lutherans elect first transgender bishop

And all of the Christian world for the most part until about 85 years ago

 

Wouldn't the term 'Christian' world be an oxymoron and isn't celebacy unnaturally, deliberately disobeying the first commandment? Gen.1:28.

 

I agree with (most) of the rest of your post, but to be a pedant about this one side point you made in passing, because it's something that really bugs me, this is simply not true. The church has always endorsed not obeying human nature, and I want it to stay that way, because the Church is right in doing so. Even the kind of language we now use about "unnatural" things is a modern phenomenon born entirely in response to modern social issues (I don't deny the historical position of the church is that homosexuality is wrong because it's unnatural, I'm just saying the choice of language we see today was rare before it became an issue). And if you hold a conservative theological disposition you should be cautious about using that kind of language, for fear it gets weaponised against you.

Perhaps due to the Patristic Period's immense focus on impulse, and the overwhelming influence of Augustine, for most of the Churches history our focus has been on much the opposite. It's had a focus on the denial of the (human) natural. The church promotes chastity, charity, humility, temperance - these are not natural human traits, and have been the issues that dominated Christian discourse over the past 2000 years, not a condemnation of the unnatural. We call them "Christian values" (or Judeo-Christian if you want to be more inclusive) rather than "human values" because they're novel curiousities localised, before the colonial era, entirely to Europe and the Middle-East and truly only remain in earnest within communities of Western faith (including Islam) or Western spins on religions (e.g. Western spin-offs of Buddhism, which really isn't about things like charity and the Christian understanding of humility).

We see in other civilisations the proliferation of polygamy, debauchery, societies built on the advertising of ones achievements and the masking/denial of their faults - e.g. societies that value and specifically reward pride and 'peacocking' and punish honest confession (regrettably, this is more common in the West now due to hyper-competitive neo-liberalism). By comparison, in the church when we think of the most pious people we ought to emulate we think of the people that cast off their sinful natures - ascetic monks living vows of poverty and the like, not arrogant billionaires or promiscuous celebrities. But when we think which of the two are behaving more naturally, it's not the monks.

It's human nature to be lustful, to be greedy, to consume. It's Christian nature to behave chastly, to live for others, to consume only as much as you need not as much as you want. It's human nature to demand satisfaction today, it's Christian nature to wait patiently for what will inevitably come. And we all acknowledge it's hard. We pray for strength, and we practice being virtuous. We acknowlede it's a lifelong process. Nothing natural is so difficult. If we zone in on Augustine, he hated sex (he has a lot of personal baggage he brought into his theology, I think), and suggested one shouldn't have sex outside of the explicit purpose of procreation. He even claims having sex when you're infertile (including during periods of the menstruation cycle) is actively sinful. Once you reach a certain age, to Augustine, sex was no longer permitted as procreation wasn't feasible. To resist our natural desires in such a way offends the observable and objective biological wiring of our species. But it became the doctrine that Rome used to coerce the priesthood into celibacy - implicitly described as an affront to nature in the Bible.

I could go on away from sexuality - St. Francis of Assisi, for example, had a lot of great things to say about wealth and the desire for ownership and property that directly contradicts human nature. Human nature is sinful and the Church has a much longer and more venerable history of condemning it than it has of protecting it.

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To clarify, this is very much off-topic from the earlier off-topic discussion. When we were talking about 'nature' before, in Romans, we weren't exclusively talking about human nature (which is fallen), but the general natural order - of which human impulse is one component but not the only component.

 

No and no.

 

The Christian is called to not be of the world but to live by the Spirit and I can't see that celibacy, as a deliberate choice, obeys the command of God to multiply. That's disobedience.

Arithmetically and productively it unnaturally doesn't even add to the sum total of the human race, let alone multiply to produce a product.
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I appreciated reading your post, and it certainly jogged a number of ideas I’d been mulling over in the past. I think it would be a mistake to argue that St Augustine fought against human nature, for the following simple reason. He appealed to our sense logic, decency, modesty, right? In us. He asked us to be loyal to our Lord. In short he appealed to our nature, just a different part of it than the fleshy part.

What, there are different natures with us? Actually, in classical anthropology (eg in Aristotle), the answer would be, yes.

We have the heart pumping, the stomach processing food; organs functioning automatically, one might almost say vegetatively. Aristotle says that part of us is the vegetative nature. We also have instincts, drives, hormones, fleshy impulses, just like any wolf, dog, or monkey: Aristotle says that part of us is the animal nature. And then we have things which no creature in the world has: logic, reason, free will, etc. Aristotle says that this part of us is the human nature.

So yes Aristotle would say that creatures out there can have multiple natures within them; animals for instance have two (vegetative and animal), while man has three (vegetative, animal, human).

So then back to St Augustine, you will notice that he’s not fighting against human nature, but against the animal nature within us. He wants us to hold in check the animal impulses that would have us fornicate with everyone & everything in sight if we were allowed; and he wants us to magnify the human nature within us: the virtues, the reason, the great understanding, the moral excellence.

In this he exactly matches the classical philosophers like Seneca, who also taught us to restrain our animal nature, and magnify the human nature within us.

 

"Seems" is the important word in that sentence, Tiffy.

 

Indeed!

So does that perhaps mean that many opinions concering what God has done, not done, will do, never does, can't do, won't do, and why etc. might merely be the opinions of those who wrote down the assertion, or are their assertions imposing upon us, in some cases, their perhaps ill informed opinions of the way God actually operates and God's reasons for doing what God did, whenever God did it? Did they know the mind of God? 1 Cor.2:11, 2 Sam.24:1, compared to 1 Chron.21:1. So who was it that incited David to number Israel and Judah, God or Satan? And who was right? The author of 2 Samuel 24:1 or the author of 1 Chron.21:1?

Occam has his razor at the ready to slice through the unnecessary mental theological gymnastics required to explain this, while successfully preserving total biblical inerrancy and absolute inspiration in every assertion by every biblical writer for both Old and New Testaments.

Indeed seems.
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It took me a while to parse that word-salad, but if I understand your argument, you're saying that regarding Biblical truth and Scripture itself, one opinion is as good as the next? That there is no objective truth to be had? That everything is just interpretation, all the way down?

 

You seem to miss a lot of what Paul said says about celibacy

 

No, I'm not saying that; because I think scripture is what it says it is, inspired. I just doubt that some of the writers of it were actually told exactly why God did or said or thought anything, and their opinions, (especially those in the Old Testament concerning the nature and personality of the God they thought they knew all about), were not neccessarily accurate, just because they got them in the Bible, for us all to read 3000 years later. Being inspired is more than just being right about everything one says, does or thinks about God and manages to get written down in a 4000 year old library.

I believe in progressive revelation of truth and some Old Testamet theologians needed to progress quite a lot. God, using The Bible, and a good deal of interventon, got there in the end though.
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I'm not against celibacy. It was the contention of some in here though that there was something sinful about surgically messing about with one's genitalia thus rendering oneself incapable of producing or bearing children, (it's unnatural therefore sinful, I thought the objection was).

So if one happens to be celibate anyway, surgery couldn't really be sinful surely, since no natural function, (i.e. childbearing or procreation), would have been affected since celibacy makes those functions of our genitalia as effectively redundant as our appendix and having that removed isn't sinful.

 

How do you know what is truth and what is error? Do you trust your own discernment in this matter? If so, why? If not, why not? Whom do you go to for authoritative interpretation of Scripture? What makes your view of Scripture preferable to the historical, orthodox reading (apart from your own ideological and philosophical preferences)?

Do you agree that the books of the New Testament carry Apostolic authority? If so, what does "Apostolic authority" mean to you? Or do you dispute the actual authorship of the New Testament books? Or do you think that Scripture was somehow corrupted during transmission down through the ages?

Finally: is it possible that your reading of Scripture is idiosyncratic and/or erroneous, and not everyone else's? If you're honestly saying that the Apostle Paul got it wrong and Tiffy got it right, then that's a pretty bold claim and I'm going to need more evidence than your say-so.

 

Lest I draw this thread too far afield from the original topic, I also want to mention a book I read long ago called Agape and Eros by Anders Nygren. It's interesting, though probably a bit esoteric for casual readers. It's a really good (though somewhat technical) explanation of why the Apostles generally use the Greek agape rather than philia or eros as their word for "love". It's relevant to our discussion because it goes back to the issue of love one Christian has for his neighbor, and of Christ for his Church.

Liberals get it wrong, and have always got it wrong, when it comes to understanding how the Apostles use the word love in Scripture. This is particularly acute in the English-speaking world, because our word "love" has such a wide semantic range.* Agape does not refer to some hippy-dippy universalist notion of unconditional acceptance and tolerance, not in general koine Greek usage and certainly not in Christian theology.

*"I love my dog" and "I love my wife" refer to two vastly different mental states, for example (or at least I devoutly hope so).

 

The same way Adam presumably did, now that I have the mind of Christ to guide me and I am regenerate. Phil.2:5.

I lean not to my own understading. Prov.3:5-6.

The Holy Spirit, The Church, common sense and experience in the faith.

What makes orthodoxy orthodox? It doesn't just mean what the majority believe, it means what some indivuduals in church history fought hard to intruduce againt the majority. Acts 11:1-4.

Some of them but that is not an issue which affects whether they are inspired or not, in my opinion.

I think there are some omissions and a few interpolations but they do not consequentially affect the fact that the scriptures are inspired and useful to establish doctrine and act as a guide to Godly conduct and a proper understanding of the way to salvation.

Quite possibly, but I could ask you the same question and should receive a similar answer if you are honest.

I don't even know how I could discover what everyone else thinks and says is truth.

Since I'm not saying it you will be relieved of the necessity of searching for more evidence, won't you. Do you feel relieved?
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Here endeth the lesson on sucking eggs.
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Not really. You alarm me, Tiffy. Not just you, but all of the Christians who look at Scripture the way you do. It explains so much about why the Christian church is in the state it's currently in.

 

You needn't be alarmed on my account. I'm more alarmed by those who look at scripture the way you and others like you do. Like driving a car with the operating manual open on the dashboard, and constatly consulting it instead of looking at the road ahead and paying attention to the task of driving the car.
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As an Anglican, I am directed to do so by Article VI of the 39 Articles of Religion. To wit: "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." (And it's good theology even for non-Anglicans.)

 

1Co 12:12-18 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.

Our relationship with the Lord is very much personal and individual. Each one is made a part of the body of Christ on earth, His Church, by the one Holy Spirit.

When the eye says, "You ears have to see it the way we see it, for this is the way the Church sees it," in reality it's the way the eyes see it; the ears can't perceive things the way the eyes can. Nor can the nose see or hear things the way the eyes and ears do. We're all different, and the Holy Spirit teaches and guides each one of us as an individual (primarily through the words of the Bible, but also by the inner witness).

This passage in 1 Corinthians seems to tell us that we, as individuals, will inevitably perceive some things in ways that differ from many of our brethren. But that doesn't mean that the ones who see it differently from 'us' are so incorrect that they are "not of the body;" indeed, they are of the body. We are assured that their presence in the body of Christ does not hang upon whether they come around to our perceptions, but upon the one Holy Spirit who has baptized them into the body of Christ.

But sometimes we do wonder about the stubbed toe...