If I were in his position, and part of my duty is to interpret and lead via "the holy scriptures," then I would probably want to be as accurate as possible.
The point is that the canon of writings assembled into the book is based on how people think at the time. Things change and evolve. A book canonized today would probably undo even more of the old testament teachings as archaic and no longer relevant with their version of Romans 14 and Acts 11:4-6. Francis 2:8-10 or from a series of letters sent to the people of Americas instead of Corinthians. These writings are just a snap shot in time
No, you're trying to trivialize changing the canon of the Bible. It's a pointless argument if you're not going to adopt the understanding of the Catholic tradition and then argue within it as the subject of this conversation is the Pope.
I was under the impression we were arguing why it's important for the Pope to have an accurate view of the Bible. Instead it seems like you're just wanting to say that it's all man-made anyways so might as well change it which is a completely foreign thought process to a genuine Catholic.
That's fine, it just makes it pointless to make a argument for what the office of Pope should and shouldn't do. It's like going into a Muslim country and telling everyone how stupid their views are because you don't respect their holy texts. Why bother?
That was my point, you're not interested in having an actual conversation. Which is fine. That's why I said I had a misunderstanding of what was going on here. But it's clear now.
Since the time of the canonizing of the book, lots of history has happened where the pope of the time has softened some of what was traditional practices. Again, not sure why it is okay to accept some pope from historical time could canonize the bible, but a future pope would not have similar authority to make further amendments. He is the Vicar after all, and is infallible. Unless you do not believe that about modern popes??
No, you're trying to trivialize changing the canon of the Bible. It's a pointless argument if you're not going to adopt the understanding of the Catholic tradition and then argue within it as the subject of this conversation is the Pope.
I was under the impression we were arguing why it's important for the Pope to have an accurate view of the Bible. Instead it seems like you're just wanting to say that it's all man-made anyways so might as well change it which is a completely thought process to a genuine Catholic.
And, infamously and comically, isn't exactly well supported by the text itself.
Source: grew up in churches that tried to do just that.
For the (fortunately) uninitiated:
Said scriptures also says that a woman can be sold to her rapist after he violates her. I think a more modern interpretation would not be a bad idea.
So various churches can freely pick/discard almost whatever they want besides the 10 commandments while Muslims can't exactly just throw away the Quran or Hadith (which are much more specific)..
Except Jesus said that he didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and not one stroke of a letter of the law will pass away. So he didn't change anything about slavery, mistreatment of women, etc.
> didn't change anything about slavery, mistreatment of women, etc.
The "fulfill" bit is rather ambiguous. AFAIK the most popular interpretation (certainly when it comes to ceremonial rules like not eating pork/shellfish/etc.) is that his intention was to "bring the law to its intended goal/purpose" rather than to maintain it in perpetuity.
So if the remaining Jews continue following the Old Covenant, but others choose to rather follow Jesus' 'New and Eternal Covenant', then where would this obligation towards Old Testament law come from?
You aren't bringing up the moral law.
Hint: there's parts about freeing slaves, about repatriating foreigners, and about fallow fields. It's really sort of awe-inspiring how our secular government is implementing Jubilee by fiat.
And teachings of Paul supersede the stuff from Jesus.
What is lacking, from my perspective, are scholarly interpretations that swing the discussion the other way. The best I've seen simply just exclude the problematic scriptures which really isn't within the Catholic tradition (inerrancy of scripture and all).
contexnt: I've studied religions (and still follow the topic) and have a basic understanding of where things are, but take it with a grain of salt.
I understand that as part of the faith, it is not our place to know the reason God has chosen. However, I believe that there are very serious concerns about the intentions of the people 'qualified' to interpret the texts. Relying on "just trust us" gets us into big trouble, fast.
As the saying goes, the devil may quote scripture too.
I would disagree. The art of hermeneutics has been around for a _long_ time and has been refined over time as we develop new understandings about the ancient cultures that wrote these documents. So, yes, things do change, but I would argue they do not _dramatically_ change. For example, the message of "the gospel" has been the same since the founding apostles. But our understanding of something like Genesis 1 has changed dramatically over the years as our understanding of the sciences, history, etc. increase.
Think about it. It's been thousands of years. A little humility is called for. You're not the first or the last to make flippant remarks like this without understanding.
Christianity has been comfortable with fairly sophisticated realpolitik since day zero.
There are places where the bible gives guidance for heterosexual marriages, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all other marriages are prohibited. Most people are heterosexual, so it makes sense that the bible would talk about marriage in a heterosexual context.
There are also several verses that condemn gay sex, but I think you could make the case that it's not talking about the types of loving, committed gay relationships that we have in mind today. And also, even if gay sex is forbidden, you could still hold that gay couples are allowed to get married and adopt children, but that they should remain celibate. That's rough, but Christians commonly hold that heterosexuals aren't supposed to have non-procreative sex either. For comparison, the American Jewish Conservative movement holds that male-on-male anal sex is biblically prohibited, but all other aspects of gay relationships are permitted. And even though the sexual act is forbidden, it's also forbidden to invade someone's privacy by questioning whether they're doing it.
This is where I've yet to see convincing evidence. The whole meta-story of the first few chapters of Genesis was about creation. Not just creation of the universe as we know it, but the pro-creation between a man and a woman in the sanctimony of marriage.
Whether you have an overly-religious view of Genesis or not doesn't really change the fact that the original authors were clearly "sanctifying" this act of pro-creation (the "meme" if you want to use Dawkins' terms). Other cultures and tribes obviously had their own ways of sanctifying it, but in a large, almost universal majority of cases, it was always between a man and a woman.
Changing the gender to same-sex more or less destroy's the original intention of the meme. I mean, you can do it, but I don't think you're walking away with the authentic thought that was being communicated by the authors.
I'm purely speaking from an academic sense here (the art of understanding what someone wrote a long time ago). Sure, we can choose to ignore and/or change it because it's "out of date" but that leads back to a point I made elsewhere about how it's not usually within the Catholic tradition to so blatantly alter scripture.
I find this to be a very strange reading. I never got that from the creation narrative at all. Looking through it, I only see two places that seem to be about marriage. First there's Genesis 2:22-24:
> 22. And God YHVH fashioned the side that had been taken from the man (adam) into a woman (ishah), bringing her to the man (adam). 23. Then the man (adam) said, “this one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman (ishah), for from a man (ish) was she taken.” 24. Hence a man (ish) leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife (ishah), so that they become one flesh.
This doesn't mention procreation at all! It seems to say that men and women come together because they have a common origin, not necessarily because it produces offspring. You could still say that this supports heterosexual marriage, but I don't see any particular reason to read it as prohibiting other types of marriage. And in fact, it seems to work fine with gay marriage – two men or two women are also presumably from the same flesh and bones as Adam and Eve.
Then there's Genesis 3:16:
> And to the woman [God] said, “I will greatly expand your hard labor—and your pregnancies; in hardship shall you bear children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.
This says something about bearing children and about male-female relationships, but it doesn't really draw the line saying that the purpose of marriage is to produce children. It also presents all of this as an unfortunate state of affairs.
I guess there's also 1:28-29:
> 28. And God created man (adam) in the divine image, creating them in the image of God—creating them male and female. 29. God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”
That talks about reproduction, but it doesn't say anything about marriage.
> I'm purely speaking from an academic sense here (the art of understanding what someone wrote a long time ago).
Right. I think whoever wrote the creation story was trying to provide an explanation for why the world was the way it was: why the world exists, why there are seven days in a week, why there are men and women, why they have dominance over the animals, why there's suffering, why snakes have no legs, and so and so forth. I don't think they meant for the creation story to give instructions at all, except a moral that one should obey God. I don't get the impression that the author was trying to sanctify marriage or procreation at all. If they were, it seems like they would have described Adam and Eve's wedding, they would have spent more than one sentence on the birth of their first child, and they wouldn't have presented pregnancy as a curse.
Later in chapter 2, God is quoted as saying:
> Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and they shall become one flesh
Jesus himself then comes back and quote this exact verse in Genesis in the context of divorce being bad (Matthew 19). It's clearly referencing marriage within the context of creation.
You may not agree it's the central thrust of the text, and perhaps I overstated the position, but marriage between a man and a woman is certainly a major theme in these first two chapters. I'd be impressed if you can find Rabbinical texts that support a different theory.
What differences are you referring to specifically?
Makes my motivated reasoning detector go off.
It wouldn't matter if 99% of animals and humans were gay.
> Natural law[1] (Latin: ius naturale, lex naturalis) is a philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of a set of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory[2] asserts that certain rights and moral values are inherent in human nature and can be understood universally, independent of enacted laws or societal norms. In jurisprudence, natural law—sometimes referred to as iusnaturalism[3] or jusnaturalism,[4] but not to be confused with what is called simply naturalism in legal philosophy[5][6]—holds that there are objective legal standards based on morality that underlie and inform the creation, interpretation, and application of human-made laws.
Also, what does your comment have to do with gay penguins that i was responding to? I was just trying to show natural law has nothing to do with gay animals.
We'll call it "natural law", to suggest that it comes from somewhere other than some random human.
Got it.
Here you are.
It then does a similar trick where the authors of the New Testament are acknowledged to have poor Greek in many cases but then using specific word choice to claim they meant an extremely forced reading, relying on the previous trick a bit too.
There’s even a discussion of how nitpicking word choice is bad practice earlier in the same document!
He did say slaves should obey their masters, however. It's weird that Christians have no problem opposing slavery despite it being unambigiously supported by the Bible, and verbatim by both God and Jesus, but they absolutely cannot budge on homosexuality.
Even though the Bible only explicitly forbids sex between men, meaning the Church should have no stance whatsoever on lesbianism, yet they do. It's like they want to eat their cake and have it too.
There are just a few (oblique) mentions of homosexuality in the New Testament. It clearly wasn't a main concern. Pope Francis' interpretation always seemed completely consistent with scripture. It's the extremely heavy emphasis on homosexuality that's inconsistent with it.
Also: being gay and gay acts are two different things. Catholic priests are not supposed to engage in any sexual acts, so in that sense, it doesn't really matter if a priest is gay.