If you agree that mt5 has obvious sexual connotations, why were you talking about the key word in that passage has nonsexual connotations in other contexts?

And your a-d breakdown is beyond ridiculous. Not because you are not correct, but because tame deuces obviously knows adultery requires one participant to be married, and you are being a huge nit trying to harp on a phrase where, while his phrasing is ambiguous on that part, is clearly meant to emphasize the other part, namely the sexual intercourse. But since you seem to agree that mt5 indeed has sexual connotations, there is no longer any need for him to emphasize that it is about sex.

It's been like 20 posts since, so naturally you need to be reminded of the original context...

* t_d stipulated that "the big mainstream religions go out so broadly against sexual activity." (as an aside: for one, in the case of rabbinic Judaism, that is simply wrong).
* He backed that up by a quote from the NT
* and linking that quote to being aroused or not, being able to stop sexual arousal or not and the like.

My original point of objection was that the verse he supplied didn't support his assertion, nor his suggested link to arousal in general.

- I did that by pointing out the actual context of the verse (the radicalized ethics of Jesus, which Jesus exemplified by a number of examples, among them adultery),
- while maintaning that the actual point of this verse is neither arousal or sexual activity as such, but a certain kind of sexual activity, namely adultery.
- which is, while it includes sexual intercourse, primarily a legal matter.

You're not one for the fine differences, apparently. I'm not sure that I'm able to spell out the difference between "A, including action B, being used as an exemplification of motto C" and "A, insofar it is being B, being very strict" any better than I've already done. Also, if T_D was aware that adultery means sexual contact between at least one married person with another, he should not write:

Insofar as "actually" is a qualifier that refers to the individuating feature of adultery of any other form of sexual intercourse, this is simply wrong:
* Sex between two unmarried persons isn't adultery. (Story of Dinah's rape for reference).
* As I've stated, the problem of adultery isn't having sex. It's taking another man's wife as your own (via sex). That's why the OT doesn't consider raping a woman in war adultery, for example.

Microquoting on my ipad is horrific so I will use it sparingly, apologies.

The verse is not about adultery (something that includes intercourse) but specifically about some OTHER behaviour (which does not include intercourse) and how this is similar enough to adultery to be sinful. The debate, as far as I can tell, is on how to best characterize this "other" behavor given the passage. TD used the expression "arousal" to describe the other behavior, which you rejected. For a time it seemed as if you were attempt to characterize the other behavior as nonsexual in nature (giving examples of how the same word might apply to desiring a job). Now it seems you think it IS a sexual behavior.

Regardless, I think it is fairly clear that many Christians DO interpret the passage and Christian sexual ethics generally very much in the broad sense that is wrong to think about having sex with other people or fantasize about it etc when married. And so TD is quite right to cite the example - regardless of whether these Christians are theologically accurate - as being one demonstrating a ridiculously broad repression of even the most mild kinds of sexual activity (fantasizing) when in a marriage.

I also don't understand why you think adultery is primarily a legal matter. Surely it is a core theological and moral matter?

And I fully expect to have it confirmed shortly that td is of course fully aware of the definition of adultery and had no intention of implying otherwise, your nitty reading of his statement aside.

Yes.

Sure.

No, he's quite wrong in doing so.

For one, it is a methodological cluster**** to cite a NT verse as a characterization of a moral code of contemporary christians, IF you do not differentiate between the meaning of the verse in its literary context and original historical setting on the one hand and its interpretation during christian history and contemporary christianity on the other. In particular it's wrong to then go on claiming or implying that the interpretation of contemporary christians is what the NT text was originally meaning or referring to.

For two, despite all your and t_d's efforts to bend his original statement as being about contemporary interpretations of the NT text, he was stating:

"while Christianity is often a bit more liberal in scope than Judaism on many subjects (if we compare OT vs NT), the New Testament is actually particularly harsh on sexual matters, quotes like... "

Which is a statment about the NT, not contemporary interpretations of it.

Surprising as that may be, no it wasn't always a core theological or moral matter. Just as slavery wasn't always a moral matter. Or for a male to accept a newborn child as your own and thereby not abandoning it and condemning it to death.

I am still very much unclear on precisely what you think the difference between contemporary interpretations of the passage (the part relevant to this thread) and historical meaning actually is. This is not to say that perhaps there is a big difference, but I have yet to find in your posts a clear indication of what that difference even is, let alone justify it. Nonetheless, it seems like your only substantive objection to TD is that he ought to have appended "contemporary interpretations" to his post. Do that and he is certainly quite right, for it is widely interpretated today in precisely the kind of broad sense that fantasizing sexually about another while married is bad and is precisely the kind of repression on even the most minor of sexual behaviors being discussed.

The prohibition against adultery is part of the Ten Commandments, how can you suggest it is not a core theological issue? Slavery I agree was not a theological issue, indeed it is sanctioned, but adultery most certainly is. And if we cannot use the Ten Commandments are a judge of what is a core theological issue, not just a legal one, I don't know what we could use.

If we take tame_deuces initial post as a loose definition of the contemporary meaning of the passage, then we would have to conclude, that the verse is saying something close to "Every feeling of sexual arousal that is not directed towards your rightfully wedded wife, is sin."

If we take the broader context of the verse into account, the verse is saying something like "Your righteousness shall far exceed the pencil-pusher nit-picking of the pharisees and scribes. They insist on the difference between intentions and actions, which leads them to say: Only material acts of adultery are a sin. I say: **** that ****. Any thought of adultery is just as bad."


We can quibble about the "widely", "repression of even" etc., but sure.

Sure. I was phrasing that somewhat careless. I was referring to the difference of a transgression being of primarily sexual or legal nature. Here's a comparison: Until fairly recently, intermarital rape was not a sexual offence but registered under domestic violence and prosecuted as battery or some such. That doesn't mean that the raped women were not sexually assaulted, but the sexual part of it didn't have legal relevance. If intermarital rape was prosecuted (in the official legal view), it was because it was violence, not because it was rape.
Similarily, adultery is part of the comandments because it implies breaking the marriage of another israelite, not because it is about having sex with a woman you're not married to (A married Israelite CAN have sex with an unmarried woman, for example).

I'm not going to bother with the rest of the hyperbole, sorry. Your tone is way too hostile, and again it is clear you are looking for a fight and not a debate. I also have no idea why I should provide "secular/philosophical" arguments to anything at all. What does philosophy or secularity have to do with the issue?

As for this point; As I see it a christian should feel ashamed about sexually desiring someone he is not married too. The bible is clear and sound. Thus I don't get your point.

Of course, I don't think anybody should be a Christian... as think the notion of the bible somehow being true is ludicrous. Burning trees don't talk and men don't have superhuman strength because of their hair. Nor do I think anyone should be ashamed for getting sexually aroused at seeing a woman sunbathing, just because it isn't their wife.

But now you are commenting on how I would interpret biblical edicts, and it doesn't follow that even if I don't believe in them (or believe them to be sound) that I think actual believers should ignore them or intepret them as liberally as they want, which you seem to suggest.

Quite the opposite. I actually think most Christians aren't Christians, because they don't follow the bible or cherrypick from it.

The interesting bit is that Matthew 5 does not specify this in regards to adultery either.

So apparently in Matthew 5 adultery is clearcut, but once I quote it... the meaning magically disappears.



And for reference, here is the entirey of Mt5 on "adultery of the heart" (NIV):


There is a passage afterwards on divorce and adultery, but it is certainly a stretch to claim it is a specification that belongs together with 27-30.

See, tames, the "hostility" in my tone stems from the fact that whenever one starts responding to you, there is this distinct pearls-before-swine feeling in the air.

In any case, I'm still waiting on some substantive point on how to actually deal with christian sectists and their feelings of guilt, because I still completely agree with you on this:

Just wow.

Has anybody anywhere at anytime said anything about providing such a thing?

You seem to be mistaking social psychology for being interested in cures.

I'm disappointed with this. I had thought that we shared similarly non-essentialist views about religion, but here you seem to suggest that in order to be a real Christian you have to follow the Bible faithfully. Is that actually your view?

For example, I think the Jesus of the gospels called his disciples to follow a mostly pacifistic ethic. However, since the time of Constantine, most of the Christian Church has rejected this element of Jesus' teachings. But I don't think this shows that the Christian Church ceased to be Christian. Rather, pacifism ceased to be an important element of Christianity. This is because, on my view, what it means to be Christian is not some set of beliefs or rules set once and for all in the Bible, but the actual beliefs and rules followed and identified at any given time as "Christian".

It depends completely on what you ask me. Are you asking me who Christians are (or have been) as a sociocultural group, or are you asking me how they should be if there is truth to its core narrative (aka the Bible)?

I think those are two completely different questions, and that their respective answers don't affect eachother much.

In a recent thread, someone quoted Sam Harris saying this: "The only future devout Muslims can envisage—as Muslims—is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, politically subjugated, or killed."

Harris's point here relies on the assumption that there is some essential core to Islam such that if you reject it you are no longer acting as a true Muslim. This is plausibly correct if you think that an essential feature of being a genuine Muslim is that you are acting as if (or believe that) the narrative core of the Koran were true.

If, however, you don't think this is an essential feature, or don't think that being a muslim is more than a nominal category, then it is obviously false. So the question I was asking you was an analytical one: what do you think it means for someone to be a Christian?

Okay. But this also doesn't mean that it has a special sexual denotation. In English, "desire" is the same *concept* in both sexual and nonsexual usages. (It's the object of desire which is changing, which changes the context and the understanding of the ways that the desire -- and its fulfillment -- is expressed. The "emotion" or "feeling" or "concept" of desire is the same in both contexts.) Simply saying "well, those are non-sexual contexts, so it can't possibly mean the same thing" is a terrible reading of language. All you need to do is replace "sexual" with any other context, and you can use the same logic to assert that no word means anything outside of its individual usage in as narrow of a context as you choose.

Rather, the point of that exercise is to put ACTUAL context to the word usage. There's no reason to assume any sort of special sexualized meaning. In fact, the general way forward is that in the absence of any specific evidence to treat a context as special, that you should treat it as normal. This is a standard way of understanding language in general.

Ahhh... the unattainable standard. "Prove that there's no special interpretation, and noting that there's no reason for a special interpretation isn't good enough."

Part of theology is learning how to read and understand scripture. Understanding language is part of that process. Even though you may not consider yourself to be doing theology, you are. You've engaged in an argument about language to attempt to support or reject a certain interpretation of a piece of scripture. That's part of doing theology. (What did you think theology was?)

What it means for "someone" is not for me to answer. What a christian is generally seen as is fairly easy to answer (someone claiming to belong to the Christian religion). What I deem a Christian should be is something else (someone who adheres to the core narrative of the Christian religion).

As for why I deem the core narrative important? Perhaps an analogy will help: A soccer player who doesn't kick the ball, doesn't show up the matches and don't know the rules of the game isn't really a soccer player. For demographic purposes I'm sure he can be registered as a soccer player, and in surveys he might very well tick the box that says he is a soccer player... if we are debating the effects of soccer, it is probably even prudent to include him.. because there might very well be things soccer causes this person to do, so when referring to soccer as an institution we should not exclude him.

But ultimately to be an actual soccer player there are certain things you have to do, which this person does not. There is a core narrative to be followed.

And Christianity has a rulebook.

I'm sorry, but I am still rather confused on precisely what you think the difference here is. At best, it seems like some incredibly minor nitpick. Perhaps your distinction is that you don't like arousal since you want to allow that involuntarily going half mast when seeing some other woman is not a sin, but lingering for a second on what one wants to do with said half masted penis to said woman would be a sin? Nonetheless, we have come a VERY long way from when you were trying to talk about how the terms used at nonsexual connotations in other contexts.

I take it as obvious that you are knee jerk snap autocritizing any posts of mine just because it is me, and probably didn't actually, ya know, bother to check whether there was something to criticize first. As we have so poignantly seen, this usually doesn't work out very well for you.

In this case, you have offered three strawmen. I never claimed otherwise for your "but". I am presuming you merely confused connotation and denotation. It happens. It is possible - but not necessary - that there are sexual connotations of this word. I don't suggest anything remotely close to your attempted paraphrase, this distinction is that they might not mean the same thing, not that they can not mean the same thing. And I was erecting no such standard. Someone who is familiar with this topic (usage of ancient greek, i.e. not I) could presumably find numerous different examples in ancient literature where where the word was used with sexual connotations to demonstrate that it can be used this way, or - if they really were an expert - might be able to say with authority that this proposed connotation does not exist in the literature. My guess is that just as the connotations of desiring a woman are very different from the connotations of desiring a job, so to is it here, but this is just a guess as I have simply no knowledge the meaning of ancient greek words. So 0/3. Not bad, for you.

As for tame_deuces vs Original Position, I don't like td's attempt to talk about actual soccer players as little as I do Harris's devout muslims. No true scotsmen and all that. I think td's point is better phrased as saying: this people, who both agree to descriptively call christian, have a tension in their worldview in that they claim to be followers of a book but don't follow the clear and unambiguous teachings of this book identified in passages a,b,c. That seems to be a point that can be made rather objectively, without trying to suggest they are not actual Christians.

Is the distinction between "any arousal not pointed towards your wife" and "attempting/intending to break someone elses marriage" really too flimsy for you? Seems like a fairly significant difference to me. The act of breaking a marriage includes (usually) arousal. However, said arousal is not what is being criticized, nor, technically, does desiring to commit adultery necessarily imply the state of being aroused (though that is, admittedly, nitpickery).

In as far as the bolded and the underlined depend on each other, you're on very shaky ground (as the debate in this thread on but one verse very well illustrates).

The distinction between arousal and attempting to break someone else's marriage is indeed strong. However, that is not the distinction as you were characterizing it earlier. You said it was the mere THOUGHT of adultery. If I fantasize about having sex with another women when one of us is married, is that not a thought of adultery? Your previous characterization did not include anything remotely as strong as attempting or even intending to commit adultery, merely thinking about it. Again, I submit that far from demonstrating that a correct historical reading of this passage is something other than how td roughly characterized it, you have not even been able to articulate a clear and consistent view of what the alternate characterization even is. My guess as to the problem is that you are getting squeezed between two things you don't want: you don't want to admit that a reasonable reading is a very broad prohibition against sexual thoughts which justifies td's comments about the ridiculousness of christian sexual ethics (this led you to the comparison with desiring jobs) and on the other side you know it has something to do with sex (which has led you to a VERY strong interpretation as "attempting adultery").

And if you want to claim that there is no single passage in the bible that can clearly and objectively understood well then have at it. I will take that is a pretty substantial win on the failings of the bible.

So to be clear, your criticism is simply, "Well, it *could* mean something else."

Congratulations on raising a Clintonian "It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is" objection. If your objection is merely to raise "possibility" from a position of abject ignorance on the topic, then my criticism stands:

I've offered an explicit alternative, which I believe would be broadly accepted:

I'll also repeat my basic challenge: What *WOULD* convince you that there's no special sexual connotation of that word, if the absence of a reason to think it would is not sufficient for you?

Sure. But you do agree that the physical state of being aroused and the mental state of fantasizing/desiring/thinking about breaking the marriage with/of someone else are two distinct categories?

There comes a point where just restating that you continue to be unconvinced loses it's positive argumentative value.

In my very first post on Mt 5 I said "The relevant point is not sexual arousal but simply desiring a married woman for himself." That seems clear enough of a difference, which I've maintained throughout and which neither you nor t_d so far have even attempted to challenge, undermine or contradict. You keep insisting that the distinction is nonexistent. That's evidently bs. So until you present some actual argument, I consider the point ceeded.

... thereby simply documenting a fairly naive understanding of how scripture fits into the whole of christian religion. But I think this is a horse that has been beaten to death many times over, so w/e, I guess.

Just to be clear here, as your wording is a little strange. When you say 'the mental state of fantasizing/desiring/thinking about breaking the marriage with/of someone else' are you referring to fantasising about someone sexually?

Correct. The implication (since retracted, it appears) was that a particular word could not have a particular connotation in a particular context because it had a different connotation in a different context. My sole point was to note that this does not logically follow, that indeed words CAN have different connotations in different contexts.

Not knowing anything about the greek use of this word, simply citing a single example where it is used differently just does not establish that it cannot have sexual connotations here. Given how distinctly different the contexts are (a sexual one vs a job) it is very plausible that there ARE indeed different connotations, just as there are different connotations in these different contexts for our modern word of desire. Not knowing anything about ancient greek, as I already told you (do you even read my posts before rage typing?), if an expert on ancient greek informed me that all connotations known in the literature of this word were nonsexual, then great, so be it.

Next time, try to actually put an iota of thinking into things before your eyes mist with red at the sight of "uke_master" and you start rage typing gobbledygook in opposition.