9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
–Phil 2:9-11 (ESV)
Courtly love started out as a game, a parody of Christianity. In the parody God’s love was exchanged for romantic/sexual love, and women became the object of worship instead of God. The forms of worship remained the same, but the worship was redirected away from God. This is why we now have the custom of singing songs in praise of romantic love and women, and of a man getting down on one knee and confessing his love and devotion to a woman. While it started ostensibly as a game and parody of Christianity, very quickly Christians began adopting the parody in place of the real thing. Today this substitution is nearly complete, but the process began almost immediately.
One way to see the amazing speed with which courtly love replaced Christianity is in the story we have of St George and the dragon. Per the BBC St. George provided a sort of blank slate our medieval ancestors could fill in:
Very little, if anything, is known about the real Saint George. Pope Gelasius said that George is one of the saints “whose names are rightly reverenced among us, but whose actions are known only to God.”
There are at least two variants of the story of St. George and the dragon*, but the most popular one is rich with symbols of the religion that replaced Christianity, the religion of courtly love. This version comes from The Golden Legend, an anthology compiled by Archbishop Jacobus de Voragine on or around 1275. But since The Golden Legend was an anthology of existing tales (much like the Brothers Grimm), the story itself would have been circulating for some time prior.
In The Golden Legend, St. George slays a dragon to rescue a beautiful princess and convert a pagan kingdom to Christianity. St. George manages to wound the dragon with his lance after making the sign of the cross. But he needed a symbol of something more powerful than Christ to control the dragon (a noble woman’s sexual purity). This came in the form of the virgin princess’ girdle (an exterior belt). Once the noblewoman’s girdle was placed on the dragon’s neck, the dragon was tamed and the princess (not St. George) lead the dragon back to town:
…St. George was upon his horse, and drew out his sword and garnished him with the sign of the cross, and rode hardily against the dragon which came towards him, and smote him with his spear and hurt him sore and threw him to the ground. And after said to the maid: Deliver to me your girdle, and bind it about the neck of the dragon and be not afeard.
When she had done so the dragon followed her as it had been a meek beast and debonair. Then she led him into the city, and the people fled by mountains and valleys, and said: Alas! alas! we shall be all dead.
Once in town, St. George offered to slay the dragon if the kingdom converted to Christianity. After the kingdom converted St. George kept his promise and slew the dragon.
Note that the girdle is a classic courtly love symbol a noble woman would give a knight to demonstrate that he had won her favor:
For a classic gift of love, a medieval lady could bestow a favour on a knight on the tournament circuit, usually one of her detachable sleeves, a handkerchief, a ribbon, or a scarf. Something fluttery and easily tied would make a good public declaration;
…Other handmade gifts from ladies, as Gilchrist notes, could be “a pillow, towel, kerchief, girdle or purse”
Not only is the dragon subdued by the power of a noblewoman’s sexual purity, but St. George symbolically had to win the noblewoman’s favor in order to do God’s will.
In 1350, King Edward III made St. George the patron saint of England. This coincided with Edward III creating the Order of the Garter. The motto of the Order of the Garter is:
Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame on him who thinks evil of it)
Infogalactic explains:
The most popular legend involves the “Countess of Salisbury” (either Edward’s future daughter-in-law Joan of Kent or her former mother-in-law, Catherine Montacute, Countess of Salisbury). While she was dancing at a court ball at Calais, her garter is said to have slipped from her leg. When the surrounding courtiers sniggered, the king picked it up and returned it to her, exclaiming, “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (“Shame on him who thinks evil of it.”), the phrase that has become the motto of the Order.[3]
Unlike the girdle in the tale of the dragon, the garter was an undergarment (emphasis mine):
Since garters were not intended to be seen by any man other than her own husband or wishful lover, a woman’s garters may have fine needlework embroidered onto them, French mottoes of courtly love or amorous words of love.
This explains the snickering when the Countess of Salisbury accidentally dropped her undergarment for the king to pick up. It also shows the futility of trying to separate the ostensibly noble concept of royal/military chivalry from courtly love. This is the highest order of chivalry in England, and it is directly tied into the themes of courtly love.
The reason we don’t notice that the two are hopelessly intertwined is that as a society we have adopted courtly love as something virtuous, and we struggle greatly to distinguish between courtly love and Christianity.
*The other variant was created during the reformation and dispenses with the courtly love symbolism.
Edit: Added a quote from the Golden Legend. See also this new post for clarification.
St. George is the Slava (patron saint) of the Kljajić family. Just sayin’
Pingback: St George and the dragon. | @the_arv
Pope Gelasius said that George is one of the saints “whose names are rightly reverenced among us, but whose actions are known only to God.”
That being the case, what basis is there for either the “reverence” of his name, or his canonization? Inquiring minds want to know…
I suppose the orange tree in the Reformation version is the Tree of Life; as opposed to the apple tree of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?
It’s hard to overstate how chivalry works to both encourage men towards, and exclude men from, respect. It’s a kind of rope-a-dope. If you want to be noble, then you must aspire to the heights of chivalry (which means to suffer the deprecations of women, who are men’s inferiors). If you survive such debasement, then you are proven to be truly noble. Only the most attractive of non-aristocratic men will survive that because attractiveness will be all that is left of a debased man who has sacrificed his honor, strength, courage, and limited resources to the amusement of a woman.
For the solid aristocrat it’s a game he can sometimes win, and use to unseat a rival…a vicious and pernicious game that sets a destructive example for the lower classes. But eventually it eats even the highest aristocrat because no one is attractive forever, and more attractive men come along every day.
Contrast that with the truth from the Ancient World we abandoned:
Esther 1
Cade,
I am not certain Queen Vashti’s response really was wrong. It definitely had the noted result, but keep in mind to not build doctrine based on what ungodly men say, even when they are quoted in the Scriptures. They said what they did, but God does not necessarily fully agree.
Esther was still in the position to replace the hole this set of events created, whether or not Vashti’s actions were correct.
I want to add that Ahasuerus (Xerxes) was an imperfect, even foolish, king and husband. Vashti’s rejection of Ahasuerus takes place, and could legally be excused, because Ahasuerus had decreed a celebration during which no one could be compelled to anything. From the same chapter:
(Basically, read the whole chapter.)
Yet Ahasuerus’ legal counselors recognized the precedent that would be set by Vashti; knowing that women are prone to sinful impulses to rebel.
“But he needed a symbol of something more powerful than Christ to control the dragon (a noble woman’s sexual purity). This came in the form of the virgin princess’ girdle (an exterior belt).”
I can’t imagine the peasant laity hearing “a noble woman’s sexual purity” without laughing their woolen trousers off.
Dalrock!!!
You, sir, have won the internet today!
@Damn Crackers
The history of medieval noble women is a mixed bag just like all other stratifications of society. They could suffer very severe consequences for fornication or adultery. An indiscretion could cost her everything, and they had a lot to lose; and precious few ways to recover whatever was lost. A peasant women had much less to lose and potentially a lot to gain from a calculated affair with a noble man.
@BIllyS
So what?
Do you, or do you not, believe that your ex-wife was empowered and encouraged to divorce you, and put you into the bondage of alimony, because other women set a precedent which was let to stand, and then enforced, by the men in authority?
So in Esther, when speaking of Vashti’s disobedience it reads thusly:
“On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcas, seven eunuchs who served in the presence of King Ahasuerus, 11 to bring Queen Vashti before the king, wearing her royal crown, in order to show her beauty to the people and the officials, for she was beautiful to behold. 12 But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command brought by his eunuchs; therefore the king was furious, and his anger burned within him.”
Are we to assume that Ahasuerus requested something offensive to Vashti? The text says he requested her to show up wearing her crown, but does not indicate that he asked for her to be nude or to engage in some kind of sexual escapade, as it has always been indicated whenever I hear someone talk about the incident. Was his request for something wrong or was Vashti just being a pill and refusing to be “shown off” as a prize? We can assume that with so much alcohol flowing that something off-color COULD happen, but was that the kings intent?
I ask because, as it has already been shown in at least one other comment, Christians often praise the choice of Vashti as being “the right choice” or “not wrong” as though she was refusing on some moral ground, but the text doesn’t seem to indicate that. She was asked to appear and she refused. No other information seems to be readily available.
Order of the garter, Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame on him who thinks evil of it)
Through The Glasses I spy with my little eye: obvious Indicator of Interest is…Obvious.
Yeah, sure, it fell off by accident….that “just happened”, right.
By the way, my dates for Chaucer were off by about a century. He was writing about a century after the creation of the Order of the Garter.
Which reminds me, every Anglosphere man should read:
https://infogalactic.com/info/The_Wife_of_Bath%27s_Tale
Because of the explicit question asked: “What do women want?”
@Cane Caldo – I agree. I was only half-playing on the class differences between the peasantry and noble classes. I think that is why Chaucer and Boccaccio were so popular.
Your comment does make me think if a peasant woman would rather have a noble’s bastard over a fellow peasant’s legitimate child.
Oh, never mind. I read your comment again and I see where the disconnect is. So it seems like its more of a “I’ll buy you anything you want”, then panicking when she picks a $10,000 diamond ring kind of situation. The king decrees no one should be compelled to do anything and when the queen decides she doesn’t want to be compelled to pay him and his buddies a visit, she has validation in her decision, but the decision is found to have widespread repercussions. Well, that is something that previous pastors I have heard speak about Vashti have failed to point out. Thanks.
Damn Crackers
Your comment does make me think if a peasant woman would rather have a noble’s bastard over a fellow peasant’s legitimate child.
Hypergmany at work in the “or”. European history contains many such biographies.
But do not discount the option of “and”…
@Snapper
So, to my mind, Ahasuerus was foolish in several ways. He demanded her presence after explicitly stating that no one could be compelled to do anything, and was off having her own party.
Second, and whatever else, it was rude of him to try and pull the hostess from her own shindig and enjoyment; especially under his own decree. Legally, she had his own decree as support.
Third, he was drunk, and wanted to show her off to his subjects. If you’ve ever been in a situation like that you know it can quickly get uncomfortable–and that’s with our modern and chivalrous sensibilities. Even see a drunk friend clutch amorously at his wife in a bar? Ahasuerus hadn’t seen her in seven days, and might have decided to bang her right there. (In the Ancient World it was not uncommon for copulation to be performed before inferiors.) We can’t know from the text, and I’m not saying that’s what he wanted. I’m just trying to give you an idea of what was possible then versus what is possible now.
All that being said: Who cares? The story is one where Vashti outright rejects her husband and her king. In so doing she undermines not only her own husband and ruler, but all husbands and rulers. It doesn’t matter if she had legal right. It doesn’t matter if he was a bad guy. It doesn’t matter if he was drunk. She could have handled it differently; perhaps coming to him, but bowing down and asking his permission to retreat back to her party. She could have sent the eunuchs back with a request for a later arrangement, or for excuse of some kind. She even could have said she’d come, but delayed a bit hoping he would sober up. She had a lot of options besides, “I refuse.”
Yeah the minute you place the power of a woman’s virginity over the power of Christ crushing the head of the serpent…it’s game over.
A woman being a virgin is certainly a good character trait…but does she follow God’s will?
@Cane Caldo
Indeed. Moreover, it is the refusal that makes her so loved by modern Christians. Pastor Driscoll absolutely adored her refusal. He relished the idea of a wife telling her husband to “stuff it”. From Driscoll’s sermon on Esther:
Later in the same sermon he explained that this was the moral of the story:
From: https://web.archive.org/web/20121001013526/http://marshill.com/media/esther/jesus-has-a-better-kingdom#transcript
I understand your points, but for the sake of scriptural argument, what you have said is more than what has been told to me in the past. The scripture doesn’t point to any moral high ground, simply the fact that she had the permission to ignore his request, per his decree, but her decision, though justified, was found to have an overall negative repercussion when word of her action spread throughout the kingdom. So, really, the moral high ground argument most people trot out has no standing and is all assumption.
If I’m assuming correctly the garter represents her virginity…the motto in that context makes sense.
The story presented though…I don’t think that was case. Sounds more like AMOG King asserting himself over the snickering ‘omegas’.
The thought that virginity automatically means a good woman is a very generalized thought and more needs to be researched about her before that is the case. Women who are saints have their virginity highlighted…but it was how they lived their lives for the Lord that is more highlighted as the reason for their sainthood.
@Earl
I wouldn’t read it that way. A better and simpler explanation is that it is a symbol of her sexuality. It is a more plausibly deniable version of women throwing their bras and panties on stage for rock stars.
@Snapper
It sounds justified to our modern sense that law is this thing which are words written down in books by previous men. Even though Ahasuerus may have been wrong, he is still the king. He did not decree disrespect for the king’s commands. Vashti bowed-up when she should have bowed down.
Anonymous Reader,
The Wife of Bath in a diddy:
“If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife, from my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you.”
Dear Dalrock,
Chivalry, like Common Law, was born in and worked well in a strong Christian Context enforced by a Patriarchy.
A Lady was a Lady because her Father, Husband, and Brother saw to it that she lived up to the Virtuous ideals expressed in the Bible and the Great Books for Men. One could thus celebrate God by kneeling before a virtuous woman, whose virtue had been formed and enforced by her Father, Husband, and Brother enforcing the Virtuous ideals expressed in the Bible and the Great Books for Men
However, when one removes the Biblical Mythology and Great Books for Men, and leaves the women standing there on her own, Chivalry no longer exists, as plagued with gina t9ingzlzlzlzozo, she is unable to live up to the virtue on her own.
This runs parallel to the phenomenon of philosophers thinking that virtue is all “Common Sense” with no need from God. Nietzsche and Dostoevsky both pointed out that the silly folks believing that virtue is all just “common sense” can only do so because they were born into the luxury of a moral context of a culture exalted by thousands of years of religion and mythology. They no longer see a need for “Thou shalt not kill,” as hey, everyone knows that.
And so they dump the Foundational Prophets and Jesus Christ, and wonder why their daughter is a now a cat lady. And they conclude, “Today’s men lack chivalry!”
@Cane
Exhortations to foot washing come to mind here. This is a distinction lost on preachers who encourage their rank-and-file to humiliate themselves by washing the feet of their wives’ and other underlings. Properly following the example of Christ requires holding yourself forth as Lord and Master of the washee(s).
As someone who has more than a passing knowledge of Biblical Hebrew I’d like to point out one thing. The king did not give everyone the right to do what they wanted. The Hebrew clearly says “ish” which is “man” in English.
In my interpretation that phrase is in the context of the drinking as well. In other words no one was made to drink and no one was made to stop.
To interpret that as a general ban on law and order is truly bizarre.
@GBFM
Your first two paragraphs are totally wrong.
1. A lady has a real station in society, and she becomes one only by birth or marriage into a noble family.
2. The responsibility of training girls and young women is primarily the responsibility of older, or higher stationed, women.
3. It is as false to say that Chivalry ever worked; something like Survivor Bias.
4. There is virtue in stooping to the bowed woman, but none in bowing before a virtuous woman unless she is your better. In which case: Watch out!
@Caspar
That’s a great example of how Chivalry infects and corrupts Christianity. Christ didn’t wash feet chivalrously. He washed them paternally, as the Apostles better, and obediently as the plan of God. Anyone who believes he sees Chivalry in the Bible deceived himself, and is instead inserting it there.
I had noticed this in the NKJV text, that the kings decree included the word “man”:
8 And drinking was according to this edict: “There is no compulsion.” For the king had given orders to all the staff of his palace to do as each man desired.
However the wording of verse 5 gave me reason to believe I was wrong when it mentions “all the people present”:
5 And when these days were completed, the king gave for all the people present in Susa the citadel, both great and small, a feast lasting for seven days in the court of the garden of the king’s palace.
However, I also thought about it has you have indicated, that the refrain from compulsion was for drinking: “…and the drinking was according to this edict: ‘There is no compulsion.'”. Perhaps that is correct and Vashti was just being a disobedient witch! Or perhaps she did fear what the king would have her do in the presence of his drunken buddies. Interesting.
@Damn Crackers
“But he needed a symbol of something more powerful than Christ to control the dragon (a noble woman’s sexual purity). This came in the form of the virgin princess’ girdle (an exterior belt).”
I can’t imagine the peasant laity hearing “a noble woman’s sexual purity” without laughing their woolen trousers off.
Is there any possibility that this might have been some sort of medieval attempt at a joke, and one that those of the current age could never understand (or would choose not to) because of modern sophistication? Think about it: St. George only uses the girdle as a weapon after he realizes the power of Christ will be insufficient to stop the monster. But for a peasant of the Middle Ages, there would have been no power greater than Christ. And a sexually virtuous noble woman would have been be a laughable fantasy. So that could then lead us to a new hidden moral inside the story of St. George, which is this: When it seems you are dealing with an adversary against whom all of God’s power is not enough you will eventually find yourself having to rely on options that only exist in the imagination, thus proving that you have chosen to live in a fairy tale. Grow up!
Cane Writes: “2. The responsibility of training girls and young women is primarily the responsibility of older, or higher stationed, women.”
So are you saying that women have always been banned from Churches where men preached?
Wow just wow. lzozozlzlzolzozo
Perhaps the women share their garter/panties so as to better pass Pastor Wilson’s “Aroma of Love” criterion for a happy marriage?
lzozoozozozollzoz
Yes, nowhere does the Bible proclaim women’s underwear to be holy.
I thought [obtaining] the garter was proof of consummation. Any item of undergarment that came out of the honeymoon bedroom worked for this purpose.
Which makes it funny that they do it at the reception nowadays. Its like saying “we just got married an hour ago, but the marriage was consummated at some point in the past. Here, I’ll prove it because she is going to let me put my hand up her dress and take it off.”
Now, in all fairness. We did the garter thing and took the pictures, etc. it was fun, but in light of what the tradition is supposed to be about, kind of silly.
I feel sorry for America; your country does not have a Patron Saint because Congress decreed that no provision would be made for such – call yourselves Christian. I don’t think so!
In any event Dalrock is a day late, for yesterday, which was also Shakespeare’s birthday as well as the birthday of an un-named Prince of Cambridge, the country of whom George is Patron Saint (well one of them, anyway) celebrated his day in its usual manner that is to say with complete indifference. It would be a matter of shame were we to prance around in green like the Irish on 17th March or in a skirt as the Scots on some other say I can’t remember, and I am not sure what the Welsh do with their leeks but I doubt that whatever it is it would prevent them continuing to interfere with their sheep.
As for the BBC: if they announced that the sun was rising in the east I would feel the need to go outside to check. They have an agenda; they are on the side of the dragon.
Cry, “God for Harry, England, and St George!” Henry V 3 (i)
Opus-
About 400 million Orthodox Christians celebrate St George day on 06MAY, on the Julian Calendar.
Opus: “I feel sorry for America; your country does not have a Patron Saint because Congress decreed that no provision would be made for such – call yourselves Christian. ”
As I write this, I have it from a good source dat Dianne Feinstesinz and Marco Rubiozlzozl are currently authoring a Law to make da GBFM da patron siantz of americaz!!
Cry, “God for Harry, American, and St GBFM!” Henry V 3 (i)
lzozozl
A question to set the stage: when did Jesus stop being a Rabbi?
When Jesus washed the feet, he was washing the feet of guys who were still Jews. ‘Still Jews’ meant that they, at that moment, were under the obligation to offer sacrifice for the shedding of blood in the Temple in the process of asking for forgiveness of their sins. (I know that poor folks were allowed to offer bloodless sacrifice.)
At the moment of the washing, something monumental was about to happen. The guy washing the feet was about to become the final sacrifice. God says in Hebrews 9:22 that, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin. The guys whose feet were being washed had been taught to shed that blood every year in the Temple. Jesus was about to become the final sacrifice and provide that shed blood that God would forever more expect folks to point to when they asked for forgiveness and God asks “where is the shed blood that I require for the forgiveness of your sin?”.
Jesus was making a point: “I may be your master, but accept what I am giving you”. The feet washing, and Jesus saying “accept it” was symbolic of – “even if you elect me Lord of your life and even if I become your spiritual master, you must still accept what I am about to give you – my shed blood – because forevermore, that is the only shed blood that you can offer God when you ask for forgiveness.” (Which, by the way, is the problem with Muslim self-flagellation (trigger warning) )
Jesus did a lot of “this is like that” stuff. The feet-washing was another in that category. “I may be your master, but you must accept my washing of your feet”. That was an example of, a forunner of, Jesus’ larger statement: “forevermore you must stop sacrificing in the Temple (your own doing) and accept my shed blood as the shed blood that God requires (not your own doing, my doing). Any one who cannot humble themselves enough to accept a gift from their master will be on their own.” (Again, see the link to Muslim self-flagellation above. They want forgiveness by doing what they think is right, rather than by doing what God says is right.)
The reality of the symbolism of that feet washing by Jesus doesn’t even begin to show up in the ceremonies where husbands wash the feet of their wives.
One way or another, most of us, having been indoctrinated with Chivalry for our entire existence, are going to find ways to blow off criticisms of chivalry as “not that big a deal” even though Chivalry is the codification of the worship of passion, subversion, and women; and even though our God is a jealous God.
I agree! “One way or another, most of us, having been indoctrinated with Chivalry for our entire existence, are going to find ways to blow off criticisms of chivalry as “not that big a deal” even though Chivalry is the codification of the worship of passion, subversion, and women; and even though our God is a jealous God.”
Ultimately, as Dalrock points out, it is not fair, nor just, nor wise to equate Jesus Christ with a woman’s panties, nor replace Him with them, as so many Churchians have today done.
Kudos to Dalrock again for presenting the historical context!
@Darwinian Arminian
My apologies if my own commentary made this confusing. The Golden Legend version of the tale doesn’t state that St. George realized that the power of Christ was insufficient. However, in the tale the sign of the cross is the symbol associated with initially wounding the dragon. After that, St. George instructs the princess to use her girdle to bind and lead the dragon back to town. Symbolically this is powerful, because there is a shift in the source of power used to defeat the dragon. initially it points to Christ, but then it shifts to the power of the virgin princess.
Caldo & Dalrock & All,
Might you have any insights or opinions on Beatrice in Dante’s Inferno?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Portinari
Is Dante’s Inferno a true CHRISTIAN work, or does it fall short?
Beatrice is the center and circumference of the poem. In real life, Dante fell in love with her, and wrote romantic poems for here. But then he said the love was exalted above base animal lusts, and in the Inferno, Beatrice leads Dante to God and Heaven and Light.
Contrast that with the Beatrice I dated a few years ago, who lead me out on the dance floor and commenced twerking one me…. I’m not so sure she would have lead me to God and Heaven and Light.
Dalrock writes, “Initially it points to Christ, but then it shifts to the power of the virgin princess.”
Can some of these stories at least be seen to encourage women to be Virgins?
At least their grrrrrl power derives from Virginity, and not from ass-kicingz as in star warz hunger gamez red sparrow.
@Snapper
Is the King not allowed to change his mind?
Off topic, but I’m sure Dalrock will want to blog on this.
https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s7-engaging-the-culture/the-economics-of-sexual-purity.html
Courtly love is idolizing women, their sexuality, especially virginity, to a ‘pure’ level, and romantic chivalry seems to be derived from that. This is directly coupled to the gnostic thought of the material being bad and the spiritual being good. The core thought of such views can be recognized in the views on female sexuality of many early church fathers, including Augustine, and the resulting view that celibacy even in marriage was to be preferred over any carnal relations, because it was more spiritual. I cannot help but see a strong link towards the idolizing of Mary, moreover, of Mary the ‘eternal virgin’.
I do think there is a strong link between forced male celibacy and sublimated female sexuality in the form of adoration of virginity. Courtly love seems to be sublimated adultery disguised as platonic love.
Thomas Aquinas: ” a denial of the perpetual virginity of Mary would be derogatory to the perfection of Christ, an insult to the Holy Spirit, and an affront to the dignity of the Mother of God.”
Sex = bad
No sex = good
@Dalrock
It would be curious to see if the confusion/conflation of European chivalry and romantic love with Christian morality on marriage was caused by exposure in pagan nations such as England and elsewhere to Christianity, in which the natives blended Christian saints and concepts with pagan values or beliefs, much as we see in Mexico with Roman Catholicism.
It may be of some interest to learn (in case the above essay seems in any sense arcane or mythological) that in every English court of law on the wall behind the Justices is a plaque. On one side is a Lion and on the other a Unicorn. They are holding on to or holding up a shield and around the shield is written ‘Honi Soit qui mal y pense’. Beneath the shield are the words ‘Dieu et mon droit’ which translates as God and my right.
When the third Edward was our reigning monarch Calais (which is now part of France) was and remained until 1558 part of England. Salisbury is now occupied by Russians. Unicorns are a common sight for those who have eyes to see; Lions are best avoided.
Absolutely he can, though he must choose to do so with wisdom or he will become unbelievable to his people. That being said, as Caldo said earlier, it doesn’t matter what the reason was for Vashti’s refusal, she chose to be disobedient to her husband and king, which is not justifiable no matter how you slice it. My thoughts were merely referring to the concept that, if the king decreed that no one had to do anything they didn’t want to for the day and Vashti chose not to appear before him because she didn’t want to then he kind of shot himself in the foot. However, it appears less and less that this was the case.
You completely missed the point there…considering God was the creator of sex.
Opus,
Yes, how ironic…a royal male heir, born on St. George’s day of all days…and they cannot name him…George.
LOL! God does like to play jokes on us humans 🙂
@Opus
Wow. Thanks.
Chivalry is the codification of the worship of passion, subversion, and women; and even though our God is a jealous God.
Yes, exactly. The trouble is, as you say, that it is at this point so deeply ingrained, in ourselves, the culture, the church, that it intuitively “feels right” to worship women and exalt romantic love. It feels right to almost everyone, which is the core problem really.
You know? I wouldn’t mind worshipping a woman’s virginity.
If a woman saves herself for traditional marriage, I wouldn’t kick her out of the church.
Would you?
I’d venerate it…but worship is reserved for God alone.
That’s how it works with Mary in the Catholic church.
7 Drinks were served in golden vessels, vessels of different kinds, and the royal wine was lavished according to the bounty of the king. 8 And drinking was according to this edict: “There is no compulsion.” For the king had given orders to all the staff of his palace to do as each man desired.
Cane, I always read this as there was no compulsion to the drinking. Each man could take as little or as much as he wanted. So someone in the palace that served at the king’s behest, who would never think about standing before the king in an inebriated manner, could tie a few on. If one of the eunuchs or princes showed up tipsy or even 3 sheets to the wind, the king would excuse his lack of control because everyone was invited to the party.
Also, as each man desired I think applies to the men of the palace, not necessarily to the women.
15 “According to the law, what is to be done to Queen Vashti, because she has not performed the command of King Ahasuerus delivered by the eunuchs?”
This leads me to believe that she was still obliged to perform the command of the king.
Nonetheless, whether she was breaking the law or not, still a foolish move because she bowed up when she should have bowed down (like that expression). The rest of the book of Esther was about Esther bowing down, and we have no record that the king ever refused one of her requests.
17 For the queen’s behavior will be made known to all women, causing them to look at their husbands with contempt…
The ancients weren’t confused about women’s nature.
and there will be contempt and wrath in plenty…
This is an interesting expression. I don’t believe the wrath was going to come from the wives, but from the response of the husbands both great and small. They weren’t constrained by our sensibilities. This law likely saved a number of women from quite a dressing down from the disrespected fellow.
Regards men.
If there were a church that celebrated virgins and virginity, I would go!
Why would that be a bad thing?
@ Wraithburn
on April 24, 2018 at 3:42 pm
“Is the King not allowed to change his mind?”
In the ancient Persian Empire, the law was binding, even to the emperor. For examples, see the story of Daniel and the lions’ den in the book of Daniel, and the story of Purim in the book of Esther.
As others pointed out, Xerxes foolishly put himself in a bad situation. A good wife would’ve helped him preserve his honor. Vashti used the opportunity to humiliate him. That’s the problem.
Catholic church.
They don’t bring it to some worship type level…but they acknowledge it when a women who is a saint was a virgin in her earthly life.
I knew I had read somewhere that a king made a decree and dared not go against it after it was written. Daniel! Thanks for that!
Earl writes: “Catholic church.”
So are all the single women in Catholic churches Virgins?
Symbolically this is powerful, because there is a shift in the source of power used to defeat the dragon. initially it points to Christ, but then it shifts to the power of the virgin princess.
Don’t agree with that interpretation. The virgin does so according to St. George directions, and it shows how defeated the dragon is that it meekly follows her around.
With the sign of the cross the dragon is defeated and its intended sacrificial victim is given power over it. Baptism to Christ kills it.
If the dragon represents sin, that shows aspects of Christian reality – sin reigns in fear, Christ defeats sin, defeated sin yet inspires fear, and we must be baptized to Him to kill sin and complete that work.
when did Jesus stop being a Rabbi?
Was Jesus ever a rabbi? Yes and no. Jesus was called a rabbi by his followers, but he was never an official rabbi, in the modern sense. He was not a trained scribe or teacher of the law. He was a carpenter. A blue collar guy.
This is why the Pharisees were astonished that Jesus “taught with authority.” And why they questioned His right to do so. It was strange, seeing an uneducated carpenter teaching Scripture with such wisdom and insight.
@Dalrock
My apologies if my own commentary made this confusing.
It’s all good. I think I follow your point about why the story’s turn of having the hero “switch power sources” from Christ’s cross to the lady’s girdle ends up turning the worship of God into the worship of women. Comparing the way medieval women use their undergarments in these stories to modern women who throw their panties at rock stars is also a great illustration of how ridiculous that sort of a switch really is. I suppose that in the back of my mind I’m just hoping that there were at least a few in the Middle Ages who caught on to this too — but then again, perhaps not.
Maybe the good old days weren’t so good; After all, they did get us to where we are now.
No.
You said you wanted a church that celebrated them…and I explained how the Catholic church does.
Dear Earl,
If the Catholic Church truly celebrated Virgin women, it would honor them by honoring them and rejecting those who were not Virgins.
For instance, if a store says “We honor Bitcoin,” and a girl walks in and tries to buy a case of beer with wampum, she won’t be allowed to buy the beer.
In Earl’s “Catholic” church, she would be allowed to buy the beer.
That doesn’t even make sense.
The Catholic church is not a merchant place.
You have heard of reconciliation and mercy before, right?
In GBFM’s church Mary Magdalene would be rejected.
Virginity isn’t something to be honored, chastity is. Don’t have sex if you’re not married, don’t stop having sex if you are married. A woman who was going to die a virgin saw it as a reason to mourn (Judges 11:37)
Virginity for the unmarried is important. It is equally important to encourage married couples to honor God with their bodies by having sex, and lots of it.
OP — “In the parody God’s love was exchanged for romantic/sexual love, and women became the object of worship instead of God. The forms of worship remained the same, but the worship was redirected away from God.”
Exactly. And that was always satan’s purpose in instituting and popularizing Romanticism. Directly following from that redirection are most of the ills and horrors of modern secular/churchian culture — feminism, mass abortion, etc.
Christianity as practiced now is a subset of Romanticism, and the ‘churches’ have been carefully vetted over the past forty years to ensure that remaining ‘pastors’ and ‘ministers’ worship at the altar of Woman/Romanticism. Or else you go unfunded, unhoused, and unheard.
Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, there were both cold and hot wars between the Catholic Church and the various gnostic cults that practiced ‘catharism’ and other pre-feminist apostate forms, based in Southern France. Modern Anglosphere culture in the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties was DRENCHED in neo-Romanticism, while satan rubbed his hands and licked his lips for the feast to follow.
It’s hard to describe to persons under age fifty the comprehensive romantic zeitgeist of that time. Popular films and music were almost all romance-based, laying the unconscious groundwork for the feminist takeover that quickly followed. Gradually and incrementally, the love and worship of Anglosphere populations were guided away from Father and Christ, and redirected to females, collectively and individually. Meanwhile, the secular world (including secular ‘jews’) were rushing full-tilt towards ‘female liberation’. The results speak for themselves.
Females are the de-facto deity of America — a reality constructed by the nation for centuries (Goddess Libertas in NY Harbor, Washington Monument phallus, etc.), but brought to full evil only after broad public acceptance of the Romantic Ideal, which removed from both laity and church the final inhibitors against male obedience to, and worship of, females. The result, as intended, was the establishment in America, Great Britain, and Canada of functional matriarchies, with on one hand secular ‘laws’ that destroy fatherhood, masculinity, and family, and on the other hand, churches and ‘pastors’ neutered and acting as proxies for collective female power and command.
Ome of my problems with “theories of everything” is that they often seem to easily applied to everything. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes a celebration of virginity is just a celebration of virginity. While I might accept that virginity, like any virtue, if taken out of its proper and ordered place, can become a vice, I don’t think it is necessary to read malice into every tale of virtues too often held aloft (though one could make quite an argument that virginity is not a virtue held aloft very often at all)
@earl: “You completely missed the point there…considering God was the creator of sex.”
I think you missed my irony. According to mentioned people ‘sex=bad’. How else can Aquinas claim that if Mary would have had sex after the birth of Jesus and procreated, it would be “an affront to the dignity of” Mary?
He’s talking about what people do when they deny she was a perpetual virgin.
@Oscar
Ahasuerus might have made things awkward with his decree about drinking not being compulsory. If it covered more than that, his learned counselors would have mentioned it when the king asks them “What shall we do to Queen Vashti, according to law, because she did not obey the command of King Ahasuerus brought to her by the eunuchs?” in verse 15. This is followed in the next verse with Memucan answering that Queen Vashti has wronged the king.
Even so, a major plot point of the book of Esther is how the king changed his mind about destroying the Jews after she reveals she is one. People like to hold up previous decrees made as a way to delegitimize the source of authority.
@earl: “He’s talking about what people do when they deny she was a perpetual virgin.”
No he is not. It is exactly as I say. Aquinas in ‘Summa’:
“For, in the first place, this is derogatory to Christ’s perfection: for as He is in His Godhead the Only-Begotten of the Father, being thus His Son in every respect perfect, so it was becoming that He should be the Only-begotten son of His Mother, as being her perfect offspring.
Secondly, this error is an insult to the Holy Ghost, whose “shrine” was the virginal womb [“Sacrarium Spiritus Sancti” (Office of B. M. V., Ant. ad Benedictus, T. P.), wherein He had formed the flesh of Christ: wherefore it was unbecoming that it should be desecrated by intercourse with man.
Thirdly, this is derogatory to the dignity and holiness of God’s Mother: for thus she would seem to be most ungrateful, were she not content with such a Son; and were she, of her own accord, by carnal intercourse to forfeit that virginity which had been miraculously preserved in her.
Fourthly, it would be tantamount to an imputation of extreme presumption in Joseph, to assume that he attempted to violate her whom by the angel’s revelation he knew to have conceived by the Holy Ghost.
We must therefore simply assert that the Mother of God, as she was a virgin in conceiving Him and a virgin in giving Him birth, did she remain a virgin ever afterwards.”
* desecrated by intercourse with man
* dignity and holiness of [Mary] .. were she, of her own accord, by carnal intercourse to forfeit that virginity
* he attempted to violate her
This clearly describes any marital intercourse of Mary after the birth of Christ as ‘desecration, carnal, violation’. If he would have thought of (procreative) sex as a good thing, he would not have spoken about it like that.
Sex is good, kept within its proper place. Food is good. Food when you should be fasting is not good. Sex is good. Sex when you are a consecrated virgin is not good. Also there is the question if higher and lower goods. According to Catholic tradition sex is a lower good than virginity. The Protestant traditions reject this and switch the goods. Virginity is all well and good, but marriage is better. Considering the example of Christ and the teaching of Paul, I find the Catholic understanding to be more likely to be the truth of the matter.
Anyway, the raising up of consecrated virginity as a higher good than marriage has little to do with the worship of women or courtly-love or feminism.
Ok so he’s talking about the context of Mary, the Holy Spirit, and Christ.
I don’t get where you think that sex = bad, no sex = good. Are you talking about in this context or in general?
@Earl
I think what he’s saying is that since it would be considered a ‘defilement’ of Mary to have had engaged in sexual relations with her husband that this de facto means Aquinas (and the Catholic Church) considers sex in general to be a defilement and thus ‘bad.’ He’s not necessarily far off, just too simplistic in the examination. Sex (within marriage) is obviously a natural good, and the Church has always held this point (though sometimes certain Fathers used language that could be taken as denying this) however, the Church does see it as a lesser good. And being lesser good, it could be said to be a ‘defilement’ if it replaces the higher good of consecrated virginity. Obviously (as Paul and Christ taught) the life of consecrated virginity is not for every man or woman, but only those chosen by God to have that special grace.
The Old Testament supports this theory, as both husband and wife were considered ritually “unclean” after engaging in sexual relations, and it is more implicitly supported by the words of Christ himself when he says: “In heaven people will neither marry nor be given in marriage.”
Heaven being the highest possible good, it is necessary then to consider sex as a lower good if it will not exist in heaven. If marriage and sexual relations within marriage were the higher good then all would be married in Heaven.
All this could easily be taken as saying “sex is bad” if one does not look at it with the nuance it demands.
ray: Females are the de-facto deity of America
I think that’s too simplistic. There are other false idols that get much deference from the media and politicians. Diversity. Equality. Sexual Deviancy. Israel.
Women take a back seat to diversity. Muslims rape women and children in Europe, and the media covers for them.
Women also take a back seat to gays and trannies. Tranny “women” want to join women’s sports teams, and women must comply.
Israel gets everything it wants. Israel wants us to attack Syria, and we comply. Israel wants to build a wall and expel non-Jewish immigrants, and no outrage from Western media.
White, Christian, hetero men are on the bottom of the pecking order. White, Christian, hetero woman are higher up, but not at the top.
As a former stamp collector, I wish I had this postage stamp from the UK 1929. 1 Pound which was a fair amount of money then and might of bought you a gallon of gas in the UK at the time. ;). If you happen to see one in a stamp collection that may have come in your possession, you have done very well. Price dependent on condition.
http://www.stampmagazine.co.uk/news/article/most-spectacular-commemoratives-no-2-1929-postal-union-congress-pound;1/19320
I was unfamiliar with both of those legends about St. George, but I am familiar with a third account, which I believe to be older, and which is quite different: https://oca.org/saints/lives/2018/04/23/101184-greatmartyr-victory-bearer-and-wonderworker-george
At least back then Chivalry was limited
the latest drivel I heard last week
Older couple insisted that a man who does not do the dishes and even allows his wife to do them once is unloving and unchivalrous…
where do they get this crap from?
Sounds so similar to the young adults group.
A man who does not support his wife and follow her career is not a “real Godly man”
at least back then Chivalry did not involve men swapping roles with women….
it worked
men got something in return
respect and defined roles
now they want men to do everything
Weak men ruining feminism.
“Guiu realised there was a problem a few years ago when she felt sad at the thought of being single and couldn’t pinpoint why.” – emotions suck.
“Australia faces its own unique issues, with researchers on the documentary finding there is a “man drought” happening. They found one in three women aged between 30 and 40 had no partner and there was only one man “available” for every five women.” – because the rest have fled.
“We’re seeing more professional women who sort of basically have impressive lifestyle resumes and we’re not really seeing men matching that.” – women with lifestyle resumes – hot hot hot !!!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-24/the-truth-about-being-single-after-30/9686840
What more could a man want than an infertile middle-aged feminist with a “impressive lifestyle resume” who after 24 partners finally wants to tie the knot ?
That for sure is a “well rounded woman” – why can’t the menz do the right thing by her ?
“With researchers … finding there is a “man drought” happening … only one man “available” for every five women.”
perfect antidote to this, sing it from the rooftops :
@GBFM
I haven’t read it.
The trouble we (patrons of Dalrock) are going to come to, or perhaps have come to, regarding a discussion of Chivalry is that the whole of Western Christianity has participated in building an edifice to it. For the Protestant, the destruction of the edifice is a personal matter, and a social matter, and likely even a theological matter. Those can be painful. But for us it is not a soteriological matter. It is for others. Tied up in this is mother worship and other ideas human-centered ideas strange to the matters recorded in the Bible.
@Moose Norseman
From what I have read, the oldest story about St. George is that there was a St. George. I can find no lineage of his story. If you can trace a source for the history you linked I would be in your debt.
I keep thinking of that scene in the 1950s movie The Ten Commandments when Moses/Charlton Heston sits down on a rock outside the tent and Sephra, the oldest of the daughters was there tending the sheep whilst her sisters were trying to seduce Moses into marriage. Moses would have none of that. He wanted a helpmeet. So Sephra came over and told Moses about the virtues of the women of her tribe, their lips weren’t moist, red, and perfumes, but they were strong, hard working, obedient, and truthful. Moses nodded, took out a strap of cloth, grabbed Sephra by the hand and started wrapping her hand to his with the cloth. She just sat there, like a stone, completely submissive to Moses as he completed the ritual of choosing her to be his wife. Its as if she had NO say in the matter. Woman, I choose you, done. That was all she needed. There was ZERO CHANCE that Moses was going down on bended knee with a diamond worth 3 months of his salary.
What should strike us as either comic or tragic is that modern men think up all kinds of excuses for Vashti’s refusal…and pass right over the eunuchs who were sent to fetch her. You know: The guys who had their testicles cut off for service to the king.
If some female dropped her garter in front of me, I’d tell her to “square herself away” and move off to work on an important project. Life’s too short for foolishness, that goes for fallacious fictional mythologies such as St. George too.
@ Wraithburn
“Even so, a major plot point of the book of Esther is how the king changed his mind about destroying the Jews after she reveals she is one.”
You’re ignoring a major detail of that plot point.
Xerxes did not change the decree that allowed the gentiles of his empire to kill the Jews and take their property. He did not change the decree precisely because he couldn’t. Xerxes’ decree was binding, even to himself.
What Xerxes did was to add a second decree. He allowed the Jews to defend themselves against their attackers, and they did so successfully (Esther Ch. 8).
Speaking of (cartoonish) chivalry…
@ earl, and catholics,
So you’re saying Joseph was an eternal cuckold? And Jesus brothers, were just his gym bros? Or did Joseph have another wife in addition to the frigid one? I’m actually asking what you believe, not just mocking. Was James Brother of the Lord the Bishop of Jerusalem not Jesus brother? What about Matthew 1:25 But Joseph did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And he named him Jesus. or Mark 3:32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” or Acts 1:4 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. and lots of Etc. I knew you were taught that Mary is still a virgin, but how far do you run down the rabbit hole with that conjecture when scripture doesn’t support it, or mention it?
I’m really asking, not just trolling y’all for martyring my Anabaptist ancestors and confiscating their land and earthly possessions.
Thanks.
This work of remember the difference between chivalry and Christianity is precious, and it is perhaps the best strategy ever to gain some “White Knight” to reason.
@Sharkly
I can’t speak for any other Catholics, but personally I find even saying such a thing to be blasphemous and furthermore, to be a good example of how to “test the spirits”. When one uses such disgusting and vile language as an accusation against the Saints and against Jesus himself, it is easy to see who is behind the attack.
Did Abraham and Lot share a mother and father? Abraham called Lot his “brother” and yet they Abraham was his uncle and Lot was Abraham’s nephew. What about 1 Corinthians 15:6 when Paul says Jesus appeared to more than five hundred “brothers and sisters”? Who was this mother that she could bear five hundred children? Perhaps it would be well to understand that “brother” in our language (usually) means one very specific thing, yet in both Koine Greek and in Hebrew, it has broader application.
Once again, using vile, loaded language. It would do you very well to humble yourself and moderate your tone when discussing the mother of your Lord and Savior.
No, this is a lie. You are not “actually asking” you are attempting to poison the waters by using inflammatory language. I do not know why you think anyone at all should address you other than to wipe the dust off their feet if you insist on arguing like that.
He was his cousin. He was most likely the son of Mary of Clopas and Alphaeus.
2 Samuel 6:23 says that Saul’s daughter Michal had no children “until the day of her death.” By your logic she must have been giving birth after she died! Quite a miracle indeed.
1 Corinthians 15:25 says that Christ will reign “until all his enemies are put beneath his feet.” Using your logic Christ’s reign will end as soon as his enemies are subjugated. Interesting theory. Not sure it holds up.
His mother and his cousins.
His mother and his cousins. Notice that his “brothers” are never called the sons of Mary. In fact, the James you mentioned above was called the son of “the other Mary”.
The Angel Gabriel says Mary “will conceive” (future tense) and she says: “How can this be? For I know not man.” But how does her answer make sense to you? She is betrothed. If this were a normal marriage, then the idea that she WILL conceive (not had conceived, but WILL conceive) should be totally normal. Her bafflement makes absolutely no sense unless her betrothal and marriage was (in her view) not going to be consummated. If you went up to a teenage bride and told her “You will have a child” would it make sense if she said: “But how is that going to happen?” It could only make sense if she was not going to have sexual relations with her husband. Mary was a consecrated virgin and her marriage to Joseph was seen in that light. Luke 1:34 has to be either ignored by you, or you have to assume that Mary was simply speaking nonsense.
John 19:26 is where Jesus gives his mother to John. But why would he do this if she had other, living sons? In fact it would be a breach of both tradition and law for him to do so. She would have gone into the house of her other, allegedly extant, sons. Why was she given to John, who was the son of Zebedees?
Martyrdom is to die for love of God. If their progeny is any example of their spiritual nature, they were not martyred at all and in all likelihood deserved far worse than what they got.
This is extremely shacking grounds. Sorry. It’s a simple explanation and you make one up that doesn’t stand up. She hadn’t slept with a man yet so couldn’t be expected to have conceived or to conceive yet until her marriage. It’s not some futuristic thought pattern that she had.
It makes perfect sense in the light that she was a virgin at that point and thus asked how it could have been.
Yadda, yadda, yadda, the eternally offended. God technically did cuck Joseph, according to the definition of the word. Playing ‘shaming’ because one brings it up isn’t going to change that.
Funny. In Eastern Europe we tend to know the original legend of the brave knight who came and slew the dragon to save the princess (dressed in wedding dress, conveniently). The garter is not always (rather rarely in fact) mentioned and if it is, it´s George who “used the princess´ garter” to leash the beast (always insisting on the fact that he had already beaten it). My intuition would be that the symbolism of this detail is that if you beat the dragon, you get to fiddle with the garter…
The nonsense you mention seems to be a 13th century(so very late) troubadour bollocks intended to make the song attractive to female audience (if you sing well, you get to fiddle with the garter, too). Maybe it was intended as a parody at the beginning, who knows. Might have been a time not unlike ours. Imagine Chretien de Troyes drinking himself to death saying: “What have I done, What have I done? Who could have believed they´d buy that crap?!” Marie de France Giggles in the background.
Thank you for this. It can be noted that when a person doesn’t ever do something or have something, it is ‘until the day of their death’ and not ‘And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son’.
Death is the end of all chance to have sex or procreate or get your Jimmies rustled. If Mary and Joseph did not ever have sexual relations, it would have stated ’till his death’.
SkylerWurden: I find even saying such a thing to be blasphemous Well I don’t believe Joseph was eternally cuckold, but it seems from your response that you actually do believe what you call blasphemous, only you’d describe it in more flowery terms I suppose.
No, I also don’t believe Mary was frigid, or that she defrauded Joseph of his marital due, or that their marriage was never consummated, and thus never happened, and would have left Jesus without an earthly father, and a bastard, as the Pharisees and apparently some today believe.
Then you have about a page worth of “Brothers doesn’t always mean Brothers”. Meanwhile we know Lot was actually Abraham’s nephew, Because the Bible tells us so. The Bible is usually pretty specific about genealogies and relations.
And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” Not being catholic, and having had Sex-Ed, that seems like a pretty reasonable question to me, especially considering it is coming from a stunned young lady upon the appearance of the Archangel Gabriel, which might throw any person off their rhythm. I don’t see Mary saying, “I’ll never let that Joseph touch me, he’s just here to pay my bills and run my errands.”
Yeah, I’m still not seeing your beliefs coming from the Bible. I still see them being forced into it.
Anyhow, maybe that’s why I’m not catholic, and don’t listen to your popes and antipopes.
Didn’t mean to sidetrack the thread, just was checking if you papists really believed that stuff out to the literal ragged edges, or if there was some point at which you admitted uncertainty due to no mention in scripture, and it being entirely a conjecture or a “tradition of men”.
From Fox’s book of Martyrs (Bishop Latimer) For his sermons here against purgatory, the immaculacy of the Virgin, and the worship of images, he was cited to appear before Warham, archbishop of Canterbury… Eventually burned at the stake together with Dr. Ridley
To get back onto men’s issues:
As this godly martyr (Robert Samuel) was going to the fire, there came a certain maid to him, which took him about the neck, and kissed him, who, being marked by them that were present, was sought for the next day after, to be had to prison and burned, as the very party herself informed me: howbeit, as God of His goodness would have it, she escaped their fiery hands, keeping herself secret in the town a good while after. But as this maid, called Rose Nottingham, was marvellously preserved by the providence of God, so there were other two honest women who did fall into the rage and fury of that time. The one was a brewer’s wife, the other was a shoemaker’s wife, but both together now espoused to a new husband, Christ.
With these two was this maid aforesaid very familiar and well acquainted, who, on a time giving counsel to the one of them, that she should convey herself away while she had time and space, had this answer at her hand again: “I know well,” saith she, “that it is lawful enough to fly away; which remedy you may use, if you list. But my case standeth otherwise. I am tied to a husband, and have besides young children at home; therefore I am minded, for the love of Christ and His truth, to stand to the extremity of the matter.”
And so the next day after Samuel suffered, these two godly wives, the one called Anne Potten, the other called Joan Trunchfield, the wife of Michael Trunchfield, shoemaker, of Ipswich, were apprehended, and had both into one prison together. … In a short time came a writ from London for the burning, which according to the effect thereof, was executed.
How many a Christian wife today would suffer being burned alive in order to keep her marriage vow out of conscience toward Christ by staying in the same house with an unsaved husband, when she could have fled and lived? Praise Jesus! This saint showed the meaning of “’til death do us part”.
@SW: “I think what he’s saying is that since it would be considered a ‘defilement’ of Mary to have had engaged in sexual relations with her husband that this de facto means Aquinas (and the Catholic Church) considers sex in general to be a defilement and thus ‘bad.’”
That’s about right, but misses the more fine points I included.
@SW: ” Sex is good. Sex when you are a consecrated virgin is not good. Also there is the question if higher and lower goods. According to Catholic tradition sex is a lower good than virginity.”
Now we’re getting to the core of the matter. Consecrated virgin is not a concept found in the bible, I’m curious what you mean by it (the Romans had the Vestal Virgins who were consecrated virgins, but you could not possibly alluding to that, do you?). But the elephant in the room that you are missing is that Mary was MARRIED to Joseph. I know of no orthodox Christian who denies the virgin conception, but the idea that Mary kept her virginity (hymen?) through childbirth and throughout life is very questionable. You are saying that Joseph and Mary did not consummate their marriage, the so-called ‘celibate marriage’, which was praised by some church fathers, but was unheard of before. Not only that, but the apostle Paul explicitly instructs to do otherwise:
1 Co 7:2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.
The viewpoint that virginity is more pure is exactly reflected in writings of Augustine and Aquinas, and support my tongue-in-cheek summary ‘sex=bad, no sex=good’. And I also pointed out the link between that view and idolizing women and their sexuality into sublimated virginity.
“We’re seeing more professional women who sort of basically have impressive lifestyle resumes …
Women think that if they are “well traveled,” have a popular YouTube Channel, and a knowledge of popular culture and fashion, that men should see them as amazing wife material.
Women do as they please, then confuse their pleasures with achievements that might benefit their husband.
Moose Norseman-
That is the official account provided by the Orthodox church, and I have heard/read it many times. Its still nice to go back and read it again. Thanks for posting.
By the way, are you OCA?
As Moose Norseman has pointed out, the eastern church really only focuses on one thing about St George. He was offered lands and title by the emperor in exchange for renouncing Christ, and he refused and died for it.
I had never heard these other accounts until today.
@SW: “The Old Testament supports this theory, as both husband and wife were considered ritually “unclean” after engaging in sexual relations”
There were LOTS of regulations in the OT that made people unclean. If you closely look, many of them are related to preventing contagious diseases from spreading. The view that sex is ‘unclean’ even for NT believers (compare Acts 15 which lists which OT laws NT believers should still keep) is difficult to maintain. It does however fit nicely with my summary ‘sex=bad,no sex=good’. This view is quite pervasive throughout church history, but is problematic with actual and direct commands and writings from Scripture.
You cannot maintain ‘celibate marriage’, and hence keeping viriginity in marriage is good, if the apostle Paul instructs Christians who CAN control their sexual passion to NOT marry. And he instructs married Christians repeatedly to frequently have sex. Now if virginity in marriage is NOT good according to the apostle, why is it seen as something good by later writers? Only by some other force that gets more priority. We know from Augustine that he was influenced by gnostic thinking which shaped his view on sexuality and virginity. We see the same line of thought in other church fathers. This led to the view that being a virgin AND being married was seen as the ultimate show of spiritual superiority. I think it is time to be honest on this and recognize how gnostic thinking infiltrated the church teachings. Celibate marriages are wrong. Sex is good.
Off Topic: http://theothermccain.com/2018/04/24/the-unf-kable-canadian-menace/
Cue the attacks on Men’s Rights groups.
Red Pill Latecomer says:
April 25, 2018 at 5:20 am
“We’re seeing more professional women who sort of basically have impressive lifestyle resumes …
“Women think that if they are “well traveled,” have a popular YouTube Channel, and a knowledge of popular culture and fashion, that men should see them as amazing wife material.
Women do as they please, then confuse their pleasures with achievements that might benefit their husband.”
Indeed. Those read to a discerning man as having established seriously expensive tastes, debts, and having slutted it up with lots of men, many of whom weren’t even white. Re the latter, given not just her having been f**ed out of ability to bond, but telegony, where she permanently retains DNA from men she’s contacted semen from, she has made herself utterly unmarriageable to a man with any prospects (including bachelorhood).
Feminists think their lifestyle resume is impressive to other women and gay men. They don’t actually take into account what men think an impressive lifestyle resume for a woman is.
Luke:
We’ve discussed this here before. Not only are you wrong, but the opposite is true.
On a more general note, there are a plentitude of legitimate arguments against promiscuity. There’s no reason to make shit up (or rely on made up shit) like a slutwalking feminist.
Regards,
Boxer
There were many theories to this…such as Joseph was married before and had children.
St. Jerome proposed that James was a cousin of Jesus…but in those times they didn’t have a name for that term so they used ‘brother’.
http://www.copticheritage.org/orthodoxy/james_the_brother_of_the_lord
If you read the Scripture…it described Joesph as a righteous man. He was going to divorce Mary quietly because he assumed like all of us would…she fornicated with another man and got pregnant.
It wasn’t until he got the message from the angel in a dream about where and how Jesus came about. His role was to be Jesus’s earthly father because Joseph came from the line of David and that legitimized Jesus (like what was brought up earlier He wasn’t a ‘bastard’ child) That’s not being cuckolded.
Right. St. Mary is the mother of the Creator of the Universe. St. Joseph was his protector while he sojourned on earth as a child. There is honor in both those roles. There is no honor in accepting being cukcolded, yet that is what 99% of men do, even as they squeal like b*ches on the internet. Sts. Mary & Joseph are worthy of honor, not derision.
Earl, Can you imagine what an honour to have been Jesus earthly “step?” Father, wonder what he would have been like as a youngster. I guess you could say Jesus had no siblings only half siblings as they didnt share a father.
Being cucked is not knowing your not the father. Not Joesph’s situation at all. Whats interesting about Mary and Joesph’s situation was that they were doing something most Churches (maybe all would utterly despise) – they were an engaged unmarried couple living together long term, which was typical at the time for Jewish arrangements and would have been having intimacy together without consummating the marriage. They spend a long time building up to that moment, at which point the Wedding ceremony is held, you have to wonder, with our western mindset of not talking about sex, a Wedding feast celebrating that you are both now ready to do that is a fairly public display. In the desert you knew when every girl was having her period as she had to leave the camp and then get purified after – fairly public. Its hard for me to get my head round just how public sex and reproduction was in that society.
I’ve posted this before Dalrock, but on the subject of chivalry, this clip from El Cid (1960) says a lot. It has the custom of the “colors” (garment) of a woman to be worn into battle:
….and, as a Red Pill man, I would say tow things: 1- Roderigo (Heston) was right to show Chimene (Loren) the consequences of her actions and 2- Women are conniving and manipulative…
Cuckolding is merely the replacing what would have been another animal’s offspring with your own. It comes from the Cuckoo bird who lays its eggs in the nest of another, making them raise it. It does not require sex at all.
Even though Joseph didn’t leave Mary after the angel appeared as he would have had it been any other man, it still means he was cuckolded. Just because God did it, doesn’t change what was done.
Joseph married Mary thus Jesus wasn’t a bastard child but this doesn’t remove the cuckolding. They are two different things.
Joseph was righteous because he did what God commanded of him and raised God’s son.
Let me try that again..
Cuckolding is merely the replacing what would have been another animal’s offspring with the offspring of another. It comes from the Cuckoo bird who lays its eggs in the nest of another, making them raise it. It does not require at act of sex, a woman who gets sperm inserted at a sperm bank can cuck her husband with the offspring.
It’s the permission part. Did God get Joseph’s permission before Mary was made pregnant? Nope… therefore it was an act of cuckoldry.
No hater…not if you read the definition of a cuckold.
cuck·old
1. the husband of an adulteress, often regarded as an object of derision.
1.
(of a man) make (another man) a cuckold by having a sexual relationship with his wife.
Both are about sex with another man…Mary is a virgin and Jesus came about through the Holy Spirit hence Joseph isn’t a cuckold.
Let’s pretend, shall we… That Mary had fallen pregnant with another man’s child and Joseph had gone along with it so that she wouldn’t be stoned to death.
Cucked or not?
The law forces men to raise the children of other men all the time, does this now make them cuckolded or not? He’s only a ‘cuck’ when he doesn’t know about it but as soon as he finds out, it’s what? Normalised? Ratified cuckoldry?
So a woman who inserts the sperm of another man into her vagina doesn’t make her husband a cuckold?
‘So a woman who inserts the sperm of another man into her vagina doesn’t make her husband a cuckold?’
Tell me what man’s sperm was inserted into Mary to create Jesus.
You’re arguing two different things…in any other case it’s cuckoldry. In this case it’s not.
@Oscar
I am aware of that. You are still missing my point. He did change his mind; he could not change the previously encoded law signed with his royal signet. If his mind had not changed, there would be no need for a new decree as what had come before was sufficient.
“We’re seeing more professional women who sort of basically have impressive lifestyle resumes and we’re not really seeing men matching that.” – women with lifestyle resumes – hot hot hot !!!
When reading about how women are surpassing men in every way, I’ve learned to be on the lookout for the women-hardest-hit angle (thanks Dalrock readers). I’m rarely disappointed. From the same article:
“The loaded terminology and expectations have led to an unhealthy stigma from which women still struggle to break free, according to documentary maker Mariona Guiu.”
1. Professional women with impressive lifestyle resumes
2. Men not hacking it
3. Women left struggling to break free
4. Think of the women
I didn’t state any was inserted into Mary. Point out where I did..
I gave that as an example that cuckoldry includes non-sexual acts as well. That the act of cuckoldry is not related only to sexual adultery but to the passing off of offspring onto another without their permission or knowledge. A woman can suffer a miscarriage and then steal a baby and pass it off as her husband’s. No adultery took place but it is still an act of cuckoldry.
Your arguments boil down to the fact that God did it and thus it’s right. That’s fine. I actually agree with that. I am merely making the point that this doesn’t change that Mary’s first born child wasn’t Joseph’s but God’s and that God made Mary pregnant without Joseph’s permission or knowledge and Joseph had to be convinced to take on the task of raising God’s son. It doesn’t have the same shameful connotation of a cuck by adultery because Mary wasn’t unfaithful, nor did God force Joseph to raise Jesus against his will like the modern state.
@earl
Although since it is Greek. There is specific wordings that refer to blood brothers and sisters that emerge from the same womb.
Personally I see no reason that perpetual virginity is ever required for a mother of Jesus. Being a virgin prior to the birth of Jesus is enough. And likewise a person is not somehow defiled or somehow stained by sin in losing his virginity on the marriage bed.
As for evidence that there is ever a pledge for perpetual virginity. Its scant compared to the reliability and historical accuracy of the Gospels.
And a celibate “marriage” is nothing but a sham. Its not a marriage only a partnership. They are simply room-mates
Ultimately its validity is not essential for salvation. Its not something that people are obligated to believe or not to believe.
RCC teachings state that marriage that is not consummated is dissoluble and the one-flesh relationship is not established. It is defective of a full marriage where consummation leads to the one-flesh relationship, and the marriage bond becomes indissoluble.
To state that Joseph and Mary did not consummate their marriage, is to state they did not establish a one-flesh relationship, and their marriage is defective of a full, indissoluble marriage.
Non-consummation in marriage also goes against the instructions of the apostle Paul to engage in frequent sexual intercourse.
@ Wraithburn
No, you’re missing the point. I’m aware that Xerxes changed his mind. Even though Xerxes changed his mind, he couldn’t change the previous decree. That would have also been true with the decree about “compulsion”.
In other words, Xerxes had a bad habit of putting himself in bad situations with unwise decrees. Vashti used the opportunity to humiliate her husband. Esther didn’t. That’s the point.
OT: The world keeps getting crazier every day.
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/drag-kings-hope-detoxify-masculinity-portraying-men-act-like-women/
“[Goldie] Peacock’s idea is that, because actual men have all been socially conditioned to be “toxic,” we need actual women to pretend to be men to show us what men could be like if they weren’t all so darn toxic. Since there’s actually no such thing as men and women, a woman pretending to be a man pretty much is a man — the perfect man, according to feminists, because he acts like a woman, which isn’t really a thing, but never mind.”
@Lost Patrol says: “When reading about how women are surpassing men in every way, I’ve learned to be on the lookout for the women-hardest-hit angle (thanks Dalrock readers). I’m rarely disappointed. From the same article:
“The loaded terminology and expectations have led to an unhealthy stigma from which women still struggle to break free, according to documentary maker Mariona Guiu.”
1. Professional women with impressive lifestyle resumes
2. Men not hacking it
3. Women left struggling to break free
4. Think of the women”
Yes, its either – men cant match up to these Amazing Talented Women(tm) or the menz are just too scared to have relationships with them.
Either way, they avoid the elephant in the room taking a dump in the corner.
feministhater – you must be off your tits to think God would cuckold Joesph, a man being cuck’d is basically a costly deception, he spends his money/time/love raising another mans child he thinks is his own. If you adopt a child or marry into another family and then pay for them, your not cuck’d.
Any man whose wife will not have sex with him maybe isn’t a cuckold, since that usually means she will have sex with anyone BUT him. The rest of the argument does hold up however, since scripture states that Joseph did not know Mary until after the birth of Christ. To me this seems to imply that he did consumate the marriage after, else why the qualifying condition? Not knowing her UNTIL implies that he did know her at that time, but later he did.
I meant did not.
I’m not getting into this Mary as Perpetual Virgin debate. But, it is curious that the “brother” of Jesus, James, was considered the founder of the Ebionites. They were a school who considered Jesus the Messiah, but they denied his divinity.
Being cuck’d is being deceived continually and long term by the mother not the child. A truly dreadful sin that appears to occur way more than we think, which is why in france and the UK you can’t DNA test your kid unless the courts mandate it, if you do they will throw your ass in jail. So its a jail-able offence to find out if your kid is your own in these countries without the mothers approval. So cuckolding may actually run between 1% to 10% of the population, depending on where you look.
Did Joseph marry into another family or was his own betrothed pregnant by another without his permission? The very fact that Joseph would have left Mary had the angel not intervened in his dream shows the way of it. Sorry if that offends you.
@Earl – I left this message over at the last post:
“Fine. When, as with the early Church, your church going to throw parties and celebrate all the 30 and 40 yo virgins in your congregation? They among church laity are considered freaks by their own church.
As I said. You can’t square the circle on this. Expect more van attacks by crazed virgins.”
Now, would the Church celebrating a virgin like the Toronto van killer have succeeded (if he converted to Catholicism beforehand) in stopping his rampage? I hope the answer would be yes. But, I’m not sure.
Can Christian marriage save us from the Incels?
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.4633051/why-some-incels-are-celebrating-toronto-s-van-attack-suspect-1.4633057
Red Pill Latecomer
Women think that if they are “well traveled,” have a popular YouTube Channel, and a knowledge of popular culture and fashion, that men should see them as amazing wife material.
Don’t forget the college degree that is often listed. This is projection on their part. They are attempting to qualify to men by displaying the qualities they want in a man. It is very common. It is a result of the mistaken notion of “men and women are the same except for babies”.
@FH “Did Joseph marry into another family or was his own betrothed pregnant by another without his permission? The very fact that Joseph would have left Mary had the angel not intervened in his dream shows the way of it.”
Did Mary deceive Joseph ? Being cuck’d is to be deceived.
They weren’t married yet, so I’m not sure in the Jewish engagement period would her having sex with another man even be classed as adultery, she would instead be forced to marry the other.
But Joseph would have been required to “divorce” her to exit the engagement, which he planned to do quietly. Luckily for us all it was him and not you 😀
Scott
As Moose Norseman has pointed out, the eastern church really only focuses on one thing about St George. He was offered lands and title by the emperor in exchange for renouncing Christ, and he refused and died for it.
I had never heard these other accounts until today.
Well, sure you have not, because the eastern church has a long cultural history apart from the Roman church, of which English / French are two branches. All of the cartoonish chivalry that Dalrock has explored over the last few years comes from French-ish courts and those related such as the English. You won’t find much or even any of this “lock of my hair”, “whiff of my garter”, etc. stuff in Slavic countries.
Again I will point out that Anglosphere feminism is the most virulent branch on the planet. It is not a coincicdence. Cartoon-carnival chivalry is a major underpinning of anglosphere feminism.
For example, in some Anglosphere subcultures if a woman has a bad sexual experience, a “date gone bad” it can now be called “rape”. Because she didn’t have a good time. There is a tie from that to “she tied her girtle on the dragon and led it back to town”, although it might take a bit of pondering for some to find it.
These cultural objects are not just empty words.
To my Protestant brothers arguing with Roman Catholics regarding the eternal virginity of Mary, what do you hope to accomplish by this? The argument, boiled down, consists of:
Rinse, lather, repeat.
@ Minesweeper
“… I’m not sure in the Jewish engagement period would her having sex with another man even be classed as adultery, she would instead be forced to marry the other.”
False.
Deut 22:23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.
….
28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[c] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
I should have used the NASB for that last Bible citation. The Hebrew in Leviticus 28 doesn’t actually say “rapes”. It’s more accurately translated “seizes”, which means he took her illegitimately, which doesn’t imply rape. Here’s the NASB translation.
Deut 22:28 “If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered, 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.
“… the eastern church has a long cultural history apart from the Roman church, of which English / French are two branches. All of the cartoonish chivalry that Dalrock has explored over the last few years comes from French-ish courts and those related such as the English.” ~ AR
The English fought the French constantly, but were simultaneously major Francophiles, because French was synonymous with “sophisticated”.
@Dalrock
I think I started that, but I did not intend to trigger a discussion on the eternal virginity of Mary (which is kind of a singular case), but on the view that exaltation of virginity *in the married state* over a normal sex life where such female virginity is especially celebrated and seen as more pure. This is not about Protestant vs Roman Catholic. As I stated earlier, to me this originated in gnostic thinking but strongly correlates to idolizing of women in the ‘pure’ state of virginity. As such it sheds light on the idolizing of women, sublimating their sexuality into something pure (whereas male sexuality is seen as almost immoral), resulting in women not being held responsible, and the mess we ended up since feminism accelerated the process.
Thanks Paul.
Her bafflement makes absolutely no sense unless her betrothal and marriage was (in her view) not going to be consummated.
Pretty clear that the RCC is a parody of Christianity too.
OT
Incels, the new criminal class:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/25/what-is-incel-movement-toronto-van-attack-suspect
Know what I’d like to see?
More “this is how you do it” instead of “look at all these people doing it wrong”. Don’t get me wrong, we need to be warned of false teachers who don’t teach what the Bible says.
But…
Share some victories. Someone. Anyone. I’ve shared some. Lets see some others tell about their victories. How they did it. How their marriages changed for the better.
Whilst cooking tonight’s dinner and thinking over a glass of red wine. I have to admit that you guys are right and I am wrong.
It has been one of those things that has gnawed at me for awhile but I think Minesweepers’ explanation over the issue being the lack of deception by Mary and the fact that Joseph wasn’t forced which sets my mind at ease. Thank you for that and apologies for the derailment of the thread.
There are somethings I will never understand though so I always think it best to argue to a point. For me that point has passed on this issue so I stand down.
Going to go enjoy a good dinner. Enjoy the rest of your day everyone.
@Oscar says: “@ Minesweeper
“… I’m not sure in the Jewish engagement period would her having sex with another man even be classed as adultery, she would instead be forced to marry the other.”
False.
Deut 22:23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.”
Mary was not out on the piss and got herself knocked up in a stall by drummer boy, no town involved – “If a man happens to meet in a town”, the actual word is
H5892 `iyr eer
or ayar (Judges 10:4) {aw-yar’}; from H5782 a city (a place guarded by waking or a watch) in the widest sense (even of a mere encampment or post).
So her crime is she is in a place that she can get help – essentially a safe environment in comparison to the wilds and dosn’t call out.
All those verses in Det 22 really describe rape or seized sex for her. Joseph even before the dream didnt consider her worthy of death.
The definition of cuckoldry is sexual acts. If you don’t like it…take it up with Webster’s.
They don’t celebrate virginity in men. You never see a male saint have virgin next to his title. There’s martyr, what clergy he was, evangelist, etc. you never see ‘virgin’. It’s only with women that is brought up.
@Earl – Thank you. Your response is helping me understand some of the responses I’m getting in another post. It seems like we are worshipping virginity in men from many of the people here.
@Oscar
Yes, and that’s what I’m trying to get at. He remained king with authority to make decisions. Vashti is brought up as a good thing for women to do. Not only that, but it gets expanded. We don’t live in Persia and husbands can change their minds. But if you do, then this gets brought up as a way to usurp authority from the man.
@ Wraithburn
It appears that we agree and were speaking past each other. I apologize for my part in that.
You’re right. Vashti is not an example for godly wives to follow. Pastors who present her as such interpret the story through a feminist lens.
@ Minesweeper
I did not claim that Mary “got herself knocked up”. I pointed out that the penalty for an engaged woman who had sex with a man other than the one to whom she was promised was death (for her lover as well). The penalty was NOT marriage to her lover.
@AR
Yes, this is right. Chivalry is a disease of the Western churches. The Great Schism with the Eastern Church is in 1054. In the 12thC, Chivalry/Courtly Love appears in France, and–coincidentally–the Western Church forbids priests from marriage at the same time. You can imagine the sort of men who would be produced over the centuries by that selection process, and what their ideas about women would be.
This is also correct. When Enlightenment Western Europeans later enshrined “Reason”, they did not put the new goddess over the idol which Chivalry worships, but in service to her. The whole pantheon is headed by women. This is particularly true in, again, France; where the Goddess of Reason and then the Goddess of Liberty (Lady Liberty) were literally worshipped. Vivid evidence of this idolatry exists in the New York Harbor; to our shame.
Religiously reactionary types like to think that the fault of Western Civilization is a result of Protestantism, but it’s actually deeper magic than that. Protestantism itself isn’t actually a break from the unofficial pantheon of Western Europe. It barely addresses it.
@earl: “[The Church] don’t celebrate virginity in men.”
..but celebrates virginity in women. And as said “according to Catholic tradition sex is a lower good than virginity.” Which thus means female sex has a lower status than female virginity. And this extends to marriages, as celibate marriages (virginity in marriage) were seen as ‘better’. In my view this contributed to viewing women as more pure, and guardians of female purity, positioning them as gatekeepers to sex/lust, and at the same time idolizing their virginity, which extended to viewing women as being more moral than men. This is the foundation upon which courtly love, chivalry and feminism were built.
RCC catechism has:
“the completely developed feminine personality is thus to be found in the mother.”
“the virgin who renounces marriage from religious motives, acquires precedence above the married woman and enlarges the circle of her motherly influence upon society”
“This elevation of woman centres in Mary the Mother of Jesus, the purest [P: eternal] virginity and motherhood, both tender and strong, united in wonderful sublimity. [..] The respect for woman rises and falls with the veneration of the [P: eternal] Virgin Mother of God.”
Given that both the married Mary as the penultimate RCC role-model for women, and Christ as role-model for men, were both eternal virgins according to RCC dogma, it is not difficult to see that while men do not have a married role-model, women do. And that role-model has virginity in the married state as well as being target of veneration. Given the required veneration of Mary it is clear how married women became exalted and is being venerated herself.
It is idolatry. It is degrading to men. And ultimately it is degrading to Christ.
By making Mary the centerpoint of veneration, married women are pushed from the simple biblical imagery of Christ-Church as man-woman with corresponding sexual duties, towards non-biblical virginity in marriage.
Cane,
Long ways back now, but my point was that we have to watch building doctrine on the speech of those without God’s direct backing. I find enough evidence elsewhere in the Scriptures for most of the points I would take from that passage that I would use those instead.
I also agree it is stupid to take that as a courageous stand as some do. They lack thought, but that has already been shown in other areas.
I need to study the whole story better, but I know she was rather stupid in how she carried things out. The King had absolute right there and her approach brought her trouble. The reason I would need to study it closer is that I have not done so lately and it is possible my thoughts are clouded by poor teaching on the topic rather than what is Written.
@Oscar
No problem at all, I’m glad we got it cleared up.
Ok so you go after the church for saying these things….How is that any different from what Christ said or what Paul said? Were they idolators by saying such things?
http://biblehub.com/matthew/19-12.htm
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+7%3A+8-35&version=NASB
Or if you don’t want to read the whole passage…this is the part from Paul I’d highlight.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+7%3A+32-35&version=NASB
> It has been one of those things that has gnawed at me for awhile but I think Minesweepers’ explanation over the issue being the lack of deception by Mary and the fact that Joseph wasn’t forced which sets my mind at ease. Thank you for that and apologies for the derailment of the thread.
Glad you figured it out. I think of it as adoption – Joseph knows it was not his child, but God’s sanction makes him choose to go forward. It is chosen in strength and soberness, not forced by weakness.
Cuckoldry is shameful, but pursuing a God-given mission is never shameful.
There’s a symmetry there where man adopts God that God might adopt man.
Point is they aren’t celebrating virginity just for the sake of celebrating virginity…that’s idolatry. They celebrate virginity as a sacrifice to live for the Kingdom of Heaven and to serve the Lord.
Red Pill Latecomer — “Israel gets everything it wants. Israel wants us to attack Syria, and we comply. Israel wants to build a wall and expel non-Jewish immigrants, and no outrage from Western media.”
Very revealing that you twisted my comment concerning Romanticism into a diatribe against . . . Israel!
LOL!
You must be a graduate of the Supreme Dark Lord Teddy Beale School of (((Jew Hatin’))).
ray: Hey, RPL, quite a thundershower over here this afternoon. Flooded out a few of the beach houses.
RPL: Yeah, if it weren’t for Israel and the Jews, modifying the weather and putting herpes on spoons, why, the world would be a great place, and those people would still have houses. And no cold sores.
:O)
Hmm, from your linked Guardian article:
Incel is short for “involuntarily celibate”. The term rose to prominence because of its adoption by a subsection of the “manosphere”, a loose collection of movements united by misogyny that also includes some men’s rights activists, pick-up artists, and Mgtow/volcel – heterosexual men who refuse to have sex with women for political reasons.
So, according to the Establishment, the manosphere is defined by its “misogyny.”
The SLPC even has a manosphere page: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2012/misogyny-sites
I’m sure that, over time, they’ll try to scrub the internet of all mansophere sites.
@earl
I’m talking about virginity IN MARRIAGE. I do not have any issue at all with unmarried celibacy/virginity.
@Oscar, your not seeing those passages correctly, the bible called Joseph a righteous man who would have known and followed the law, he didn’t consider (even before he had the dream) that she should have been handed over for punishment. Because the law didn’t demand this.
You think those passages say an “engaged women who lies with another should be killed”. They are instead about rape.
Dalrock says: To my Protestant brothers arguing with Roman Catholics regarding the eternal virginity of Mary, what do you hope to accomplish by this?
My zeal for the Word, isn’t about what I do or don’t accomplish, it is more of a desire to stand up for the Holy Word of God, against some unending virginal adoration being tacked onto it. I was a virgin for 33 years, but nobody worshipped me for it, or should have. Sure it was commendable, but I wasn’t a god to be prayed unto.
I’d like to mention that the Great Whore of Rome, drunk with the blood of the holy martyrs down through the ages, describes a false church based in Rome that kills and persecutes those faithful to God’s word. My ancestors martyred for their holy faith: They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” God’s wrath will not forebear forever on those who kill and mistreat his servants. A Holy and fearful Jealous God will deal with the bloody whore. I wouldn’t want my name on their roll, that book of the damned, when God judges the Great Whore. Fear God and flee the wrath that is to come!
I’ll stick up for my protestant views, hopefully even unto death if required, like my martyred ancestors. And I am not ashamed to condemn their wicked traditions, even as they scorn my beliefs and words. For a second it seemed like you were asking me to “Beta up”.
Anyhow, I recognize the value in focusing on unity, and what we share in common, and our common goal of ridding our respective churches and culture of the evils of Feminism. So I too apologize for engaging in my own holy crusade against papist heresy on your website.
I still don’t get why Prots think that the Catholic church claims the Virgin Mary as a god. We honor her for the role that was given to her by God, the Mother of God (Jesus).
earl, While you seem to be right-minded, you don’t speak for all of catholicism. Many in other countries actually do pray to saints and angels and iconic objects, while calling themselves catholic. While protestant churches usually aren’t controlled from afar, Should the pope not correct the pagan practices that go on in the name of Catholicism worldwide, if y’all claim to be the true church? Is it enough to say, well I don’t pray to Mary? Is maintaining a kingdom of this world more important than losing some members over false practices? Not that that couldn’t apply to every denomination. But it seems to me that the pope tolerates some crazy Sh1t in some countries, to go along with the local brand of Catholicism and its admixture.
Boxer: everything I posted in my comment above that you got pissy about is conventional wisdom on Dalrock’s site, accepted by the vast majority of men here, excepting only telegony. Re that, you seem to have some kind of emotional block at accepting new information on that subject. (Have you never read up on “slut face” over at Roissy’s site, out of curiosity?)
You really should try to keep up on topics important to the manosphere.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141001090238.htm
@ Minesweeper says:
April 25, 2018 at 7:55 pm
“You think those passages say an ‘engaged women who lies with another should be killed’. They are instead about rape.”
Wrong.
Deut 22:23-24 are not about rape. They’re about when “a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her”. And the penalty for both of them is that “you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife.”
If she “didn’t scream for help”, then it wasn’t rape. That’s why she gets punished as well.
Deut 22:25-27 are about rape. That’s why the man gets executed, and the woman does not.
Deut 22:28-29 are not about rape. They’re about when “a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered”. “Ceases”, as in, takes something that doesn’t belong to him (her virginity), but not by force. But she’s not already engaged to another man. Therefore, the punishment is not death. The punishment is that “the man who lay with her shall give to the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.”
Check the dogma of the church when it comes to Mary and saints. That’s what speaks for Catholicism.
@ earl says:
April 25, 2018 at 10:24 pm
“I still don’t get why Prots think that the Catholic church claims the Virgin Mary as a god.”
I’m from Central America. I know worship when I see it. And what I saw in Central America was worship of Mary. You might want to learn about what your fellow Catholics do in other countries before making statements like that.
The reason Catholics don’t behave that way in the US is that the US was (I emphasize WAS) a Protestant country.
@Oscar,” Deut 22:23-24 are not about rape. They’re about when “a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her”. And the penalty for both of them is that “you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife.”
If she “didn’t scream for help”, then it wasn’t rape. That’s why she gets punished as well.”
Considering they would have known the punishment, death, you still think this wouldnt have been forced rape ? Her crime was to not alert others to help her. You really think having sex is worth death for her ?
@Oscar, again, why do you think Joseph didn’t drag Mary to the elders for punishment ? I’m not even sure why we are arguing over this, is it because you would have thought if God hadn’t told Joseph that he had created himself inside of her she would have been killed ? The NT doesn’t state anywhere that she was in danger of that occurring.
@ Minesweeper says:
April 26, 2018 at 8:23 am
“Considering they would have known the punishment, death, you still think this wouldnt have been forced rape ?”
Numbers 15:32 Now while the sons of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation; 34 and they put him in [a]custody because it had not been [b]declared what should be done to him. 35 Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” 36 So all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him [c]to death with stones, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.
The man gathering wood on the Sabbath knew the penalty was death, yet he did it anyway. People do things without thinking of the consequences with disturbing frequency.
“Her crime was to not alert others to help her.”
No. Her crime was having sex with one man while being promised to marry another. That’s why Deut 22:23 includes that specific detail – that she was promised to marry another man.
“You really think having sex is worth death for her ?”
1. It doesn’t matter what I think. That’s what God commanded.
2. Do you think picking up sticks was worth death for the man in Numbers 15?
“I’m not even sure why we are arguing over this… ”
We’re arguing about this because you stated that a woman who was promised to marry one man, and had sex with another, was not under penalty of death, and you’re wrong, and you refuse to admit you’re wrong, even when I provided you with the exact scripture that calls for the death of a woman (and her lover) who has sex with one man while being promised to marry another.
“The NT doesn’t state anywhere that she was in danger of that occurring.”
But the Old Testament law does. And, at the time, the people in the Gospels were still living under the Old Testament laws.
@Oscar, go on then provide me the scripture where by a engaged female in a field willingly has sex with another man.
DT 22:23-24 : sex in a city not crying out = death
DT 22:25-27: rape in a field no one heard her cries = no death:
no condition for sex in a field willingly.
@Oscar, “But the Old Testament law does. And, at the time, the people in the Gospels were still living under the Old Testament laws.” – yes, so why didn’t Joseph want to take her before the authorities ?
becaause your wrong.
@ Minesweeper says:
April 26, 2018 at 8:59 am
“DT 22:23-24 : sex in a city not crying out = death”
But only if she’s promised to marry another man. If she’s not promised to marry another man, the penalty is for the man to marry her, and he’s not allowed to ever divorce her, according to Deut 22:28-29.
“DT 22:25-27: rape in a field no one heard her cries = no death:
no condition for sex in a field willingly.”
That’s because there was no one there to hear her cries. Old Testament law requires a standard of proof and assumption of innocence. That’s one way you know that Deut 22:23-24 is not about rape.
If the two lovers were in a city (Deut 22:23-24), and therefore there were people around to hear her cry out, but no one heard her cry out, then she didn’t cry out. Therefore, it’s not rape, and she is therefore guilty of the crime of having sex with one man while being promised to another man.
If, on the other hand, they were in a field (Deut 22:25-27), and there was no one around to hear her cry out, then she is assumed innocent of the crime of having sex with one man while being engaged to another.
“… so why didn’t Joseph want to take her before the authorities ?”
According to Matt 1:19, because he didn’t want to “disgrace her”. Or, as other translations put it, because he didn’t want to “make a public example of her”. Being stoned to death would be a powerful, disgraceful, public example, don’t you think?
You didn’t answer my question. Do you think picking up sticks was worth death for the man in Numbers 15?
We don’t know what we don’t know. I would bet most premarital sex didn’t result in stoning in their society. But we are not told any more detail and should therefore not speculate too much.
What we do know is that, according to Deut 22:23-24, the penalty for willingly having sex with a woman promised to marry another man was death for both lovers.
That we do know.
We also know that, according to Deut 22:28-29, the penalty for sex with a virgin who was NOT promised to another man was marriage with no possibility of divorce, plus a payment of 50 shekels of silver to her father.
That, we also know.
The death penalty in Deut 22:23-24 is similar to the death penalty for adultery; pledged to be married had a very similar status to being married, hence the similar penalties. I agree with Oscar.
That don’t mean anything. What specifically do they do that shows worship of Mary?
@Oscar:“… so why didn’t Joseph want to take her before the authorities ?”
According to Matt 1:19, because he didn’t want to “disgrace her”. Or, as other translations put it, because he didn’t want to “make a public example of her”. Being stoned to death would be a powerful, disgraceful, public example, don’t you think?”
No mention of that happening (Being stoned to death), humiliation yes.
You seem to be filling in blanks where there are no blanks, if the bible wanted to state :
“any betrothed woman who lies with another man should be stoned to death” – it would but it doesn’t say that, you think it does.
It could also easily say, “any betrothed woman who is raped\seized kill the perpetrator”. It doesn’t say that either. Check Leviticus 18 for a long list of prohibitions without conditions.
Again, the bible didn’t state that Joseph planned to divorce her quietly to save her life but instead her humiliation.
You didn’t answer my question. Do you think picking up sticks was worth death for the man in Numbers 15?”
I didn’t, what has that got to do with this ? I can only assume the perpetrators knew God’s rules, broke them and suffered the consequences.
Its clear we are seeing 2 entirely different things from the same passage, I see what it says, you see what you think it says. And that’s fine, just don’t go stoning to death any betrothed women will you ?
One last swipe at the Papists:
If it had not been for “Heretics” publishing the Bible in a language where people could read it, and people willing to risk their lives to stand up against the Popes and their mob on the broad road. The catholics might still be selling indulgences, claiming priests could forgive sins, claiming you could go to heaven if you kissed the pope’s toe, and building their kingdom on earth with even greater over-reaches. The catholic clergy at the time of the reformation were noted to be largely debauched, bloodthirsty, power hungry, and greedy. One has to ignore history to not see that the catholic church has in fact been an earthly kingdom, and under the sway of earthly influence, as they struggle for power, money, and influence. They change like a chameleon to stay relevant, and operate by different rules in different parts of the world to hold together their earthly empire.
That is why it pays to try to sway their “church”. Like so many other “churches” it is quite under the sway of the world, and those outside who make bold demands of it. And I come against them and their traditions boldly in the name of the living God, and his Son Jesus. If some have an ear to hear, they’ll hear the Shepherd’s voice in His Word, and not in dogma forced into it.
My father once asked a catholic; Since catholics can now eat meat on Fridays, did those in purgatory for eating meat on Fridays get released then also?
LOL
My God and His heavenly kingdom in no way resemble the insanity of the catholic chameleon church, and their fallible and sinful self-deifying popes.
Oscar — “I’m from Central America. I know worship when I see it. And what I saw in Central America was worship of Mary. You might want to learn about what your fellow Catholics do in other countries before making statements like that.
The reason Catholics don’t behave that way in the US is that the US was (I emphasize WAS) a Protestant country.”
I know worship when I see it too, and there is FAR more sincere feeling for the ‘Queen of Heaven’ than there is for Christ in the Catholic Church. I grew up Catholic and, although I liked its traditionalism and family-centrism, its de-facto worship oops I mean reverence of Mary is absolutely error. Christ addressed this in Revelation 2 with admonitions against ‘Jezebel’ made to the ‘church of Thyatira’, of which the Catholic Church is part.
There is VERY little knowledge of King Jeshua in Catholicism, but much ‘knowledge’ of Mary. Dalrock’s comment concerning the uselessness of this debate is very wrong. ‘Reverencing’ Mary as co-Redemptrix, and as Queen of Heaven, is idolatry. It does not disqualify Catholics completely, as Rev. 2:18-20 attests; but it is an error that keeps these persons further from Christ’s presence than need be.
I’ve travelled a fair bit in Mexico, and also have lived in Central America. There is no question whatsoever that, widely, Mary is the central figure of adoration amongst both the priests and the people. Catholics simply cannot admit this obvious truth, because then it calls into question their Mariolatry dogma, not to mention the utter betrayal of their modern popes, who are SJWs, not stand-ins for Jeshua. There are no stand-ins for Jeshua. Peter was the first church leader. Not a replacement for Christ.
The urge in humanity, male and female alike, to deify the feminine is tremendously strong, and made much more tempting by the artifices of satan, of which there have been many involving a (false) spirit of Mary, going back to the first centuries after Calvary.
My beloved dad was a Catholic, and a fine man, and I am grateful for the formative years I spent in Catholic schools and churches. I do not say these things about Catholicism because I hate that church, or its adherents. In the years just ahead, Catholicism’s ancient attachment to ‘Mary’ will cause tremendous treachery and death, and I hope some Catholics in the Anglosphere will put away their Mariolatry, and turn to Jeshua alone, as He is alone. Breaking Latin America’s addiction will be much harder, as their cultures and ethnicities are long comfortable with goddess-worship; they simply pasted Mary on top after the Conquistadors
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