Rumpole_of_the_Motte
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User ID: 1829
Rumpole_of_the_Motte
1mo ago
You completely missed the point. You are arguing ought, but you are ignoring what is. You have to contend with the evidence, but you just laugh and say 'I disagree'. I don't care that you disagree with the history of Christianity, I care they you think you can rewrite it. Universal care for the stranger has been part of the faith since the Torah, continues through the church fathers, was never rejected or repudiated in the pre-modern era, it recognized reasonable boundaries, had the goal of making the stranger a brother, and was in fact a hallmark of the faith.
Origen says one must "prepare himself to be a neighbor to every one that needs help". If that isn't a conclusion that says help everyone that needs help I'm not sure what you are reading. We can't get anywhere if you keep ignoring the evidence.
Christianity would have gotten no where without the care for the poor and outcast, they fed and clothed them before they became Christians. This is the historical record. the disconnect isn't in the welcome, its that lack of formation in modern times that has become a problem, coupled with the embrace of secular materialism. You love the stranger by making them like yourself. If they reject that, you send them on their way, if they abuse or exploit your generosity, they sin like Judas and we pray that they can find forgiveness in this life. But that doesn't mean you don't help them from get go. You absolutely need to make sure your welfare system is secure against abuse, that's in the Bible too, but that doesn't abrogate Leviticus. But tossing out the scripture and abandoning the historical practice of the church because you disagree with it just makes you a different kind of progressive theologian.
Rumpole_of_the_Motte
1mo ago
Note that Jerome's conclusion to his statement about Jews bearing the collective guilt for Christ's death is that Christians must abhor violence and pray for the salvation and forgiveness of all Jews: "That is the Lord's weapon; that is our weapon, too, prayer. If ever anyone should persecute us and hate us, let us say likewise: In return for my love, they gave me calumny. But I, what did I do? I prayed. In order to get the better of them? God forbid; does the Lord pray for one in order to vanquish him? Why did He say: 'but I prayed'? What was His prayer? 'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing's"
But really, Jerome's correctness is entirely besides the point. The point is that he was prominent, and bringing up another opinion that he held a prominent position on only reinforces my point. Its not that any church father was right about everything, its that the idea that loving your neighbor involved anyone you encounter was framiliar, not foreign to early Christians, and its in no way refuted by allegorical interpretations existing alongside it either. Rather as you rightly say, it was intertwined with the allegory. For example, in Homiles on The Gospel of Luke 34.2 Origen tells us that:
"He [the Lord] teaches that the man going down was the neighbor of no one except of him who wanted to keep the commandments and prepare himself to be a neighbor to every one that needs help. This is what is found after the end of the parable, “Which of these three does it seem to you is the neighbor of the man who fell among robbers?” Neither the priest nor the Levite was his neighbor, but—as the teacher of the law himself answered—“he who showed pity” was his neighbor. The Savior says, “Go, and do likewise."
Right after this he launches into allegorical interpretation, which also has a universal bent:
"The man who was going down is Adam. Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers. The priest is the law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ. The wounds are disobedience. The beast is the Lord’s body. The pandochium (that is, the stable), which accepts all who wish to enter, is the church. The two denarii mean the Father and the Son. The manager of the stable is the head of the church, to whom its care has been entrusted." (34.3)
All this talk about a dominate reading is backwards projection of modernist legal theory onto people who just didn't frame the Bible using those concepts. The assumption that their use of allegory means that they rejected other interpretations just doesn't hold when you actually read what they wrote.
Yes, strangers needed to be circumcised to celebrate passover and circumcision for Christian converts was a topic of hot debate when Paul was writing. Note that he dropped that requirement. Hospitality was never supposed to be limitless. Guests had to follow the laws of the land, and give honor to their hosts. Liberationist readings of the parable fail because they ignore any expectation that would be placed on guests.
But this universal welcome and hospitality is a well established part of the faith, starting from Exodus and going through the church fathers. The fact that this reading of the parable doesn't make sense to you but did to the overwhelming tide of Christianity might give one pause. You say that Jesus demands an allegorical interpretation of his parables, but point to a novel historical critical youtube take as the only evidence of your position. If you want it both ways, that's fine. You can even have new revelation if you want. Maybe Moroni has issued you some new tablets for your new pro-social religion. You can do it, but what you have is another progressive religion, something you've invented to get what you want. Which is a strange place to end up with what was supposed to be a non-progressive take
Rumpole_of_the_Motte
1mo ago
Allegorical interpretation was never done in a vacuum, it was something that existed alongside other methods of interpretation, traditionally one of four meanings acknowledged by early Christians. If are going to respond to the author of the Vulgate with 'That's just like your opinion man' I'm not sure you are taking this seriously. The reasoning about what this parable means has been done for millennia and caring for strangers is an interpretation by no means a recent innovation. When your non-progressive take involves reversing 2000 years of Christian teaching and practice I shudder to think of what you consider progressive.
It is a story about who reads the law better, and I agree with you and the video that all three should be regarded as law followers. The love God, love your neighbor formulation as a summary of the Law was not a new innovation, it was a oft repeated gloss of Leviticus 19:18 and Deut 6:5. The issue then and now is that our glosses become our totalities. Our law expert has given the pithy Sunday School answer that everyone knows. What our Lawyer doesn't want to acknowledge that the discourse he pulls his answer from also contains "When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God." (Lev 19:33-34). This is why the identity of the victim is obscured in the parable. Jesus isn't teaching anything new here, he is calling out the failure of the Jews to live up to their own Law, using the example of a law follower furthest from the centers of power. There is nothing to abrogate because the command is already there, Jesus is just mindful of the jots and tittles others forget.
Now, to be fair, in modern times the parable it's self has been pulled from its context to support things that would be unimaginable, especially in regards to the behavior of the guests. Loyalty and honoring the host on the part of the stranger are a given. Betraying one who has shown you hospitality was the gravest of sins, What Jesus accuses Judas of in John 13:18. Dante rightly places them in the deepest pits of hell.
Rumpole_of_the_Motte
1mo ago
The argument in that video falls apart when he assumes the man who is beaten is an Israelite. Jesus never states this, he is just identified as a man (ανθρωπος) who is stripped of his clothes and knocked unconscious, being rendered effectively unidentifiable. The Samaritan would have been a far case neighbor to the listeners of Jesus' parable, but to the man in the story, it is deliberately ambiguous. If Jesus wanted this to be about Jewish relations, he would have identified the man as a Jew.
He also tries to gloss over all of pre-reformation interpretation as allegorical and while there is a ton of allegory in those early writings, No less than St. Jerome (347-420) in his Homily on Psalm 14 lays out a pretty bog standard reading that is scarcely different than you'd hear at Sunday School class: 'Some think that their neighbor is their brother, family, relative or their kinsman. Our Lord teaches who our neighbor is in the Gospel parable of a certain man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho…. Everyone is our neighbor, and we should not harm anyone. If, on the contrary, we understand our fellow human beings to be only our brother and relatives, is it then permissible to do evil to strangers? God forbid such a belief! We are neighbors, all people to all people, for we have one Father.'
Rumpole_of_the_Motte
1yr ago
Listen to Wovenhand: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y4p9Iv4agb0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=F2D98Y1p3eU https://youtube.com/watch?v=YWUESqoZ7xAe
If you do discord Paul Vanderklay's bridges of meaning server is worth looking at: https://discord.gg/KCfju3Ts Its not strictly only for Christians and hard to really encompass the weirdness of the project, but there is overlap between what goes on here and what goes on there. See this conversation with one time Mottemod BJ Campbell and Paul Vanderklay: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FY4Fil_nB_c
I did not misquote Origen, you're reading him backwards. Origen is pointing out that Jesus is both the Samaritan and the man beset in his allegory. he clearly thinks that the church accepts all those that wish to enter, he says so outright, the fact that not everyone goes on a journey and gets mugged does not mean that you don't help those that get mugged. That is why he concludes the homily with: "According to the passage that says, “Be imitators of me, as I too am of Christ,” it is possible for us to imitate Christ and to pity those who “have fallen among thieves.” We can go to them, bind their wounds, pour in oil and wine, put them on our own animals, and bear their burdens. The Son of God encourages us to do things like this. He is speaking not so much to the teacher of the law as to us and to everyone when he says, “Go and do likewise.” If we do, we will receive eternal life in Christ Jesus, to whom is glory and power for ages of ages. Amen." Remember that Origen states that the man going down in his allegory is Adam, aka the stand in for all of humanity. I don't know what more you could want. You keep acting like this parable only makes sense read your way but the entirety of church history has been able to make sense of it just fine. You can still say you are the one that got it right, but at some point your are just doing the meme http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/files/2015/02/11007614_628927553920047_152492327_n.jpg
The apostles wrote to churches about how to be churches. It isn't surprising that the content of these is focused that way. But the work of the apostles was out there with strangers, both jew and gentle, relying on the hospitality of strangers themselves. Are you trying to claim the rabbis taught that you had to cut off someones foreskin before offering them a cup of water? Really? The same rabbis that set up a court for the gentles in their temple? They taught everyone that they could ignore Lev 19:34? You seem to think it doesn't exist or that the fact that they had the same expectations in law keeping placed on them as the Jews placed on themselves somehow means that they weren't being loved, when its evidence of the opposite attitude. The whole rationale that God gives for his commandment in Leviticus was the Jewish experience as strangers in Egypt and I have already demonstrated it clear connection that Jesus draws in his answer. The loving thing to do for a stranger is to initiate him into the community. This is an evangelistic and universalistic faith that demands that you make the stranger your brother, it always has been. It is love that makes the enemy a stranger, a stranger a neighbor and a neighbor a brother. My reading has embraced every scripture you have cited, integrated it with the whole of scripture and the history of the church. There is no contradiction between having a rule of order and loving your neighbor. I have said over and over that strangers who take advantage should be cut off, regarded like Judas, but you have to start with love and a welcome in. Ultimately, you are calling the great commission to go and make disciples demonic, and I don't know what to say to that. My concern is that your reading of the parable simply can't explain the historical record and runs roughshod over scripture that doesn't fit, which is the same problem I have with progressive theology.
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