entanglingbriars

[entanglingbriars]

For a lot of non-mainstream and/or non-Western Christians and also a surprising number of Jews, original sin is "the doctrine we don't believe in" and the actual contents of the doctrine is a secondary concern at best.

[entanglingbriars]

You've mentioned in the past that Eastern Christianity and some forms of Western Christianity (namely, Mormonism) reject original sin. That's one of those technically-true-but-misleading statements.

All forms of Christianity accept what non-theologians are usually talking about when they say "original sin": that humans are all mortal and sinful due to Adam's sin. What they reject is the specific Augustinian articulation of original sin (that fallen humans can do nothing but sin without grace, that all humans are personally guilty of Adam's sin, and that said guilt is sexually transmitted), which I suspect only traditional Western theologians, Calvinists and some particularly sex-hating Catholics believe today.

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See, I think it's the other way around. I think originally you were right, the rejection was specifically the Augustinian articulation. But the Catholic Church, as far as I can tell, hasn't articulated the doctrine that way (particularly the transmission via sex) in ages. If that's the case, Eastern Orthodox Christians (among others) should say "We're so glad that the Church has rejected the dumb parts of the doctrine and now we're in agreement with them."

But they don't. The continue to say they reject original sin, which to me suggests the rejection is less about the Augustinian articulation and more about marking themselves as different from mainstream Western Christian thought.

Tagging @apenitentialprayer

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People read John 8:1-11 and think the reader is supposed to identify with Jesus, not the scribes and Pharisees (or the woman). You see similar issues with the Parable of the Good Samaritan (although it's less pronounced).

I think a lot of Christians who fixate on sin (the ones who follow up every example of Jesus loving a sinner with “BUT THEN HE TOLD THEM NOT TO SIN ANYMORE!!!!”, the ones who constantly remind everyone they know that we are called to give up worldly things, we’ve all met this type of believer) are responding from a place of trauma.

I think a lot of them cut off vital parts of themselves in the name of false sacrifice. I think they were told by misguided religious leaders or uninformed friends or unhelpful communities that they needed to lose some of what made them a unique child of God in order to become acceptable to Him, and they see this painful amputation as a necessary thing that they were able to do out of their love and devotion. They make some fundamental piece of their soul a sacrifice and lay it on the altar like Abraham with Isaac.

And then they see someone who hasn’t done that, and still calls themself a Christian. Someone who is authentically a believer and passionate and orthodox without losing who they were before their conversion. And it makes them wonder, on some level - why did I have to make this sacrifice, if others didn’t? It’s hard to acknowledge spiritual and religious abuse from parents and pastors and priests and communities. It’s hard to deconstruct and walk away from ideologies that are hateful when they lie about being loving instead.

It’s easier to say “no, I’m right, it’s everyone else who’s not serious about this like I am”. It’s self-soothing. It’s a sign you love Jesus more authentically than others. If your life is going badly it’s a sign you deserve to be saved more. It breeds all the kinds of hypocrisy and self-importance our Lord warns against.

And idk I find it really sad. If something’s really sinful and bad and unhealthy, giving it up doesn’t feel like a wound that never heals. It feels like freedom.

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if youre freaked about the social construction of “natural” just wait till you hear about “real”

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Have you considered starting your own new version of Christianity that everyone can join?

I Long For An End To The Schisms Separating Me From My Siblings In Christ

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The census didn't happen. Luke made it up to get Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Matthew solved the problem by having Mary be from Bethlehem, then fleeing to Egypt with Jesus, and then moving to Nazareth. The massacre of the innocents, which was what Mary and family were fleeing, is also a fabrication.

Are there records of the tax census outside of the Bible that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem? I can't find any account of it in historical records. Maybe "lost"?

there are no records. they have to have moved there, though. prophecy is heavy and asks much of us

[entanglingbriars]

So in Judaism holiness has a distinct and strong connotation of separation. If something is holy it is set apart from everything else. The existence of the sacred is predicated on other things being profane or secular. So to speak of all days, all people, or all places as holy doesn't really work in a Jewish context.

Certain things, places, people, and times are set aside in Judaism and are therefore holy. There are also degrees of holiness. The Jewish people are set apart from other peoples and are therefore holy, but among the Jews there are tzaddikim who are holy relative to other Jews.

So Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) is holy. But relative to Eretz Yisrael, Jerusalem is holy. Relative to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount is holy. Relative to the Temple Mount, the precise spot where the Holy of Holies was located is holy. And these holinesses are all absolute. They are holy by virtue of their physical, geographic location

Things like a synagogue, on the other hand, aren't holy by virtue of location (at least not originally), but because they are buildings set aside for worship. They might come to be seen as inherently holy if a great sage taught or worshiped at them, but for the most part their holiness is their purpose, not their location.

Outside of Israel, holiness as regards to place is less important than holiness as regards to time. You could call a synagogue holy (as I do above), and you can desecrate one, but the religious significance is relatively low. But days that have been set aside as holy are of immense importance. Shabbat is the obvious one, but what I think a lot of gentiles don't realize is that Shabbos is the holiest day in Judaism. Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, Rosh Hashanah, etc are all less holy than Shabbat. The only possible exception is Yom Kippur, which is the only Holy Day when all the prohibitions of work on Shabbats apply (normally certain forms of work are permitted on holy days even though they are forbidden on Shabbat).

That said, there's a legend of a man who was imprisoned and told he could be free one day each year. The sages debated which day he should choose. Shabbat, which is the holiest day? Yom Kippur, which is as holy as Shabbat and also the final opportunity in the year to atone for sin? Passover with the seder and other rituals? But in the end they decided he should elect for the first day available.

ETA: When you get married, you declare that your spouse has become holy to you specifically.

The fear of paganism has never really made sense to me. “Christmas is pagan” no it’s not but of it we’re who cares. I wouldn’t have any problem worshipping my God in a pagan temple; I don’t have a problem worshiping him on a pagan feast day. ALL days belong to Him. He is the Master of Eternity, the Lord of History. Every day is the Lords day, rejoice and be glad brotha

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it's probably a remnant from Judaism which traditionally regards merely entering a pagan temple (or a church for that matter) as idolatry

The fear of paganism has never really made sense to me. “Christmas is pagan” no it’s not but of it we’re who cares. I wouldn’t have any problem worshipping my God in a pagan temple; I don’t have a problem worshiping him on a pagan feast day. ALL days belong to Him. He is the Master of Eternity, the Lord of History. Every day is the Lords day, rejoice and be glad brotha

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The halakha is that if someone's foreskin grows back or is artificially pulled down they have to be re-circumcised. This is a rabbinic obligation, not directly from the written Torah.

I have a question about wolfenstein and Judaism.

Spoilers for wolfenstein the new colossus but BJ gets his head chopped off and put on a new body. I'm pretty sure that body was lab grown so hypothetically it would have every body part, including the foreskin. And BJ is Jewish.

So does BJ have to get circumcised again or is God fine with just the first one?

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The most common position historically, as I understand it, is that God transcends masculinity and femininity, but has chose to reveal himself to humanity as masculine and should therefore be addressed as such. But that doesn't mean God is masculine per se, just that he wants us specifically to use he/him pronouns for him.

There are of course countertraditions to this, my favorite of which is CS Lewis' who took the position that God is so masculine that everything else is feminine in relation to him. Some more progressive and liberal theologians today will use God/Godself pronouns for God,* which imo gets super unwieldy, but I understand the motivation.

*I once read a theology class syllabus that required the use of God/Godself pronouns when not quoting someone else.

Okay, huddle up gang. Are they saying the Christian God is transmasc?

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The writer of Matthew deliberately paralleled Jesus' life to Moses'. If something is a Moses allegory it can almost certainly also be read as a Jesus allegory (though this rarely works as well in reverse).

Some of the parallels:

A bunch of infants were killed when Jesus/Moses was killed, but he semi-miraculously escaped

The ancestors of Jesus/Moses journeyed from Israel to Egypt (in Moses' case his great-something grandparents, in Jesus' case his parents) and therefore by extension

Jesus/Moses came up out of Egypt

Moses/Jesus was a literal/metaphorical shepherd (and in the case of Moses became a metaphorical shepherd as well)

Jesus has five major sermons in Matthew, which is clearly intended to evoke the idea of the five books of Moses

if I see another moses-coded character being yapped about as a jesus allegory by goyim I will explode something

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I think I was overreaching to say literalism was invented to justify slavery, but I do think there's a reason it rose to its greatest prominence in the US and that reason has a lot to do with slavery.

Was literalism really created to justify slavery? The way I heard it was that it came about as a combination of the Protestant doctrines of sola scriptura (making it vital that the meaning of a given passage could be pinned down) and the perspicuity of Scripture (making people suspicious of interpretations beyond the "plain meaning" of the text). And, ironically, this led to the historical-critical method: treating, say, the Pentateuch as strictly historical results in awkward questions like "How did the author(s)' biases shape the text? Did the events happen as depicted? Did they happen at all?"

(To be fair, I think I might be using "literalism" in a different sense to you - "any given passage has one meaning and should not be allegorised" is not the same as "every passage is strictly literal history".)

So this isn't my area of expertise, I'm mostly basing this off of work done by Fred Clark, who while I think he has academic training, is not a scholar. When I say literal I very much do mean "every passage is strictly literal history." But the thing that makes literalism literalism, imo, isn't its view that scripture accurately relays literal history (not an uncommon view for a number of different hermeneutical schools), but rather that the most important thing about scripture is that it accurately relays literal history.

The beauty of that paradigm is that it discourages looking for overarching themes in favor of discrete incidents. Black Christianity famously uses the Exodus narrative along with other passages in the Prophets and Gospels to construct a biblical narrative that opposes slavery. White American literalism says "Yes, there was a historical exodus, but that doesn't support the idea that the Bible opposes slavery because we have these other passages saying the Israelites kept slaves." It prevents readings that investigate the text and probe it for meaning.

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do you think christianity is inherently antisemitic? like christianity kind of requires supercessionism to work which is problematic

There are a few different ways to look at this question. The answers supplied below are not intended to cohere into a single statement so much as to provide a range of perspectives that are generally complementary and occasionally contradictory.

In general I think it's better to say that Christianity is anti-Judaism than antisemitic. Antisemitism implies a racialized attitude towards Jews that is simply not applicable for most of Christian history. Yes, you do get ideas like the second portion of original sin Jews have from killing Jesus that were floating around Catholicism (though never adopted formally) in the late Nineteenth/early Twentieth Centuries, but that's very much an anomaly.

I don't think there's any way to escape the problem that for Christianity to be true, Jews must be misinterpreting our scriptures. Paul and Luke have a better grasp on the Law and Prophets than Hillel and Shammai.

Supersessionism and anti-Judaic ideas aren't incidental to Christian theology. They're as baked-in as concepts like the Trinity and (for Western Christianity) original sin. If you want to get rid of them you have to re-evaluate the entirety of your theology, not just the parts that are explicitly and obviously supersessionist.

On that note, Christianities without the Trinity and original sin do exist. There are even Western Christianities without original sin. They tend to be regarded as extremely heretical at best and not even really Christian at all at worst by mainstream Christians.

There's a difference between a theological position about Judaism that is not anti-Judaic (not uncommon in the late Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries) and a theological position about Judaism that is coherent in light of the remainder of that denomination's theology (much less common. Also an issue for Christianities that accept human evolution, among other things).

There is probably no way to construct Christianity that won't be regarded by Jews as a misappropriation and misunderstanding of our tradition.

Christianity is an exclusivist religion, by which I mean it necessarily requires that other religions are either wrong or grasp only a portion of the full truth revealed in Christianity.

Judaism also has exclusivist elements, but while there is room for some other religions to be equally valid alongside Judaism if Judaism is true, Christianity is in the awkward position of being literal idolatry if Judaism is true.

What Christian doctrine teaches about Judaism is less important than what Christian history has done about Judaism. Even if a way were found to fully expunge all anti-Judaism from Christian doctrine, there would still be almost two thousand years of Christians killing us, forcibly converting us, forcing us to the margins of society, and blaming us for their social problems.

Most of the Big Names in Christian theology were virulently opposed to Judaism, accused us of deicide, supported our deaths or disenfranchisement, and believed us to be deliberately rejecting God in favor of Satan. Those Big Names are also the main source for almost all of modern Christian theology. It would be nice to think that their views on Jews and Judaism didn't affect their other theological positions, but I find this unlikely.

Individual Christians are not responsible for the entirety of the history of Christian practice and teaching. They are only responsible for their own beliefs and actions.

For the most part, Jews don't really care what Christians believe in their hearts about us, what we really want is for them to stop trying to convert us.

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The Paradesi synagogue (built in 1568), Cochin, India

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Was literalism really created to justify slavery? The way I heard it was that it came about as a combination of the Protestant doctrines of sola scriptura (making it vital that the meaning of a given passage could be pinned down) and the perspicuity of Scripture (making people suspicious of interpretations beyond the "plain meaning" of the text). And, ironically, this led to the historical-critical method: treating, say, the Pentateuch as strictly historical results in awkward questions like "How did the author(s)' biases shape the text? Did the events happen as depicted? Did they happen at all?"

(To be fair, I think I might be using "literalism" in a different sense to you - "any given passage has one meaning and should not be allegorised" is not the same as "every passage is strictly literal history".)

So this isn't my area of expertise, I'm mostly basing this off of work done by Fred Clark, who while I think he has academic training, is not a scholar. When I say literal I very much do mean "every passage is strictly literal history." But the thing that makes literalism literalism, imo, isn't its view that scripture accurately relays literal history (not an uncommon view for a number of different hermeneutical schools), but rather that the most important thing about scripture is that it accurately relays literal history.

The beauty of that paradigm is that it discourages looking for overarching themes in favor of discrete incidents. Black Christianity famously uses the Exodus narrative along with other passages in the Prophets and Gospels to construct a biblical narrative that opposes slavery. White American literalism says "Yes, there was a historical exodus, but that doesn't support the idea that the Bible opposes slavery because we have these other passages saying the Israelites kept slaves." It prevents readings that investigate the text and probe it for meaning.

[entanglingbriars]

I think this is on pretty solid ground philosophically/theologically speaking, but I also think it's on weak ground biblically speaking. The Bible very much makes a distinction not only between the miraculous and the mundane, but between different degrees of miraculousness.

So in Luke we have the miracle of the birth of John the Baptist, a miracle like that performed for Sarah because she was post menopause, but this is contrasted with the even more miraculous birth of Jesus to a virgin. Luke's point is clear: the birth of Jesus wasn't an everyday common miracle but a special, extra miraculous miracle.

Or the signs and wonders performed by Moses and Pharaoh's magicians. In many cases they are able to perform similar miracles, but Moses' miracles always triumph over or conquer the magicians.

The psalmist(s) definitely saw miracles in everyday creation, but I would contend that they are a minority voice. In general, the Bible understands miracles as a break from the natural working order of the world by God's deliberate breaking of that order.

In terms of tradition, both Christianity and Judaism have tended to side with the Psalms and say that almost everything is miraculous, but I know you're a Bible boy (girl?) so that might carry less weight with you.

Some Thoughts on Miracles

I don't really believe in a miracle/mundane divide. Metaphysically, I don't think there's a difference between God creating light, and the sun rising every day. I don't think there's a difference between Jesus turning water into wine and grapes naturally fermenting, nor do I believe there is a difference between Jesus feeding 5000 by multiplying bread or Christians feeding 5000 with a food bank.

I don't believe that there is anything more miraculous about a virgin birth than the birth of any newborn, nor is there anything specially miraculous about Jesus rising from the dead from you or I waking up every day.

We say that miracles are acts of God, then read "And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:17).

Jesus sustains everything around me and around you every second of every day!

There is nothing less miraculous about anything than everything, and there is no miracle made more miraculous because it is uncommon. Rareness is not synonymous with being more an act of God, all things are possible by the power of God.

If you want to see the act, the annunciation of God, look around you! The world is rich with miracles!

So if anyone would dismiss any miracle of the Bible on the ground that miracles can't happen, or suggests that a miracle is not miraculous because it has a natural explanation, I would like to ask. Why the dichotomy between the miraculous and the mundane?