I am wrong, totally wrong, as my old friend, Professor Emeritus John Troyer pointed out to me a few moments ago in a characteristically generous email message. It is Mary, not Jesus, who is said to have been immaculately conceived.
Rats! I hate it when I am wrong, but wrong is wrong, and there is no getting around it.
My profoundest apologies. Fortunately not many people have found their way back to my blog yet.
Aaaarrrggghhh!!!
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5 comments:
As someone who majored in theology (and as a former Roman Catholic), I ought to have caught that; but it doesn't really impact your main point about worldviews.
Dude Diogenes,
You were a theology major! I never would have guessed that. Roman Catholic theology, I assume.
Did you complete your studies in theology or did you switch majors?
I was raised as a Catholic but nothing ever made any sense to me, so I converted to atheism and have ignored scripture ever since. I was always confused by the logic of it all and still am.
"Man’s inability to abide perfectly by God’s Law leads...to the hope that one perfect man will appear, the Messiah, whose fulfillment of God’s Law will lift the curse of God’s anger from Mankind."
If I am following the story, it is because of Jesus's Immaculate Conception, then, that enables him to fulfill God's Law perfectly? Why? I still don't get it.
I like David Palmeter's story better.
I was raised a Catholic and I too forgot these critical distinctions. So to review, Mary was touched by God resulting in her being born without original sin (immaculate conception). Subsequently, as an adult, who never had sex, she gave birth to Jesus who was also born without sin because his mom didn't have sin. Mary by the way never ever had sex and was/is eternally revered as Virgin. Thus the story goes that God made us as we are (complete with sex drive and necessary organs), yet sex is the source of original sin, but Jesus came to earth to die for our sins (past and future)and so sex is cool now because Jesus gave us a get out of hell free card. Moral of the story, Jesus is like a software update correcting errors in the original program. Okay, I think I'm ready to move on to transubstantiation.
Yes, I studied Theology at a Catholic university (though we also covered major Protestant theologians and and some non-Christian - mostly Muslim - theologians).
I double-majored in Philosophy as well; naively, I wanted that background for apologetic reasons. Ironically, it was my theological studies more than my philosophical ones that lead me to wholesale reject any belief in Christianity or even the supernatural. Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels was highly influential, for example; it wasn't that I found the Gnostics more compelling than the "orthodox"; rather, the "orthodox" response to "heretics" seemed immensely un-Christlike. The more I studied Church history, the less I could believe there was a divinely inspired institution on Earth.
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