How the World Is Marking the 500th Birthday of Protestantism

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, Southern Baptists are almost all a pack of morons and/or ignoramuses and fools.  -I can say that, and you can't.  The women also wear WAY too much perfume to church, some of them, and it gives me a headache right up there with the hate politics and some inevitable tone-deaf singers - except an actual literal headache.

Slate Star Codex and Russell Moore alike are drawing big blanks.

Anathema back at'cha, pal.

[Rusty Edge]

Oh, uh, I don't actually have a strong opinion about Protestantism. Personally, the various schisms that befall religions are kind of baffling to me. I guess it comes down to me not understanding how conflict arises from varying interpretations of a text. I mean, I've been in a fair number of arguments about the meaning or message of some (stupid, unimportant SF) story, but it's kind of always seemed obvious to me that we're arguing about our personal preferences rather than the literal truth of the text. Our experiences always inform how we interpret a text, and when we will never have direct access to what the text is about, that's the best we can do. So maybe try to convince people that your particular preferences are better (and such preferences will lead to a particular reading of a text), but don't try to convince people of what the text actually says.

It's probably not such a stretch for you. People are people. Religions are always on about truths.

;-p   Oh, uh, I don't actually have a strong opinion about Science. Personally, the various schisms that befall sciences are kind of baffling to me. I guess it comes down to me not understanding how conflict arises from varying interpretations of data.. Our experiences always inform how we interpret data and observations, and when we will never have direct access to the original experiment, that's the best we can do. So maybe try to convince people that your particular preferences and methods are better (and such preferences will lead to a particular reading of a set of data), but don't try to convince people of what the experiment actually proves.

So scientists quarreling about a heresy like cold fusion might have more at stake than simply determining a particular fact. It could be about money, glory, book deals, department size, being afraid of being made a fool, being outraged that the masses are being mislead, or whether chemists know more than physicists. Or how about that time that Louis Pasteur was advocating that doctors practice hygiene, because they were actually transferring disease from patient to patient and causing death and illness rather than curing it? They weren't eager to embrace that one. Global warming, etc.

Fortunately or not, scientific fact is more provable than religious truth, but people are people and don't deal well with challenged long-held assumptions, or accepting responsibility for their errors, or the implications that force change.

Yeah, I know there a differences in political power between religion and science, so schisms can have more endurance, but in some ways, the two, or at least the people involved, act alike.

[Elok]

Slatestarcodex.com

Russellmoore.com

If you care to check them out.  I have to go to bed now, since I'm waking up for work in less than eight hours.

[Lorizael]

;-p   Oh, uh, I don't actually have a strong opinion about Science. Personally, the various schisms that befall sciences are kind of baffling to me. I guess it comes down to me not understanding how conflict arises from varying interpretations of data.. Our experiences always inform how we interpret data and observations, and when we will never have direct access to the original experiment, that's the best we can do. So maybe try to convince people that your particular preferences and methods are better (and such preferences will lead to a particular reading of a set of data), but don't try to convince people of what the experiment actually proves.

Oh man, it was totally not my intention to get into a science vs. religion debate. But if you want to go down that route, the difference is that in science, reality can (does not always, but can) tell you when you're wrong. Either your law of gravity will get your rocket to the moon or it won't. Either your theory of germs will cure that disease or it won't.

In debates about texts, there is often no fact of the matter, no actual objective truth to be found. This is not me saying that science is better than religion or that religious people have to take things on faith, just that any particular text is a finite source of information.

Like, say, look at debates about whether a character in a novel is gay. Unless the character says, "Hi, I am a gay person," or you have a reliable, omniscient narrator who says "so and so was gay" or you see said character engaging in gay sex, then there might simply be no fact of the matter about whether that character is gay. Each side can argue for one particular interpretation of the text or another, but there is literally no truth about it, only better or worse, or more or less interesting, ways of reading the text. This doesn't make fiction worse than science, but different.

I see no reason why the same is not true of religious texts.

[Rusty Edge]

;-p   Oh, uh, I don't actually have a strong opinion about Science. Personally, the various schisms that befall sciences are kind of baffling to me. I guess it comes down to me not understanding how conflict arises from varying interpretations of data.. Our experiences always inform how we interpret data and observations, and when we will never have direct access to the original experiment, that's the best we can do. So maybe try to convince people that your particular preferences and methods are better (and such preferences will lead to a particular reading of a set of data), but don't try to convince people of what the experiment actually proves.

Oh man, it was totally not my intention to get into a science vs. religion debate. But if you want to go down that route, the difference is that in science, reality can (does not always, but can) tell you when you're wrong. Either your law of gravity will get your rocket to the moon or it won't. Either your theory of germs will cure that disease or it won't.

In debates about texts, there is often no fact of the matter, no actual objective truth to be found. This is not me saying that science is better than religion or that religious people have to take things on faith, just that any particular text is a finite source of information.

Like, say, look at debates about whether a character in a novel is gay. Unless the character says, "Hi, I am a gay person," or you have a reliable, omniscient narrator who says "so and so was gay" or you see said character engaging in gay sex, then there might simply be no fact of the matter about whether that character is gay. Each side can argue for one particular interpretation of the text or another, but there is literally no truth about it, only better or worse, or more or less interesting, ways of reading the text. This doesn't make fiction worse than science, but different.

I see no reason why the same is not true of religious texts.

Nah, me either. I just wanted you to see why we quarrel. Social sciences might have been a better comparison. Well, back to Real Life for me.

[Lorizael]

Ah, yeah, I think I just took your twisting of my post more seriously than was intended and should have read the next bit a little more carefully.

[Buster's Uncle]

The Vatican Bans Sales of Saints' Body Parts in Updated Relic Rules
Time
Nicole Winfield / AP •December 16, 2017



The new rules govern how body parts and cremated remains are to be handled



(VATICAN CITY) — The Vatican’s saint-making office has updated its rules governing the use of relics for would-be saints, issuing detailed new guidelines Saturday that govern how body parts and cremated remains are to be obtained, transferred and protected for eventual veneration.

The instructions explicitly rule out selling the hair strands, hands, teeth and other body parts of saints that often fetch high prices in online auctions. They also prohibit the use of relics in sacrilegious rituals and warn that the church may have to obtain consent from surviving family members before unearthing the remains of candidates for sainthood.

Officials said the guidelines were necessary given some obstacles that had emerged since the rules were last revised in 2007, particularly when surviving relatives and church officials disagreed. One current case before a U.S. appeals court concerns a battle over the remains of Fulton Sheen, an American archbishop known for his revolutionary radio and television preaching in the 1950s and 1960s.

Sheen’s niece went to court to force the archdiocese of New York to transfer Sheen’s body from under the altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Peoria, Illinois, where Sheen was born, ordained a priest and where his sainthood cause has been launched by Peoria’s bishop.

The New York archdiocese refused and appealed a 2016 lower court ruling in favor of the niece. A decision from the appeals court is expected soon.

Monsignor Robert Sarno of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints said it’s impossible to know what difficulties could complicate a saint-making case or whether the new guidelines might have helped avoid the legal battle over Sheen.

But Sarno said the Vatican believed the updates were needed anyway to provide bishops around the world with a detailed, go-to guide in multiple languages to replace the Latin instructions that provided only general rules to follow.

New to the protocols is a section that makes clear that bishops must have the “consent of the heirs” in regions where the bodies of the dead legally belong to surviving family members. The revised instructions lay out in detail how a body is to be unearthed, saying it must be covered with a “decorous” cloth while a relic is being taken and then re-buried in clothes of similar style.

The guidance also explicitly allows for cremated remains to be used as relics. For most of its 2,000-year history, the Catholic Church only permitted burial, arguing that it best expressed the Christian hope for resurrection. But in 1963, the Vatican explicitly allowed cremation as long as it didn’t suggest a denial of faith about resurrection.

The new instruction also makes clear that bishops must agree in writing to any transfer of the remains, and calls for absolute secrecy when a body is unearthed and a relic taken for eventual veneration.

The document repeats church teaching that relics from candidates for sainthood can only be venerated publicly once they have been beatified, the first step to possible sainthood.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/vatican-bans-sales-saints-apos-163735371.html

[Unorthodox]

Wait wait wait...

prohibit the use of relics in sacrilegious rituals

Um.  You mean sacrilegious rituals are OK as long as you DON'T use a saint's remains? 

[Buster's Uncle]

As for intercession--don't Protestants ask people to pray for them?  It's not like we believe the priest is some kind of superhuman being.  It's been understood since the time of Constantine (Donatist controversy) that Grace comes from God, regardless of the priest's own merits.

I see I never answered this.

Well, God answers prayers, and you could always use a good word or two put in, is more or less the thinking.  God did concede an argument or two with a faithful follower in the Old Testament.  -One imagines He wasn't real firm on whichever side of the Divine-Punishment/Wrath-or-not in those case to have given in, and you never know if what you want/need isn't something like that. 

The saints gone to their reward?  We don't know anything about them or their circumstances, do we?  Do you cats go overboard about Mary like the RCs do?  You used to, I think, judging from the art.  So, I'm a good Southern Baptist for the sake of this argument, and so I believe that Mary was uncommonly virtuous -or why would God have chosen her?- but WHY would I pray "Hey!  [Specially honored ghost!]  Please go to bat for me with Dad, please."  -As a good Southern Baptist, praying to Mary -or ANYONE but God/Jesus- is worship and the rankest blasphemy of all.

We ain't wild about the statues in church, either, the Bible being clear on THAT issue...  We think Mohammed took that way too far, and even tolerate the occasional painting of Jesus Himself, though we shouldn't in Church.

There's theology behind the question of priestly authority, but I won't front that that isn't mostly relic rationalization for the temporal issues of schism, though I find the internal logic of the theology sound enough...


-Any other questions?  I feel like it now, and will do my best to explain...

---

...I was looking for when you asked me about if I wasn't chipping at the foundation upon which I stood, which I've wanted badly to talk about ever since.  Haven't found it yet, though, and I must have re-worded in my memory, 'cause I'd have sworn it was this thread, and running searches has yielded bupkiss...

[Buster's Uncle]

But you only know Jesus via those same authorities, and you're editing out the sources you know Jesus from based on inherited biases.  Which is to say, you're hacking at the base of the same pillar you're standing on.  If I said to you that I understood the teachings of Confucius better than the Chinese, or those of Muhammad better than the Muslims, because I'd read their respective works in translation and come to conclusions which did not fit with what people from their culture concluded, you'd laugh at me.  It's immensely improbable that your superior understanding comes from actual insights rather than ignorance.

Dang.  Two posts down.  "you're hacking at the base of the same pillar".  Bumped to tackle later...

[Elok]

Okay, about icons: the Bible, and the record, isn't really anywhere near as "clear" as Protestants like to think.  The Hebrews are specifically ordered to decorate the Ark of the Covenant with angels.  Furthermore, Jews were known to use images very similar to Christian icons as decorations.  Look at the Dura Europos Synagogue, from the third century.  Whole wall covered in Bible stories--either they somehow missed the Second Commandment, or they understood it rather differently.  Early Christian iconography grew out of an existing and accepted tradition.  The strict iconoclastic tendencies of modern Jews probably came from Muslim influence.  Given the centuries of interaction between the West and Islam prior to the rise of Protestantism, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that you guys got it the same way by a roundabout channel, odd as that may sound.  Especially since Sola Scriptura and anticlericalism also rather resemble Islamic teaching.  I'm not going to get into the theological underpinnings of iconoduly; the short version is that it relates to the Incarnation.

EDIT: Wife notes that the entire Temple was ordered to be decorated with various kinds of graven images, and thus resembled our kind of church far more than yours.

[Buster's Uncle]

How about you guys don't get Exodus 20: 2-4 and Occam's razor?

[Elok]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon's_Temple#Architectural_description

Gigantic frickin' statues of angels, carvings of cherubim, flowers, palm trees, etc.  A little digging into Kings shows further details about lions and bulls.  It seems the holiest site in Judaism was absolutely covered in images of things both in and under heaven.  Not sure about the seas below.

EDIT: Also, censers.  Lots of censers, and lamps.  Sounds a lot like us, which should not be surprising since our liturgical traditions grew organically from Judaism.  Occam's razor would seem to suggest that the Second Commandment forbids the creation of actual, literal idols, and not the use of images in worship, because Judaism just loved images in worship for more than a thousand years.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings+7&version=NKJV

[Buster's Uncle]

Not responsible for anyone else getting it wrong...

Y'all do New King James?  Interesting.

[Elok]

It was a translation I hopped to from Wikipedia.  We generally favor King James above other readily available English texts because it comes from the received text, and (so I read) the argument that everything has to be reinterpreted in the light of umpteen other textual variants as they're dug out of holes in the ground is, according to our theologians, crap.  I haven't looked into this all that deeply, since I don't care that much.

NB that your list of people who have gotten it wrong now includes the Jews who wrote the OT, and their successors for centuries, in addition to the first fifteen hundred years of Christians.  Based on one particular interpretation of one line in one book of the Bible, dating from a time period when, well, they put images of angels on the box they made to hold the Ten Commandments containing the very line you cite.  Did anybody get this right besides Muslims, prior to the sixteenth century?