Purity And Passions

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails. In the music of the harp which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills us. The harp is the travelling patterer for the Universe’s Insurance Company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness is all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop but the charming moral transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way off, is heard as music, a proud sweet satire on the meanness of our live.

We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means than temperance and purity. “That in which men differ from brute beasts,” says Mencius, “is a thing very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully.” Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. “A command over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind’s approximation to God.” Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.—

“How happy’s he who hath due place assigned
To his beasts and disafforested his mind!
* * * * *
Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev’ry beast,
And is not ass himself to all the rest!
Else man not only is the herd of swine,
But he’s those devils too which did incline
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse.”

All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.

I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subject,—I care not how obscene my words are,—but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles.

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Higher Laws (Chap. XI)

Be Sure Your Philanthropy Is Not Misplaced

"Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered him, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday's liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice?

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this. The last were not England's best men and women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists.

I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. From what southern plains comes up the voice of wailing? Under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would redeem? If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even- for that is the seat of sympathy- he forthwith sets about reforming- the world. Being a microcosm himself, he discovers- and it is a true discovery, and he is the man to make it- that the world has been eating green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe; and straightway his drastic philanthropy seeks out the Esquimau and the Patagonian, and embraces the populous Indian and Chinese villages; and thus, by a few years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the meanwhile using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live. I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology. My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it, that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings. Take your time, and set about some free labor."

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Economy (Chap. I)

Does Matthew 1:25 Refute The Roman Catholic Dogma Of Mary's Perpetual Virginity?

• Discussion:

          -It is an official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church that Mary never had any children after the birth of Jesus Christ. It is believed that she was a virgin before the birth of Christ and remained so afterward for the rest of her earthly life. Various theories have been made in an effort to explain the references to His brothers and sisters in the gospels. The Roman Catholic Catechism makes reference to Augustine in supporting this teaching: 

          "Mary "remained a virgin in conceiving her Son, a virgin in giving birth to him, a virgin in carrying him, a virgin in nursing him at her breast, always a virgin" (St. Augustine, Serm. 186, 1: PL 38, 999): with her whole being she is "the handmaid of the Lord" (Lk 1:38)." (# 510)

          The term "knew" was a modest way of describing sexual relations. That is how it is used in various places throughout the Old Testament (Genesis 4:1; 17; 25; Judges 11:39). To know carries with it connotations of people being intimate with each other. This idea of "knowing" is also expressed in the context of the covenant relationship between God and Israel (Amos 3:2; Hosea 2:14-23). Therefore, "knowing her not" in Matthew 1:25 means "keeping her a virgin" until marriage.

          Children in Jewish culture were viewed as blessings from God (Psalm 127:3-5). The wife was likened to a vine and children to olive shoots (Psalm 128:3). The "barren womb" was said to "never be satisfied" (Proverbs 30:16). Children were viewed as a sign of divine favor (Genesis 21:6; 1 Samuel 1-2) . In fact, women who were unable to bear children felt humiliation and attributed their condition to some underlying sin or wrongdoing. For example, Rachel preferred death over childlessness (Genesis 30:1). This backdrop seriously weakens the Roman Catholic view of Matthew 1:25.

          If we understand the clause "until" in Matthew 1:25 to indicate a change in the virginity status of Mary, then that reading would lend support to the virgin birth. It would further emphasize the fact that Jesus was not born as a result of sexual relations. Further, if Joseph had children from an earlier marriage, then Jesus would not have been recognized as the rightful heir to the Davidic throne. He would not have been Joseph's eldest son.

          The Catholic dogma of Mary's perpetual virginity ignores the positive portrayal of childbearing by the Old Testament. It requires a highly unusual reading of Matthew 1:25, which centers around the marriage of Mary and Joseph. Matthew does not give us any indication whatsoever of Mary being a perpetual virgin. Why would a man abstain from sexual relations with his wife? Would it not have been unnatural for a Jewish woman to not have children? God created the sex act. He pronounced His creative work to be good upon finishing it (Genesis 1:31). Sex within the confines of marriage does not spiritually defile a person.

The Ancients Did Not Believe In A Flat Earth

"The world, being made spherical, is confined within the circles of heaven….Without a doubt, the world is beautiful. It excels as well in its magnitude as in the oblique circle and those about the north, and also in its spherical form. Yet we must not worship the world, but other its Artificer."

Athenagoras (ca.175), 2.132,136. Cited in A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, edited by David W. Bercot, p. 222

On The Historicity And Morality Of The Canaanite Conquests (Part 2 Of 2)

• Discussion:

          -James Bishop created a series of posts explaining what he thinks is problematic with traditional defenses of God commanding the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. The second installment of this series continues on the work of the first by answering a few other objections to this narrative. Following are a few excerpts from the author along with a critique: 

          "...If we swapped “Canaanites” with “Jews” in the Old Testament, and Joshua with Hitler, we would have Archer defending Hitler on the basis that the Jews cancerous, including their infants and children. If we swapped “Canaanites” with “Jews” in the Old Testament, and Joshua with Hitler, we would have Archer defending Hitler on the basis that the Jews cancerous, including their infants and children."

          This is a false analogy. Israel was a theocracy, not a dictatorship. Classes of people were not being eliminated at whim. The context of these battles in the Old Testament relates to purity of worship, not racial hatred. Note that the Old Testament does not paint these battles in a positive light, and rightfully so. It only records the details of these events, no matter how gruesome. The biblical texts present a complex picture, including both military conflict and peaceful coexistence.

          No other nation in history besides Israel had been led directly by God. He commanded His people to wage this war. Consequently, this cannot simply be applied to justify any genocide committed throughout history. A man actually commanded by God to do something should be distinguished from one who is delusional in the belief that He is calling upon him. It is not our duty as Christians to kill anyone so that they do not sin later. It was a specific judgment by God against a particular group of people.

          This truly is a paradoxical situation. How can God be one essence in three persons? How can His sovereignty be reconciled with our freewill? How can God remain just while making just the unjust? These types of questions are raised here to illustrate the point that there are many aspects of God's nature that confound human rationality and sensibilities, especially that of nonbelievers.

          "God’s plan, however, is to not only kill all the Canaanite parents but their children and infants too. In other words, God is judging the Canaanites for practicing child sacrifice by killing their children."

          The Canaanite children would likely have grown up to resent the Israelites who raised them and cause rebellion. Further, Israel was not strong enough at this time like Rome was in a more developed stage to keep several hostile districts under control at the same time. Not every surrounding nation posed a threat to Israel. Sometimes groups voluntarily surrendered themselves to the Jews.

          God could have terminated the lives of the Canaanite children to spare them from becoming corrupt like their forefathers. The same idea could be applied to the multitudes of children who died in the Genesis flood. They would be received into His kingdom rather than come under eternal condemnation for sin. God's reasons include what is best for the children given the entirety of circumstances at the time. Children die all the time and in many different ways. This is ultimately rooted in the problem of evil, which has been tackled by different theodicies. 

          "Going on what the biblical authors tell us, God wanted to eradicate the Canaanite religion and identity because they were a major threat to Israel. But here God, given his want to eradicate the Canaanites, we learn that they were not fully wiped out (Judg. 3:1–4)."

          Israel did not finish the job due to disobedience, so there is no inconsistency in the narrative.

          God extended mercy to nations that repented during the Old Testament (Jeremiah 18:7-8; Jonah 3:10). He is merciful enough to spare even the smallest remnant of righteous people in the midst of a wicked city (Genesis 18:24). The Canaanites had enough time and understanding of what God required of them in order to be spared from divine judgment, but they persisted in their ways. 

          God has the authority to use anything in His created order as an instrument to punish the unrighteous. He is sovereign over life (Deuteronomy 32:39). He gave it to us. Life belongs to Him. God can also take it back from us. He can do so in any way that He deems appropriate.

On The Historicity And Morality Of The Canaanite Conquests (Part 1 Of 2)

• Discussion:

          -James Bishop created a series of posts explaining what he thinks is problematic with traditional defenses of God commanding the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. This two part series attempts to show that a number of those objections do not hold water when put under scrutiny. Following are a few excerpts from the author along with a critique: 

          "...Wesley Morriston agrees writing that there “is nothing uniquely “Canaanite” about them. All, or nearly all, of these practices—from sexual intercourse during a woman’s menstrual period to homosexual behavior to bestiality—are still common. Is there any real reason to believe that these things were more common among the Canaanites in the ancient world?”

          Some cultures in the ancient world were worse than others. It is not even claimed that Canaanite culture was the worst that ever existed. There are other instances in the Old Testament of societies that were destroyed by God because of their sin (e.g. Genesis 19). 

          Genesis 15:16 refers to a point of wickedness at which God has no other choice but to act in judgment. His patience with perverse people wanes according to the degree of their perversity. These people had four hundred years to repent. The real wonder is why God gave them so much time to do so.

          "More likely it is that the biblical authors are deliberately depicting their Canaanite enemies in a negative light, thus portraying them in a way that is not entirely fair. One should remember that the Israelites were the supposed exterminators of the Canaanites and we only have their testimony bearing witness to the Canaanites themselves. We have to rely on the killers of the Canaanites to learn about the Canaanites."

          This is not likely given that Jewish culture taught heavily against lying (Exodus 20:16; Psalm 101:7; Proverbs 12:22; Hosea 4:2). The Old Testament contains warnings against modifying the substance of its message (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Proverbs 30:5-6), which suggests that honest people wrote it.

          Even if we have only one side of an event presented by a source, that does not necessarily make it untrue or untrustworthy.

          "Evidence of the Canaanite culture, beliefs, and practices appear to leave out much of what the biblical authors say about them. This suggests that the biblical authors had limited knowledge of the Canaanites. For instance, translations of the Ugaritic texts do not suggest the Canaanites being a particularly “debauched” or “cruel” culture (unless one sees the common ancient practice of animal sacrifice as cruel)."

          Archaeological discoveries may be helpful in shedding light on more obscure parts of the Old Testament, but the insight that they provide is limited. How can we be sure that the Ugaritic texts provide us a full picture as to how the Palestinian world was? 

          The biblical authors should not be dismissed on a priori basis until proven correct. It is much more likely that our, not their, knowledge of the Canaanites is limited. The biblical authors were alive thousands of years before us. They would be better suited to speak to these matters than us.

          There could have been other documents further supporting the description of the Canaanites as found in the Old Testament that have since perished. We do not have even a fraction of literature produced from that time period.

What Is Your Religion?

 “Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Freeman's Defense (Chap. XVII)

The Brevity Of Human Life

“Death! Strange that there should be such a word, and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!”

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Reunion (Chap. XXVIII)

There Is More To Life Than This World

 "...But it is often those who have least of all in this life whom he chooseth for the kingdom. Put thy trust in him [God] and, no matter what befalls thee here, he will make all right hereafter.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Freeman's Defense (Chap. XVII)

A Textual Critical Analysis Of Mark 16:9-20

          Most modern English translations of the Bible place into brackets or footnotes the text of Mark 16:9-20, which is about Jesus appearing to the disciples and giving them instructions to carry on the work of preaching the gospel. The text records Jesus appearing first to Mary Magdalene who was not believed after telling others the news of Him being resurrected after His crucifixion. He then appears to two other disciples bodily and later for a third time to the eleven while they were supping. Scholars generally do not consider Mark 16:9-20 to be part of the original text of the gospel of Mark.

          Two key witnesses consulted in reaching this conclusion would be Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. In regards to textual defects, Randall Price writes, "...there are thousands of variants between them [Sinaiticus and Vaticanus], but where they agree they appear to represent a text that goes back to the second century AD" (Searching for the Original Bible, p. 80). Philip Wesley Comfort writes, "Through the use of chemicals and painstaking effort, a scholar can read the original writing underneath the printed text" (The Quest for the Original Text of the New Testament, p. 27, n 1).

          Early Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Georgian translations are appealed to as evidence for Mark's gospel ending at 16:8. The New English Translation has this excerpt on Mark 16:9-20: "Most mss include the “long ending” (vv. 9-20) immediately after v. 8 (A C D W [which has unique material between vv. 14 and 15] Θ ƒ 33 M lat sy bo); however, Eusebius (and presumably Jerome) knew of almost no Greek mss that had this ending. Several mss have marginal comments noting that earlier Greek mss lacked the verses." This scribal interpolation was produced and in circulation as early as the second century. A few manuscripts contain a shorter ending that comes after Mark 16:8, which is cited as follows:

          "And they reported all the instructions briefly to Peter’s companions. Afterwards Jesus himself, through them, sent forth from east to west the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. Amen."

          Verses 12 and 13 parallels Luke 24:13-35 in which Christ chided two of His followers traveling on the way to Emmaus for their lack of faith. Verse 14 mirrors Christ appearing to the eleven apostles and eating with them in Luke 24:36-43 and John 20:19-23. Verse 15 is derived from Christ's commandment to preach the gospel to the unbelieving world in Matthew 28:18-20. Verse 16 echoes the words of incurred divine judgement on those who reject the gospel message found in John 3:18. The reference to handling snakes was gleaned from Paul's miraculous recovery from a snake bite during an encounter with barbarians in Acts 28. The idea of miraculous survival after drinking poison is nowhere to be found in the New Testament.

        Contributor Walter W. Wessel writes in the Expositor's Bible Commentary on Mark 16:9-20 regarding differences in vocabulary and style when compared to Mark's gospel: 

        "Of the 75 significant words in v. 9-20, 15 do not appear elsewhere in Mark and 11 others have a different meaning. In other words, more than a third of the words are non-Markan. The marked difference in vocabulary between 16:9-20 and the rest Mark's gospel makes it difficult to believe that they both came from the same author." 

        The insertion of Mark 16:9-20 as a conclusion to Mark's gospel after verse 8 disrupts the flow of the narrative in that it is suddenly introduced and reads awkwardly. The use of the word "now" at the beginning of verse nine seems disconnected with the ending of verse eight for the reason that there is no smooth change in focus from the woman mentioned in Mark 16:8 to Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene in Mark 16:9. Mark did not write his gospel in a choppy style. It would also be unusual for Mark to introduce in this place (as if it were for the first time) Mary Magdalene when she was already mentioned a few times before (Mark 15:40, 47; 16:1). Why is the detail of her having seven demons cast out by Christ brought up here?

         The explanation taken here for Mark's gospel ending at 16:8 would not be that the concluding part of the work has been lost but he intended it to end that way. The theme of trembling and astonishment is one found throughout Mark's gospel (2:12; 4:41; 9:6; 10:32). His gospel ends just as abruptly as it began. The New English Translation has this footnote which speaks of, "the literary power of ending the Gospel so abruptly that the readers are now drawn into the story itself." It continues, "E. Best aptly states, “It is in keeping with other parts of his Gospel that Mark should not give an explicit account of a conclusion where this is already well known to his readers” (Mark, 73; note also his discussion of the ending of this Gospel on 132 and elsewhere). The readers must now ask themselves, “What will I do with Jesus? If I do not accept him in his suffering, I will not see him in his glory.”