Diarmaid MacCulloch ViaMedia.News Love Came Down at Christmas – For Some
Theos Is the UK a Christian Country?
“We asked a range of experts and thinkers how they would answer the question: Is the UK a Christian country?”
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love A Brief Evolutionary Context for today’s Global and Christian Crises
The Golden Legend, mentioned by Diarmaid MacCulloch, is a fascinating text and it is worth citing in full. In a text cataloguing the many varied and wonderful events that witnessed to the Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ it is said that: “Even the sodomites gave witness by being exterminated wherever they were in the world on that night, as Jerome says “a light rose over them so bright that all who practice this vice were wiped out; and Christ did this in order that no such uncleanness might be found in the nature he had assumed”. For, as… Read more »
(continued from previous) Rather than just accept it and saying it has always been that way, perhaps we could analyse it and try to determine the cause. Because, if you look carefully at history, it has not always been that way. Many religions and cultures have been tolerant, if not approving, of same-sex behaviour. Endsjo writes “Whilst the condemnation of homosexuality had been, and still is, found within parts of most religions, it is the Western religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – that have traditionally been the most negative and homophobic. Christianity emerges by far the most aggressive of the… Read more »
As usual Diarmaid McCulloch provides a great read. And! It looks like his book will be out in time for Christmas. lol.
oops apologies to MacCulloch. Here in Nova Scotia we are inundated with Mc this and Mac that. I have trouble even with my own relatives. Does he spell that McDonald or MacDonald?
It’s on my list already.
I feel like I’ve been involved in the church discussions of gay and lesbian people for the last half century. And I thought I’d heard it all. But I’m afraid I’d never heard the claim, mentioned in MacCulloch’s article, “that the baby Jesus killed all sodomites, simply by being born in Bethlehem; he would not come into a world where there were people doing things ‘against nature’.” Live and learn, I guess. Also, a comment about Coward’s claimed fact that “Dimensionally, the universe is 13.7 billions of distance in space/time terms.” That’s not quite correct. The observable universe is about… Read more »
Oops. I should proof-read more carefully. In the second paragraph, the second sentence should read:
“The observable universe is about 13.7 billion light years in every direction. So, if one looks to the right about 13.7 billion light years and about 13.7 billion light years the left, one sees a span of about 27.4 billion light years. In addition, what one sees at that point is what was there about 13.7 billion light years ago and the universe has kept expanding since then.”
Thanks so much, Dr Primrose, for correcting my idea about how old the universe is. I vaguely knew it was a space/time thing but hadn’t thought about how dimension of expansion adds to the measurement of light years. Now I do!
For someone who thinks that the genuine Jesus was interpreted out of existence by the early church, Colin Coward is remarkably confident about what was important to Jesus. I’d want to add another question, which is the challenge liberal theology has faced from the beginning: ‘how do we keep ourselves from looking down the well of history at Jesus and just seeing our own reflection?’ I don’t get the sense that Colin Coward’s Jesus would disagree with any of Cowards own worldview. Coward cites ‘contemporary a priori’ knowledge: ‘a priori knowledge’ is knowledge based on pure reasoning and deduction from… Read more »
David Keen – I don’t believe that the genuine Jesus was interpreted out of existence by the early church. I’m interested that this is what you think I’ve said in my very brief sketch. Neither am I very confident about what was important to Jesus. Who knows? I’m confident about the role his followers and early converts and the institutional Church and every generation since Jesus have had in interpreting what was important to Jesus. All theologies, liberal and traditionalist and every other type face the challenge of looking down the well of history at Jesus and seeing their own… Read more »
David Keen has hit the nail on the head. Reject the New Testament accounts of Jesus – and you have nothing to say about what Jesus said or thought. What is the evidentiary basis of your claim that any subsequent group or church or generation had or passed on any clue about Jesus, or could conceivably interpret what was important to him?
Colin Coward, re: your final para, I would not run up a white flag so quickly. Lol! True, that a priori/a posteriori take on a defined epistemological technical sense in western phil–with a wee controversy with regard to science. But I took your meaning immediately i.e. regarding your juxtaposition between contemporary a priori knowledge on the one hand and ‘the bible’ on the other hand. As we say in French à priori in the sense of at first glance, or prima facie if you like Latin like William F. Buckley liked Latin. Besides you can consult something like Cassell’s (… Read more »
Rod, white flag lowered to half mast! I appreciate immensely your encouragement for me to soldier on. Of course I will. The Jesus I have apparently interpreted out of existence seems to be mysteriously and insistently present in my life, active beyond death and planting very annoying seeds of inspiration in my heart, mind and soul where the ground of my being is annoying (to some) fertile. I don’t know about leading – I try to work collaboratively, helped by friends who tell me when to stop talking so much and listen to others. I’m learning.
I have to agree with dr.primrose: As a person who was a gay/AIDS activist for years, and still follows GLBT issues, I have never once from the other side heard Diarmaid MacCulloch’s claim from conservatives about Jesus of Nazareth wiping out all GLBT people in Bethlehem by his birth, in order to purify the town. GLBT opponents cite St. Paul, they cite Leviticus, they cite “natural law”, but not obscure Medieval texts. I also agree with David Keen: Right from the start of his column, Diarmaid MacCulloch seems awfully sure of himself. Maybe I’m misreading Mr. MacCulloch, but “It is… Read more »
Just because you or I may not have not heard of something does not obviate its impact structurally. Hence the shape of MacCulloch’s conclusion in the final paragraph of the piece above. Keep in mind that this appears to be an excerpt from a forthcoming book treating the subject as a whole. MacCulloch does seem confident in his assertions. He is entitled to be. It’s his job. He is arguing for the systemic cumulative impact of attitudes embedded in texts from an evidentiary perspective. You write: “I doubt smug condescension will sway very many of them to look at a… Read more »
In a different comment attached to the original post, rather than this thread, I remarked that I’d never heard the story about ‘purifying the world’ either, although I do know a couple of the other apocryphal tales about Jesus. They’re about as believable as the Langedocque legends which inspired Don Brown’s ‘da Vinci Code’ – amusing, so long as you don’t take them seriously. Given that, its not surprising if conservative evangelicals haven’t ever mentioned them. ‘Sola scriptura’ would surely apply? And no, it can only be later tosh. Such a brutal act would be totally out of character for… Read more »
The Catholics killed the Protestants; the Protestants killed the Catholics; and they both killed the Anabaptists: and the Anabaptists killed – well, nobody, as they believed in tolerance.
Your comment reminds me of a song from the early 1960s by Tom Lehrer, an American musician, satirist, and mathematician, called National Brotherhood Week, which satirizes the same. One of the verses states: Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics And the Catholics hate the Protestants And the Hindus hate the Muslims And everybody hates the Jews The song mentions liking people who [we feel] are inferior, and being grateful National Brotherhood Week doesn’t last all year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY&ab_channel=TheTomLehrerWisdomChannel Mr. Lehrer wrote a number of social commentary songs during the 1960s, including We’ll All Go Together When We Go (about nuclear war)… Read more »
Hail to thee, o kindred spirit! I became sixteen in 1963, at which age one was allowed (in Scotland) to purchase Tom Lehrer’s vinyl records! Even now, I like to regale younger folk with snippets from his (and Flanders and Swann’s) songs. I understand that, by mutual consent, the Ivy League and he parted, but that he then had a very successful career in musicals. I had a Jewish friend at University, who liked to sing Lehrer, and who would often tell the most disgraceful anti-Jewish jokes, as a sort of defence mechanism. But the persecution of the Anabaptists, by… Read more »
You are six years older than me. I think Albert Einstein once commented (in reflecting on nuclear weapons) that human beings are scientifically-and-industrially-advanced while having DNA and brain structures from 100,000 years ago. Our tribalism apparently had evolutionarily-useful benefits, but these days, it is frightening. That groups would be shunned and persecuted over differences such as adult baptism (a rational, to me, theology that the candidate is making a conscious, informed choice to be baptized), or (in the case of Jews) because they believe in God as a Unity rather than as a Trinity, or because they have more skin… Read more »
There have been some interesting responses to the MacCulloch article. What I find most interesting is the ambivalence about it I would argue that all professor MacCulloch is doing is his day job, history. He describes what actually happened, what people thought about homosexuality and the church in the twelfth century. What he describes is par for the course if you look at the mediaeval church response to homosexually. There is a violence and brutality which is shocking, close to genocide. But it seems that we in the modern world are totally unaware of this history. (I have been researching… Read more »
Simon, I think that is pretty much correct. There is a real reluctance to trace and face the historical vectors of systemic biases. For example, it is a hard lesson we are learning here in Canada with regard to the legacy of church residential schools and racism. History is important. It keeps religious (and political) claims honest. I have the impression that for some, reading the bible is similar to reading Tennyson’s hypothetical world as a source for the history of the charge of the light brigade.
Not all residential institutions were bad, and not all Christian administrators were evil. I was blessed to spend some years in a children’s home in Scotland, founded and run by Christians, and greatly assisted by the local primary school where both the headmaster and his wife and also some other staff members were Christians.
Your point has nothing to do with the history of Indian Residential Schools in Canada, which were operated by the Churches and as part of government policy.
https://news.umanitoba.ca/tag/residential-schools/
In Canada and the USA, residential schools for Indians were essentially instruments of genocide. Children were forcibly taken from their families and tribes and sent far away. The aim was to wipe out native languages and cultures, and many children died in the harsh conditions. The USA and Canada are only recently coming to grips with that terrible legacy. Obviously some children’s homes and residential schools in some countries were well run and humane, including Christian ones. But in Britain we have our own history of children being taken from unwed mothers or from poor families. On last night’s Who… Read more »
I want to re-emphasize the connection I suggested between MacCulloch’s work in his piece above on the history of sex and Christianity and the emergence in public consciousness of the horrors of Indian Residential Schools in Canada. In the case of residential schools historical reappraisal of self serving colonialist narratives, examining critically both what had been included, and what was left out, including an attendance to documentary evidence, has resulted in a truth telling that makes the possibility of true reconciliation ( not yet realized) viable. This, in fact, is the basis of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission work which… Read more »
Even the name ‘Indian residential schools’—using our name for indigenous people, not theirs—gives the game away.
Here’s the thing: the parents had no choice, The children were forcibly taken from them; their home communities were emptied of the presence and the voices and the joy of their children. When the kids got to the schools they were forbidden to speak their native languages, wear their hair and clothes according to their traditions, and worship according to their beliefs and ceremonies.
It was an evil system and the stated goal was to ‘kill the Indian in the child.’
It does indeed, Tim. Things are changing. We have gone from First Nations children being beaten for speaking their mother Indigenous language at school, to a revival of aboriginal languages including an increasing use of Frist Nations place names (link). We have a long way to go. We are still stuck with the Federal ‘Indian’ Act. On the broader question, this all pertains to the ability to distinguish between dominant historical narratives and the historical reality endured by marginalized groups, whether aboriginal peoples in white settler states, sexual minorities and women in the Churches, or anti-Judaism/antisemitism in the New Testament.… Read more »
I hadn’t heard of this particular belief/story but I find it fascinating (and terrible). I recently listened to a secular podcast about the history of the understanding of same sex activity in nature and the very old idea stemming from the Church that it was “against nature”. Scientists observed animals were engaging in sexual activity with the same sex but covered it up for a long time which preserved the faulty concept. (The podcast series is called “You’re Wrong About” and the episode title is “Lesbian Seagulls” if anyone wants to listen to it). Reading this comment allowed me to… Read more »
Does anything Dr MacCulloch writes indicate that wiping out the sodomites was something that Jesus did? My interpretation was that the story popped up in medieval times as something that happened.
Hello, Simon Dawson quotes quite a long passage from what I presume is the William Granger Ryan translation of The Golden Legend (Princeton University Press)- my copy seems the same and is the 3rd reprint, 2012 Jacobus de Voragine states that Jerome said that (after the semi colon) Christ did this’ This neatly illustrates the problems with seeking definitive ancient texts, because he doesn’t say when or where Jerome said it! And the sentence itself is a very awkward construction between the sodomites ‘bearing witness’ which to me suggests choice and Christ causing a bright light to wipe them all… Read more »
I once waded through a couple of volumes of Jerome’s epistles, for a patristics extended essay, and have never since called him ‘St’. A very dodgy character.
Since the answer to your question is in the article, I’m wondering if this is a leading question?
No, it was not a leading question. I did not read
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as meaning this was something Jesus did. The sodomites died. Then Christ came into the world. Perhaps my own ignorance is impeding my understanding.
Richard tks for the clarification. I tend ( from experience) to look for debating club approaches to issues–even when they are not there. My bad.
Perhaps this shows the importance of going back to the original source. Although professor MacCulloch’s text is a bit convoluted, the original Golden Legend text is quite explicit that Christ did this.
The Golden Legend does not give us evidence of what Jesus thought and did in the first century. It gives us evidence of what the church thought and did in mediaeval times. The two issues are different. Both are important.
The Revd Professor Diarmaid McCulloch tends to get it right and can certainly never be guilty of flabby thinking