I'm wondering if it is a feminized mythology or something else. They made the blessed Virgin into an ideal: human sexuality inferior, and as such, non-existent and able to give birth without disturbing the hymen at all.
The protoevangel of James notes that she was tempted to have sex, and I guess the details are pretty lurid, and that's one of the main reasons it was shunned. I've not read the proto. I gained this information from The Life of Christ, by Giuseppi Ricciotti, a Roman Catholic priest. The book is a great source of information, and to many people considered an insuperable book of its kind.
Hermann Sasse notes that Mary's assumption constitutes man's attempt to be on even footing with Jesus. Look for his piece online, it's a fascinating read with some historical info that is good to know. I think the placement of her as sinless alone among humans makes Jesus no longer unique. She is the neck of his body, and to get to the head you must pass through the neck. For The Head to get to you, He has to come down through the neck. And they've not finished yet until such time as they've attached belief in all this to the bare-bones requirement of the possibility of one's salvation.
Can you imagine St. Paul preaching this view of salvation to his Galatians? Or St. Peter to his congregation? Either one affording neither baptism or the Holy Bread (1 Samuel 21) to anyone who doesn't believe this? I can't.
Why is it that the development of doctrine always seems to be at the expense of the unique character of Christ as found in Scripture? Why does the development of doctrine always result in moving Christ further away from His Sheep, not closer. It is something I've never understood. Instead of King he becomes the CEO who delegates to the saints, and really is none too happy to have you approach him outside the parameters designed by the developers of doctrine?
And, all of this perfection of woman in the ideal that eminates from these doctrines -all under the cloak of some sort of higher-end theology- is not truly Hebraic either, as far as I can tell. It bespeaks an impostion of the Hellenistic upon the Hebraic, and which to me rings false.
I don't know if you've visited Pastor Leithart's site in the last few days, but he had the following piece there, which I don't really think is connected directly to our discussion here, but represents yet another piece of the puzzle falling into place for me.
True Humanity In the second edition of his book on ritual in the early modern period (Cambridge 2005), Edward Muir describes the 14th and 15th century obsession with "Christ's carnality": "As Leo Steinberg has shown, in fifteenth-century Italy thoroughly Christian artists made visual allusions to Christ's phallus, showing that the god-man had all the attributes of other men. In many paintings the Virgin Mary pointed to the penis of the infant Jesus, and some scenes of the deposition from the cross obviously showed the outlines of Christ's adult member beneath the obligatory cloth that hid his sex from view. Allied to this concentration on the parts of Christ's body was the cult of the holy foreskin. Other than the consecrated host and perhaps some drops of blood shed on the cross, the fleshy residue from the infant Jesus's circumcision would have been the only bodly remnant of Christ on earth since the rest of the his body was resurrected and ascended to heaven. The researches of Caroline Walker Bynum have shown that the cult of the holy foreskin seems to have had a certain charm for female mystics. When Catherine of Siena experienced her mystic marriage to the infant Jesus, she received from him a ring made not of gold but of his foreskin."
Here's a link to his site.
I never know how far off the trail I might acutally be as I'm thinking about all of this, which I do quite often.
Excellent analogy. Perfectly squares with what is actually occurring in some misguided churches.
Why does the development of doctrine always result in moving Christ further away from His Sheep, not closer.
It's a matter of degree, I suppose. I'm reminded of Einstein's caution that "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
There is correct doctrine and we are instructed to discern it and protect it. It and nothing else.
Thanks for the excerpt from Pastor Leithart. There is something very dark about disavowing the human sexuality of Mary and the priestly class, while cloyingly attending to various "relics" and artifacts. It shows a misunderstanding of matter in general, and God's gift of humanity in particular.
Why does the development of doctrine always result in moving Christ further away from His Sheep, not closer. It is something I've never understood. Instead of King he becomes the CEO who delegates to the saints, and really is none too happy to have you approach him outside the parameters designed by the developers of doctrine?As a convert the Church, I'd say that was a characterization that I have not been taught and simply does not meet anything in my experience.
It's the kind of thing people like to say about us.
What the rest of the argument amounts to is that the truth is a lot like some lies. Therefore it can't be true.
Oh yeah, and Catholics are all bout rationalization and lack of insight, but the debunkers have views which are totally reasonable and unaffected by any prior experience or notions they might have.
No sale.