Hieronymus
1mo ago
I wish that passage were given more weight, but I don't think it's that open-ended. It's most likely a reference to rights established by the English constitution as the authors understood it, with an emphasis on those in the Declaration of Right. It may also include some common-law rights.
If read in that light, I think it would have some radical implications. But it wouldn't establish a compelling interest test for each and every federal law.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
Republicans have managed to get elected roughly half the time, so it seems like it's you who's trying to escape all accountability here. If you say they couldn't do anything because of progressive Republicans, well, maybe you should have won more elections.
These two sentences contradict one another.
Man, I think that men who pine for a virgin bride have caught a glimpse of the loveliness in the life you’ve described. I wish someone could explain the rest to them such that they could see the beauty of the whole package. Some secular men would be moved by it; many others would at least respect it. And it would strengthen the spines and zippers of Christian men and women alike.
I’m not the right person to do it. I’m not even sure what form it would take. But it would be a win for truth and beauty, to say nothing of the people involved.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
I hadn't seen this, so I wanted to read the statement. I found an ANC statement (not technically the government, I suppose) on reddit. I couldn't find it on the terribly-organized ANC website, but I could confirm its legitimacy by finding a copy on a regional ANC Twitter account.
And wow, it's even worse than you said:
Let it be categorically stated: there are no Afrikaner refugees in South Africa. No section of our society is hounded, persecuted or subject to ethnic victimisation. These claims are a fabrication and a cowardly political construct designed to delegitimise our democracy and insult the sacrifices made by generations who fought for freedom. ...
What the instigators of this falsehood seek is not safety, but impunity from transformation. They flee not from persecution, but from justice, equality and accountability for historic privilege.
The misuse of refugee protections to shield right-wing, anti-transformation elements is a violation of the spirit and letter of international law. ...
I am particularly struck by the phrase "impunity from transformation."
Hieronymus
1mo ago
These were public policies made by public health professionals. The public health professionals thought the vaccines reduced infection rates and that's why they set the policy the way they did.
They did believe this, but I also remember discussions about how privileges could incentivize vaccination. I think that was applied as an argument in both directions: It was a reason to allow vaccine passports rather than just keeping things closed altogether, and it was an argument for not loosening things up on those the speaker considered defectors against society.
Fortunately for me, my blue state tended to either open things up or close them rather than using a passport strategy, as I was both vaxxed and stubbornly opposed to proving it on principle.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
I am not a libertarian, and I am certainly no ancap. I have some very strong classical liberal leanings, but classical liberalism is not the summum bonum.
The family, as a classic example of natural duty, is one of the great weaknesses of a thoroughgoing, non-agression-principle–centered libertarianism. Libertarianism in its heart of hearts wants to divide the world into free agents and property; children are neither. They are both human and inescapably dependent. It is baked into the order of creation, and no one can will it away. They are not the only example, but they are by far the clearest.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
Perhaps I'm misreading you, but voluntary associations and state power aren't all there is. It's true that state power often tries to replace, or even actively attacks, voluntary associations. But it often acts the same way toward natural bonds which impose duty.
I'd argue that child support in 21st-century America is more often an effort to replace natural duty by state power than it is an effort to enforce that duty. But when the state does try to backstop natural (or even long-established social) institutions, it has the option to do so with a much lighter hand than when it tries to replace them.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
Last I checked, the highest rate of antidepressant usage by sex and profession was men working with small children, and it was more than twice the next item on the list.
I mean, have you ever tried throwing a toddler over your shoulder and spinning him around while he giggles? It's pretty great.
I can totally see how childcare at daycare scale with daycare constraints would grind me down. I also wonder how much the current rules are the way they are because they're written by and for women. And I'm also curious how much the depression you refer to is increased or decreased by selection effects.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
Sounds a bit like human sacrifice and scapegoating doesn't it?
Unironically yes. The Bible depicts it as a sacrifice: though those who killed Jesus didn’t intend it that way, Jesus did. And if you do a quick search, you will find a million sermons with titles like “Christ our Scapegoat,” referencing the literal scapegoat in Leviticus.
Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, offering himself as a sacrifice to God the Father on behalf of sinners is the mechanism. It’s the core of Christian belief.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
I have wondered if we could create a new version of the marriage contract: "Enhanced Marriage," which both parties can opt into that makes it MUCH harder to get divorced AND adds additional legal duties on both sides (and presumably some additional benefits) so that they are tied more strongly together.
There was an attempt at this with covenant marriage, but it doesn't seem to have accomplished much. That said, it'd be interesting to hear from mottizens who live in states where that's an option. It looks like it was watered down to make the law acceptable to the mainstream and undermined by the availability of no-fault divorce in other states.
And, while I can't speak for all social conservatives, I'd be reluctant to support any new version of this so long as Obergefell stands.
The thing is that cooking and washing were compatible with childcare, while teaching and medicine generally are not. Children benefit from stay-at-home moms; I did, anyway. And if your values differ from those of the broader culture, daycare is likely to drag your kids at least part way to that culture.
I know that this isn't practical for all families. But we should try to make it practical for as many families as we can. And for those couples who are on the fence about what to do, we should let them know that it's good for them and their kids.
Edit: Since this discussion started with college, I'd like to add that the liberal arts are valuable for most intelligent people -- the actual liberal arts, not activism in a skinsuit. Making those available in a way that is culturally and economically compatible with housewifery as a life path is a worthwhile goal in itself.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
No one is denying the relevance of Christianity’s Jewish roots. The Old Testament is important, and Jesus as the Jewish Messiah is a central doctrine of Christianity. But gentiles were included from a very early date.
I want to riff on hydroacetylene’s examples, keeping in mind that the Battle of Milvian Bridge, when Constantine began to move toward Christianity, happened in 312.
Acts 10–11 covers the Jewish church’s acceptance of gentile converts, and Acts 15 relates the decision not to impose the Mosaic law on them. Even if you do not accept Acts as history, it demonstrates the presence of gentile converts who did not practice the Jewish law at the time the book was written. It may be from the 60s, because it doesn’t include Paul’s death, but I think that some liberal scholars have it as late as the early second century.
The Didache is a super interesting document of early Christian teaching and practice. It has a ton of Jewish influence, but it also takes pains to distinguish Christians from non-Christian Jews (ch. 8) and to include gentiles (14:3). Its date is hotly disputed; it is most likely from the first century, but at the latest from the middle of the second.
The church fathers cover a long span of time, but they begin in the late first century. The earliest group is called the apostolic fathers (as distinct from the apostles themselves), and they take it as a given that the church includes gentiles.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
The classical liberal chamber of my heart grew three sizes today. A move that simultaneously targets overregulation, the illegibility of the administrative state, and strict liability? I hope that the president can find a way to parlay this into lasting change.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
Sure. But then, all people would be the same in that regard. Love has to single out a particular person (or a particular thing) in contradistinction to others.
Fair enough. I think that's a pretty base level definitional difference with Christianity.
When I looked into liberation theology, what I found was a group of people using gospel language but assigning the terms Marxist definitions. It wasn’t that they denied the resurrection but that they rendered it irrelevant, something one could take or leave. If that’s not representative, I’ll be pleasantly surprised; I considered reading Gutiérrez, but by that point I wasn’t particularly inspired to look deeper.
I will have to check out your link.
Edit: Do you know of a link to the words of the people’s mass you linked? My Spanish isn’t great, and I will do a better job muddling through text than audio.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
It means that love of neighbor follows from love of God, but the former doesn’t subsume the latter.
Let me give an example that I read a zillion years ago in the New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. I may get the details wrong, and I haven’t confirmed the thoroughness of the book’s sources, but it works just as well as a thought experiment anyway:
A woman was in the custody of the Soviet secret police. These sometimes took a perverse joy in breaking people they weren’t going to let leave alive anyway, and they had decided to break her faith. When maiming her legs didn’t do it, they brought in her children and threatened to shoot them if she did not deny Christ. She refused, and the secret police shot her children in front of her.
If love of God is the higher good, she did the right thing. It’s not that she didn’t love her children enough; it’s that she loved God more than that.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
These are not evangelical theologies---and it's fine to dislike them for that reason…
The gulf here is much wider than that. If Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead, then confessional Lutheranism, or Roman Catholicism, or Eastern Orthodoxy falls apart. Liberation theology and the social gospel movement keep on trucking.
… but they obviously incorporate the supernatural.
Only in the sense that they try to “use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop,” in Lewis’ inimitable phrase.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” is the second greatest commandment. The greatest is, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The two commandments are not the same, and the order is important. You can’t just swap out the gospel for any old cause, not even one that preaches love.
If you remove the supernatural bits from Christianity, you are not left with a new kind of Christianity; you have a new movement wearing Christianity as a skin suit. There have been plenty of these. Off the top of my head, liberation theology, the social gospel movement, and the preaching of John Ball seem to be pretty straightforward parallels.
The command to love your neighbor does not imply that you are to love everyone to the same degree and in the same way. Christians disagree among ourselves about the details. I personally find the first epistle of John to be helpful here, but I also consider it one of the most difficult books of the New Testament. A lot of people read John talking about love, have fuzzy feelings, and ignore the things he says that make it complicated.
I don’t know enough Aristotelian (I assume) philosophy to speak fittingly in terms of essences, properties, and qualities. But I can point out that in Christian belief all men possess the image of God, which gives them value in itself and may resolve your dilemma.
No problem, still appreciate the reply. Hope it's been interesting for you as it has in return. Or maybe I have too much time on my hands.
I respect and appreciate the enthusiasm.
To be frank, my ADHD makes it hard for me to handle all the subjects of discussion in our exchange and consistently organize my replies in a useful way. As a younger man perhaps I would have made it work by hyperfocusing on the thread to the exclusion of all else, but that’s rare these days. Since it’s the best I can do tonight, rather than leave you hanging I am going to summarize a couple of partial thoughts.
I agree that Hebrews was probably not written by Paul but by someone in his circle. In the absence of internal attribution I am partial to the Barnabas theory, but that’s really underinformed speculation on my part.
I somehow did not predict that the Mormon view of Hebrews would be so different, but in retrospect it would have to be to correspond to the Mormon view of priesthood. I think that view bakes in some assumptions about what the Levitical priesthood is for, though, that I want to dispute. The primary function of the Old Testament priesthood was to present offerings to God, particularly sacrifices. That’s why the author of Hebrews presents it as being not only surpassed but replaced by Christ’s role as a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (e.g., Heb. 10:8–14).
That phrase, “after the order of Melchizedek,” is a reference to Psalm 110, which is a royal psalm. The phrase applied to David as king in Jerusalem, so David is being treated as a type and Christ the antitype. Christ is priest-king in a way that David only foreshadowed, and he is a priest forever unlike Aaron or (metaphorically) David. He made his one sacrifice, himself, and sat down at the right hand of God. But the office of priest-king is unique; since Jesus lives forever, he can have no successor. There cannot be another priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 7–10, more or less).
I really have to spell it out for you people, I guess. Encourage Protestants to use the power of the state to enforce their religious morality and they may well decide to come after Catholicism, which they have traditionally seen at best as a corrupt and degraded form of Christianity.
I, for one, appreciate having this spelled out. I might have anticipated that objection during the George W. Bush administration, but I don’t anticipate it now.
I think you are writing in good faith, but I don’t think you understand how Protestant social dynamics have evolved. When Berry says “a Protestant nation,” he has a different idea what that means than a turn-of-the-twentieth-century counterpart might have had. While on a theological level Catholic vs. Protestant theological differences mean as much as they ever did, on a social level differences between theological liberalism and theological conservatism are much more salient. (This is strongly related to social progressivism vs. social conservatism and weakly related to economic leftism vs. economic rightism.)
If Berry got his dream, would he shutter Roman Catholic schools? No, I don’t think so. Would he shutter Jesuit schools? Maybe. But not because of Jesuits’ oaths of loyalty to the pope – because they are, in fact, liberal as heck.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
I don’t have the time or focus tonight to give this as thorough a reply as I’d like, particularly to the biblical references, but I will write what I can and try to pick out the most important points.
For us, a modern council of 12 apostles is where the overall legitimacy resides, as it did anciently, given by various figures literally appearing and laying on hands in the earlier days of the church….
Ah, I see where your reservations about Paul come from. Interestingly, while no biblical figure matches the idea of apostleship you lay out below, including Jesus’ twelve disciples, St. Paul comes closest in other respects.
Authority is also nearly synonymous with the actual right to receive specific guidance for your position, such as leading the church, and at the top that encompasses doctrinal revelation.
This explanation is very helpful, and I think it’s a very important difference between Mormonism and Christianity.
I would view it as a great error to assume humans are allowed to do it all by themselves with their own permission (Hebrews 5:4).
Hebrews is saying something almost the opposite of that. It’s about how the high priesthood of Christ is the ultimate reality toward which the Levitical priesthood pointed. Christ having accomplished his sacrifice once for all, the Old Testament priesthood is now unnecessary.
The scriptures are great, my church did actually come from a Sola Scriptura initial background, but in general the intention is for them to be used alongside current divine guidance (eg 2 Tim 3:16-17).
I don’t see how you get that from 2 Timothy at all. Particularly if you look at the whole passage starting in verse ten, Paul is saying that the Scripture itself is edifying, that it gives knowledge of salvation, and that it lets one discern false teachers. Verse 16 discusses its use between Christians in a way that applies to church leaders, but there is no sign of an expectation of ongoing revelation to those leaders.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
I appreciate the summary. Could you clarify what you mean by authority in this context? You seem to be using it in a particularly Mormon way.
It likely goes without saying, but the Protestant take is that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative guide to the apostolic faith and that all subsequent teachers are to be judged by that standard; the canon is closed.
Obviously, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have their takes on the apostolic succession, but I don’t think their notion of authority is the same as yours, and it would be interesting to see it explained from your side.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
As a Protestant, I agree with you that the papacy is no guarantor of doctrinal fidelity. But the core question is this: The pope is said to be the vicar of Christ – is he? Flawed historical assertions and doctrinal contradictions count as evidence against the claim, but the claim itself is true or false and should be addressed as such. (Whether this is the right forum to go deep on that question is a separate issue.)
The same is true of claims about the president of the Mormon church: Is he a true or false prophet? Having a true prophet may be useful, but that doesn’t determine whether Joseph Smith and Russell Nelson qualify. Flawed historical assertions and doctrinal contradictions count as evidence here too. And I think it’s audacious to say that the LDS score well.
What about the Mormon history of pre-Columbian America, which doesn’t jive with any historical source or archeological finds? Or the book of Abraham, whose source manuscripts turned out to be Egyptian funerary texts once we could read hieroglyphs? Or the edits to the Book of Mormon regarding the nature of the godhead? Or the doctrines which were said to be unchangeable but were nevertheless changed, like plural marriage?
Hieronymus
2mo ago
I am not sure if you mean to imply more depth than you give explicitly, but the version you wrote is not the same as Magusoflight’s. I think it’s misleading to say, “This is fine,” without qualification, at least where kids are involved.
Consider teaching children about paraplegia. You want children to respect its victims and to be aware of what they really are and are not capable of. You want them to understand that disability is not a moral failing. But you don’t want them to think that being wheelchair-bound is just as good as being able to walk, that it’s no affliction at all, and that given a choice between being healthy or paraplegic there is no reason to prefer one over the other.
I think that the folks adding intersex conditions to the preschool and grade school curricula are trying to say that there is no reason to prefer not to be intersex; they are looking to deconstruct sex and gender in the minds of children as young as they can get them. To teach that this is an affliction, to add that little bit of complexity, would undermine their goals.
This is my third draft of this comment. I am trying to figure out how to articulate this clearly and with a minimum of snark.
Your first paragraph is a 100% correct critique of 2rafa’s read of Barrett. But I think your second paragraph betrays a tendency common among Roman Catholics to read current practice back into history as always having been the practice of the church, and this is mistaken. Aquinas would not have accepted Catholic social teaching – the body which has evolved since the late 19th century – as it is now. Very few Roman Catholics, and perhaps no popes, before the twentieth century would have accepted the position on the death penalty now given in the Roman catechism.
I think that a great deal of Catholic social teaching as it now exists is the product of Western modernism. At its best it can include some genuinely countercultural Christian teaching. (As a Protestant, I particularly appreciated Rome’s stand against torture when everyone else seemed to be losing his mind.) But it is not above the fray or immune to secular influences, often to its detriment.
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