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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32404 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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An implication that the church is inventing a new doctrine to stick with the times must address the fact that the doctrine was practiced in the early church, and you've failed to do so.

The answer to this is that pretty much any religion that's been around for a while is going to have a minority arguing for pretty much anything. If it doesn't count as the religion changing their doctrine because a minority in the past already had that position, nothing will ever count as a change in doctrine at all.

Or to put it another way: If "no polygamy" doesn't count because there was always an anti-polygamy faction, could the church change back to polygamy, and that still wouldn't count, because there was always a pro-polygamy faction too?

IDK where your talk about minorities is coming from. When I say the early church I mean the entire early church, including its founder.

Polygamy is less of a mess than the race and the priesthood issue because the church has never said it was wrong or that any doctrine has changed, just that the commandment is now to not practice it. AFAIK it was (and was always presented as) an explicitly pragmatic move so that the church wasn't destroyed.

If you're going to quibble that the faction doesn't count as a minority, I think that misses the point. It's not true that every single important person in your early church, at every single time, opposed polygamy. So while you could claim that opposing polygamy is rooted in church history, someone else could equally claim that supporting it is rooted in church history. This standard lets you justify pretty much anything.

If early church figures really universally opposed polygamy, then why is polygamy associated with the early church at all?

Not sure I understand you. Seems like your point is "there will always be a minority for any position" and my point is "Yeah but I'm not talking about minorities, I'm talking about widespread accepted church practices." At any given point in time, given two conflicting practices (supporting vs opposing polygamy perhaps), one will usually be the majority and one the minority. So long as you stick with the majority, this standard only lets you justify one thing at a time.

That's not to say it's a perfect measure, but I just don't really see where you're going with this. It's in some ways true that opposing polygamy is rooted in church history, but I'd never claim opposition as doctrine for that time period, because it simply wasn't. I would claim "black people have access to the priesthood" as doctrine for that period because it was doctrine.

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