Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Correction (was Re: Moral reasoning) Message-ID: Date: 11 Dec 90 06:07:16 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 62 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: > In a posting of mine sent yesterday [Tuesday; the message was held up > for a day and a half due to lack of I-nodes], I made the claim that the > Greek word is feminine. and goes on to cite a particular reason for the slip in some explicit feminines of one of the Odes of Solomon. Let me point out that the identification of God's Wisdom as feminine goes back to at least ben Sirach and is prominent in Ecclesiasticus -- I once constructed a canticle (after the model of those used in Episcopalian practice for Morning and Evening Prayer) for use in my church in Berekely when we were dealing with the issue of inclusive language. Anyway, _Hagia Sophia_ is indeed feminine in Greek, and the Ode Richard cites and other passages show this to have originally been assimilated to the Spirit, although later Greek Orthodox thought identifies _Hagia Sophia_ with Christ (maybe not to the exclusion of the earlier connection to the Spirit; I don't know.) On slavery: > What follows from this? That far from the wrongness of slavery being an > obscure thing which the Holy Spirit was unable to make clear to the Church > for 1800 years, it was such an immediate deduction from the teaching of the > apostolic age that by about 50 years after Paul's letters, the wrongness of > slavery was already in a *hymnbook*. Which makes it all the more of a problem (taking Richard's view of this as stipulated) why this early truth did not penetrate theology or church practice or the Pastoral Epistles (with their "house rules" about slaves.) Nor when the church had power did this truth ever seem to penetrate to any kind of social effect. > Given that this step was so direct and taken so soon, how is it that for > so long the Church conformed its mind in this respect to the world? The An excellent question, assuming you are correct that such a step WAS taken so soon. *I* think it is direct and obvious and should have been taken by the Church from the beginning -- but you will be hard pressed to find any patristic support of this. And I think it equally, or more, obvious and direct that "in Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Greek nor Jew" has consequences that the Church has evaded for nearly 2000 years in OTHER respects than slavery. > Holy Spirit cannot lead us into all truth all at once, but can we really > suppose that the Paraclete, having led us into a truth, would then lead > us _out_ again? Are you not begging the question here? Just exactly *which* truths into which the Spirit led us are we discarding, and WHY do you expect there to be ANY humanly employable criterion by which we can distinguish Spiritual Truths from the (honest and sincere and prayerful, but humanly conditioned) PARTIAL knowledge that Paul says obscures our vision? -- Michael L. Siemon In so far as people think they can see the m.siemon@ATT.COM "limits of human understanding", they think ...!att!sfsup!mls of course that they can see beyond these. standard disclaimer -- Ludwig Wittgenstein