The claim that God has a favorable attitude toward rape is implausible on its face.
In all of the Bible passages that are cited to show this, the people involved are either married or unmarried. To rape a married woman would be forcible adultery, and to rape an unmarried woman would be forcible fornication.
As everyone knows, both adultery and fornication are strictly forbidden in the Bible. Doing either one forcibly would just make matters worse.
And, in fact, adultery carried the death penalty in the Old Testament:
Deuteronomy 22
[22] “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall purge the evil from Israel.”
We’ll deal with the subject of the Old Testament’s harsh legal penalties–including the death penalty–in another post, but for now let’s look at a couple of the passages that are being cited as evidence that “God approves of rape” . . .
Behold! The terrifying Metallic Ice Queen Virgin Mary that America "donated" to the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth! (Thanks to Steve Ray for taking the photo for me on a recent visit!)
Some years ago I went to a travelling exhibit of the Vatican art treasures.
One thing leapt out at me really clearly: In contrast to all the art treasures from previous centuries, the “art treasures” from the mid-2oth century onward were terrible.
Sometime I want to post a picture of the “Millennium vestments” they designed for John Paul II. They look like some kind of alien dignitary costume from Star Trek Voyager.
And bad Catholic art is by no means confined to the travelling art treasures exhibit.
The less said about the American “contribution” to the portraits of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the better (pictured).
And there’s that horrible, goofy statue in the foyer of the Vatican Museums of a man holding a cell phone fused with a smiling John Paul II. It looks like a transporter accident (see below).
And there’s that sculpture in Rome of John Paul II that looks like the pope’s head on top of a telephone box or bus shelter that’s about to gobble up whoever steps inside it (see below).
And then there’s that weird sculpture in the Paul VI hall that you see behind Pope Benedict when he’s giving his weekly audiences. It looks like some kind of alien shrubbery from a show with a low budget for sets (see below).
And then there’s . . . okay, enough!
I’m sure you’re as sick of all the lousy Catholic art as I am.
So why not do something about it?
“Like what?” you say.
Well, how about supporting Catholic art education so that we can get better Catholic artists?
I’m glad to introduce a chance to do just that at the Chesterton Academy, where my buddy Tim Jones teaches art.
Since September 4th of this year, I’ve had the privilege of being the art instructor for the stupendously amazing 9th-12th grade students of the Chesterton Academy, in Edina, Minnesota (the West Minneapolis area).
This delightful private Catholic high school was started as a grass-roots movement of parents. The school opened its doors in the fall of 2008 with just ten students; the following year it had twenty. In its third year, it had forty-two students. This year, over eighty students are enrolled, and the school is drawing national and even international attention. Chesterton Academy was just named one of the Top 50 Catholic High Schools in the United States by the Cardinal Newman Society.
Chesterton Academy “strives to offer a classical curriculum, one that draws on the great Western traditions of faith and reason wielded in concert” as part of “a meaningful education in an authentically Catholic environment”. This includes a classical approach to art, where every student – in all four years – learns traditional methods of painting and drawing, art appreciation and art history from the cave art of Lascaux, to Egypt, Greece and Rome on up to the present day.
Basic geometric forms.
Our classical approach to studio art involves drawing and painting from real life, using a variety of objects and “casts” as visual references. As our program has grown, our need for casts and other art supplies has expanded as well.
A simple plaster sculpture cast.
One miraculous hallmark of the Chesterton Academy has been their continual ability to accomplish so much with so little. Their frugality is a virtue, because one fundamental goal of CA has been to make the classical education they offer as reasonably priced as possible, so as to keep it within reach of as many families as possible.
So there is a great opportunity, for those interested in encouraging young artists, to contribute in a substantial way that will be of immediate and direct help to these art students. Contributions of art supplies – like the plaster cast above, or drawing and painting materials – are tax deductible, and the Chesterton Academy (501c3) will provide a letter acknowledging your donation for that purpose.
But mostly, it’s a great chance to be a part of this joyful and growing revolution in education.
Thank you!! Please e-mail me at timjonesart@yahoo.com or post a comment and I will be in touch with more information. Meanwhile, here are some useful links for your perusal (but we will be very grateful for any kind of assistance you can offer!).
My buddy Jon Sorensen is out visiting this weekend, so he’s not around to stop me from posting the beginning of his awesome article on how Jesus is not a knockoff of the Egyptian god Horus. (Take that, Bill Maher!)
Here goes . . .
Horus Manure: Debunking the Jesus/Horus Connection
Many atheists, neo-pagans, and other disbelievers of Christianity claim the story of Jesus Christ was borrowed from earlier mythologies. In recent years, a claim has been making the rounds that Jesus is based on the Egyptian god, Horus.
Who was Horus?
Horus is one of the oldest recorded deities in the ancient Egyptian religion. Often depicted as a falcon or a man with a falcon head, Horus was believed to be the god of the sun and of war. Initially he appeared as a local god, but over time the ancient Egyptians came to believe the reigning pharaoh was a manifestation of Horus (cf. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Horus”).
What about Jesus?
The skeptical claims being made about Jesus are not always the same. In some versions he was a persuasive teacher whose followers later attempted to deify him by adopting aspects of earlier god-figures, while in others he is merely an amalgamation of myths and never really existed at all. Both versions attempt to provide evidence that the Gospel accounts of the life of Christ are rip-offs.
In the 2008 documentary film Religulous (whose name is a combination of religion andridiculous), erstwhile comedian and political commentator Bill Maher confronts an unprepared Christian with this claim. Here is part of their interaction.
Bill Maher: But the Jesus story wasn’t original. Christian man: How so? Maher: Written in 1280 B.C., the Book of the Dead describes a God, Horus. Horus is the son of the god Osiris, born to a virgin mother. He was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer who was later beheaded. Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert, healed the sick, the blind, cast out demons, and walked on water. He raised Asar from the dead. “Asar” translates to “Lazarus.” Oh, yeah, he also had twelve disciples. Yes, Horus was crucified first, and after three days, two women announced Horus, the savior of humanity, had been resurrected.
Maher is only repeating things that are and believed by many people today. Similar claims are made in movies such as Zeitgeist and Religulous and in pseudo-academic books such as Christ in Egypt: The Jesus-Horus Connection and Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth.
Often Christians are not prepared for this type of encounter, and some are even swayed by this line of argumentation. Maher’s tirade provides a good summary of the claims, so let’s deconstruct it, one line at a time.
Ethel Waters was conceived by rape. Should she have been killed by abortion?
Recently a couple of pro-life political candidates have made dramatic, embarrassing statements about rape.
The first was Todd Akin of Missouri (no relation, as far as I know), who referred to the odds that a woman will have a baby if she has been subjected to “legitimate rape.”
GAH!
More recently, Richard Mourdock of Indiana seemed to suggest that sometimes “God intended” rape.
GAH!
It’s clear that some pro-life politicians need to learn better how to talk about this subject. So let’s take a look at it and see what lessons there are . . .
“Legitimate Rape”???
Reportedly, when asked if women who became pregnant as the result of a rape, Todd Akin replied:
Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.
Akin’s first problem–or at least the first huge problem–is that he used the phrase “legitimate rape.” This appeared to suggest that there is such a thing as legitimate rape, which is morally repugnant.
Of course, a moment’s reflection would lead one to realize what he actually meant. By “legitimate rape” he presumably meant actual rape–forcing sex on an unwilling participant.
A contrast to this, presumably, would be cases that are sometimes classified as “statutory rape,” in which the statutes of the local criminal code classify an act as rape because one of the parties is not old enough to legally consent to the act. In fact, both of the parties may be willing participants (or one may not be), but in any event one party is deemed unable to legally consent by reason of age.
Akin may also have had in mind situations in which a woman is ambiguous about consent or where she later decides to repudiate her involvement in the act.
All of this leads to Akin’s second huge problem: Political opponents and people coming from a pro-abortion perspective will not go through the mental exercise of trying to figure all this out. They will simply attack.
If they do acknowledge that he wasn’t actually asserting that some forms of rape are morally legitimate then they will paint him as dismissing what happens to women in other situations (i.e., that statutory rape, ambiguous consent, or repudiated consent “don’t matter”)–or even just accusing rape victims of lying.
Then there is the matter that Akin was trying to assert, which is that a woman’s body has certain in-built defenses such that, if she is forcibly compelled to have sex, make it unlikely she will have a baby.
Although some pro-life leaders have asserted that this is true, others have challenged the claim.
This leads to Akin’s third huge problem: By citing a medically disputed claim he gets the issue off the need to protect children conceived of rape and onto the merits of the claim, with other pro-lifers taking a contrary position.
This allows the enemies of life to dismiss pro-lifers (including Akin) as scientific illiterates who are so driven by ideology that they make preposterous claims repudiated by others of their own camp.
This is a post linking to pieces that are part of an ongoing series I’m working on about the “dark passages” of Scripture–passages that tend to take modern readers aback (for example, because of the violence contained in them).
I’m also including passages that some find difficult even if they aren’t “dark.”
Here I’ll link to the individual posts in the series at their current locations. That will make it easier for me to link each one of those posts individually back to this one to provide a continually-updated post to help people find what they’re looking for.
Matthew 2:23 says that Jesus was raised in Nazareth “that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.'”
But this statement does not appear in anywhere in the Old Testament.
Does this mean that Matthew just invented the prophecy?
Recently a Muslim author responded to me by claiming just this.
Let’s look into the matter . . .
The Background
Recently I made a video posing the question “Did the New Testament Authors Feel Free to Make Stuff Up?” (click here to watch it).
I looked at several lines of evidence showing that they did not feel free to simply invent material about Jesus, unlike the authors of the Gnostic gospels that were written in the second and third centuries.
The British blogger and convert to Islam Paul Williams posted a response on his blog, Exploring Life, the Universe, and Everything (he’s also apparently a Douglas Adams fan, which I can appreciate), where he wrote:
Yes Jimmy, there is evidence they did [make stuff up] from time to time. Consider Matthew 2 for example:
“There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’”
There is no such prophecy anywhere in the Bible [emphasis in original].
Lost Prophecies?
I became aware of Matthew 2:23 when I read through the New Testament at age 20. The Bible I was reading had footnotes revealing where various quotations from the Old Testament could be found, and I was surprised to see that there was no Old Testament reference for the prophecy given here.
What did this mean?
What was Matthew quoting?
Was it a source that had been lost?
We know that there were many prophets in ancient Israel who genuinely spoke for God, even though their prophecies are not recorded in the Old Testament. 1 Kings even indicates that there were as many as a hundred prophets at once!
And Ahab called Obadi’ah, who was over the household. (Now Obadi’ah revered the LORD greatly; and when Jez’ebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, Obadi’ah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave, and fed them with bread and water) [1 Kings 18:3-4].
Could it be that some of this material was passed down in the form of oral tradition, and this is what Matthew was referring to?
Many people of conscience view Halloween with some suspicion, and the way it is often celebrated today, that’s understandable.
Some have chosen not to celebrate Halloween at all, and that’s a respectable choice.
Others have chosen to invert the popular celebration by dressing up–or having their children dress up–as entirely wholesome figures, like doctors, nurses, and firemen or even as historical figures, like saints.
But what about scary Halloween costumes? Are those okay?
“Oh, No! It’s a Clown!”
Drama is a human universal. It’s something that people in all cultures appreciate, and it’s something that we participate in from our earliest days.
As soon as children are able to play, they start playing pretend, and their games involve drama.
My own earliest memory–or my earliest clear one–is of such a game.
I was four or five years old, and I put on a clown mask and jumped out to scare my parents.
Playing along, my mom clutched my dad and said, “Oh, no! It’s a clown!”
Did the gospel writers feel free to make stuff up?
Some people hold the view that the writers of the four gospels felt free to basically make stuff up, to freely shape the narratives they were writing about Jesus’ life by either manufacturing stories about his deeds or making up teachings and putting them on his lips.
The idea is that they used the figure of Jesus as a vehicle for their own ideas, and they made up material to serve the perceived needs of their local Christian communities.
It’s easy to show that by the second century there were a lot of people identifying themselves as Christians who did exactly this. That’s why there were so many Gnostic gospels dating from the second to the fourth century.
But what about the first century, canonical gospels?
Let’s take a look . . .
What We’re Talking About
I should say a word about what I mean and what I don’t mean.
I’m talking about making stuff up out of whole cloth–the kind of things that the authors of the Gnostic gospels did, telling stories and making up sayings that have absolutely no relation to the historical Jesus and what he said and did.
I’m not talking about paraphrasing what Jesus said–using different words to express the same thing. Or simplifying a story by choosing not to record certain details about what happened. Or telling a story from a certain point of view or bringing out an implication, nuance, or meaning that others might not have brought out. Or using a bit of literary artistry or reorganization in how the material is presented.
The gospel authors did all of those things, as is easy to show. John did a bit more of them than the other three.
What I’m talking about is fundamentally different. I’m talking about making stuff up.
While the Gnostics may have been into that kind of thing, there are very good reasons to think that the authors of the canonical gospels weren’t.
