spin

There's always gotta be someone who goes for extreme exaggerations and appeals to the sobs of the suffering. We were talking about Augustine, not Genghiz fucking Khan.

And you would be still wasting your time trying to judge Genghiz Khan by today's standards. If he were alive today performing his feats, then you might have something to bleat about, but you will never make sense of the past by ignoring the values of the time and projecting your own biases into those events. And does it make any sense whatsoever comparing him to two translators who worked in Spain? That's just plain... meaningless.

Serfdom was just starting to fail in Europe. The Europeans had fought a couple of useless wars to gain and maintain the Levant. Constantinople got sacked by knights on their way east. It wasn't too long before William Wallace was hanged, drawn and quartered. Such executions were still public entertainment through to the Elizabethan era and beyond.

Judge the past by the past.

spin

That's what my last sentence above dealt with. If they really thought those values were eternal they'd be out trying to stone people for fornication or to stone refractory children. They've already censored the bible, so that they are just being arbitrary. The biblical texts were trying to deal with their own periods, but those who try to foist selected bits of it onto today's society are where the problem is.

More relevant are those who have abused children or those who refuse medicines for members of their own families or those who force pregnant women to have unwanted children, but don't do anything to help those children.

watersbeak

Fine.

I am wrong.

I should not have mentioned a brutal military conqueror.

I should have found a fourth century religious cleric, who did not believe, as Augustine taught, in "original sin".

Mandeaism, and Manichaeism. Neither proliferated by the sword. Both rejected orthodox Judaism, ultimate source of Augustine's positions on many subjects: "holy scripture".

The standards of that era, third and fourth century, did include military conquest, but also embraced learning, kindness, and beneficence. Why not compare Augustine with someone who preached humility, instead of elitism? I am not going to defend Augustine, as a man of his generation, or of that era. His writings, his ideas, represent Christianity, and must be rejected, not dismissed as, small deviations, but fundamentally in harmony with the thinking of the times. Augustine may not have held Khan's sword in his hand, but his tracts, outlining the need to expand Christianity, and remove the heathen (the "ignore list" of that era) justified the subsequent adoption of Genghis' method, by the church.

Ask Giordano Bruno what happened, subsequently.

Sam

arnoldo

That quote sounds something similar to 1 Cor. 14:34-35 which directs women to remain silent in church.

Jermome Murphy O'Conner,Paul: A Critical Life (or via: amazon.co.uk),comments that this passage is most likely an interpolation. O' Conner argues that Paul was arguing against Jewish traditions for the subordinate role of women. The following is a brief quote.

Additionaly, in a footnote, O'Conner writers that 1 Corinthian 14:34-35 was written at a later time to bring it in line with "non-Pauline" 1 Timothy 2.

spin

Educated people were of the elite of the time.

No-one is asking you to defend him. Just stop the inappropriate retrojection of modern values into the oast.

Suddenly we're back to woeful comparisons with Genghiz Khan.

History is not a mix and match affair.

You do jump about in time, don't you? You analyze Bruno in the context of humanism and the reactionary approach of the church of the era.

aa5874

Your position is highly illogical. People today can discuss whether or not Augustine was wrong or right about anything exactly like people in the time of Augustine could have discussed whether or not some earlier person was right or wrong about any matter.

The very development of human society must take into account what was considered wrong or right in the past to GUIDE us today and even for the future.

watersbeak

acknowledged error.

I should have cited Arius and other presbyters who had defied the official hierarchy. One reason for citing a guy like Bruno, is that someone recorded the atrocity of his execution. I am relatively confident that the same kind of crime has gone on in history, since ancient times, in many cultures, throughout the world.

My feeble rejoinder sought to inject a dose of skepticism regarding the claim that Augustine "was a man of the times", and that we ought, therefore cut him some slack.

I think he represented orthodox Christianity, rather well, and laid it out: straight. It isn't Augustine's texts per se, that I object to, but, rather, Christianity, its Jewish precursor, and its Muslim successor, though, as for that, I don't like any religion, or any faith based ideology.

I disagree with you, that the church in Augustine's time, was fundamentally different from Christianity today--it remains "reactionary": need to acknowledge the divinity of Jesus to gain admission to Heaven, punishment of eternal damnation for those who ignore Jesus' divinity, need to punish the heathen (disbelievers).

Sam

Gorit Maqueda

I must confess that I also try to judge people from the past.
But whenever I try to cite them to appear in court, they always decline...

aa5874

Do you have any idea what 'history' is? History can be assembled when people judged others from the past whether or not they are right.

What is the history of America if one cannot make judgments about Lincoln?

steve_bnk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo

He was a hedonist who converted to Christianity and preaching getting a hard on is evil. The prototype of the modern Christian views on sex.


'...For Augustine, the evil of sexual immorality was not in the sexual act itself, but rather in the emotions that typically accompany it. In On Christian Doctrine Augustine contrasts love, which is enjoyment on account of God, and lust, which is not on account of God.[121] For Augustine, proper love exercises a denial of selfish pleasure and the subjugation of corporeal desire to God. He wrote that the pious virgins raped during the sack of Rome, were innocent because they did not intend to sin.[122][123]

Augustine's view of sexual feelings as sinful affected his view of women. For example he considered a man’s erection to be sinful, though involuntary,[124] because it did not take place under his conscious control. His solution was to place controls on women to limit their ability to influence men.[125] He equated flesh with woman and spirit with man.[126]

He believed that the serpent approached Eve because she was less rational and lacked self-control, while Adam's choice to eat was viewed as an act of kindness so that Eve would not be left alone.[125] Augustine believed sin entered the world because man (the spirit) did not exercise control over woman (the flesh).[127] Augustine's views on women were not all negative, however. In his Tractates on the Gospel of John, Augustine, commenting on the Samaritan woman from John 4:1–42, uses the woman as a figure of the church...'