In and of itself, I’m not sure that’s a direct statement on abortion, though context may make it so.
Admittedly brief searching on Gregory of Nyssa seems to highlight him as a surprising if not shocking standout on the subject of slavery for his time. If the orthodox church accepted the legitimacy of slavery, at least in principle, but Gregory denied it as strongly as he did, I don’t think I’d call him “unquestionably orthodox”.
Depending on the form given to that acceptability, it could go either way. “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear” covers a wide range of slave-owning practices that “do not threaten them” doesn’t quite counteract, for example. Nor does the latter excuse defaulting in the former.
Actually, given your suggestion about considering the “abortion - murder” belief to have it origins dating back to Jesus by the old/attested/lasting criteria, I was asking if “slavery = acceptable” also worked the same way. So, not a lack of condemnation, but support.
Point conceded. I said major countries and China is certainly that.
So Jesus is necessary for salvation but you don’t have to believe that he is? By that yardstick the whole population of the world is Christian.
Unlike them in that they believe completely in the teachings of Mohammed whilst most Christians tend to cherry-pick from the teachings of Jesus.
Ignorance fought.
Perhaps not so accountable after all. Pope Benedict raised a shitstorm a few years back by stating unequivocally that extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. He back-pedaled pretty quickly on that though and the RC hierarchy now seem happier with the more nuanced version of St Augustine: If anyone is saved, he must in some sense be a member of the Church; in what sense, we cannot always say.
That “in some sense” of course potentially opens the doors wide to people of all faiths and if that is indeed Catholic doctrine then the main premiss of my OP is wrong, at least when it comes to the RCs.
Gregory of Nyssa wasn’t accused of holding heretical opinions in his lifetime or at any time afterward I think. I have heard claims that some Christians today consider him a bit questionably orthodox (for his views about gender I think, not for his views about slavery) so I’ll concede that maybe “unquestionably orthodox” is a slight stretch.
I would agree with you it’s very unlikely Jesus condemned slavery explicitly (on the one occasion he appears to have addressed slavery at all, it’s to praise the Centurion’s concern for his sick slave). But I don’t see any reason to believe he discussed it as a positive good either. For that matter neither did the early church: when I say they accepted the legitimacy of slavery I mean that they strongly condemned slaves disobeying or deserting their masters. In something like the same way, I think soldiers in the United States armed forces should in general obey their superiors and their lawful orders: that doesn’t mean I think the United States military is generally a force for good, or a benevolent institution.
I’ve seen some very creative arguments to try to make a pro-choice viewpoint compatible with Christianity, but this has to be near the top. It fails for three reasons.
Early Christian sources discussing abortion treat the women who have abortions as <i>perpetrators</i>, not victims, and to the extent they discuss the victims at all they identify them with the unborn children. This would be utterly incompatible with the idea that abortion is primarily a crime <i>against the mother</i>. Here’s an example from the <i>Apocalypse of Peter</I> around 100 AD, in which women who cause abortions are being harangued by their victims:
“And near that place I saw another strait place into which the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down and became there as it were a lake: and there sat women having the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and there came forth from them sparks of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion.”
Early Christian sources often discuss abortion and infanticide in the same breath, indicating that the first was seen as something very similar to the second: killing a child just at an earlier stage of development. Here’s the Epistle of Barnabas:
“Thou shalt love thy neighbor more than thine own soul. Thou shalt not murder a child by
abortion, nor again shalt thou kill it when it is born”
And a very similar passage from the Didache:
“You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child"
There is very little positive evidence for your claim that abortion was seen primarily as a crime against the mother. The closest things I’m aware of are a couple comments by Basil of Caesarea and Tertullian, but they mention harm to the mother <i>along with</i> the crime against the unborn child.
By far the most common view among all early Christians, shared not only by the orthodox church but as far as we can tell by the various Christian heresies, was that life began at conception, and that conception is the moment that soul and body are united.Here’s Gregory of Nyssa:
“As man is one, the being consisting of soul and body, we are to suppose that the beginning of his existence is one, common to both parts, so that he should not found to be antecedent and posterior to himself, if the bodily element came first in time….”
And Clement of Alexandria, who somewhere else mentions beliefs about early ensoulment as one of the bits of common ground that the orthodox and heretics could agree on:
“An ancient said that the embryo is a living thing; for that the soul entering into the womb after it has been by cleansing prepared for conception, and introduced by one of the angels who preside over generation, and who knows the time or conception, moves the woman to intercourse; and that, on the seed being deposited, the spirit, which is in the seed, is, so to speak, appropriated, and is thus assumed into conjunction in the process of formation. He cited as a proof to all, how, when the angels give glad tidings to the barren, they introduce souls before conception. And in the Gospel ‘the babe leapt’ (Luke 1: 44) as a living thing.”
It would make sense for Christians today, against slavery, wouldn’t hold that an anti-slavery historical figure was questionably orthodox or not; after all, if he was, then they are.
Do we have examples of not-anti-abortion persons in history who were accused of holding heretical opinions? In their lifetimes or otherwise.
There’s a couple of problems with that analogy. You’ve put “lawful orders” in there; so far as I can tell, and I know my Biblical and noncanonical knowledge is lesser than yours, there’s no equivalent of the “lawful orders” exception to be found there. There isn’t a “obey, unless they ask of you something bad, in which case you’re excused” clause. Secondly, while I agree you can in some cases be in favour of specific actions within a general whole you diapprove of, or the like - all it really does is shift the approval down a step. You aren’t necessarily in favour of the US military in general as a force in the world, but you are in favour of soldiers obeying lawful orders and their superiors. Not a big issue. But if the early church isn’t necessarily in favour of slavery, but is in favour of those in slavery obeying their masters and not deserting them, it does make the early church in favour of those in slavery obeying their masters and not deserting them. And, beyond that, it also means they weren’t* against *the legitimacy of slavery.
There’s a problem with this interpretation, which is that the prior passage just before this section already deals with the subject of murder;
[QUOTE=Apocalypse of Peter]
24. And I saw the murderers and those who conspired with them, cast into a certain strait place, full of evil snakes, and smitten by those beasts, and thus turning to and fro in that punishment; and worms, as it were clouds of darkness, afflicted them. And the souls of the murdered stood and looked upon the punishment of those murderers and said: O God, thy judgment is just.
And near that place I saw another strait place into which the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down and became there as it were a lake: and there sat women having the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and there came forth from them sparks of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion.
[/QUOTE]
Murderers are explicitly separated from those who cause abortions. Which doesn’t necessarily seperate out those who cause abortion as non-murderers, since there may be some other reason they’re split off to their own punishment… except the problem is then that the possibility is that the separate punishment is for a separate crime; from a brief search I’m seeing translations which link adulterous conception followed by abortion.
Also there’s a fun bit condemning me to get thrown off a cliff repeatedly forever for the whole not being straight bit, which is somewhat problematic, but hey.
This is more of a nitpicky objection, but it’s not clear from the context whether we might not be talking about unwilling abortion. Same problem for your Didache quote, though with Barnabas, it’s especially so given the next line that we should really be attacking our kids (nonlethally, anyway).
It does becuase what is The Law? Its clear to many that Jesus wasnt talking about the entirety of OT text.
And stoning? Jesus stopped stoning, remember? “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” In any case, His Death and Resurrection was “until all is accomplished.”
Are you content to have your standard of evidence be what’s “clear to many”?
So far as your point is “it’s unclear exactly what was meant by “the Law” in this instance”, so far, I agree. “The Law” being a problem in this case isn’t simply a problem if we’re looking at the entirety of OT text; your own cite also includes possibilities for “the Law” being “the civil law regulating social behavior and specifying crimes, punishments and other rules” and “the moral and ethical laws, such as the Ten Commandments” both of which would entail keeping on with practices such as stoning.
Your certain “and he doesn’t do that either” is an argument that your cite doesn’t back up. At best, it throws uncertainty into the mix.
No, he didn’t. He stopped** a** stoning. Are you comfortable taking a single example of Jesus’ actions as a statement on all situations of that type? I think that would lead to further problems.
Not to mention, this is an explicitly contrived situation; the idea is that the adulterous woman is being brought to Jesus specifically to try and trap him in the answer he gives. That’s in itself good reason not to generalize a response.
Also very unclear, sadly. Could you cite that particular quote, so I can see the context?
I may be under a misapprehension then. I assumed (even though I know assumptions are dangerous) that people who prayed five times a day were more zealous than Christians for most of whom once a week is ample. Another thought: I just realized that I’m basing that last statement about Christians on the Anglican Church in England. The English in general are very lax in their religious practice, with many claiming to be Church of England yet attending church rarely if ever. These were the sort of Christians with whom I was comparing Muslims. Are things so different in the US outside the Bible Belt?
And what was the reason he gave for stopping the stoning? Was it, “Public executions for infidelity are evil and God never meant for anyone to think otherwise!” Or is it, “You all are just as guilty as this woman, of not following The Law, so y’all might want to reconsider whether you’re really in the mood to start obeying the rules on executions, or if you all want to go get right with the Lord first, and then come back and start this business up again.” Whatever room for interpretation there might be, I’m pretty sure, at least, that there is no denunciation of the crime nor its specific punishment.
It’s plausible that Jesus believed that the end of the world was imminent. And so we see lots of cases of Jesus trying to get people to change their ways right that moment, so that everyone had a final chance to clean up their act before God called the firestorms in. We do, after all, see the same sort of thing with Sodom and Gomorrah and other cases in the Bible. He warns the people of their impending doom if they continue to disobey his laws and then, if they fail to comply, he acts against them. And while it is never explicitly stated, I think it is reasonable to think that God, in these cases, would be willing to turn a blind eye to past indiscretions while society gets back in line. He’s less concerned with the individual offenses than that society as a whole is acting according to His design.
I’m not saying that this is the correct interpretation, but I would say that it is plausible and, unlike the “Jesus was ending the criminality of infidelity” or “Jesus was establishing a religion of kindness and compassion” theories, it isn’t contradicted in other quotes.
Well, first of all, your claim was specifically that abortion was forbidden as being a crime of violence against the mother. Whether or not the author of Pseudo-Peter thought abortion was murder, he certainly appears to have thought it’s primarily an act of violence against the fetus / embryo since the people punished for it in this scene are the mothers (they are perpetrators, not victims) and they’re being acused by their children. There are other parallel scenes in other early Christian visions of hell / heaven, but it’s not clear if they are referring to abortion or infanticide so I won’t mention them here. Unfortunately I don’t know if there are nuances in the text that might illuminate the argument a bit, since I don’t speak Greek or for that matter Coptic.
There are lots of reasons one might treat one class of murders separately from murders in general. In America for example, killings of police officers or terroristic murders are considered particularly heinous, so are killings with a “hate” motivation against Black people, gays, etc… In some past societies certain forms of murder (patricide, killing of a master by his servant, etc.) were considered different than murder in general and might (in a medieval work of this nature) have been considered as a category of sin all on its own. In Dante’s literary description of hell (not that I consider it to be based on a genuine supernatural experience), treasonous murderers are punished in a separate and much more, uh, torturious circle of hell than other murderers. It’s possible the author of the Apocalypse thought abortions were a category of technical “murder” that was somewhat less bad than typical murders. It’s also possible he was particularly interested in abortions because he lived in a Greco-Roman context in which they were commonly accepted by the broader society, so he wanted to single them out for condemnation.
I don’t know exactly how far the extent of Jesus’ example regarding the stoning is meant to extend. I doubt the Gospel authors would have bothered to put the periscope into the text (yea, I’m aware of the arguments over the provenance of John 8, so if you want you can substitute “the Gospel authors or subsequent editors”) if it wasn’t meant to convey some sort of message beyond just “hey on one occasion Jesus did a weird thing”. I think there was clearly some sort of general presumption against execution being established (not necessarily and absolute prohibition, but a general presumption). I don’t support the death penalty for murderers (or for any other crime besides treason) mostly because this passage can’t possibly be limited in its applicability to one specific case.
I’ve always taken it to mean that, whenever folks are about to take action against anyone for committing a sin, Jesus would – without even looking up from what he’s doing – say that the action should be taken by whoever among them is without sin. Sort of a you’re-in-need-of-forgiveness-so forgive-others-their-trespasses bit. Like, it’s just one specific instance of the judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged stuff.
When it comes to official Christian doctrine, I’ll put biblical sources ahead of those that derive from apocrypha. And certainly ahead of non-scriptural works. Just because something is believed by a Christian doesn’t mean it’s Christian belief.
Check Exodus 21: “If two men are fighting and they strike a pregnant woman and her children are born prematurely, but there is no harm, he is certainly to be fined as the husband of the woman demands of him, and he will pay as the court decides.”
That clearly defines that causing a woman to miscarry can be a crime. But is it the crime of murder?
Look ahead to the next passage: “If there is harm, then you are to require life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, and bruise for bruise.”
So the penalty for taking a life is losing a life. But the penalty for causing a miscarriage is paying a fine. This is clear scriptural authority saying causing a miscarriage is not taking a life. Abortions are not murder.
Another possible interpretation is that Jesus was saying fallible people couldn’t reliably judge the acts of other people. They wouldn’t know if they were rightfully punishing a guilty person or committing a sin by punishing an innocent. So people should stay out of judging other people and allow God, whose wisdom and knowledge is complete, to carry out judgments.
Little Nemo, as a pro-tip you’re not making the strongest argument for your own case. The more explicitly pro choice equivalent of that passage (or at least, the one that draws a clear distinction between early and late term abortion) is the one in the Greek Old Testament, you’re using the Hebrew version.
Exodus 21 in the Septuagint reads (this was the passage that led Augustine incorrectly to believe in a sort of delayed ensoulment):
“And if two men strive and smite a woman with child, and her child be born imperfectly formed, he shall be forced to pay a penalty: as the woman’s husband may lay upon him, he shall pay with a valuation. 23But if it be perfectly formed, he shall give life for life, 24eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
It’s irrelevant anyway: the Old Testament here is wrong, as it’s wrong in many other places (either intellectually, morally or theologically). The writers of the Old Testament would have utterly rejected the concept of a Trinity, and had many other views that Christianity has soundly rejected (in some cases Jesus himself- he didn’t follow the injunctions about shunning lepers, after all). Your error here is that you’re suggesting that Christianity is founded on the Bible (= Old Testament plus New Testament). This is clearly not the case since there have been Christian groups since the first century who rejected the Old Testament (the Marcionites and their followers), and also since Christianity existed for at least four decades before there was a New Testament. What did they have to go on, for those four decades? Tradition.
The teaching against abortion doesn’t derive from the Apocalypse of Peter, there are plenty of other early Christian sources (all extra-biblical) that suggest Christians were more or less agreed about when life began and that killing an unborn human being was homicide. (Probably the best citation here is Clement of Alexandria). I cite the Apocalypse as an example of what early Christians believed, and it’s a pretty good example: it was included in the earliest drafts of the New Testament and was dropped on the basis of late date and uncertain authorship, not on the basis of its teaching. My point here isn’t to cite the Apocalypse as an example of what God dictated to the author (that isn’t my view of inspiration anyway), it’s to cite it as an example of what was broadly held Christian belief within seven or eight decades of the death of Christ.
So you’re basically suggesting here that scripture is a more reliable source for “Christianity” than tradition, or alternatively that Christianity is founded on the Old and New Testament and that later traditions got accreted on top of that. I don’t think that is either a historically or logically supportable view, and it’s certainly not the view held by the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican or Methodist churches, or for that matter by me speaking from my heterodox, Gnosticism-influenced personal viewpoint. The Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Methodist churches all treat tradition as a source of truth alongside of scripture. Luther and the churches derived from him disagree, obviously. But it’s not clear why the Lutheran view would be correct.
From a “neutral” viewpoint, speaking outside of any church communion, if Christianity is rooted in anything it ought to be rooted in the life of Jesus. What do you think is a more reliable guide to what Jesus believed: a text written maybe a thousand years before, or a series of texts written by purported followers of Jesus within decades or centuries of his death?
Possibly, but I feel that runs pretty straight headlong into the concept of Godly law to begin with.
Like, I could tell someone that even if God thinks that homosexuality is sinful, if the result of that is that homosexual people go to Hell and burn for eternity, then what value is there in doing anything, here on Earth, to homosexuals? What are you really going to add to anything above and beyond “complete misery for the rest of time” that is really going to chance the decision making process of the individual? If that is insufficient, everything you can throw at them is going to also be insufficient. (If you really believe in the concept of a Hell.)
But while that may be fairly close to Catholic thought, I wouldn’t say that Catholic thought is a particularly good match for the Bible. And all of the portions of the New Testament which try to remove the concept of God’s Law that humans should adopt - like public executions, fines, etc. - seem to come down less on what Jesus taught and more on what St. Paul was able to buy as a compromise at the Council of Jerusalem. But even there, the compromise (for gentiles) was that they don’t have to get circumcised or do anything that seemed, overall, too difficult.
The overall argument for this was, “we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” (Acts 15:19) This is a far cry from, “God has changed his mind on the laws and they are no longer in effect.”
Even if we accept that Paul perfectly received all of the wisdom of Jesus, by magic, the argument is that it’s better to get people to believe in God, as a strategic maneuver. There’s no indication that God is doubling back on his earlier laws. And, we will note, the Old Testament is and mostly always has been part of the full text.
If we take the view that Paul was just one apostle (as indicated by the fact that he had to compromise with the other apostles), then even that message is lessened in favor of the Gospels.
And if we take the view that Paul was largely the originator of a somewhat related but different religion from Jesus, but it’s his branch that made it to modern times rather than others, then we have to question things like whether the Pericope Adulterae were even, probably, part of the original story? That particular tale was widely excluded in early Christianity, and that may be because it was an addition inserted by the anti-legalist gentile church, to lend support to the Paulian view of things.
Well, those People who spent the last century trying to Research the historical Jesus (Jeschua) and seperate him from the Messiah he became, mostly characterize him as:
one of many at that time end-times prophets, like John the Baptist (with whom he was confused at the beginning), who tought the end of the world would restore Israel (hence the 12 apostles for the 12 thrones) and Roman occupation. He most likely didn’t consider himself the son of God or Messiah, but a Prophet of the Jewish God. He didn’t intend to start a new Religion.
And yes, it’s true that what’s commonly thought of as Christian today is shaped at least 50% by Paul’s letters, who had only seen Jesus in a Vision, and came from a different Background than the followers and disciples of Jesus.
However, your cherry-picking of two examples (not very convincing, either) just illustrates that, when taken out of context, a book as big as the Bible (= that is, a collection of books written over hundreds of years, in two different languages with different culture and philosphical/ theological concepts, covering different literary and theological Genres) can be used to Support any Position.
That’s why claiming to have the One True (Literal) Interpretation of The Bible / Christianity can not be supported, no matter how many authoritarian pastors Claim it.
If there is one consistent thread in both OT and NT, it’s “Take care of the widows, orphans, the poor”. There are hundreds of different verses, from prophets threatening divine wrath, to Jesus Parables, and that helping the poor is what God wants and likes.
More specific Claims are often contradicted - the OT has just war, while Jesus is against killing. And so on.
And regarding divorce: the context is that learning about the conditions at that time, if a man divorced a woman, she was both without financial Support (no alimony or Splitting the wealth back then) and shamed. That’s e.g. the reason why the OT considers it just to require a rapist to marry the woman he raped. In some instances, it might have been two Lovers whose parents disagreed and used a loophole; in many other cases it would have been real rape, but the OT doesn’t care about what the woman feels, only that by marrying her and not being allowed to divorce her, the woman is provided for financially.
So that is why Jesus tells men not to divorce, yet in the letters, answering specific questions that came up in real life, Paul does what any good Pastor (in the sense of "taking care of people’s souls) does: he Looks for a principle, finds compassion, and tries to apply that to real circumstances, and therefore allows divorces in some circumstances.
Therefore, applying the principle of compassion, along with newly understood principle of respect towards women, many Protestant churches accept divorce as something "that is not desired, but happens in real life that People can drift apart, and if there is no love left, it’s more cruel to force them to stay together than make a clean cut and allow for a second marriage.
Actually, it’s a bit stricter: you don’t have to belief in Jesus “as your personal saviour” (this is a very specific US-concept, too often combined with prosperity Gospel or parts of Calvinist pre-destination); but there are many parts of Catholic Dogma you have to believe in; e.g. that not only Jesus was Born immaculate = without original sin, but also that Maria herself was Born immaculate (not mentioned in the Bible anywhere, not necessary, a minor Point compared to real problematic theological questions - but declared not only part of Dogma but also infallible).