Christianity has been struggling with sex ever since the Nativity
Dec 25, 2019 14:15:23 #
At Christmastide you can’t escape from the fact that Christianity centres on the birth of a child, and glories in it. But Christians say that this Jewish baby from 2,000 years ago is also the supreme God, and then it gets complicated.
Birth generally involves sexual encounter, all messy and sweaty: what about this one? Did Jesus have two human parents? Well, he certainly grew up with a mum and dad, Mary and Joseph; but the story we hear in church at Christmas, amalgamated out of two different accounts in two of the four gospels, suggests that somehow Joseph didn’t get involved in the initial process of parenting, and that Mary had remained a “virgin”.
Yet those gospel-writers, Matthew and Luke, seem confused. They set out, at great length, Joseph’s family tree, which suggests that he was Jesus’s biological father – otherwise why would they bother with the genealogy?
Maybe because of this shaky knowledge of Jesus’s parentage, Christianity has tied itself up in knots about sex and marriage: it must often seem to outsiders that Christians do little else but argue about these questions. And frequently, confident Christian assertions about sex are made without understanding the history behind it all.
Matthew tries to prove Mary was a virgin by referring his story back to an ancient Hebrew prophecy from Isaiah, that “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son”. Yet Matthew was writing in Greek, and unfortunately the original Hebrew didn’t talk about a “virgin” at all, just a “young woman”. On that slight shift in translation, Christianity built a great deal.
Around a century after the first four gospels were composed, new Christian writings, also claiming to be gospels, began to emphasise Mary’s virginity, removing any taint of sex from her story. One of these is the gospel of James. It was never regarded as an official gospel, but it was hugely popular in its day for filling in the bits of a very patchy New Testament tale. It tells Mary’s story from her birth through to the birth of Jesus, and one of its main aims is to emphasise that Mary didn’t just start out a virgin – she stayed a virgin. So in a key part of the text, a midwife examines Mary after childbirth and exclaims in astonishment: “Behold, a virgin hath brought forth: which nature doth not allow.”
This “gospel” has another new departure: the idea that God had already intervened not just in the birth of Jesus, but in the conception of Mary herself. James tells us that Mary’s mother (called for the first time Anna, another detail not in the Bible) was infertile.
Then an angel appeared to Anna, saying: “Anna, Anna, the Lord has heard your prayer. You will conceive, and bear a child, and the child will be famous throughout all the world.” And immediately Anna fell pregnant with Mary. This is the origin of the Roman Catholic idea that Mary, let alone Jesus, was conceived without sin: the “immaculate conception”.
Take note: we’re not dealing with the original four gospels here. There are references in those biblical gospels to Jesus having brothers and sisters – which sounds as if Mary at the very least didn’t stay a virgin. Christians began to explain them away as Jesus’s cousins – or Joseph’s children by a previous marriage. As a result, Christianity came widely to accept Mary’s perpetual virginity: she stayed a virgin. This means that the most important marriage in the Christian story didn’t involve physical sex at all, which makes for a confused start to any Christian theology of marriage.
Christianity’s problem with sex goes back to these first centuries of its history, when early Christians turned sex from a biological necessity into a vice; from a pleasure into a sin. Christians have been struggling with the fallout ever since.
According to the gospels, Jesus Christ had very little to say about sex. He did insist on monogamy in marriage, and he decreed that there should be no divorce (something about which Christians began disagreeing with him straight away – including the apostle Paul). But beyond those two pronouncements, Jesus said virtually nothing – nothing, for instance, about homosexuality.
One gospel story, more than any other, sums up his attitude towards sex (John 8:3-11). Jesus was teaching in the Jerusalem Temple, where the Dome of the Rock now stands, when a group of men dragged in a woman caught in the act, they said, of adultery. They asked Jesus whether they should stone her to death – the ancient Jewish penalty. But all he said was: “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” And when they’d all shuffled off looking sheepish, all he said to her was to go off and sin no more.
That is a story of forgiveness and mercy. Jesus was very hot on forgiveness and mercy. It would be nice if Christians were too.
• Diarmaid MacCulloch is emeritus professor of the history of the church, University of Oxford
Birth generally involves sexual encounter, all messy and sweaty: what about this one? Did Jesus have two human parents? Well, he certainly grew up with a mum and dad, Mary and Joseph; but the story we hear in church at Christmas, amalgamated out of two different accounts in two of the four gospels, suggests that somehow Joseph didn’t get involved in the initial process of parenting, and that Mary had remained a “virgin”.
Yet those gospel-writers, Matthew and Luke, seem confused. They set out, at great length, Joseph’s family tree, which suggests that he was Jesus’s biological father – otherwise why would they bother with the genealogy?
Maybe because of this shaky knowledge of Jesus’s parentage, Christianity has tied itself up in knots about sex and marriage: it must often seem to outsiders that Christians do little else but argue about these questions. And frequently, confident Christian assertions about sex are made without understanding the history behind it all.
Matthew tries to prove Mary was a virgin by referring his story back to an ancient Hebrew prophecy from Isaiah, that “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son”. Yet Matthew was writing in Greek, and unfortunately the original Hebrew didn’t talk about a “virgin” at all, just a “young woman”. On that slight shift in translation, Christianity built a great deal.
Around a century after the first four gospels were composed, new Christian writings, also claiming to be gospels, began to emphasise Mary’s virginity, removing any taint of sex from her story. One of these is the gospel of James. It was never regarded as an official gospel, but it was hugely popular in its day for filling in the bits of a very patchy New Testament tale. It tells Mary’s story from her birth through to the birth of Jesus, and one of its main aims is to emphasise that Mary didn’t just start out a virgin – she stayed a virgin. So in a key part of the text, a midwife examines Mary after childbirth and exclaims in astonishment: “Behold, a virgin hath brought forth: which nature doth not allow.”
This “gospel” has another new departure: the idea that God had already intervened not just in the birth of Jesus, but in the conception of Mary herself. James tells us that Mary’s mother (called for the first time Anna, another detail not in the Bible) was infertile.
Then an angel appeared to Anna, saying: “Anna, Anna, the Lord has heard your prayer. You will conceive, and bear a child, and the child will be famous throughout all the world.” And immediately Anna fell pregnant with Mary. This is the origin of the Roman Catholic idea that Mary, let alone Jesus, was conceived without sin: the “immaculate conception”.
Take note: we’re not dealing with the original four gospels here. There are references in those biblical gospels to Jesus having brothers and sisters – which sounds as if Mary at the very least didn’t stay a virgin. Christians began to explain them away as Jesus’s cousins – or Joseph’s children by a previous marriage. As a result, Christianity came widely to accept Mary’s perpetual virginity: she stayed a virgin. This means that the most important marriage in the Christian story didn’t involve physical sex at all, which makes for a confused start to any Christian theology of marriage.
Christianity’s problem with sex goes back to these first centuries of its history, when early Christians turned sex from a biological necessity into a vice; from a pleasure into a sin. Christians have been struggling with the fallout ever since.
According to the gospels, Jesus Christ had very little to say about sex. He did insist on monogamy in marriage, and he decreed that there should be no divorce (something about which Christians began disagreeing with him straight away – including the apostle Paul). But beyond those two pronouncements, Jesus said virtually nothing – nothing, for instance, about homosexuality.
One gospel story, more than any other, sums up his attitude towards sex (John 8:3-11). Jesus was teaching in the Jerusalem Temple, where the Dome of the Rock now stands, when a group of men dragged in a woman caught in the act, they said, of adultery. They asked Jesus whether they should stone her to death – the ancient Jewish penalty. But all he said was: “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” And when they’d all shuffled off looking sheepish, all he said to her was to go off and sin no more.
That is a story of forgiveness and mercy. Jesus was very hot on forgiveness and mercy. It would be nice if Christians were too.
• Diarmaid MacCulloch is emeritus professor of the history of the church, University of Oxford
Dec 25, 2019 14:28:10 #
You are so confused about what Christianity teaches, you really need to shut your pie hole.
Dec 25, 2019 14:32:09 #
Iliamna1 wrote:
You are so confused about what Christianity teaches, you really need to shut your pie hole.
I simply posted an interesting article, the gentleman who wrote it Diarmaid MacCulloch is emeritus professor of the history of the church, at the University of Oxford in England. I think it is a good bet that he knows a whole lot more about Christian teachings than either of us. Wouldn’t you agree?
Dec 25, 2019 14:53:09 #
Iliamna1 wrote:
You are so confused about what Christianity teaches, you really need to shut your pie hole.
All the mockers of Christians and Christianity will one day meet the true Jesus as their judge.
Dec 25, 2019 15:17:29 #
Kevyn wrote:
I simply posted an interesting article, the gentleman who wrote it Diarmaid MacCulloch is emeritus professor of the history of the church, at the University of Oxford in England. I think it is a good bet that he knows a whole lot more about Christian teachings than either of us. Wouldn’t you agree?
Nope. He's as clueless, as are you. And you're clueless about WHY you're clueless.
Dec 25, 2019 15:48:31 #
Liberty Tree wrote:
All the mockers of Christians and Christianity will one day meet the true Jesus as their judge.
The gentleman who penned this is a scholar of Christianity, he is in no way mocking and rather has spent his life studying its history, scriptures and teachings. The people here who haven’t, instead using it as a bludgeon to attack those different from them and as a shield for their racism and xenophobia are likely to be those surprised on judgment day.
Dec 25, 2019 15:50:31 #
Kevyn wrote:
No, I wouldn't agree. I simply posted an interesting article, the gentleman who wrote it Diarmaid MacCulloch is emeritus professor of the history of the church, at the University of Oxford in England. I think it is a good bet that he knows a whole lot more about Christian teachings than either of us. Wouldn’t you agree?
From the New Humanist: The Church rejected me because I'm gay.
Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch talks to Ralph Jones about how personal experience has shaped his ideas about sex and Christianity.
MacCulloch says of his TV series, Sex and the Church, it is “extraordinarily personal – it reflects what I want it to say”.
Dec 25, 2019 16:44:17 #
lpnmajor
Loc: Arkansas
Kevyn wrote:
At Christmastide you can’t escape from the fact th... (show quote)
Please, Anikan Skywalker's birth was by immaculate conception........................ everybody knows that.
Dec 25, 2019 16:58:19 #
Kevyn wrote:
The gentleman who penned this is a scholar of Christianity, he is in no way mocking and rather has spent his life studying its history, scriptures and teachings. The people here who haven’t, instead using it as a bludgeon to attack those different from them and as a shield for their racism and xenophobia are likely to be those surprised on judgment day.
He may be a scholar of some sort, but he's clueless about what Christianty's about. His conclusions are flawed and it's just a bunch of liberal bunkum. Any REAL Christian would see the flaws in that article.
Dec 25, 2019 20:37:23 #
Kevyn wrote:
At Christmastide you can’t escape from the fact th... (show quote)
An interesting article...
In my opinion the author seems to be projecting his own desires into his interpretation of the Bible... But we all have a tendency to do that...
The part about the Hebrew and Greek translation has always fascinated me... Was Mary truly required to be a virgin? And the Gospel of James is a good read.. It provides the names for both of Mary's parents, and the story of Mary as a young woman... Muhammed leaned heavily upon it when creating the Koran, and it is still used by the Muslim faith... Mary's father is also considered a prophet in Islam and there is a shrine built where he is buried that Muslims may pilgrimage too.... (the exact location escapes me at the moment)
Interestingly enough, Christianity wasn't the first cult to claim a virgin birth... The cult of Mitra also had the story... A savior born of a virgin... The cult was quite prominent in Rome before the coming of Christ and endured for several centuries afterwards...
John 8:3-11 is also controversial... With some scholars arguing that it was a later addition to the Bible.. Parky and I have been discussing it on another thread... Regardless, the lesson is clear... But be sure to remember how it ends "Go, and sin no more!"..
Christ didn't specifically speak out against homosexuality, but he did speak out against sinful sexual practices... As he was a Jew, we can be pretty certain that this includes homosexuality...
Christ's genealogy is another controversy... But one of the more interesting ones... Both genealogies establish Christ's lineage from David, which is an important point in declaring him the Savior.... The controversy is not that he is descended from David, but in the fact that the lineages are different and no explanation is given in the Bible for this...
An interesting read Kevin.... Glad to see you dwelving into faith over the holidays... Merry Christmas and happy new year...
Dec 25, 2019 20:54:40 #
Kevyn wrote:
The gentleman who penned this is a scholar of Christianity, he is in no way mocking and rather has spent his life studying its history, scriptures and teachings. The people here who haven’t, instead using it as a bludgeon to attack those different from them and as a shield for their racism and xenophobia are likely to be those surprised on judgment day.
You should indeed shut your pie hole. You are indeed clueless.
He may be called a scholar of Christianity but that sure doesn’t mean he’s a Christian. Intellectual knowledge is not heart knowledge.
Dec 25, 2019 21:21:57 #
Iliamna1 wrote:
He may be a scholar of some sort, but he's clueless about what Christianty's about. His conclusions are flawed and it's just a bunch of liberal bunkum. Any REAL Christian would see the flaws in that article.
Yes a Christian can easily see the flaws in that article. But the secular world and cafeteria Christians would think it has merit.
The only good thing about that article is it illustrates how important the Holy Spirit is. The bible isn’t just another book.
Dec 25, 2019 21:41:16 #
Kevin, my belief in all this can be summed up by that great American philosopher Sam Clemens who revealed: "Religion was created when the first Con Man met the first sucker."
In 5 days I'll be 88; I'll consider ideas useful worth considering from any other Vet on this site who can refrain from regurgitating nonsense. More thoughts next year. You are not the only rational one here.
In 5 days I'll be 88; I'll consider ideas useful worth considering from any other Vet on this site who can refrain from regurgitating nonsense. More thoughts next year. You are not the only rational one here.
Dec 26, 2019 05:37:47 #
Dec 26, 2019 06:45:48 #
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