they've received.
* The Expanse, the bit I'm paraphrasing spoken by Amos Burton as performed by Wes Chatham. I recommend.
And for good reasons, so I've read, Jewish people stay very far away from that analogy. Because it's dangerous. It's the kind of thing that seems to justify genocide, the elimination of an entire People from the face of the earth. It's like I said, members of this culture are no longer persons, they're just enemy combatants, rivals in the contest for scarce resources, so killing them isn't an offense to God. They're just getting in the way. And that does put more contemporary conflicts into an interesting light.
Whether good or not, in the text, so it was ordered. So it was done.
Reading back in the text, it seems like these Amalekites were regional rivals, with a long history of retribution a la Hatfield and McCoys. You could also try to tie it into an anti-monarchic hermeneutic. Remember that God warned the Israelites not to follow a King? With Saul, suddenly the regional raiding of Exodus and Judges become a total war as tribal feuding escalates into organized military conquest.
Did God say this was good? Taking it back to seminary, where is God in the text? This might be one for Kerygmania. It's history. I suspect at one time it may have been considered a glorious story of martial valor, though not it is shameful.
But (for the others who may decide to continue on this dead horse) he does command it. So he commands evil. That may be even worse than calling it good.
I think I was in seminary when I learned about this Catholic notion of "Invincible Ignorance," that is suppose to cover folks who are or or were literally incapable of experiencing the gospel.
Of course, this creates a perverse incentive to never hear the gospel, if you're the gaming sort. And reminds me of Dante's Inferno where the first layer of hell is...remarkably pleasant. My college girlfriend remarked that it'd be pretty cool to just hang out with all the righteous pagans for eternity, since you never really felt the need for Jesus in the first place.
And of course, being given a choice of "do what I say or be punished" is no choice at all. In real life, isn't that called extortion?
I've been given a hard time over saying this before, but too much - erm - enthusiastic - Christianity absolutely does seem like Kissing Hank's Arse
I'm reminded also of Terry Pratchett's Faust Eric, where people only actually go to Hell if they really, really, believe they deserve to go there. So it's vitally important to shoot missionaries on sight.