mls@dasys1.UUCP (Michael Siemon) (10/23/89)
My last note, on libertine Christianity, will have seemed somewhat unbalanced. Because it was the second of a pair of articles, and the first -- posted as a follow-up to the question on monogamy -- seems to have got lost. (My work account does strange things with postings to s.r.c.) I won't rework the lost posting, except to recap the main points: - the Christian teaching about monogamy probably stems from Jesus' ruling about divorce (cf. Mark, chapter 10). Most of the commentary I have read from people trained in rabbinic traditions sees this as having a natural consequence in forbidding polygamy (as well as remarriage which is specifically forbidden in verse 11; this is the context in which bishops are expected not to have multiple wives.) - the halachic point got lost in the Hellenistic world; they already were monogamous (the Romans being serially monogamous, like Americans. My article also protested a frivolous and I think malicious statement of the Greek view of sex; admitting that the Greeks were terribly oppressive of women, I refered to Foucault's _The Uses of Pleasure_ for a good treatment of the Greek position.) - the Jews in Europe have been monogamous since a ruling of the Vilna Gaon -- a ruling due to expire soon, after its 1000 year provisional limit. There is debate on what the expiration might mean (read -- but please don't unthinkingly post to -- soc.culture.jewish) Yemenite Jews, among others, retain the old allowance of polygamy. The reason I write is that you may otherwise miss the balance, the tension, in my defense of liberation from the Law. I do not regard the Law as my Master -- only Christ has that status -- but it *is* a guide. I must not abdicate my own responsibility to God by shifting responsibility to the Law -- but that does not mean that I ignore it. People who read my articles will know that I am sometimes wildly divergent from orthodoxy and at other times will explore it with the devotion that can only come from within. I do not, myself, see a contradiction in that; it is rather two sides of the same coin (or of the $10 bill used by David Buxton for a related matter.) My point in the "libertine" article can be restated thus: Christians found themselves accused by "respectable" Romans of orgies during their agape meals. (There is a nice irony here, in that the modern veiw of pagan Romans is that *they* indulged in orgies.) It is entirely possible that *some* strands of early Christianity may have justified such accusations, but you might also easily believe that most of the charges were rumor and incomprehension of what it is we share, so preciously, as Christians. As orthodoxy developed, it became "good tactics" to *shift* the "blame" in these charges to those groups that spoke as I have done, against the Law. In some cases the charges -- Christian against Christian -- may have been valid. But *we* only have the accusing documents of the surviving Church that became oh, so respectable. There was a polarization, and I think it came mostly from the party that advocated Law. I see people saying "you break the sabbath; therefore you are a murderer." (or more to the point in my own life: "you are gay; that is just as bad as being a murderer.") Obviously, I will react with anger against such charges. For these accusers are blind, deliberately so I feel, to my *delight* in the Law, to my willingness to study it and learn from it. I am no Marcionite, to claim that the "Old Testament" god is evil and what Christ did is to save us from the God of Abraham and Moses and Isaiah and Jeremiah. I am a Christian, and will confess the Nicene or any orthodox creed. But nonetheless, the tension is there -- the Law does not bind me; God does. -- Michael L. Siemon I cannot grow; ...!cucard!dasys1!mls I have no shadow To run away from, I only play.