To_Mandalay
2d ago
I know it's ackshually dulia but if you don't assume Catholic doctrine is true, from an anthropological perspective Mary clearly occupies the role of a goddess in the religion.
To_Mandalay
2d ago
Children and especially babies require an immense amount of attention
Children really require much less attention than WEIRDos think they do. Historically you could mostly ignore your babies between feedings. And once they becomes ambulatory you can just let them do whatever pretty much except when they have to do work around the house or in the fields. They'll probably be fine, horrifying as most moderns find the prospect. High child mortality was due to illness which pre-modern mothering was powerless to prevent, no matter how attentive or caring, not due to kids wandering off and getting eaten by bears.
This is still the case in a lot of undeveloped countries, or at least it was a few decades ago. I've talked to people who grew up in Latin America in the 70s but essentially lived pre-modern peasant existences and described parenting as being very hands-off.
Like what does a modern "neglectful" mother do? She probably lets her kid eat whatever, doesn't take him to the doctor, doesn't buy him new clothes, lets him go wherever he wants with whoever he wants whenever he wants. None of these were factors in the pre-modern world (everybody was eating the same thing, nobody was going to the doctor for yearly checkups, everybody wore the same clothes all the time) except for the last one which would only result in death at the margins.
To_Mandalay
2d ago
Men and women are both created in the image of God.
Maybe, but to what extent? Augustine believed the woman was not as much the Image of God as the man. Aristotle said without much qualification that woman was inferior to man.
Women historically had been protected or privileged over men in things likely to result in death like drowning on a sinking ship
This actually isn't really true. Someone linked the wikipedia page for "women and children first" which makes clear this is not some ancient code of conduct but a rather recent 19th century phenomenon, observed only sporadically. Men tended to fare better in shipwrecks, the Titanic being the glaring exception, because they were better swimmers.
or serving in combat.
The idea that being exempted from combat is a privilege is itself a pretty modern one. For a very long time bearing arms was one of, if not the highest honor. Free men could bear arms, not slaves or women. Probably the oldest conception of what it means to "be a man" is to be a great warrior who can kill a lot of people.
"Where's all that 'male privilege' when it's time to get drafted?" is a complaint that belongs to the post-modern and especially post-industrial era where warfare has been stripped of all the glory and honor that historically attended it, and been reduced to merely an unpleasant duty not dissimilar from digging ditches or pulling wagons.
Occasional woman through history who have fought as soldiers or warriors, whether disguised as men or otherwise, tend to draw praise or at least neutral curiosity, while men who took on the role of a woman with regards to child-rearing or other tasks assigned to the female sphere were viewed as worthy of derision at best.
To_Mandalay
2d ago
Mary is a goddess, it's not really comparable.
To_Mandalay
2d ago
Healthy women have deep-seated, base, mammalian urges to reproduce and nourish healthy offspring. It is hardwired in them to feel pleasure through these behaviors. The bond a mother has with her children and how they give great meaning to her life is a story in every culture in existence.
A significant minority of women likely do not have this instinct or have it in a much weakened form. Through human and pre-human history women really haven't had that much of a choice on whether they bear children or not, so selection for enjoying motherhood is probably not as strong as you might think.
Women are forsaking these genetic behaviors for what reason? For whose benefit?
Cuz they don't feel like it, I guess? Really nobody is forcing women not to have kids. It's not a matter of it being too expensive or anything. You can be flat broke in a western country and your kids will have an infinitely more comfortable existence than those of the peasant woman in 1312 who popped out twelve children. If women really want to have kids, they can, it's not hard.
To_Mandalay
2d ago
Inferior in the great chain of being, in absolute worth, closer, in the mind of a pre-modern, to the Imago Dei
To_Mandalay
2d ago
If that were true, we would expect traditional societies to be more willing to allow women to suffer and die in place of men, because they have less value.
Not necessarily. Women are valuable because they can give you sons.
"Female infanticide" is it's own phenomenon deserving of a name but not "male infanticide." The wiki article only gives the examples of India, China, and Pakistan, but gender-skewed infanticide was also not uncommon in pre-modern Europe. Not a lot of men in history were going "awwww man, another son?" when their wife popped out the latest kid.
To_Mandalay
3d ago
Horses are better than humans at running but the number of people throughout history who would disagree with the statement "horses are inferior to human beings" is very small.
To_Mandalay
3d ago
Counterpoint: Say something about someone's mom who is from a traditionalist culture and if you survive the reaction you should reevaluate women not being valued. Mothers and matriarchal figures are highly respected.
Of course women have value in traditional societies. More than livestock. But less than men.
To_Mandalay
3d ago
Is your argument that modern society values motherhood more?
No.
Complementarianism, may be expressed more now, I suspect for much of existence it went without saying, but was no less true.
I don't think so, I think for most of history it has been the standard belief of most men that women are an inferior order.
To_Mandalay
3d ago
To claim that modern society has devalued motherhood and femininity, or made them low status, is completely backwards. Motherhood and femininity in general have been devalued for as long as patriarchy has existed, so pretty much the whole of human history. I can't think of any human cultures, let alone any of the big-name European and near-eastern ones that the modern west is descended from, which have not considered the female sphere and female pursuits to be intrinsically lesser than that of men.* The "oh, women aren't inferior to men, they just have different strengths/they're made for different roles" line you hear from conservatives nowadays (what Christians call 'complementarianism') is itself an anti-modernist rearguard action. For the great majority of the history of western civilization, philosophers, theologians, and intellectuals, whether Pagan, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or atheist, have been happy to state that actually, women are just strictly inferior to men. It's the reason you occasionally get figures like Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great who are praised for being essentially men in women's bodies, but you never get men praised for being essentially women in men's bodies.
What happened in more resent centuries isn't that motherhood and womanhood were devalued. Motherhood and womanhood were devalued way back in the primordial past, and only recently have women been allowed to escape such devalued roles at scale.
You can't make motherhood 'prestigious' because motherhood has never been prestigious. Closest thing would just be banning women from doing actually prestigious things.
To_Mandalay
11d ago
Somebody could easily hold that a homophobic, misogynist, Islamist party ruling Gaza is a preferable to Gaza being wiped off the face of the earth.
To_Mandalay
11d ago
They have been holding 'LGBTQ+ for Hamas' rallies since October 8th.
Very few if any leftists have expressed support for Hamas' political, religious, and social program while also being pro LGBT+ which would actually be contradictory. A portion of them will express support for Hamas insofar as they fight the IDF without supporting their social program, which is a consistent position. A greater part of them will refuse to say either way, because they view calls to condemn Hamas as bad-faith attempts at distraction (the standard line being "I'll condemn Hamas when my government sends them billions of dollars").
Entirely from the correctness or incorrectness of the political views themselves, there's no real contradiction between "I support LGBT+/feminism/whatever" and "I am against Israel's actions in Gaza."
To_Mandalay
11d ago
This isn't really true. Christianity expects the rejuvenation and perfection of the physical world after the Second Coming and the Resurrection. Progressivism is a secularized millennarianism. It's very Christian. What you're describing is more Gnostic.
To_Mandalay
12d ago
I doubt there are very many people who were angry about Trump disrespecting the troops and are now actively pro-Hezbollah.
To_Mandalay
12d ago
He did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them. The novelty of Jesus's teaching is entirely in the nature of Grace, not specific ethical teachings.
If that's the case, he wasted a lot of time delivering ethical teaching. I tend to think Jesus believed 'works' were a lot more essential to salvation than most Protestants (even most Catholics) would like.
Wait a second, why do twelve disciples have swords three years into Jesus's ministry if Jesus actually teaches unconditional pacifism like the literal words suggest?
They didn't. Jesus told them to go buy some swords earlier that same week, explicitly so that he could fulfill the prophecy that he would be 'counted among the transgressors,' and then forbids them from using the swords when he's arrested. There's not a single place in the New Testament where violence against one's enemies is encouraged or even sanctioned. Divine violence on the other hand is all over the NT, you might even say it's the whole point, but that's a very different matter.*
*I would say the pacifism of the early Christians is inexplicable without the apparently ubiquitous belief that Jesus was going to come back very soon to establish the kingdom and destroy Rome and the nations; in other words, earthly Christians didn't need to do any killing because God was about to do it for them. When this didn't pan out naturally doctrine had to evolve.
To_Mandalay
12d ago
You are not "steelmanning" the anti-Christian reactionary argument, which would be something like, "Christianity's inherently egalitarian and destructive elements were held in check by the natural ethnocentrism and aristocratic spirit of Europeans, but eventually the poisonous seed flowered, and resulted in democracy, socialism, egalitarianism, etc." The question to ask would not be "were Christian Europeans Based™?" but "Were Christian Europeans more or less Based™" than they would have been in a counterfactual where Europe was never Christianized.
To_Mandalay
12d ago
It goes back to Celsus:
They say to each of their hearers:—Believe, first of all, that he whom I introduce to thee is the son of God, although he was shamefully bound, and disgracefully punished, and very recently was most contumeliously treated before the eyes of all men. Believe it even the more, on that account. If these bring forward this person, and others, again, a different individual, while the common and ready cry of all parties is, ‘Believe, if thou wilt be saved, or else begone,’ what shall those do who are in earnest about their salvation? Shall they cast the dice, in order to divine whither they may betake themselves, and whom they shall join?
They declare the wisdom that is among men to be foolishness with God. The reason of this has been stated long ago: their desire to win over by means of this saying the most ignorant, servile, or uninstructed of mankind. These sorcerers flee away with headlong speed from the more polished class of persons, because they are not suitable subjects for their impositions, while they seek to decoy those who are more rustic.
To_Mandalay
12d ago
Three 19th century American Presidents were Irish, but they were Protestant Irish.
That's not really 'Irish,' though. Scots-English Yeomanry from Ulster vs Celtic peasantry from County Cork.
This sort of interpretation tends to strip Jesus' preaching of anything particularly novel or interesting. "Well when he said turn the other cheek he didn't mean you should let your enemies kill you, he just meant, you know, don't go off half-cocked, control your anger," "Well when he said 'it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye...' he didn't mean it's bad to be rich, he just meant don't love money too much." This is all stuff any Greek Pagan would have happily nodded along with. What was so hard or so shocking about the path Jesus offered?
I think Jesus' message probably was radically ascetic and self-denying. The story of Lazarus and the Rich Man is also interesting in this regard. It's from a different author than Matthew's gospel, so it's not necessarily going to agree on everything, but in the story, the rich man never actually appears to do anything wrong. You could kind of argue his sin was not being more charitable to Lazarus, but the text never actually says this. And when the rich man is being tormented in Hades and asks Abraham for a cup of water, Abraham tells him no, because "remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony." That's it. In other words, the rich man went to Hell just for being rich. It had little to do with his or Lazarus' deeds in life, but with a cosmic imbalance that had to be corrected. The story is kind of a didactic one even if it isn't literally a parable so it doesn't necessarily mean Luke thought every rich person was going to Hell and I'm sure he didn't think every poor person would have a share in the kingdom but the overall view of earthly wealth is very dim.
This is somewhat supported by what is known of the early church, it's self-imposed poverty and the lack of any violent resistance to persecution. People being what they are, this didn't last long and pretty soon theologians and church fathers were spinning all sorts of justification for why you can actually
To_Mandalay
12d ago
Of course there was no mass immigration in 1500. Mass immigration didn't happen because there was a "do mass immigration" button just sitting there that nobody bothered to press until 1960, it happened because A) travel became unprecedentedly easy in the 19th - 20th centuries B) for a variety of reasons the politics of the west in the 20th century made western states fairly accepting of that influx.
The nuanced view is that Christianity ultimately is at the root of post-enlightenment left and liberal politics, which I think is pretty unambiguously true (and that's a good thing, thank you Christianity).
To_Mandalay
17d ago
Jack Chick theory of politics.
To_Mandalay
17d ago
It is a familiar theme in the conversation and heart of the faithful, that in the last days before the judgment the Jews shall believe in the true Christ, that is, our Christ, by means of this great and admirable prophet Elias who shall expound the law to them.
(There is a list at that link of various church authorities over the centuries who have spoken of a corporate conversion of the Jews at the end of time, including Origen.)
And there’s 200 years from Melito to Augustine where there is never mention of corporate salvation
at His last coming He will favour with His acceptance and blessing the circumcision also, even the race of Abraham, which by and by is to acknowledge Him.
To_Mandalay
17d ago
It is not found in the church fathers. Read what Melito or Origen have to say. Hence, it is not found in traditional or historic Christianity, per my post.
Augustine talks about the corporate conversion of Israel at the end of the age. I don't think it gets much more Church father than Augustine.
When Paul speaks about mysteries they always defy a literal understanding, for instance —
I'm not sure how the following defies a literal understanding. He's just talking about the resurrection and the transformation of believers when Christ returns. It's a "mystery" because it's strange and incomprehensible to the pagans of the time.
What information? Do you disagree with the statement that the general opinion of pre-modern thinkers was that women were inferior to men? Can you find any such figures who disagreed? Maybe you can, I'm sure there were a handful, but they're going to be vastly outnumbered by those who held the contrary position. Mary is a goddess*. She is inimitable. The fact that according to Christian mythology she was once a mortal woman is irrelevant to the role she actually occupies in existing religious practice. She should be compared to her fellow divinities, not mortal men, and she is certainly inferior to God the Father and to her own son. Having warrior and scholar goddesses didn't stop the Greeks from pacing such onerous restrictions on their women that it surprised their own contemporaries. The divine and human spheres are different, and the reverence of female divinities says little more about the role of women in actual existing human society than the frequency of incest in stories of the gods says something about the acceptability of incest between actual flesh and blood human beings.
Necessary doesn't equal prestigious. Actually it often indicates the opposite, since the mundane and commonplace is rarely exalted.
*Yes I know it's not latria it's dulia etc. etc.
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