]]>
And he shall take a wife in her virginity. A widow, or a divorced woman, or a woman who has been defiled, or a prostitute, these he shall not marry. But he shall take as his wife a virgin of his own people, that he may not profane his offspring among his people, for I am the Lord who sanctifies him." (Leviticus 21:13-15, ESV)
There are several things wrong with this argument. One is that the priest is supposed to be pure after marriage too, and if sex is impure then how is he going to remain pure if he has sex with his wife? Another is that there's a reason give, one that doesn't have to do with the purity of the bride but with the offspring. I suppose it's possible to take that as assuming the offspring will be polluted because the mother is polluted, but I don't think that's what's going on here. One of the priestly requirements during Ezekiel's vision of a renewed temple in the last chapters of his prophecy sheds some light on this issue:
They shall not marry a widow or a divorced woman, but only virgins of the offspring of the house of Israel, or a widow who is the widow of a priest. (Ezekiel 44:22, ESV)
If the issue were some animus against people who had had sex, then why would a widow of a priest be ok? Presumably if pollution from sex itself transferred pollution to any offspring, then wouldn't the widow of a priest be just as problematic as the widow of anyone else? This suggests some other reason why priests needed to marry virgins in Leviticus, a reason that must be consistent with marrying widows of priests in Ezekiel. It's unlikely that there's different reasoning involved in the two cases, even if you don't accept divine inspiration behind the two passages.
A much more likely explanation is that the issue with offspring is that virgins raise no problem for offspring having been fathered by someone else prior to the marriage. If a priest marries a virgin, any child she gives birth to will be of the priestly line. If he marries someone who is not a virgin, there is always the possibility that any offspring might have been fathered by someone who is not a priest. At least that's true if her previous sexual activity was with someone who was not a priest. If she was married to a priest, her offspring would still be assumed to be of priestly descent. So this interpretation makes sense of the second allowable condition in Ezekiel, in keeping with the spirit of the Leviticus passage.
Those who begin with the assumption that the Bible is anti-sex like to come up with these implausible claims, and someone who doesn't think carefully about the biblical passages in context can easily come away with the conclusion that these charges have some foundation. Biblical passages certainly do assume a sexual morality that differs from popular views today, but it doesn't follow that the assumptions behind that sexual ethic are anti-sex. Even ignoring the celebration of sex in the Song of Songs and Paul's insistence in I Corinthians 7 that sex should be a normal and regular part of marriage, you still can't easily get the conclusion that sex itself is impure unless you ignore much of the ancient context and often even the literary context of biblical statements.
]]>And he shall take a wife in her virginity. A widow, or a divorced woman, or a woman who has been defiled, or a prostitute, these he shall not marry. But he shall take as his wife a virgin of his own people, that he may not profane his offspring among his people, for I am the Lord who sanctifies him." (Leviticus 21:13-15, ESV)
There are several things wrong with this argument. One is that the priest is supposed to be pure after marriage too, and if sex is impure then how is he going to remain pure if he has sex with his wife? Another is that there's a reason give, one that doesn't have to do with the purity of the bride but with the offspring. I suppose it's possible to take that as assuming the offspring will be polluted because the mother is polluted, but I don't think that's what's going on here. One of the priestly requirements during Ezekiel's vision of a renewed temple in the last chapters of his prophecy sheds some light on this issue:
They shall not marry a widow or a divorced woman, but only virgins of the offspring of the house of Israel, or a widow who is the widow of a priest. (Ezekiel 44:22, ESV)
If the issue were some animus against people who had had sex, then why would a widow of a priest be ok? Presumably if pollution from sex itself transferred pollution to any offspring, then wouldn't the widow of a priest be just as problematic as the widow of anyone else? This suggests some other reason why priests needed to marry virgins in Leviticus, a reason that must be consistent with marrying widows of priests in Ezekiel. It's unlikely that there's different reasoning involved in the two cases, even if you don't accept divine inspiration behind the two passages.
A much more likely explanation is that the issue with offspring is that virgins raise no problem for offspring having been fathered by someone else prior to the marriage. If a priest marries a virgin, any child she gives birth to will be of the priestly line. If he marries someone who is not a virgin, there is always the possibility that any offspring might have been fathered by someone who is not a priest. At least that's true if her previous sexual activity was with someone who was not a priest. If she was married to a priest, her offspring would still be assumed to be of priestly descent. So this interpretation makes sense of the second allowable condition in Ezekiel, in keeping with the spirit of the Leviticus passage.
Those who begin with the assumption that the Bible is anti-sex like to come up with these implausible claims, and someone who doesn't think carefully about the biblical passages in context can easily come away with the conclusion that these charges have some foundation. Biblical passages certainly do assume a sexual morality that differs from popular views today, but it doesn't follow that the assumptions behind that sexual ethic are anti-sex. Even ignoring the celebration of sex in the Song of Songs and Paul's insistence in I Corinthians 7 that sex should be a normal and regular part of marriage, you still can't easily get the conclusion that sex itself is impure unless you ignore much of the ancient context and often even the literary context of biblical statements.
]]>And he shall take a wife in her virginity. A widow, or a divorced woman, or a woman who has been defiled, or a prostitute, these he shall not marry. But he shall take as his wife a virgin of his own people, that he may not profane his offspring among his people, for I am the Lord who sanctifies him." (Leviticus 21:13-15, ESV)
There are several things wrong with this argument. One is that the priest is supposed to be pure after marriage too, and if sex is impure then how is he going to remain pure if he has sex with his wife? Another is that there's a reason give, one that doesn't have to do with the purity of the bride but with the offspring. I suppose it's possible to take that as assuming the offspring will be polluted because the mother is polluted, but I don't think that's what's going on here. One of the priestly requirements during Ezekiel's vision of a renewed temple in the last chapters of his prophecy sheds some light on this issue:
They shall not marry a widow or a divorced woman, but only virgins of the offspring of the house of Israel, or a widow who is the widow of a priest. (Ezekiel 44:22, ESV)
If the issue were some animus against people who had had sex, then why would a widow of a priest be ok? Presumably if pollution from sex itself transferred pollution to any offspring, then wouldn't the widow of a priest be just as problematic as the widow of anyone else? This suggests some other reason why priests needed to marry virgins in Leviticus, a reason that must be consistent with marrying widows of priests in Ezekiel. It's unlikely that there's different reasoning involved in the two cases, even if you don't accept divine inspiration behind the two passages.
A much more likely explanation is that the issue with offspring is that virgins raise no problem for offspring having been fathered by someone else prior to the marriage. If a priest marries a virgin, any child she gives birth to will be of the priestly line. If he marries someone who is not a virgin, there is always the possibility that any offspring might have been fathered by someone who is not a priest. At least that's true if her previous sexual activity was with someone who was not a priest. If she was married to a priest, her offspring would still be assumed to be of priestly descent. So this interpretation makes sense of the second allowable condition in Ezekiel, in keeping with the spirit of the Leviticus passage.
Those who begin with the assumption that the Bible is anti-sex like to come up with these implausible claims, and someone who doesn't think carefully about the biblical passages in context can easily come away with the conclusion that these charges have some foundation. Biblical passages certainly do assume a sexual morality that differs from popular views today, but it doesn't follow that the assumptions behind that sexual ethic are anti-sex. Even ignoring the celebration of sex in the Song of Songs and Paul's insistence in I Corinthians 7 that sex should be a normal and regular part of marriage, you still can't easily get the conclusion that sex itself is impure unless you ignore much of the ancient context and often even the literary context of biblical statements.
]]>1. Lester walks into his house and tells his parents that he has been out [of] the closet for 10 years now and has kept it a secret in fear that they would not accept it.
Out of the closet but keeping it a secret? Any suggestions as to what that's supposed to mean? My guess is that the student thought being out of the closet had something to do with admitting to yourself that you're gay rather than its actual meaning of being publicly known as gay.
2. Though I disagree with homosexuality, I do not have anything against it.
I'm trying to figure out what disagreeing with it is supposed to involve if it doesn't involve holding something against it. Maybe the idea is that the person doesn't approve of it but is nice to gay people, but notice that it doesn't say against gay people but against homosexuality. So it's not well put if that was supposed to be the idea. It might be that disagreement is finding it distasteful, while having something against it is thinking it's morally wrong (or vice versa). But that doesn't seem like a natural way to say either.
As I've suggested, there's probably something coherent that these sentences were supposed to mean, but this is a philosophy paper, and clarity and precision are crucial for the very enterprise that these students are supposed to be engaged in.
]]>1. I'm looking for any instances in X-Men movies or comic books where any character or the narrator uses race-language or species-language to refer to mutants as distinct from humans. This includes when it's morally loaded but also when it's not. I'm interested both in Magneto's elevated view of the rights of mutants as superior beings but also in the factual claim that mutants are a separate race, sub-species, or species.
2. I'm also looking for instances where Magneto has given moral justifications for his questionable or immoral actions, again from the movies or the comic books. (I have no cartoon episodes to verify the information.) I'm interested in his attitude toward humans and the moral difference he sees between mutants and humans. I'm also interested in any general moral principles he might state in the process of explaining his reasons for doing things. Any specific descriptions of Magneto's actions as terrorist would also be nice or descriptions of particular actions he's taken that are morally questionable or outright immoral would also help me.
3. For those more wizard-inclined, I'm hoping to compile a list of seemingly-chance occurrences in Harry Potter, where something not under the conscious control of any character, i.e. lucky occurrences, are absolutely crucial for the major plot of the book to move along, particularly if Harry's success or the bad guys' defeat or frustration in their purposes hinges on it. I'm also looking for specific instances where any characters talk about issues related to destiny, the various prophecies, time travel and changing the past, free will, and so on. If you can give page numbers in the American paperback editions (hardcover for Deathly Hallows) or chapter numbers otherwise, that would be great. But even just mention of the events and how important they are could help me if it's something I haven't thought of yet, especially if it's a really big deal.
Whatever help anyone can offer is appreciated.
]]>The Bible does not begin with the creation of a special race of people. When the first human is introduced into the story, he was called adam [special characters removed because I have no idea how to do them], which means 'humankind'. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Adam and Eve are not Hebrews or Egyptians or Canaanites. It is incorrect for the White church to view them as White or for the Black church to view them as Black. Their 'race' is not identifiable; they are neither Negroid nor Caucasian, nor even Semitic. They become the mother and father of all peoples. The division of humankind into peoples and races is not even mentioned until Genesis 10. Adam and Eve, as well as Noah, is non-ethnic and non-national. They represent all people and not some people. [Hays, pp.48-49]
After the word 'Semitic', he places a footnote number, which leads to the following footnote:
[W.D.] McKissic [in Beyond Roots: In Search of Blacks in the Bible, 1990] disagrees, raising the issue of genetics, both for Adam and Eve and for Noah and his wife. The genetic pattern for all the races of humankind, argues McKissic, had to be present in both these sets of people. Thus they had to carry the genetic pattern for the Negroid race. If they carried these genes then one of them at least, according to McKissic, would have had Negroid features.
I'm not sure there's any real disagreement here, though, at least in substance. Hays seems to be thinking of race as some later subdivision of people, and of course Adam and Eve couldn't be of any race if it necessarily involves that. McKissic, on the other hand, is thinking of race in a very different way. If at one point you had two people who became the ancestors of every human being, including those who would be parts of pretty diverse races, then you must have had the genetic material necessary for those races to exist later. One thing McKissic doesn't take into account, at least in this quote (although I think he might in the book; it's been many years since I read his book, and I don't have it in front of me at the moment) is that mutations can explain changes in skin color, hair type, and so on. It doesn't have to stem from just genetic information present in the ancestors.
I seem to remember McKissic making the argument that darker skin color genes tend to be dominant, which means at least one of the ancestor-pair would have to be black. Using the term this way clearly does not indicate species sub-division into races, as Hays seems to be treating it. All it means is that we in our day have identified various characteristics that we associate with various races. Someone is identified as being in a certain race according to such characteristics. An earlier ancestor with those characteristics would rightly, as the English words are now used, be called black or white (or whatever) according to the criteria we now use to assign such terms. So if Adam, say, looked enough like the typical African or black American today that were he seen today he'd be so classified, then he was black by the meaning of the current term. That, as far as I can tell, is what McKissic means. He's simply talking about something different from what Hays is talking about.
Now there's actually been a DNA discovery since McKissic's book (and since Hays's book, for that matter) that shows that light skin color is a mutation and that the ancestors of white people were black by the current definition (as McKissic is using the term), so I think his view is pretty much scientifically confirmed at this point. Hays doesn't want to acknowledge that as Adam and Eve belonging to the black race, because his notion of race is defined as a sub-division that later occurs. But racialized terms aren't always used that way, as the meaningfulness of McKissic's claim shows. I think it's perfectly ok (at least linguistically) to say that Adam and Eve were black. It doesn't seem to me to involve any misuse of the terms involved. If this is right, then it has an interesting consequence for those who claim race terms involve an ancestry component. It doesn't remove an ancestry component, but it does allow someone with no ancestry (or no human ancestry, depending on how you view Adam and Eve) to have a race under one important concept of what it is to be a member of a race.
]]>
Please submit only one post (per blog, per author) dated since the last Christian Carnival deadline, i.e. something posted since midnight EST Tuesday night, April 29 (5am GMT Wednesday, April 30). [If you are emailing your submission: if you are able to do so, please submit your information in Times New Roman 12pt font, preferably in plain text. The uniformity will save time for the host.]
Include the following information in your submission:
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The deadline for submissions is midnight EST Tuesday night, May 7 (4am GMT Wed May 8). Be aware that hosts have the option of limiting the Christian Carnival to the first 40 (or 50) acceptable entries. (Most hosts do not do this, and most weeks do not have that many posts, but this is a good reason to enter early just in case. Hosts that limit the number of entries do not have the option of selecting their favorites, so you can't rely on your post being good.)
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Disclaimer: As the goal of this Carnival is to highlight Christian thought in the blogosphere, entries will be limited to blogs that share that goal. Posts strictly focused on matters unrelated to Christianity or from blogs with potentially offensive material that Christians may not want to link to may end up being rejected, but there are other carnivals that would be a more appropriate for such posts. Though this will be a judgment call on the part of the week's host or the carnival's organizers, and being human they may make mistakes, this is necessary given that the Christian Carnival is sometimes quite large, and it is sometimes questionable whether the entrants are seeking to promote Christian thought.
]]>We just need to know what email address we can reach you at. The email address we have for you stopped working. So we wanted to ask you to take a quick second to update your address. You can do it over the phone right now. All you have to do is press 1 and fill out your email address. Just press 1. It just takes a second. That way we'll be able to keep you up to date on the great work that MoveOn's 3.2 million members are doing every day to win back the country from radical Republicans. So please just press 1, and thank you for your time and your continued support of MoveOn. And of course this message was paid for by MoveOn.org's political action and was not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Then the voice changes, and there's a phone number for how to reach them (I assume for when the recording is left on an answering machine or voicemail, and you can't press 1 to get anywhere).
So is this a new tactic or something? Our phone number is associated with only two adults, both members of the Republican Party. No one else has been at this number since 1999. I don't think MoveOn.org even existed back then. (Update: I guess it has.) I'm pretty confident they would count us as radical Republicans. So is there something we actually did that they incompetently assumed would make us prime candidates for giving money to them? Or are they just trying to annoy conservatives by sending them spam phone calls?
]]>other U.S.: District of Columbia, U.S. government
Canada: Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec
U.S. States Lost from March: Alaska, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming
U.S. States Gained from March: Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada
U.S. States not seen yet at all: I still haven't seen Hawaii and Mississippi since I started doing this in October.
]]>
He thinks the bad guy here is duty, as if a duty to have sex with one's spouse is bad. His argument is that good things lose their goodness when they become a mere duty. In one sense of what someone might mean by a duty, I think he's right. However, in a pretty common sense of the term, I think he's very wrong, and I think his view is strongly at odds with the moral perspective Paul expresses in I Corinthians 7 and Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount implies.
It's worth distinguishing between (1) duty in the sense of merely following rules without any further reason and (2) duty in the sense of going the extra mile for another person or doing what you'd want them to do for you if you were the one who strongly desired sexual connection. The first kind of duty is worthy of the Schwyzer's criticism. The second is not.
Suppose one member of a married couple has a strong desire for sexual intimacy, while the other doesn't. I'm not talking about cases of serious illness or complete exhaustion. I simply mean one wants to and the other doesn't. The one who doesn't is completely capable of engaging in sexual activity and enjoying it but simply isn't interested. Now it may be the loving thing to do for the interested party to back down. I don't want to suggest that forcing sex even in marriage is remotely excusable. Nevertheless, the question I'm interested in here is not the moral obligation of the interested party. What Schwyzer was addressing is whether there can be a duty to have sex, not whether there can be a duty to refrain. I'm sure he'd agree with me that there are plenty of instances of that.
The Pauline view is clear on this. In I Corinthians 7, Paul commands husbands and wives to seek to be available to each other sexually except in times of special devotion to intense prayer. That suggests a duty to have sex. It doesn't mean a duty to have sex every night, as the proposal in question suggested. But it does imply a duty to have sex. This Pauline view can be easily motivated by Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, particularly by the Golden Rule (do to others what you'd want them to do for you) and the extra mile (if someone asks you to carry something a mile, do it for two miles, and if someone asks for your coat offer up your shirt too). Jesus speaks as if this sort of thing is a typical characteristic of his followers, and those who don't do this are failing to be like citizens of the kingdom of God out to be. I can see how someone would apply such statements to the case at hand by arguing for a duty to have sex even when one isn't interested for the sake of the sex.
But this is not duty for the mere sake of duty. It's duty for the sake of the other person. If a person motivated by love for another person has a duty to do what's loving for the other person, there may well be times when that involves having sex when one otherwise wouldn't have been interested, and Jesus' teaching does seem to include cases like that. I'm not sure why cases of voluntarily being willing to have sex when one isn't interested should be exceptions to the kinds of loving acts he commands in those passages. This doesn't mean setting an arbitrary rule to ensure that couples have sex more often, but it does suggest that the motivation Jesus commands in the Sermon on the Mount involves a duty to show the kind of love that might include things like this. So I would defend Paul against Schwyzer's argument by pointing out that a duty to sex in the Pauline sense seems to follow fairly easily from the kinds of teachings in the Sermon on the Mount that I'm sure Schwyzer has no problem with.
]]>
Please submit only one post (per blog, per author) dated since the last Christian Carnival deadline, i.e. something posted since midnight EST Tuesday night, April 22 (5am GMT Wednesday, April 23). [If you are emailing your submission: if you are able to do so, please submit your information in Times New Roman 12pt font, preferably in plain text. The uniformity will save time for the host.]
Include the following information in your submission:
1. The name of your blog and a link to your main site. (Adding the name with a hyperlink would be a nice courtesy to the host.)
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3.
If you want a trackback, include a trackback link. (Tracking back is
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The deadline for submissions is midnight EST Tuesday night, April 29 (4am GMT Wed April 30). Be aware that hosts have the option of limiting the Christian Carnival to the first 40 (or 50) acceptable entries. (Most hosts do not do this, and most weeks do not have that many posts, but this is a good reason to enter early just in case. Hosts that limit the number of entries do not have the option of selecting their favorites, so you can't rely on your post being good.)
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Disclaimer: As the goal of this Carnival is to highlight Christian thought in the blogosphere, entries will be limited to blogs that share that goal. Posts strictly focused on matters unrelated to Christianity or from blogs with potentially offensive material that Christians may not want to link to may end up being rejected, but there are other carnivals that would be a more appropriate for such posts. Though this will be a judgment call on the part of the week's host or the carnival's organizers, and being human they may make mistakes, this is necessary given that the Christian Carnival is sometimes quite large, and it is sometimes questionable whether the entrants are seeking to promote Christian thought.
]]>Before I even started graduate school, I hoped to be able to write popular-level philosophical discussions about questions that I thought needed serious philosophical reflection that science fiction and fantasy often raise, and I guess now I get to write about two topics I care a lot about in two fictional worlds that I've spent a lot of time in. These will be my first publications besides a book review (although it was a book review that made several substantive points, some of which I thought were genuine contributions to how to think about the issues). That means I need to work hard to submit some parts of my dissertation to journals pretty quickly to avoid giving the impression that I'm a lightweight when it comes to publication. Still, I'm glad to have the chance to contribute to these volumes.
]]>