Hieronymus
2yr ago
That explains so much. I remember being excited to see PCM have a shot at moving off-site, but the number of PCM users who joined was dwarfed by the number of rdrama users who did, so the culture was very different.
Hieronymus
6mo ago
Cultural differences are real and meaningful, but in this case I wonder if the difference in honesty looks bigger due to a difference in norms about how to return lost property. Unless I were in a small town, handing a lost wallet in to the police probably wouldn't occur to me, and then it would likely be option two or three.
Hieronymus
6mo ago
I can see why one might think so, as a polytheistic precursor to the version we now have, but it's not in line with Judean polytheists' practice. When King Josiah of Judah decided he was done putting up with all this pagan nonsense, the Jerusalem temple had plenty of artifacts of polytheistic worship for him to burn, grind up, and/or throw into the river.
Hieronymus
9mo ago
I think there are a modest but meaningful number of men online, whether they were successful cads or not, who are coming to realize that rejecting Christian sexual ethics has been bad for people of both sexes. I wonder if they'll be the one group of irreligious moderns who will find the natural law persuasive.
Hieronymus
1yr ago
… but he’s no Roy Moore.
This is definitely a tangent, but I haven’t kept up with political scandals. What do you mean? My recollection is that Moore was accused of some things that were really serious and some things that were merely weird; then, when some of the weird accusations were proved, people spoke as if the grave ones were too, mostly without evidence. But I am fully prepared to have missed some developments in the mean time.
Hieronymus
1yr ago
I happened to read it at that age. Although it's not exactly history, it did put our brief coverage of Hawaii in my US history class to shame.
Hieronymus
1yr ago
I want to offer a data point since your example caught my eye. My go-to butter, from a very respectable American dairy brand, is 81% butterfat. Butter isn’t what they’re most known for and I don’t think chefs seek it out, but I prefer it to the well-reviewed European brands I have tried. So it surprises me that the EU forbids it to be called butter.
On the other hand, America’s minimum alcohol content for liquor to be labeled with the obvious categories (whiskey, brandy, gin, etc.) is 80 proof (40% ABV) as opposed to the EU’s 75 proof (37.5% ABV). I don’t know what that says about us, but I am grateful for it.
Hieronymus
1yr ago
I would love to read it.
I appreciate your and @screye's replies on the culture war aspects. As an American I am used to reading western history with the bias of the author in mind. But that's hard to do for parts of the world where I don't have the context; I can sometimes intuit the author's biases, but their implications are not clear to me.
Hieronymus
2yr ago
Were they still punishing people for wrongthink by taking away their checkmarks, or had that also changed?
Hieronymus
2yr ago
But since the title of "king" generally meant "ruler" and not "husband of queen", there was historically a lot of reluctance to give this title to someone who married the female monarch, particularly in the days when the husband ruled the wife.
Yes, I see avoiding the implication that he ruled jure uxoris. That said, what would have been the implications if he had become co-ruler? It's hard for me to see how Britain would have been worse off for giving Albert or Philip more influence.
Hieronymus
2yr ago
Thanks!
Hieronymus
2yr ago
One more minor bikeshed: modhatted comments have the poster's username in white on bright red, apparently regardless of theme. While this makes sense for bans and such, the median mod comment on TheMotte has a much mellower tone. I'd suggest either changing the color to the traditional green or dialing back the amount of red color, e.g., underline the username and set it in red with no background.
Hieronymus
9d ago
Arthur, heir to the throne, Henry's elder brother and Catherine's husband, was married at the age of fifteen and died six months later of (presumed to be) the sweating sickness. There are allegations that he had been growing weaker and more sickly since the wedding in the period leading up to his death. Doubts about the consummation of the marriage are therefore not unreasonable.
That is a fair point.
It was Henry VIII who later had the scruples about "oh I must have inadvertently married my brother's widow, which is incest, and the Old Testament says God punishes that, this is why I have no living male heirs and must annul this illegal marriage so I can marry my current mistress", and put the pressure on the pope of the time to do so.
Well, yeah. It was a misreading of Leviticus – if it were correct then levirate marriage, commanded to Jews in the same book, would make no sense. But it was a misreading that underlay canon law. And you can see why the issue would obsess him.
You can believe she was lying because she was a jealous, spiteful woman...
She'd certainly have understandable reasons for jealousy. And if she had originally felt that lying was a minor offense made as much for Henry's sake as for hers, it wouldn't be at all shocking if she refused to come clean so that he could look justified in betraying her.
Hieronymus
1mo 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.
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).
Hieronymus
1mo 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
4mo ago
That you reject sanctity and natural law does not make them incoherent.
Hieronymus
5mo ago
Do people do this? The thought makes me motion sick.
Hieronymus
7mo ago
If that were the case, wouldn't it apply to Roman Catholic undergraduates as well as to seminarians?
I'm not Catholic nor close to Catholic seminaries, so this is just spitballing: I wonder if the situation can be explained by the facts that Roman Catholic seminarians are a relatively captive audience regardless of how liberal the institution is (in a way that Baptist seminarians, say, are not) and that young Catholic seminarians are heavily preselected for cultural and theological conservatism in a way that their professors weren't.
Hieronymus
8mo ago
What was uniquely bad about the initiative in Florida that it caused some supporters of legal abortion to vote against it?
I don’t think we can speculate too much without seeing the survey question. 14% is a pretty small number of abortion supporters, so maybe it’s the percentage comfortable with heavy restrictions plus or minus the lizardman’s constant.
Hieronymus
2yr ago
I look forward to reading your post. I hope you are right.
Hieronymus
2yr ago
I would distinguish pressure to conform to the culture, which all churches experience, from conformance as a source of legitimacy. Women’s ordination sure does look like the latter, though. I don’t know the terms of the debate over the word obey, but I would be interested to learn them; I recall reading Legg’s work at one point, and he writes largely in terms of precedent.
I am pretty sure that the Anglo-Catholics (whether they remained Anglicans or swam the Tiber) made their arguments against their low church brethren in other terms than conformity.
Hieronymus
2yr ago
I know a lot of people are asking for less whitespace, but please consider adding a little more vertical space between top-level comments. It would help to visually distinguish subtopics within the weekly threads.
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.
If you have another reliable record of apostolic teaching, you should listen to it. But you don't – both Rome and Constantinople have a history of backdating later innovations to ascribe apostolicity to them. Tradition can be useful, but to call it authoritative is an error.
Fortunately that's not needed here, because the Bible speaks to the issue. If Cruz gets it wrong, well, Cruz gets it wrong.
I'd like to respond with some clever remark about Roman Catholics in power, but that'd be silly because, like Protestants, they are too varied a group to generalize about that way. As far as I'm aware of Eastern Orthodox politicians in traditionally Orthodox countries, they seem more driven by ethnic nationalism than by any particularly Christian concerns.
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