The Things We Do

(they/lui)// Southern Italian FM-Catholicism (US diaspora) // communist tradizione populare

[iustuspeccator]

Where Does Your Taste Live? | American Christianity Quiz — theodramatist

What you watch, read, eat, and listen to—mapped to your nearest neighborhood on the map of American Christian traditions. Thirty‑four questi

okay okay one more quiz, this is your American Christian denomination based on your taste in secular things and get ready because I got dead on bullseye Episcopalian LMAO

[iscariotapologist]

my results on the which medieval theologian are you quiz btw. gang's all here

[ohholydyke]

Oh this gave me so much joy going through and was actually really enlightening as a semi systemic way of going through different aspects of my thought

And then I got MY BABYGIRLS

[faithshaped]

yayyy wooo yippie wahoo

[aprilsjesusblogging]

I admit this is the kind of thing that reminds me that I know very little theologians or how they think; I was guessing on a lot of these!

I got Boethius, whom I know nothing about. But it's clear the quiz doesn't really know where to put me, which is fine--

--I got some other cool people :D

[that-love-is-all-there-is]

[epistrophian]

Street Scene, 1990s (detail)

Color Photograph by Ejlat Feuer

Scanned from brochure taken from El Museo del Barrio, NY.

[contremineur]

Roman lararium (tufa, c. 1st to 2nd century AD)

Designed like a temple in miniature with pilasters, steps leading up, an eagle in the pediment and a different fruit behind each palmette acroterion, this would have stood in a wealthy Roman house or garden. From the time of Augustus onwards every Roman household would have had a lararium for the lar familiaris, the household deity that protected the members of the family, ensuring their health and prosperity, as well as other gods favoured by the family.

from here

[signorcasaubon-deactivated20171]

Nuestra Señora de los Dolores; Catedral Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, Argentina

[likeafieldmouse-deactivated2015]

Inigo Aragon - Contemporary Altars (2012)

[victusinveritas]

[unsuspectingfish]

My small little Christian town used to have a May Day festival complete with a May Pole. I didn’t realize how weird it was until later.

[night-windows]

[scavengedluxury]

Car park shrine. Maribor, Slovenia. June 2015.

[bobbole]

Vintage sacred heart french votive lamp

[ithankthevirgin]

I dedicate this retablo in gratitude to Saint Benedict for giving me courage to decide to inject hormones. And now I have very soft skin, nice tits and very sweet voice so I could conquer all guys in Oaxaca.

[eesirachs]

do you take any interest in liberation theology? if so, do you recommend any books/papers about it?

my recs—alves theology of human hope, yountae beyond man, keller political theology, moltmann theology of hope, rivera poetics of the flesh, rivera-pagán god the liberator, rose theology of failure, sobrino christology at the crossroads or christ the liberator, spivak can the subaltern speak, ateek justice and only justice, boff ecclesiogenesis, freire pedagogy of the oppressed, tonstad god and difference (esp chapter on abortive ecclesiology), segundo liberation of theology, thurman jesus and the disinherited, liew and segovia colonialism and the bible, menéndez-antuña bridging the interpretive abyss, tinker spirit and resistance. the rest i'm sure you know—cone, williams, gutiérrez

[hildegardavon]

Frederick Dudley Walenn, 1869-1939

Untitled (Mary Magdalene weeping at Christ’s tomb), 1900, oil on canvas, 36.5x26.5 in 

Private Collection

[urlocalllama]

if I could ask God anything and get the real, genuine answer, I'd ask him why He commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. He knew He was going to stop him. He knew that He'd never truly ask him to do it. He knew that if he went through with it then His promise would be frustrated.

The thing is... the story has led parents to think it's okay to sacrifice their children, metaphorically and sometimes literally, for a false sense of moral superiority. How many LGBT+ children have been sacrificed in the supposed name of Christianity? How many autistic children? How many orphaned children? How many abused children?

Maybe it was the right lesson for Abraham, especially about how it paralleled Christ's atonement. But it's not a story that has translated well into modern times.

[relatablemormonmoments]

do you want the Jewish answer? It was to challenge him to think critically about commandments from g-d (and translating to religion as an institution, rulings from religious leaders and scripture), and it's a challenge he failed. He was supposed to, theoretically, fight g-d and say "no, by no means am I going to do this. I don't care that you created everything, that is my child and my world, and I'm not going to do it just because you said so."

Instead, Abraham royally screws up, traumatises his son, and in doing so, loses his son, loses g-d's will and favor, and in the Tanakh we never really hear from Abraham again after this point, because he failed.

It's a story about someone blindly following in faith, and losing the most important things to them because they never stopped to think "Wait, did I hear this right? And if I did hear this right, am I so sure that this is something I want to follow?"

Isaac was Abraham's only son at the time, and the child he had fought so hard to have. Him following an order blindly without thinking of the consequences is not supposed to be a good thing (It just kind of benefits the feudal society that eventually embraced Christianity, which is why the understanding was changed in Christian worldviews.)

[standard-text-editor]

The notion that this is "the Jewish answer" is so funny, because 1. no it isn't, and 2. in the text, God explicitly praises and rewards Abraham for being willing to sacrifice Isaac (Gen 22:16-18). In the text, it's a test of loyalty that Abraham explicitly passed.

More to the point, though, the academic view, which, if it's not a consensus, is at least very widely held, is that in the oldest version of the story, Abraham did sacrifice Isaac, and the story we have in Genesis today is a later reworking after child sacrifice became unacceptable. The smoking gun here is mainly that when Abraham returns to his servants afterwards, in Gen 22:19, there is no mention of Isaac returning with him, even though when they were going up the mountain it is consistently said that they both went. (This is, incidentally, also the view of a number of medieval rabbinical commentators, including the Yalqut Reubeni, which has Isaac recuperating in Heaven for three years after being stabbed and then returning to Earth.)

I personally think it's more likely the whole episode was written to explain why Abraham had a firstborn son who went on to live and do things instead of being sacrificed as was expected of Israelites at the time. There are a number of passages that indicate the sacrifice of firstborns was a thing you had to do, including Exodus 22:29-30:

מְלֵאָתְךָ וְדִמְעֲךָ לֹא תְאַחֵר בְּכוֹר בָּנֶיךָ תִּתֶּן־לִּי׃ məlēʔātəkā wədīmʕăkā lōʔ təʔaḥēr bəkôr bānekā titten-llî. You shall not delay to make offerings from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. כֵּן־תַּעֲשֶׂה לְשֹׁרְךָ לְצֹאנֶךָ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים יִהְיֶה עִם־אִמּוֹ בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי תִּתְּנוֹ־לִי׃ kēn-taʕăśe ləšōrəkā ləṣōʔnekā šibʕat yāmîm yīhəye ʕīm-ʔīmmô bayyôm haššəmînî tīttənô-lî. You shall do the same with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to me.

(I include verse 30 to show that this is indeed about sacrifice and not, like, priestly service, unless you want to believe oxen and sheep can be priests.)

This is part of the Covenant Code, which is generally regarded as the earliest prescriptive/legislative text in the Bible.

People eventually stopped loving child sacrifice, though, and you get mechanisms for getting out of it pretty quickly, by redeeming your firstborn instead (i.e. by making some substitute sacrifice; Exo 13:15 et al.) and/or by counting the religious service of the Levites as balancing it out (either altogether or one for one with any excess firstborns still having to be redeemed; Num 3, 8). Jeremiah has God saying that the practice of child sacrifice that existed among the Israelites is actually something he did not command (Jer 7:31), but that also confirms that child sacrifice is something that did happen at least as far as the author of Jeremiah believed, and Ezekiel, who explains the commandment to sacrifice firstborn as deliberately cruel punishment on God's part ("in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the Lord"; Eze 20:23-26), also presupposes that this was a thing that happened. By extension, the fact that it didn't happen with Abraham's firstborn is then something that would need addressing, and the binding of Isaac is just that: Abraham actually was going to sacrifice Isaac as per normal, but God intervened.

And FWIW, child sacrifice really wasn't that unusual in the region (the Phoenicians seem to have done it until quite late), and in a time when infant mortality was extremely high anyway, if you believe in gods that can be appealed to through sacrifice, it makes sense that you might sacrifice the first one in order to secure the divine intervention that will enable the subsequent ones to survive. This logic also seems to be present in what God says to Abraham afterwards (Gen 22:16-17):

וַיֹּאמֶר בִּי נִשְׁבַּעְתִּי נְאֻם־יְהוָה כִּי יַעַן אֲשֶׁר עָשִׂיתָ אֶת־הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה וְלֹא חָשַׂכְתָּ אֶת־בִּנְךָ אֶת־יְחִידֶךָ׃ wayyōʔmer bî nišbaʕtî nəʔūm-YHWH kî yaʕan ʔăšer ʕāśîtā ʔet-haddābār hazze wəlōʔ ḥāśaktā ʔet-bīnəkā ʔet-yəḥîdekā. By myself I have sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, כִּי־בָרֵךְ אֲבָרֶכְךָ וְהַרְבָּה אַרְבֶּה אֶת־זַרְעֲךָ כְּכוֹכְבֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם וְכַחוֹל אֲשֶׁר עַל־שְׂפַת הַיָּם kî-bārēk ʔăbārekəkā wəharbā ʔarbe ʔet-zarʕăkā kəkôkəbê haššāmayīm wəkaḥôl ʔăšer ʕal-śəpat hayyām [...] I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. [...]

You sacrificed/were willing to sacrifice your firstborn, therefore your subsequent offspring will be plentiful and live. The fact that this logic is laid out here like this with no mention of Isaac surviving is also part of the reason so many people think the sacrifice did actually happen in the oldest version of the story.

But regardless of which of these views is right—Abraham did sacrifice Isaac and the story was changed when child sacrifice became distasteful, or the story exists to explain why Abraham did not sacrifice Isaac when he should have—I think the more important point is probably that you shouldn't to try to find spiritual guidance or moral prescriptions in stories that were written in social contexts that are wildly alien to yours for reasons you don't know anything about.

[stkateri-deactivated20260526]

Shrine to the Sacred Heart of Jesus - Catania, Sicily

[suzermop]

With ao3 down, I have too much empty time. Anyway, do like what I made?

[vintage-russia]

"Annunciation".Sketch for the painting of the Marfo-Mariyinskiy monastery (1908-1911)

Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942)