tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/saint-augustine-48731/articlesSaint Augustine – The Conversation2021-04-01T19:06:37Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1576782021-04-01T19:06:37Z2021-04-01T19:06:37ZHow will our bodies be put back together? What about those eaten by cannibals? A brief history of Christian resurrection beliefs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392984/original/file-20210331-15-1mqjb8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C1622%2C1149&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stefan Lochner, Last Judgement, circa 1435.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Easter celebrates the Christian belief that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. In so doing, he overcame sin and death on behalf of all of us. The resurrection of Jesus was a guarantee that, for those who believed in him, they too would do the same. As St. Paul put it, “He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also”.</p>
<p>That said, the resurrected body of Jesus was a very ambiguous one. He ate fish and bread, but he could also pass through closed doors. Similarly, there has always been an uncertainty about the nature of our resurrection bodies.</p>
<p>By the end of the second century, Christianity had absorbed the Greek tradition of the immortality of the soul. From that time on, it viewed the human person as consisting of an immortal soul and a mortal body.</p>
<p>This meant that, immediately after death, the individual soul continued its existence. It also meant <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Last-Judgment-religion">at the end of history</a>, the individual body would rise from the dead and be reunited with its soul. God would then judge it as worthy of eternal happiness in heaven or eternal punishment in hell.</p>
<p>Christianity shared with Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and later Islam, a belief in the final resurrection of the body. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391352/original/file-20210324-17-ldud89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391352/original/file-20210324-17-ldud89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391352/original/file-20210324-17-ldud89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391352/original/file-20210324-17-ldud89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391352/original/file-20210324-17-ldud89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391352/original/file-20210324-17-ldud89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391352/original/file-20210324-17-ldud89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391352/original/file-20210324-17-ldud89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luca Signorelli, Resurrection of the Flesh, a fresco painted between 1499 and 1502.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/5-things-to-know-about-the-traditional-christian-doctrine-of-hell-119380">5 things to know about the traditional Christian doctrine of hell</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What sort of bodies?</h2>
<p>What will resurrected bodies be like? Saint Augustine in his work <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120122.htm">The City of God</a> gave us some clues early in the fifth century. They will be physical bodies but animated by an immortal soul. They will appear to be about 30 years old, the age that Christ reached. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392990/original/file-20210331-19-zf13rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392990/original/file-20210331-19-zf13rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392990/original/file-20210331-19-zf13rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392990/original/file-20210331-19-zf13rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392990/original/file-20210331-19-zf13rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392990/original/file-20210331-19-zf13rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392990/original/file-20210331-19-zf13rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392990/original/file-20210331-19-zf13rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Men will arise in male bodies and women in female bodies. But there will be no sexual desire and hence no marriages in heaven. The “flesh” will serve the “spirit” and not the reverse as happens in the present life.</p>
<p>Critics then, like critics now, thought it a ridiculous idea and panned it mercilessly. Even though Augustine thought the critics were being frivolous, he attempted to give serious answers to their questions. Will aborted foetuses rise? What size will they be? What will the bodies of monstrous births, the disfigured, and the deformed be like? What will be the fate of those devoured by beasts, consumed by fire, drowned, or eaten by cannibals?</p>
<p>By the 13th century, these questions had become matters of serious philosophical discussion within Christianity and not merely responses to critics of it. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas">Thomas Aquinas</a>, the greatest philosopher of Roman Catholicism, for example, picked up where Augustine left off.</p>
<p>On the day of resurrection, he believed, bodies will have the same gender and the same organs as when they were alive. But they won’t have the same uses because there will be no desire to eat, drink, or have sex. </p>
<p>Therefore, there will be no need for food, clothing, transportation, or medicine. There will be no need for heavenly plants nor (pet or meat lovers read no further!) animals. Those in hell would have bodies suitable to their character — ugly, sluggish, black, gross, and capable of suffering.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-what-might-heaven-be-like-95939">Friday essay: what might heaven be like?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>But what about the science?</h2>
<p>By the 17th century, the new sciences were adding fresh answers to a key problem. How would all the dispersed bits of people get back together? For example, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle">Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry</a>, worried about bodies that were eaten by animals, fish or cannibals.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392988/original/file-20210331-21-1ldgeuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392988/original/file-20210331-21-1ldgeuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392988/original/file-20210331-21-1ldgeuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392988/original/file-20210331-21-1ldgeuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392988/original/file-20210331-21-1ldgeuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392988/original/file-20210331-21-1ldgeuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392988/original/file-20210331-21-1ldgeuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392988/original/file-20210331-21-1ldgeuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Raphael, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Kinnaird Resurrection), from 1499 to 1502.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At least a tiny bit of us, Boyle suggested, will be able to be retrieved from the bodies of animals, sharks, or cannibals — enough for God to work with. Moreover, his own chemical experiments on the long-lasting texture of bones assured him they would still be around on resurrection day. In the end, however, he like many others, was forced to fall back on God’s miraculous powers to get all of our bits and pieces back into one piece.</p>
<p>Vast amounts of theological ink were spilt on the attempt to defend what, at the end of the day, was really rationally indefensible. It is no surprise that, as the feasibility of the miraculous disappeared in the 18th century, so rational defences of the resurrection of the physical body disappeared from intellectual history. They were buried in a forgotten and unmarked theological grave.</p>
<p>These days, at least to more liberal Christians, the resurrection of the body remains a matter of faith rather than reason. It is pretty much ignored. The afterlife in general tends to be thought of as the survival of a spirit immediately after death or even only as a brief period of time in the memories of those still alive.</p>
<p>But whatever Christians believe about <em>our</em> resurrection body, they still believe Jesus rose physically, or perhaps spiritually, from the dead. It is a life and a death that continues to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/05/christians-remain-worlds-largest-religious-group-but-they-are-declining-in-europe/">influence 2.3 billion people</a> throughout the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157678/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip C. Almond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Easter celebrates the Christian belief that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And for centuries, this resurrection was seen as a guarantee that our own bodies would do the same.Philip C. Almond, Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1097092019-02-27T11:42:05Z2019-02-27T11:42:05ZWhat Catholic Church records tell us about America’s earliest black history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260032/original/file-20190220-148533-1tvovv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"> St Augustine Catholic Church Archive.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David LaFevor</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For most Americans, black history <a href="https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/african-americans-at-jamestown.htm">begins in 1619</a>,
when a Dutch ship brought some “20 and odd Negroes” as slaves to the English colony of Jamestown, in Virginia. </p>
<p>Many are not aware that black history in the United States <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Society_in_Spanish_Florida.html?id=6KByoQgXZEcC">goes back at least a century before this date</a>.</p>
<p>In 1513, a free and literate African named Juan Garrido explored Florida with a Spanish conquistador, Juan Ponce de León. In the following decades, Africans, free and enslaved, were part of all the Spanish expeditions exploring the southern region of the United States. In 1565, Africans helped establish the first permanent European settlement in what is St. Augustine, Florida today.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://slavesocieties.org/">Slave Societies Digital Archive</a> which I direct <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Society_in_Spanish_Florida.html?id=6KByoQgXZEcC">as a historian</a> at Vanderbilt University includes Catholic Church records from St. Augustine. </p>
<p>These records date back to the 1590s and document some of the earliest black history of the U.S. </p>
<h2>Catholicism and runaway slaves</h2>
<p>These Catholic Church records show that everyone was treated in theory as <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674062047">“brothers in Christ”</a> and that the Church helped incorporate Africans into Spanish communities. It also helped free some slaves. </p>
<p>St. Augustine’s Catholic records show that after English Protestants established a settlement in what became South Carolina in 1670, their African slaves began to flee southward <a href="https://essss.library.vanderbilt.edu/islandora/object/essss%3A246118">seeking admission into the “True Faith”</a> – which to the Spaniards meant Catholicism.</p>
<p>Florida’s Spanish governors sheltered them and saw to their religious conversion, seeking royal approval of their actions. After some deliberation, in 1693, Spain’s monarch ruled that all slaves fleeing Protestant lands to seek conversion in Catholic colonies should be freed. Word of the fugitives’ reception in St. Augustine spread quickly through South Carolina, generating bitter complaints among planters and encouraging additional southward escapes by their slaves. </p>
<p>By 1738, the number of slave runaways reaching Florida had <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Society_in_Spanish_Florida.html?id=6KByoQgXZEcC">grown to approximately 100</a>. Based on Spain’s religious sanctuary policy, Florida’s Spanish governor freed the runaways and established them in a town of their own called <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/histarch/research/st-augustine/fort-mose/">Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose</a>, two miles north of the Spanish city of St. Augustine. Mose was modeled after the nearby Indian towns where Catholic priests were also assigned to teach the “new Christians” the principles of the Catholic faith. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A museum presents the stories of Mose’s people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jane Landers</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The site is now a National Historic Landmark, listed on the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/fl2.htm">National Park Service Underground Railroad Route</a>, and has been nominated for a UNESCO Slave Route designation. A museum based on both archaeological and historical studies <a href="https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/fort-mose-historic-state-park">presents the stories of the Mose townspeople</a>. </p>
<h2>African heritage in church records</h2>
<p>The records in St. Augustine’s church <a href="https://essss.library.vanderbilt.edu/islandora/object/essss%3A246118">reveal the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual nature of Mose</a>. </p>
<p>Its leader and captain of the town’s militia, Francisco Menéndez, was of Mandinga ethnicity and came from the Senegambian region of West Africa in modern-day Senegal. He probably spoke a variety of languages but learned Spanish as well and wrote petitions to the Spanish King. Others at Mose came from the Congo nation, that is today in West Central Africa. </p>
<p>Pedro Graxales, the Congo man who was sergeant of the Mose militia was married to a slave woman of the Carabalí nation, from what is today southeastern Nigeria. The couple chose godparents from Congo for their children. </p>
<p>Florida’s priests noted that some people from Congo had undergone previous Catholic baptisms in Africa and that even as they learned Spanish, some of them still prayed and blessed themselves in their native language of Kikongo, a Bantu language spoken throughout large areas of West Central Africa.</p>
<h2>Creating a black Catholic family</h2>
<p>Baptism into the Catholic faith was important because it cleansed black converts of the “stigma of original sin.” It also brought them into the “Christian brotherhood” of the church. Baptism also served an important social function. Families were linked in a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Slavery-and-Abolition-in-the-Atlantic-World-New-Sources-and-New-Findings/Landers/p/book/9781138633810">system of reciprocal obligations</a> between the baptized and his or her godparents, as also between the parents and godparents. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://fxsanchez.blogspot.com/">Francisco Felipe Edimboro</a> and his wife, Filis, were African-born slaves of Florida’s wealthiest planter, Don Francisco Sánchez. The couple had their three-year-old son baptized on the same day that their master and his mulatto consort baptized their natural son. Edimboro and Filis eventually had 10 more children baptized in St. Augustine’s church. On July 15, 1794, they were themselves baptized and married. </p>
<p>Their Catholic baptism and marriage coincided with their suit to buy their freedom and likely contributed to the successful outcome of that litigation. </p>
<p>As a free man, Felipe Edimboro became a landowner and sergeant of St. Augustine’s free black militia. He also served as godfather to 21 black children born in St. Augustine whose baptisms were recorded in its Catholic Church.</p>
<h2>What these records say about families</h2>
<p>These and other records allow scholars to track the history of several generations of the large Edimboro family to the present day. </p>
<p>One of Edimboro and Filis’s free daughters, Eusebia, had a child with an enslaved man named Antonio Proctor, described in the records as “the best translator of the Indian languages in the province.”</p>
<p>Edimboro and Proctor served on the Spanish frontier together and Proctor’s valuable military service earned him his freedom.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Proctor Memorial signage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jane Landers</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eusebia and Antonio’s freeborn son, George Proctor, became a master carpenter and builder in territorial Florida and George’s son, John Proctor, served in the Florida House of Representatives in the 1870s and in the Florida Senate from 1883 to 1886.</p>
<p>More than 100 descendants recently commemorated <a href="https://www.tallahassee.com/story/life/home-garden/2018/11/01/hidden-history-reveals-new-marker/1835915002/">their family’s rich heritage</a> in a public ceremony in Tallahassee, Florida where they mounted a memorial plaque in the Old City Cemetery.</p>
<p>These records show that black history in United States begins much earlier than previously thought. They also show that men, women, and children once thought forgotten left rich histories in these little explored sources.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Landers receives funding from
National Endowment for the Humanities
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
American Council of Learned Societies
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
Historic S. Augustine Research Institute</span></em></p>Catholic Church records document the earliest black history in the US, going back to the 1590s. These records tell the histories of Africans, free and enslaved, who were part of Spanish expeditions.Jane Landers, Professor of History, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1016562018-12-06T11:47:38Z2018-12-06T11:47:38ZWhy a 14th-century mystic appeals to today’s ‘spiritual but not religious’ Americans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249069/original/file-20181205-186061-10a77fv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A sculpture of Meister Eckhart in Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bad_W%C3%B6rishofen_Meister_Eckhart_(Skulptur)_2012.JPG">Lothar Spurzem </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religious tradition <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/">continues to rise annually</a>. Not all of them, however, are atheists or agnostics. Many of these people believe in a higher power, if not organized religion, and their numbers too are <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/06/more-americans-now-say-theyre-spiritual-but-not-religious/">steadily increasing</a>.</p>
<p>The history of organized religion is full of schisms, heresies and other breakaways. What is different at this time is a seemingly indiscriminate mixing of diverse religious traditions to form a personalized spirituality, often referred to as <a href="http://www.apologeticsindex.org/7514-cafeteria-religion">“cafeteria spirituality</a>.” This involves picking and choosing the religious ideas one likes best. </p>
<p>At the heart of this trend is the general conviction that all world religions share a fundamental, common basis, a belief known as “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=zBzzv977CLgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=perennialism+history&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihotPF54bfAhWEdd8KHasdCBk4KBDoAQhKMAY#v=onepage&q&f=false">perennialism</a>.” And this is where the unlikely figure of Meister Eckhart, a 14th-century Dominican friar famous for his popular sermons on the direct experience of God, is finding popular appeal.</p>
<h2>Who was Meister Eckhart?</h2>
<p>I have <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534483/dangerous-mystic-by-joel-f-harrington/9781101981566/">studied Meister Eckhart</a> and his ideas of mysticism. The creative power that people address as “God,” he explained, is already present within each individual and is best understood as the very force that infuses all living things. </p>
<p>He believed this divinity to be genderless and completely “other” from humans, accessible not through images or words but through a direct encounter within each person. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249073/original/file-20181205-186058-z7yvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249073/original/file-20181205-186058-z7yvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249073/original/file-20181205-186058-z7yvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249073/original/file-20181205-186058-z7yvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249073/original/file-20181205-186058-z7yvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249073/original/file-20181205-186058-z7yvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249073/original/file-20181205-186058-z7yvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sculpture of Meister Eckhart in Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2012-07-12_(5082)_BW_Meister_Eckhart_(Skulptur).JPG">Lothar Spurzem</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The method of direct access to the divine, according to Eckhart, depended on an individual letting go of all desires and images of God and becoming aware of the “divine spark” present within.</p>
<p>Seven centuries ago, Eckhart embraced meditation and what is now called mindfulness. Although he never questioned any of the doctrines of the Catholic Church, Eckhart’s preaching eventually resulted in an official investigation and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=LvQYpn5OlvkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=meister+eckhart&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAnJ_R6IbfAhUKnlkKHdwKCSU4ChDoAQhJMAY#v=onepage&q=meister%20eckhart&f=false">papal condemnation</a>. </p>
<p>Significantly, it was not Eckhart’s overall approach to experiencing God that his superiors criticized, but rather his decision to teach his wisdom. His inquisitors believed the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534483/dangerous-mystic-by-joel-f-harrington/9781101981566/">“unlearned and simple people”</a> were likely to misunderstand him. Eckhart, on the other hand, insisted that the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5-rrMAAACAAJ&dq=meister+eckhart&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAnJ_R6IbfAhUKnlkKHdwKCSU4ChDoAQhAMAQ">proper role of a preacher</a> was to preach. </p>
<p>He died before his trial was complete, but his writings were subsequently censured by a papal decree. </p>
<h2>The modern rediscovery of Eckhart</h2>
<p>Meister Eckhart thereafter remained relatively little known until his rediscovery by <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=YyoJAQAAIAAJ&q=meister+eckhart+degenhardt+studium&dq=meister+eckhart+degenhardt+studium&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj2vKDE6obfAhXGwVkKHVVADEQQ6AEIazAJ">German romantics in the 19th century</a>.</p>
<p>Since then, he has attracted many religious and non-religious admirers. Among the latter were the 20th-century philosophers <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=i3ZwPgAACAAJ&dq=meister+eckhart+heidegger&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKxaGu64bfAhVGuVkKHTJMDwIQ6AEIKjAA">Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre</a>, who were inspired by Eckhart’s beliefs about the self as the sole basis for action. More recently, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=V0sqAQAAMAAJ&q=meister+eckhart+dalai+lama&dq=meister+eckhart+dalai+lama&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiz55vL7IbfAhXIY98KHTAdBOYQ6AEIMDAB">Pope John Paul II and the current Dalai Lama</a> have expressed admiration for Eckhart’s portrayal of the intimate relationship between God and the individual soul.</p>
<p>During the second half of the 20th century, the overlap of his teachings to many Asian practices played an important role in making him popular with <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534483/dangerous-mystic-by-joel-f-harrington/9781101981566/">Western spiritual seekers</a>. <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2015/01/07/merton-still-matters-how-trappist-monk-and-author-speaks-millennials">Thomas Merton</a>, a monk from the Trappist monastic order, for example, who began an exploration of Zen Buddhism later in his life, discovered much of the same wisdom in his own Catholic tradition embodied in Eckhart. He called Eckhart <a href="http://merton.org/ITMS/Annual/5/Paguio247-262.pdf">“my life raft</a>,” for opening up the wisdom about developing one’s inner life.</p>
<p><a href="https://cac.org/richard-rohr/richard-rohr-ofm/">Richard Rohr</a>, a friar from the Franciscan order and a contemporary spirituality writer, <a href="http://actapublications.com/what-the-mystics-know/">views Eckhart’s teachings</a> as part of a long and ancient Christian contemplative tradition. Many in the past, not just monks and nuns have sought the internal experience of the divine through contemplation. </p>
<p>Among them, as Rohr notes were the apostle Paul, the fifth-century theologian Augustine, and the 12th-century Benedictine abbess and composer Hildegard of Bingen.</p>
<p>In the tradition of Eckhart, Rohr has popularized the teaching that Jesus’ death and resurrection represents an individual’s movement from a “false self” to a “true self.” In other words, after stripping away all of the constructed ego, Eckhart guides individuals in finding the divine spark, which is their <a href="http://actapublications.com/what-the-mystics-know/">true identity</a>. </p>
<h2>Eckhart and contemporary perennials</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249076/original/file-20181205-186073-1i688hs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249076/original/file-20181205-186073-1i688hs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249076/original/file-20181205-186073-1i688hs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249076/original/file-20181205-186073-1i688hs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249076/original/file-20181205-186073-1i688hs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249076/original/file-20181205-186073-1i688hs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249076/original/file-20181205-186073-1i688hs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Novelist Aldous Huxley frequently cited Eckhart, in his book, ‘The Perennialist Philosophy.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/summer1978/20669844383">RV1864/Flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This subjective approach to experiencing the divine was also embraced by Aldous Huxley, best known for his 1932 dystopia, “Brave New World,” and for his later embrace of LSD as a path to self-awareness. Meister Eckhart is frequently cited in Huxley’s best-selling 1945 spiritual compendium, “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061724947/the-perennial-philosophy/">The Perennialist Philosophy</a>.” </p>
<p>More recently, the mega-best-selling New Age celebrity Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Tolle in 1948 in Germany and now based in Vancouver, has taken the perennial movement to a much larger audience. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Power_of_Now.html?id=sQYqRCIhFAMC">Tolle’s books</a>, drawing from an eclectic mix of Western and Eastern philosophical and religious traditions, have <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/20/eckhart-tolle-tops-winfrey-sales-list/">sold millions</a>. His teachings encapsulate the insights of his adopted namesake Meister Eckhart. </p>
<p>While many Christian evangelicals are wary of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=w2jOBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=meister+eckhart+catholic&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjKkPXD7obfAhUMT98KHQBfCIYQ6AEITDAG#v=onepage&q=meister%20eckhart%20catholic&f=false">Eckhart Tolle’s non-religious and unchurched approach</a>, the teachings of the medieval mystic Eckhart have nonetheless <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/culture/eckhart-tolle-vs-god/">found support</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=n0xiQgAACAAJ&dq=drury+new+age&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzqZPVrYnfAhWt11kKHYAwBKYQ6AEIKjAA">among many</a> contemporary Catholics and Protestants, both in North America and Europe. </p>
<h2>Fully understanding a new spiritual icon</h2>
<p>The cautionary note, however, is in too simplistic an understanding of Eckhart’s message.</p>
<p>Eckhart, for instance, did not preach an individualistic, isolated kind of personal enlightenment, nor did he reject as much of his own faith tradition as many modern spiritual but not religious are wont to do. </p>
<p>The truly enlightened person, Eckhart argued, naturally lives an active life of neighborly love, not isolation – an important social dimension sometimes lost today.</p>
<p>Meister Eckhart has some important lessons for those of us trapped amid today’s materialism and selfishness, but understanding any spiritual guide – especially one as obscure as Eckhart – requires a deeper understanding of the context.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101656/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joel Harrington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Meister Eckhart was a 14th-century Dominican friar, who gave sermons on the direct experience of God. His words are finding resonance among today’s spiritual seekers.Joel Harrington, Centennial Professor of History, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1000772018-08-01T10:37:21Z2018-08-01T10:37:21ZWhat the early church thought about God’s gender<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230043/original/file-20180731-136673-128azg9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">All Saints Episcopal Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints_Episcopal_Church_(Fort_Lauderdale,_Florida)#/media/File:Sanctuary.JPG">Carolyn Fitzpatrick</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.episcopalchurch.org">Episcopal Church</a> has decided to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/07/18/the-episcopal-church-will-revise-its-beloved-prayer-book-but-doesnt-know-when/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3e4113671ca0&wpisrc=nl_faith&wpmm=1">revise its 1979 prayer book</a>, so that God is no longer referred to by masculine pronouns. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bcponline.org">prayer book</a>, first published in 1549 and now in its fourth edition, is the symbol of unity for the <a href="http://www.anglicancommunion.org/identity/about.aspx">Anglican Communion</a>. The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion founded in 1867. While there is no clear timeline for the changes, religious leaders at the denomination’s recent triennial conference in Austin have agreed to a demand to replace the masculine terms for God such as “He” and “King” and “Father.”</p>
<p>Indeed, early Christian writings and texts, all refer to God in feminine terms.</p>
<h2>God of the Hebrew Bible</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230044/original/file-20180731-136646-qtite4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230044/original/file-20180731-136646-qtite4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230044/original/file-20180731-136646-qtite4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230044/original/file-20180731-136646-qtite4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230044/original/file-20180731-136646-qtite4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230044/original/file-20180731-136646-qtite4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230044/original/file-20180731-136646-qtite4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hebrew Bible.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stockcatalog/25547697457">Stock Catalog</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C7&q=david+wheeler-reed&btnG=">scholar of Christian origins and gender theory</a>, I’ve studied the early references to God.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1%3A27&version=NRSV">Genesis</a>, for example, women and men are created in the “Imago Dei,” image of God, which suggests that God transcends socially constructed notions of gender. Furthermore, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+32%3A18&version=NRSV">Deuteronomy</a>, the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195133242.001.0001/acprof-9780195133240">written in the seventh century B.C.</a>, states that God gave birth to Israel.</p>
<p>In the oracles of the eighth century prophet <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+42%3A14&version=NRSV">Isaiah</a>, God is described as a woman in labor and a mother comforting her children.</p>
<p>And the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+8%3A22-23&version=NRSV">Book of Proverbs</a> maintains that the feminine figure of Holy Wisdom, <a href="https://cac.org/sophia-wisdom-of-god-2017-11-07/">Sophia</a>, assisted God during the creation of the world. </p>
<p>Indeed, The Church Fathers and Mothers understood Sophia to be the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/logos">“Logos,”</a> or <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1%3A1-18&version=NIV">Word of God</a>. Additionally, Jewish rabbis equated the Torah, the law of God, with Sophia, which means that feminine wisdom was with God from the very beginning of time.</p>
<p>Perhaps one of the most remarkable things ever said about God in the Hebrew Bible occurs in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+3&version=NRSV">Exodus 3</a> when Moses first encounters the deity and asks for its name. In verse 14, God responds, “I am who I am,” which is simply a mixture of <a href="https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/10-things-yahweh-means">“to be” verbs</a> in Hebrew without any specific reference to gender. If anything, the book of Exodus is clear that God is simply “being,” which echoes later Christian doctrine that God is <a href="https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/pneuma/v-1">spirit</a>.</p>
<p>In fact, the personal name of God, <a href="http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11305-names-of-god">Yahweh</a>, which is revealed to Moses in Exodus 3, is a remarkable combination of both female and male grammatical endings. The first part of God’s name in Hebrew, “Yah,” is feminine, and the last part, “weh,” is masculine. In light of Exodus 3, the feminist theologian <a href="https://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Mary-Daly-Beyond-God-the-Father-Toward-a-Philosophy-of-Womens-Liberation.pdf">Mary Daly</a> asks, “Why must ‘God’ be a noun? Why not a verb – the most active and dynamic of all.”</p>
<h2>God in the New Testament</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230050/original/file-20180731-136673-hjxnss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230050/original/file-20180731-136673-hjxnss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230050/original/file-20180731-136673-hjxnss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230050/original/file-20180731-136673-hjxnss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230050/original/file-20180731-136673-hjxnss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230050/original/file-20180731-136673-hjxnss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230050/original/file-20180731-136673-hjxnss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New Testament.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/en/bible-the-gospel-of-john-3520556/">kolosser417</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the New Testament, Jesus also presents himself in feminine language. In <a href="http://biblehub.com/matthew/23-37.htm">Matthew’s Gospel</a>, Jesus stands over Jerusalem and weeps, saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” </p>
<p>Furthermore, the author of Matthew equates Jesus with the feminine Sophia (wisdom), when he writes, “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” In Matthew’s mind, it seems that Jesus is the feminine Wisdom of Proverbs, who was with God from the beginning of creation. In my opinion, I think it is very likely that Matthew is suggesting that there is a spark of the feminine in Jesus’ nature.</p>
<p>Additionally, in his letter to the <a href="http://www.usccb.org/bible/galatians/0">Galatians</a>, written around 54 or 55 A.D., Paul says that he will continue “in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” </p>
<p>Clearly, feminine imagery was acceptable among the first followers of Jesus.</p>
<h2>The church fathers</h2>
<p>This trend continues with the writings of the Church fathers. In his book <a href="https://st-takla.org/books/en/ecf/002/0020442.html">“Salvation to the Rich Man,”</a> <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/evangelistsandapologists/clement-of-alexandria.html">Clement</a>, the bishop of Alexandria who lived around 150-215 A.D., states, “In his ineffable essence he is father; in his compassion to us he became mother. The father by loving becomes feminine.” It’s important to remember that Alexandria was one of the most important Christian cities in the second and third centuries along with Rome and Jerusalem. It was also the hub for Christian intellectual activity.</p>
<p>Additionally, in another book, “<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02091.htm">Christ the Educator</a>,” he writes, “The Word [Christ] is everything to his little ones, both father and mother.” <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/theologians/augustine-of-hippo.html">Augustine</a>, the fourth-century bishop of Hippo in North Africa, uses the image of God as mother to demonstrate that God nurses and cares for the faithful. <a href="https://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/19-psalms/text/books/augustine-psalms/augustine-psalms.pdf">He writes</a>, “He who has promised us heavenly food has nourished us on milk, having recourse to a mother’s tenderness.” </p>
<p>And, <a href="https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-gregory-of-nyssa/">Gregory</a>, the bishop of Nyssa, one of the <a href="https://www.5minutesinchurchhistory.com/the-three-cappadocians/">early Greek church fathers</a> who lived from 335-395 A.D., speaks of God’s unknowable essence – God’s transcendence – in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=E2NStO5kLqkC&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=The+divine+power,+though+exalted+far+above+our+nature+and+inaccessible+to+all+approach,+like+a+tender+mother+who+joins+in+the+inarticulate+utterances+of+her+babe,+gives+to+our+human+nature+what+it+is+capable+of+receiving+nyssa&source=bl&ots=moBVMhAlyo&sig=fsWjDAO2cr1mBog6pvIuy8DUPVE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_1OTSpLjcAhVkg-AKHewqDQIQ6AEILjAC#v=onepage&q&f=false">feminine terms.</a> He says,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The divine power, though exalted far above our nature and inaccessible to all approach, like a tender mother who joins in the inarticulate utterances of her babe, gives to our human nature what it is capable of receiving.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What is God’s gender?</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230051/original/file-20180731-136655-437c3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230051/original/file-20180731-136655-437c3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230051/original/file-20180731-136655-437c3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230051/original/file-20180731-136655-437c3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230051/original/file-20180731-136655-437c3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230051/original/file-20180731-136655-437c3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230051/original/file-20180731-136655-437c3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Do images limit our religious experience?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/spbpda/14168383736/in/photolist-nA1ESd-dbhTWL-b6fKUV-dvP12P-iA2fs9-6xCQfA-WrcVkg-aabhnB-DTP354-a9sem3-cUmDRy-bH6GGH-4JEdMT-eaujPx-eEKdMv-fcLrs8-aaijXb-9pJERP-dQEGMa-ZhMSaC-67iAmy-4PP32o-aa9yxM-dBsy8B-67ixL3-o96QZo-67izg1-c9NnNQ-8sNUMg-cty7iC-8CqH3f-5HM1fi-WRBLpk-9EBApX-SQTTW8-a9hwe9-8vRUWH-Be3puZ-a9i7sE-ec1NAW-ezMxga-b6fK3F-5qKRPx-dQ79LW-i9jSBX-5Qzj2V-4nWZHg-jw2Fu9-aa9pDg-8zYZUN">Saint-Petersburg Theological Academy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Modern followers of Jesus live in a world where images risk becoming socially, politically or morally inadequate. When this happens, as the feminist theologian <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/plaskow-judith">Judith Plaskow</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Standing_Again_at_Sinai.html?id=mJX78S4ejiAC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false">notes</a>, “Instead of pointing to and evoking the reality of God, [our images] block the possibility of religious experience.” In other words, limiting God to masculine pronouns and imagery limits the countless religious experiences of billions of Christians throughout the world.</p>
<p>It is probably best, then, for modern day Christians to heed the words and warning of bishop Augustine, who once said, “<a href="http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20080828_1.htm">si comprehendis non est Deus</a>.” If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100077/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Wheeler-Reed does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In early Christian texts, God gives birth to Israel and is described as a woman in labor and a mother comforting her children.David Wheeler-Reed, Visiting Assistant Professor, Albertus Magnus CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/976702018-07-19T10:40:57Z2018-07-19T10:40:57ZWhat is heaven?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228255/original/file-20180718-142411-frvoey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Illustration of Dante's Paradiso.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dante_Pd10_BL_Yates_Thompson_36_f147.jpg">Giovanni di Paolo </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a family member or a friend passes away, we often find ourselves reflecting on the question “where are they now?” As mortal beings, it is a question of ultimate significance to each of us. </p>
<p>Different cultural groups, and different individuals within them, respond with numerous, often conflicting, answers to questions about life after death. For many, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heaven-hell/">these questions are rooted </a> in the idea of reward for the good (a heaven) and punishment for the wicked (a hell), where earthly injustices are finally righted.</p>
<p>However, these common roots do not guarantee contemporary agreement on the nature, or even the existence, of hell and heaven. Pope Francis himself has raised Catholic eyebrows over some of his <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/pope-francis-hugs-comforts-little-boy-who-asked-atheist-dad-was-heaven-891113">comments on heaven</a>, recently telling a young boy that his deceased father, an atheist, was with God in heaven because, by his careful parenting, “he had a good heart.” </p>
<p>So, what is the Christian idea of “heaven”? </p>
<h2>Beliefs about what happens at death</h2>
<p>The earliest Christians believed that Jesus Christ, risen from the dead after his crucifixion, would soon return, to complete what he had begun by his preaching: the establishment of the <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1L.HTM">Kingdom of God</a>. This Second Coming of Christ would bring an end to the effort of unification of all humanity in Christ and result in a final resurrection of the dead and moral judgment of all human beings.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christians believe, when Christ returns, the dead too will rise in renewed bodies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/waitingfortheword/5589922997">Waiting For The Word</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the middle of the first century A.D., Christians became concerned about the fate of members of their churches who had already died before this Second Coming. </p>
<p>Some of the earliest documents in the Christian New Testament, <a href="http://andrewjacobs.org/newtest/paulparts.htm">epistles</a> or letters written by the apostle Paul, offered an answer. The dead have simply fallen <a href="http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/15-20.htm">asleep</a>, they explained. When Christ <a href="http://biblehub.com/1_thessalonians/4-16.htm">returns</a>, the dead, too, would rise in renewed bodies, and be judged by Christ himself. Afterwards, they would be united with him forever.</p>
<p>A few <a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/athenagoras-resurrection.html">theologians</a> in the early centuries of Christianity agreed. But a growing consensus developed that the souls of the dead were held in a kind of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103531.htm">waiting state</a> until the end of the world, when they would be once again reunited with their bodies, resurrected in a more perfected form.</p>
<h2>Promise of eternal life</h2>
<p>After <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Constantine_I/">Roman Emperor Constantine</a> legalized Christianity in the early fourth century, the number of Christians grew enormously. Millions converted across the Empire, and by the century’s end, the old Roman state religion was prohibited. </p>
<p>Based on the <a href="http://biblehub.com/john/3-5.htm">Gospels</a>, bishops and theologians emphasized that the promise of eternal life in heaven was open only to the baptized – that is, those who had undergone the ritual immersion in water which cleansed the soul from sin and marked one’s entrance into the church. All others were damned to eternal separation from God and punishment for sin.</p>
<p>In this new Christian empire, baptism was increasingly administered to infants. Some theologians challenged this practice, since infants could not yet commit sins. But in the Christian west, the belief in “<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15011.htm">original sin</a>” – the sin of Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God’s command in the Garden of Eden (the “Fall”) – predominated.</p>
<p>Following the teachings of the fourth century saint <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/theologians/augustine-of-hippo.html">Augustine</a>, Western theologians in the fifth century A.D. believed that even infants were born with the sin of Adam and Eve marring their spirit and will. </p>
<p>But this doctrine raised a troubling question: What of those infants who died before baptism could be administered? </p>
<p>At first, theologians taught that their souls went to Hell, but suffered very little if at all. </p>
<p>The concept of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09256a.htm">Limbo</a> developed from this idea. Popes and <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/6001.htm">theologians</a> in the 13th century taught that the souls of unbaptized babies or young children enjoyed a state of natural happiness on the “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DL%3Aentry+group%3D24%3Aentry%3Dlimbus">edge</a>” of Hell, but, like those punished more severely in Hell itself, were denied the bliss of the presence of God.</p>
<h2>Time of judgment</h2>
<p>During times of war or plague in antiquity and the Middle Ages, Western Christians often interpreted the social chaos as a sign of the end of the world. However, as the centuries passed, the Second Coming of Christ generally became a more remote event for most Christians, still awaited but relegated to an indeterminate future. Instead, Christian theology focused more on the moment of individual death. </p>
<p>Judgment, the evaluation of the moral state of each human being, was no longer postponed until the end of the world. Each soul was first judged individually by Christ immediately after death (the “Particular” Judgment), as well as at the Second Coming (the Final or General Judgment). </p>
<p>Deathbed rituals or “Last Rites” developed from earlier rites for the sick and penitent, and most had the opportunity to confess their sins to a priest, be anointed, and receive a “final” communion before breathing their last.</p>
<p>Medieval Christians prayed to be protected from a sudden or unexpected death, because they feared baptism alone was not enough to enter heaven directly without these Last Rites. </p>
<p>Another doctrine had developed. Some died still guilty of lesser or <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P6C.HTM">venial sins</a>, like common gossip, petty theft, or minor lies that did not completely deplete one’s soul of God’s grace. After death, these souls would first be “purged” of any remaining sin or guilt in a spiritual state called Purgatory. After this spiritual cleansing, usually visualized as fire, they would be pure enough to enter heaven. </p>
<p>Only those who were extraordinarily virtuous, such as the saints, or those who had received the Last Rites, could enter directly into heaven and the presence of God.</p>
<h2>Images of heaven</h2>
<p>In antiquity, the first centuries of the Common Era, Christian heaven shared certain characteristics with both Judaism and Hellenistic religious thought on the afterlife of the virtuous. One was that of an almost physical rest and refreshment as after a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ltZBUW_F9ogC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=new+testament+damned+thirst&source=bl&ots=4CRCLTnLiz&sig=X0xkGiLY935HTFsVOKOIWtA53u4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwid8bPi9JXcAhUvc98KHbwdADsQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=new%20testament%20damned%20thirst&f=false">desert</a> journey, often accompanied by descriptions of banquets, fountains or rivers. In the Bible’s <a href="http://biblehub.com/revelation/22-1.htm">Book of Revelation</a>, a symbolic description of the end of the world, the river running through God’s New Jerusalem was called the river “of the water of life.” However, in the <a href="http://biblehub.com/luke/16-24.htm">Gospel of Luke</a>, the damned were tormented by thirst. </p>
<p>Another was the image of light. Romans and Jews thought of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-hell-94560">abode of the wicked</a> as a place of darkness and shadows, but the divine dwelling place was filled with bright light. Heaven was also charged with positive emotions: peace, joy, love, and the bliss of spiritual fulfillment that Christians came to refer to as the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=o1AnBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT467&lpg=PT467&dq=new+catholic+encyclopedia+heaven&source=bl&ots=4_H8BPDrB3&sig=R5SXCaIMWkh3WGYXMvKvj3wTaac&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB1b-g_srbAhWi44MKHXO-ASo4ChDoAQgoMAA#v=snippet&q=medieval&f=false">Beatific Vision</a>, the presence of God. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beato_angelico,_predella_della_pala_di_fiesole_01.jpg">Fra Angelico</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Visionaries and poets used a variety of additional images: flowering meadows, colors beyond description, trees filled with fruit, company and <a href="http://www.italianrenaissance.org/bellinis-san-zaccaria-altarpiece/">conversation</a> with family or <a href="http://www.italianrenaissance.org/bellinis-san-zaccaria-altarpiece/">white-robed others among the blessed</a>. Bright angels stood behind the dazzling throne of God and sang praise in exquisite melodies.</p>
<p>The Protestant Reformation, begun in 1517, would break sharply with the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe in the 16th century. While both sides would argue about the existence of Purgatory, or whether only some were predestined by God to enter heaven, the existence and general nature of heaven itself was not an issue. </p>
<h2>Heaven as the place of God</h2>
<p>Today, theologians offer a variety of opinions about the nature of heaven. The Anglican C. S. Lewis wrote that even one’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vMI2DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA116&dq=lewis+animals+heaven&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIu4n-65XcAhWjTd8KHYPIBjsQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=lewis%20animals%20immortality&f=false">pets</a> might be admitted, united in love with their owners as the owners are united in Christ through baptism. </p>
<p>Following the nineteenth-century <a href="http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quanto.htm">Pope Pius IX</a>, Jesuit Karl Rahner taught that even <a href="http://www.philosopherkings.co.uk/Rahner.html">non-Christians</a> and non-believers could still be saved through Christ if they lived according to similar values, an idea now found in the <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P3M.HTM">Catholic Catechism</a>. </p>
<p>The Catholic Church itself has dropped the idea of Limbo, leaving the fate of unbaptized infants to “<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P3M.HTM">the mercy of God</a>.” One theme remains constant, however: Heaven is the presence of God, in the company of others who have responded to God’s call in their own lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanne M. Pierce is a Roman Catholic member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Consultation in the USA, a national ecumenical dialogue group sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and The Episcopal Church.</span></em></p>Different cultural groups respond with numerous, often conflicting, answers to questions about life after death. An expert explains the Christian idea of heaven.Joanne M. Pierce, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/956942018-07-09T10:28:27Z2018-07-09T10:28:27ZHow the Catholic Church came to oppose birth control<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226532/original/file-20180706-122265-1v4apf9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pope Paul VI banned contraception for Catholics in the 1968 encyclical, "Humanae Vitae."</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jim Pringle</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This month marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI’s strict prohibition against artificial contraception, issued in the aftermath of the development of the birth control pill. At the time, the decision <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">shocked</a> many Catholic priests and laypeople. Conservative Catholics, however, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholic_Intellectuals_and_Conservative.html?id=LK51AAAAMAAJ">praised the pope</a> for what they saw as a confirmation of traditional teachings.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=8S1ydcsAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&gmla=AJsN-F6AaDdh2HOAlzKGJw3Xk7ZwuHYTAvpym2jdDa8KTvuGKSxei-9Oix4I84Ka55hX765CxCjr35WrEqZX0DxcLADUp0HY8Q">scholar</a> specializing in both the history of the Catholic Church and gender studies, I can attest that for almost 2,000 years, the Catholic Church’s stance on contraception has been one of constant change and development. </p>
<p>And although Catholic moral theology has consistently condemned contraception, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception.html?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C">it has not always been the church battleground</a> that it is today. </p>
<h2>Early church practice</h2>
<p>The first Christians <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception.html?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C">knew about contraception and likely practiced it</a>. Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and Roman texts, for example, discuss well-known contraceptive practices, ranging from the withdrawal method to the use of crocodile dung, dates and honey to block or kill semen. </p>
<p>Indeed, while Judeo-Christian scripture encourages humans to <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1%3A28&version=KJV">“be fruitful and multiply,”</a> nothing in Scripture <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">explicitly prohibits contraception</a>. </p>
<p>When the first Christian theologians condemned contraception, they did so not on the basis of religion but <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JbzwS6MzK1gC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=Christine+E.+Gudorf+%22Contraception+and+Abortion+in+Roman+Catholicism%22&source=bl&ots=5WJffub6wK&sig=rCNxnaAIZFq7tmfZ787O5KIePOE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia_vX5savb%20AhXtHDQIHZuqBqwQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=Christine%20E.%20Gudorf%20%22Contraception%20and%20Abortion%20in%20Roman%20Catholicism%22&f=false">in a give-and-take with cultural practices and social pressures</a>. Early opposition to contraception was often <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception.html?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C">a reaction to the threat of heretic groups,</a> such as the Gnostics and Manichees. And before the 20th century, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JbzwS6MzK1gC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=Christine+E.+Gudorf+%22Contraception+and+Abortion+in+Roman+Catholicism%22&source=bl&ots=5WJffub6wK&sig=rCNxnaAIZFq7tmfZ787O5KIePOE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia_vX5savb%20AhXtHDQIHZuqBqwQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=Christine%20E.%20Gudorf%20%22Contraception%20and%20Abortion%20in%20Roman%20Catholicism%22&f=false">theologians assumed</a> that those who practiced contraception were “fornicators” and “prostitutes.” </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1309.htm">purpose of marriage</a>, they believed, was producing offspring. While sex within marriage was not itself considered a sin, <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15071.htm">pleasure in sex was</a>. The fourth-century Christian theologian Augustine characterized the sexual act between spouses as <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360211064.htm">immoral self-indulgence</a> if the couple tried to prevent conception. </p>
<h2>Not a church priority</h2>
<p>The church, however, had little to say about contraception for many centuries. For example, after the decline of the Roman Empire, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/A_History_of_Contraception.html?id=9-R4QgAACAAJ">the church did little to explicitly</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Theology_of_Marriage.html?id=sASAQgAACAAJ">prohibit contraception</a>, teach against it, or stop it, though people undoubtedly practiced it. </p>
<p>Most penitence manuals from the Middle Ages, which directed priests what types of sins to ask parishioners about, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JbzwS6MzK1gC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=Christine+E.+Gudorf+%22Contraception+and+Abortion+in+Roman+Catholicism%22&source=bl&ots=5WJffub6wK&sig=rCNxnaAIZFq7tmfZ787O5KIePOE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia_vX5savb%20AhXtHDQIHZuqBqwQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=Christine%20E.%20Gudorf%20%22Contraception%20and%20Abortion%20in%20Roman%20Catholicism%22&f=false">did not even mention contraception</a>.</p>
<p>It was only in 1588 that Pope Sixtus V took the strongest conservative stance against contraception in Catholic history. With his papal bull “Effraenatam,” he ordered all church and civil penalties for homicide to be brought against those who practiced contraception. </p>
<p>However, both church and civil authorities refused to enforce his orders, and laypeople virtually ignored them. In fact, three years after Sixtus’s death, the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception.html?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C">next pope repealed</a> most of the sanctions and told Christians to treat “Effraenatam” “as if it had never been issued.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/como-vino-la-iglesia-catolica-a-oponerse-al-control-de-natalidad-99634">Cómo vino la Iglesia Católica a oponerse al control de natalidad</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>By the mid-17th century, some church leaders <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">even admitted couples might have legitimate reasons to limit family size</a> to better provide for the children they already had.</p>
<h2>Birth control becomes more visible</h2>
<p>By the 19th century, scientific knowledge about the human reproductive system advanced, and contraceptive technologies improved. New discussions were needed. </p>
<p>Victorian-era sensibilities, however, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholics_and_Contraception.html?id=31-_B3EaBskC">deterred most Catholic clergy</a> from preaching on issues of sex and contraception. </p>
<p>When an 1886 penitential manual instructed confessors to ask parishioners explicitly whether they practiced contraception and to refuse absolution for sins unless they stopped, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">“the order was virtually ignored.”</a> </p>
<p>By the 20th century, Christians in some of the most heavily Catholic countries in the world, such as France and Brazil, were <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JbzwS6MzK1gC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=Christine+E.+Gudorf+%22Contraception+and+Abortion+in+Roman+Catholicism%22&source=bl&ots=5WJffub6wK&sig=rCNxnaAIZFq7tmfZ787O5KIePOE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia_vX5savb%20AhXtHDQIHZuqBqwQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=Christine%20E.%20Gudorf%20%22Contraception%20and%20Abortion%20in%20Roman%20Catholicism%22&f=false">among the most prodigious users</a> of artificial contraception, leading to dramatic decline in family size.</p>
<p>As a consequence of this increasing availability and use of contraceptives by Catholics, church teaching on birth control – which had always been there – began to <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholics_and_Contraception.html?id=31-_B3EaBskC">become a visible priority</a>. The papacy decided to bring the dialogue about contraception <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Devices_and_Desires.html?id=Im8RdEyDX8cC">out of scholarly theological discussions</a> between clergy into ordinary exchanges between Catholic couples and their priests.</p>
<p>Regarding his frank 1930 pronouncement on birth control, “Casti Connubii,” Pope Pius XI declared that contraception was inherently evil and any spouse practicing any act of contraception <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=John+T.+Noonan+contraception&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj55YrnnbPbAhXjIjQIHbfPAqcQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=John%20T.%20Noonan%20contraception&f=false;%20https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19301231_casti-connubii.html">“violates the law of God and nature” and was “stained by a great and mortal flaw.”</a> </p>
<p>Condoms, diaphragms, the rhythm method and even the withdrawal method were forbidden. Only abstinence was permissible to prevent conception. Priests were to teach this so clearly and so often that no Catholic could claim ignorance of the Church’s prohibition of contraception. Many theologians presumed this to be an <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholics_and_Contraception.html?id=31-_B3EaBskC">“infallible statement”</a> and taught it thus to Catholic laypersons for decades. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholics_and_Contraception.html?id=31-_B3EaBskC">Other theologians saw it</a> as binding but “subject to future reconsideration.”</p>
<p>In 1951, the church modified its stance again. Without overturning “Casti Connubii’s” prohibition of artificial birth control, Pius XI’s successor, Pius XII, deviated from its intent. He approved the rhythm method for couples who had <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception.html?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C">“morally valid reasons for avoiding procreation,” </a> defining such situations quite broadly.</p>
<h2>The pill and the church</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Museum of Sex, in New York, marks the 50th anniversary of the world’s first oral contraceptive in 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the early 1950s, however, options for artificial contraception were growing, including the pill. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=0PgkAAAAYAAJ&q=Bromley+Catholics+on+Birth+Control&dq=Bromley+Catholics+on+Birth+Control&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjumsaDurXbAhXdFjQIHRF0DeEQ6AEIJzAA">Devout Catholics wanted explicit permission to use them</a>. </p>
<p>Church leaders confronted the issue head-on, expressing a variety of viewpoints.</p>
<p>In light of these new contraceptive technologies and developing scientific knowledge about when and how conception occurs, some leaders believed the church could not know God’s will on this issue and should stop pretending that it did, as Dutch Bishop William Bekkers <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">said outright on national television</a> in 1963.</p>
<p>Even Paul VI <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">admitted his confusion</a>. In an interview with an Italian journalist in 1965, he stated, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The world asks what we think and we find ourselves trying to give an answer. But what answer? We can’t keep silent. And yet to speak is a real problem. But what? The Church has never in her history confronted such a problem.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>There were others, however, such as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani</a>, leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the body that promotes and defends Catholic doctrine – who disagreed. Among those adamantly convinced of the truth of the prohibitions was the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/John_Cuthbert_Ford_SJ.html?id=F8luZnjkVdAC">Jesuit John Ford</a>, perhaps the most influential U.S. Catholic moralist of the last century. Although no Scripture mentioned contraception, Ford believed the church’s teachings were grounded in divine revelation and therefore not to be questioned.</p>
<p>The question was left for consideration by the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control, held between 1963 to 1966. This commission by an overwhelming majority – a reported 80 percent – recommended the church <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholics_and_Contraception.html?id=31-_B3EaBskC">expand its teaching</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholic_Intellectuals_and_Conservative.html?id=LK51AAAAMAAJ">to accept artificial contraception</a>. </p>
<p>That was not at all unusual. The Catholic Church had changed its stance on many controversial issues over the centuries, such as slavery, usury and Galileo’s theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">Minority opinion</a>, however, feared that to suggest the church had been wrong these last decades would be to admit the church had been lacking in direction by the Holy Spirit. </p>
<h2>‘Humanae Vitae’ ignored</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protest in Charleston, S.C., in 2012, against a federal mandate requiring employers to provide health insurance that includes birth control for workers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bruce Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Paul VI eventually sided with this minority view and issued “Humanae Vitae,” <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html">prohibiting all forms of artificial birth control</a>. His decision, many argue, was not about contraception per se but the preservation of church authority. An <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholic_Intellectuals_and_Conservative.html?id=LK51AAAAMAAJ">outcry ensued from both priests and laypeople</a>. One lay member of the commission <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">commented</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It was as if they had found some old unpublished encyclical from the 1920s in a drawer somewhere in the Vatican, dusted it off, and handed it out.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much has changed in the Catholic Church since 1968. Today, priests make it a pastoral priority to encourage sexual pleasure between spouses. While prohibitions on birth control continue, many pastors <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Vatican_Diaries.html?id=i_aMPEpHpBkC">discuss the reasons</a> a couple might want to use artificial contraception, from protecting one partner against a sexually transmitted disease to limiting family size for the good of the family or the planet. </p>
<p>Despite the changes in the church’s attitudes about sex, the prohibitions of “Humanae Vitae” remain. <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2016/09/28/4-very-few-americans-see-contraception-as-morally-wrong/">Millions of Catholics</a> around the world, however, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5lf4xeSt5-AC&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=Ruth+Macklin+Cultural+Difference+and+Long+Acting&source=bl&ots=_OUwvw8IKP&sig=KyE41_vBGQXQ9rxGaQANdbSbayY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDmImKq6vbAhV0JDQIHVr9AusQ6AEILzAB#v=onepage&q=Ruth%20&f=false">have simply chosen to ignore them</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa McClain does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>July marks 50 years of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical prohibiting contraceptive use. For many years prior to it, the church had not been so explicit on its stance. How did it become such a thorny issue?Lisa McClain, Professor of History and Gender Studies, Boise State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/980672018-06-12T10:39:46Z2018-06-12T10:39:46ZWhy religions of the world condemn suicide<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222671/original/file-20180611-191971-1bqhe4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A mourner reads a sympathy card left for Anthony Bourdain at a makeshift memorial in New York.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Mary Altaffer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent suicides of <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/kate-spade-214145">fashion designer</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/05/us/kate-spade-dead/index.html">Kate Spade</a> and <a href="http://business.time.com/2012/11/08/why-suicides-are-more-common-in-richer-neighborhoods/">celebrity chef and writer</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/08/us/anthony-bourdain-obit/index.html">Anthony Bourdain</a> have reminded all of us that, even for the <a href="http://business.time.com/2012/11/08/why-suicides-are-more-common-in-richer-neighborhoods/">wealthy</a>, life can become too painful to bear. </p>
<p>The sad truth is that suicide rates have been increasing in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/us/suicide-rates-increasing-bourdain.html">United States</a>. In the last decade, the suicide rate increased by <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/suicide-rates-are-30-percent-1999-cdc-says-n880926">nearly 30 percent,</a> with <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/u-s-suicide-rates-reach-30-year-high-especially-for-women-672031299528">women</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media-contributing-rising-teen-suicide-rate-n812426">teens</a> particularly affected. </p>
<p>And it’s not just the United States. Suicide is increasingly taking a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/31/suicides-of-nearly-60000-indian-farmers-linked-to-climate-change-study-claims">toll on individuals</a> and families <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80563&page=1">throughout the world</a>. </p>
<p>The ethics of self-inflicted death have historically been an important area of reflection for the world’s religions.</p>
<h2>Whose life is it?</h2>
<p>Many of the world’s religions have traditionally condemned suicide because, as they believe, human life fundamentally belongs to God.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222672/original/file-20180611-191978-1t863pe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222672/original/file-20180611-191978-1t863pe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222672/original/file-20180611-191978-1t863pe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222672/original/file-20180611-191978-1t863pe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222672/original/file-20180611-191978-1t863pe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222672/original/file-20180611-191978-1t863pe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222672/original/file-20180611-191978-1t863pe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many of world’s religions have beliefs that condemn suicide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Religious_symbols.svg">Jossifresco, revisions by AnonMoos</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the Jewish tradition, the prohibition against suicide <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/suicide-in-jewish-tradition-and-literature/">originated</a> in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+5-9&version=ESV">Genesis 9:5</a>, which says, “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning.” This means that humans are accountable to God for the choices they make. From this perspective, life belongs to God and is not yours to take. Jewish civil and religious law, the <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/talmud-101/">Talmud</a>, withheld from a suicide the <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/suicide-in-judaism">rituals and treatment</a> that were given to the body in the case of other deaths, such as burial in a Jewish cemetery, though this is not the case today. </p>
<p>A similar perspective shaped <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9f07/c3f950da57a489dc8348fcf63db61faa8ce0.pdf">Catholic teachings</a> about suicide. <a href="http://www.augustinian.org/saint-augustine/">St. Augustine of Hippo</a>, an early Christian bishop and philosopher, wrote that “<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120101.htm">he who kills himself is a homicide</a>.” In fact, according the <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/library/CATECHSM/PIUSXCAT.HTM#Commandments">Catechism of St. Pius X</a>, an early 20th-century compendium of Catholic beliefs, someone who died by suicide should be denied Christian burial – a prohibition that is no longer observed.</p>
<p>The Italian poet Dante Aligheri, in “The Inferno,” extrapolated from traditional Catholic beliefs and placed those who had committed the sin of suicide on the seventh level of hell, where they exist in the <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/dante/inferno/13/">form of trees</a> that painfully bleed when cut or pruned. </p>
<p>According to traditional Islamic understandings, the fate of those who die by suicide is similarly dreadful. <a href="http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e758">Hadiths</a>, or sayings, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad warn Muslims against committing suicide. The hadiths say that those who <a href="http://hadithoftheday.com/suicide/">kill themselves</a> suffer hellfire. And in hell, they will continue to inflict pain on themselves, according to the method of their suicide.</p>
<p>In Hinduism, suicide is referred to by the Sanskrit word “atmahatya,” literally meaning “soul-murder.” “Soul-murder” is said to produce a string of karmic reactions that prevent the soul from obtaining liberation. In fact, Indian folklore has numerous stories about those who commit suicide. According to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09552369608575426?journalCode=casp20">Hindu philosophy of birth and rebirth</a>, in not being reincarnated, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=PD-flQMc1ocC&pg=PA146&lpg=PA146&dq=bhut+pret+suicide&source=bl&ots=IFPz_TVB19&sig=VvLt5TIFvgyGH51MAO8T3wt7Z6Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjhi46PyczbAhUDu1MKHWL2DCQQ6AEIZjAK#v=onepage&q=bhut%20pret%20suicide&f=false">souls linger on</a> the earth, and at times, trouble the living. </p>
<p>Buddhism also prohibits suicide, or aiding and abetting the act, because such self-harm <a href="http://www.westernbuddhistreview.com/vol4/suicide_as_a_response_to_suffering.html">causes more suffering rather than alleviating it.</a> And most basically, suicide violates a fundamental <a href="https://tricycle.org/magazine/the-five-precepts/">Buddhist moral precept</a>: to abstain from taking life.</p>
<h2>Altruistic suicide</h2>
<p>While many religions have traditionally prohibited suicide when motivated by despair, certain forms of suicide, for the community or for a greater good, are permitted, and at times, even celebrated.</p>
<p>In his classic work <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/On_Suicide.html?id=Dk31PO6cLW4C">“On Suicide,”</a> French sociologist <a href="http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Biography.html">Emile Durkheim</a> used the term “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16006395">altruistic suicide</a>” to describe the act of killing oneself in the service of a higher principle or the greater community. And consciously sacrificing one’s life for God, or for other religious ends, has historically been the most prominent form of “altruistic suicide.”</p>
<p>Recently, Pope Francis has added another category for sainthood, that of <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-becomes-a-saint-in-the-catholic-church-and-is-that-changing-81011">giving up one’s life for another</a>, called “oblatio vitae.” Of course, both Christianity and Islam have strong conceptions of martyrdom, which also extend to intentionally giving one’s life in battle. For example, the Crusader <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=DvJP7qIePPQC&pg=PA147&lpg=PA147&dq=hugh+the+insane+crusades+suicide&source=bl&ots=bsbfSG1Own&sig=UdadRT98Vv0PgfdesP-BtYG2U80&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjl_ae5mszbAhWNwFMKHbtXAzgQ6AEINTAF#v=onepage&q=hugh%20the%20insane%20crusades%20suicide&f=false">Hugh the Insane</a> self-destructively leapt out of the tower of a besieged castle in order to crush and kill Turkish soldiers below. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222673/original/file-20180611-191978-1k404w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222673/original/file-20180611-191978-1k404w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222673/original/file-20180611-191978-1k404w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222673/original/file-20180611-191978-1k404w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222673/original/file-20180611-191978-1k404w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222673/original/file-20180611-191978-1k404w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222673/original/file-20180611-191978-1k404w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A candlelit vigil to remember two Tibetans who self-immolated in Tibet, in Dharmsala, India, in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Buddhist monks have burned themselves to death, most famously in <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/01/19/self.immolation.history/index.html">Vietnam</a>, but also in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/world/asia/china-tibet-self-immolations.html">Tibet</a>, to draw attention to violence and oppression. And within Hinduism, there is a tradition of ascetics fasting to death after they gained enlightenment. Then there are the ancient Hindu traditions of <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399318/obo-9780195399318-0082.xml">“sati”</a>, where the wife dies on her husband’s funeral pyre, and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/jauhar">“jauhar”</a>, the ritual self-immolation of an entire community of women when they were certain of defeat in war and consequent enslavement. </p>
<p>What unifies all these examples is the idea that there are principles or goals that are more important than life itself. And so, self-sacrifice is not suicide: letting go of life because of faith is different, from letting go of life because of lack of hope.</p>
<h2>Rethinking suicide</h2>
<p>While striving to emphasizing the sacredness of life, it’s most certainly the case that traditional religious prohibitions against suicide provide little comfort to those who contemplate taking their own life, not to mention to the loved ones who will be left behind.</p>
<p>The good news is that today, there are more and more <a href="https://www.speakingofsuicide.com/resources">resources for talking about and preventing suicide</a>. In particular, world religions have become more sympathetic and nuanced in their understanding. <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/depression-and-suicide-resources/">Jews</a>, <a href="http://www.ncpd.org/sites/default/files/National%20Federation%20for%20Catholic%20Youth%20Web%20Resources%20for%20Suicide.pdf">Catholics</a>, <a href="http://muslimmentalhealth.com/news/?p=549">Muslims</a>, <a href="http://www.andrewholecek.com/suicide-from-a-buddhist-perspective/">Buddhists</a> and <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/internet/Facebook-launches-suicide-prevention-tools-in-India/article14424072.ece">Hindus</a> have all established extensive outreach programs to those who suffer from suicidal thoughts. </p>
<p>Such efforts recognize that God especially loves those who suffer in the darkness of depression. Suicide then is not an act that calls for divine punishment, but an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/suicide-rates-are-30-percent-1999-cdc-says-n880926">all-too-common</a> threat that calls us to reaffirm hope in life as a precious gift given by God.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98067/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mathew Schmalz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most religions have a fundamental belief that all human life belongs to God.Mathew Schmalz, Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/905182018-02-13T11:45:51Z2018-02-13T11:45:51ZThe ‘real’ St. Valentine was no patron of love<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205774/original/file-20180209-51703-10w4gt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Relics of St. Valentine of Terni at the basilica of Saint Mary in Cosmedin.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rom,_Santa_Maria_in_Cosmedin,_Reliquien_des_Hl._Valentin_von_Terni.jpg">Dnalor 01 (Own work) </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Feb. 14, sweethearts of all ages will exchange cards, flowers, candy, and more lavish gifts in the name of St. Valentine. But as a <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/bitel-homepage/">historian of Christianity</a>, I can tell you that at the root of our modern holiday is a beautiful fiction. St. Valentine was no lover or patron of love. </p>
<p>Valentine’s Day, in fact, originated as a liturgical feast to celebrate the decapitation of a third-century Christian martyr, or perhaps two. So, how did we get from beheading to betrothing on Valentine’s Day?</p>
<h2>Early origins of St. Valentine</h2>
<p>Ancient sources reveal that there were several St. Valentines who died on Feb. 14. Two of them were executed during the reign of <a href="https://archive.org/stream/scriptoreshistor01camb/scriptoreshistor01camb_djvu.txt">Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus</a> in 269-270 A.D., at a time when persecution of Christians was common. </p>
<p>How do we know this? Because, an order of Belgian monks spent three centuries collecting evidence for the lives of saints from manuscript archives around the known world. </p>
<p>They were called <a href="http://www.bollandistes.org/thebollandists-hist0.php?pg=hist00">Bollandists</a> after Jean Bolland, a Jesuit scholar who began publishing the massive 68-folio volumes of <a href="http://acta.chadwyck.co.uk/">“Acta Sanctorum,”</a> or “Lives of the Saints,” beginning in 1643.</p>
<p>Since then, successive generations of monks continued the work until the last volume was published in 1940. The Brothers dug up every scrap of information about every saint on the liturgical calendar and printed the texts arranged according to the <a href="http://saintscatholic.blogspot.com/p/saint-of-day.html">saint’s feast day</a>. </p>
<h2>The Valentine martyrs</h2>
<p>The volume encompassing Feb. 14 contains the stories of a handful of “Valentini,” including the earliest three of whom died in the third century. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Valentine blessing an epileptic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Valentine_blessing_an_epileptic._Coloured_etching._Wellcome_V0016605.jpg">Wellcome Images</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The earliest Valentinus is said to have died in Africa, along with 24 soldiers. Unfortunately, even the Bollandists could not find any more information about him. As the monks knew, sometimes all that the saints left behind was <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/762/mode/2up/search/valentinus">a name and day of death</a>.</p>
<p>We know only a little more about the other two Valentines. </p>
<p>According to a late medieval legend reprinted in the “Acta,” which was accompanied by Bollandist critique about its historical value, a Roman priest named Valentinus was arrested during the reign of Emperor Gothicus and put into the custody of an aristocrat named Asterius. </p>
<p>As the story goes, Asterius made the mistake of letting the preacher talk. Father Valentinus went on and on about <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/754/mode/2up/search/valentinus">Christ leading pagans</a> out of the shadow of darkness and into the light of truth and salvation. Asterius made a bargain with Valentinus: If the Christian could cure Asterius’s foster-daughter of blindness, he would convert. Valentinus put his hands over the girl’s eyes and <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/754/mode/2up/search/valentinus">chanted</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Lord Jesus Christ, en-lighten your handmaid, because you are God, the True Light.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Easy as that. The child could see, according to the medieval legend. Asterius and his whole family were baptized. Unfortunately, when Emperor Gothicus heard the news, he ordered them all to be executed. But Valentinus was the only one to be beheaded. A pious widow, though, made off with his body and <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/754/mode/2up/search/valentinus">had it buried at the site</a> of his martyrdom on the <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/Topics/Engineering/roads/Flaminia/home.html">Via Flaminia</a>, the ancient highway stretching from Rome to present-day Rimini. Later, a chapel was built over the saint’s remains.</p>
<h2>St. Valentine was not a romantic</h2>
<p>The third third-century Valentinus was a bishop of Terni in the province of Umbria, Italy. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Valentine kneeling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St-Valentine-Kneeling-In-Supplication.jpg">David Teniers III</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to his equally <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/754/mode/2up/search/valentinus">dodgy legend</a>, Terni’s bishop got into a situation like the other Valentinus by debating a potential convert and afterward healing his son. The rest of story is quite similar as well: He too, was beheaded on the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15254a.htm">orders of Emperor Gothicus</a> and his body buried along the Via Flaminia. </p>
<p>It is likely, as the Bollandists suggested, that there weren’t actually two decapitated Valentines, but that two different versions of one saint’s legend appeared in both Rome and Terni.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, African, Roman or Umbrian, none of the Valentines seems to have been a romantic. </p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/st-valentine-patron-saint-of-love-124544">medieval legends, repeated in modern media</a>, had St. Valentine performing Christian marriage rituals or passing notes between Christian lovers jailed by Gothicus. Still other stories romantically involved him with the blind girl whom he allegedly healed. Yet none of these medieval tales had any basis in third-century history, as the Bollandists pointed out.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Valentine baptizing St. Lucilla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St-valentine-baptizing-st-lucilla-jacopo-bassano.jpg">Jacopo Bassano (Jacopo da Ponte)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In any case, historical veracity did not count for much with medieval Christians. What they cared about were stories of miracles and martyrdoms, and the physical remains or relics of the saint. To be sure, many different churches and monasteries around medieval Europe claimed to have bits of a <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/758/mode/2up/search/valentinus">St. Valentinus’ skull</a> in their treasuries. </p>
<p>Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome, for example, still displays a whole skull. According to the Bollandists, other churches across Europe also claim to own slivers and bits of one or the other St. Valentinus’ body: For example, San Anton Church in Madrid, Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin, the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Prague, Saint Mary’s Assumption in Chelmno, Poland, as well as churches in Malta, Birmingham, Glasgow, and on the Greek isle of Lesbos, among others. </p>
<p>For believers, relics of the martyrs signified the saints’ continuing their invisible presence among communities of pious Christians. In 11th-century Brittany, for instance, one bishop <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/760/mode/2up/search/valentinus">used what was purported to be Valentine’s head</a> to halt fires, prevent epidemics, and cure all sorts of illnesses, including demonic possession. </p>
<p>As far as we know, though, the saint’s bones did nothing special for lovers.</p>
<h2>Unlikely pagan origins</h2>
<p>Many scholars have deconstructed Valentine and his day in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_bqdZbKPztMC">books</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2847741">articles</a> and <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/morford/article/Whip-My-Roman-Sex-Gods-You-want-the-true-2634133.php">blog postings</a>. Some suggest that the modern holiday is a Christian cover-up of the more ancient Roman celebration of Lupercalia in mid-February. </p>
<p>Lupercalia originated as a ritual in a rural masculine cult involving the sacrifice of goats and dogs and evolved later into an urban carnival. During the festivities <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/lives/caesar*.html">half-naked young men ran</a> through the streets of Rome, streaking people with thongs cut from the skins of newly killed goats. Pregnant women thought it brought them healthy babies. In 496 A.D., however, Pope Gelasius supposedly <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/CP/26/1/Lupercalia*.html#ref9">denounced the rowdy festival</a>. </p>
<p>Still, there is no evidence that the pope purposely replaced Lupercalia with the more sedate cult of the martyred St. Valentine or any other Christian celebration. </p>
<h2>Chaucer and the love birds</h2>
<p>The love connection probably appeared more than a thousand years after the martyrs’ death, when Geoffrey Chaucer, author of “The Canterbury Tales” decreed the February feast of St. Valentinus to the mating of birds. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6bggAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=seynt+Volantynys+day&source=bl&ots=RazATk9FPU&sig=P18rLlniPQEToUWVCL8jD9lv-gI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf9c6v2ZXZAhWS-VQKHQuuCCIQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=seynt%20Volantynys%20day&f=false">He wrote</a> in his “Parlement of Foules”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“For this was on seynt Volantynys day.
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It seems that, in Chaucer’s day, English birds paired off to produce eggs in February. Soon, nature-minded European nobility began sending love notes during bird-mating season. For example, the French Duke of Orléans, who spent some years as a prisoner in the Tower of London, wrote to his wife in February 1415 that he was “already sick of love” (by which he meant lovesick.) And he called her his <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14343/14343-h/14343-h.htm#p245">“very gentle Valentine.”</a> </p>
<p>English audiences embraced the idea of February mating. Shakespeare’s lovestruck Ophelia spoke of herself as <a href="http://shakespeare-navigators.com/hamlet/H45.html">Hamlet’s Valentine.</a> </p>
<p>In the following centuries, Englishmen and women began using Feb. 14 as an excuse to pen verses to their love objects. Industrialization made it easier with mass-produced illustrated cards adorned with smarmy poetry. Then along came Cadbury, Hershey’s, and other <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-chocolate-and-valentines-day-mated-life-180954228/">chocolate manufacturers</a> marketing sweets for one’s sweetheart on Valentine’s Day.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Valentine’s Day chocolates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chocolates-box-red-love-heart-shaped-123648574?src=keC4YCiCasMhWRf-oQMMDQ-1-20">GillianVann/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, shops everywhere in England and the U.S. decorate their windows with hearts and banners proclaiming the annual Day of Love. <a href="https://www.dealnews.com/features/What-to-Expect-from-Valentines-Day-Deals/967905.html">Merchants stock their shelves</a> with candy, jewelry and Cupid-related trinkets begging “Be My Valentine.” For most lovers, this request does not require beheading.</p>
<h2>Invisible Valentines</h2>
<p>It seems that the erstwhile saint behind the holiday of love remains as elusive as love itself. Still, as St. Augustine, the great fifth-century theologian and philosopher argued in his treatise on <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1305.htm">“Faith in Invisible Things,”</a> someone does not have to be standing before our eyes for us to love them. </p>
<p>And much like love itself, St. Valentine and his reputation as the patron saint of love are not matters of verifiable history, but of faith.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90518/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Bitel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Valentine’s Day originated as a feast to celebrate the decapitation of a third-century Christian martyr, or perhaps two. It took a gruesome path to becoming a romantic holiday.Lisa Bitel, Professor of History & Religion, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/875802018-01-19T11:40:59Z2018-01-19T11:40:59ZTolerating distraction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202347/original/file-20180117-53307-9wrdp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Should we be more patient with those we view as distracted?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/654532294?src=goBiye55Vs3JMtGBl0UU_A-1-78&size=huge_jpg">Serhii Bobyk/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A constant complaint in our unpredictable world is that we live in an age of distraction. </p>
<p>I am quick to label students who stare at their phones in my class distracted; politicians <a href="http://time.com/4523851/donald-trump-apology-access-hollywood/">dismiss inconvenient questions</a> by calling them a distraction; and when we find distraction in ourselves, we blame it on technology. In other words, we think of attention as a rare and valuable commodity, and we assume that distraction is a problem with an identifiable cause. </p>
<p>Consider for a moment, what would a medieval monk or a 17th-century preacher make of our complaints about modern distraction? </p>
<p>I argue, they would, in all likelihood, find them strange. To be sure, they too felt distracted, all the time. But, as my research on premodern Christianity shows, they thought of distraction as the human condition itself. Above all, they maintained a remarkably patient attitude toward it.</p>
<h2>Are attention and distraction similar?</h2>
<p>I offer an account of this Christian prehistory of attention and distraction in my book, <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo24957377.html">“Death Be Not Proud: The Art of Holy Attention</a>.” Although I wrote the book as a Renaissance scholar, while working on it I was constantly reminded of the topic’s relevance in contemporary life. What has intrigued me most then and now is the cultural values we associate with distraction and attention.</p>
<p>The dichotomy between good attention and bad distraction is so fundamental that it is written into the very language we use to talk about attending. Consider the phrase “I pay attention.” It implies that attention is valuable, a type of currency we deliberately and consciously invest in. When I pay attention, I am in control of my action, and I am aware of its value. </p>
<p>Now compare this with the phrase “I am distracted.” Suddenly we are dealing with a passive and vulnerable subject who suffers an experience without doing much to contribute to it. </p>
<p>But there are reasons to question this dichotomy. Students who are “distracted” by their phones could just as well be described as paying attention to their Facebook feed; the question that the politician dismisses as a distraction probably calls attention to a matter that actually deserves it. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202350/original/file-20180117-53328-129qf94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202350/original/file-20180117-53328-129qf94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202350/original/file-20180117-53328-129qf94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202350/original/file-20180117-53328-129qf94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202350/original/file-20180117-53328-129qf94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202350/original/file-20180117-53328-129qf94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202350/original/file-20180117-53328-129qf94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Do attention and distraction refer to the same behavior?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/elderly-couple-listening-music-on-mp3-102460025?src=z1JNNA0CJwLZ72mrJB9SRw-1-17">StockLite/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In other words, it is reasonable to ask whether attention and distraction are simply two morally and culturally charged terms referring to what in reality is the same behavior. We label this behavior distraction when we disapprove of its objects and objectives; and we call it attention when we approve of them. </p>
<p>One would expect this moralizing discourse of attention and distraction to be especially prevalent in Christianity. In popular imagination, medieval monks shut out the outside world, and Reformation preachers have issued stern warnings to their congregation to resist the distractions of life.</p>
<p>But while it is true that historical Christianity took distraction seriously, it also had a nuanced and often remarkably tolerant attitude toward it.</p>
<h2>Early views toward distraction</h2>
<p>Consider the <a href="http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/JohnDonne/id/3153/rec/6">following passage</a> from the English poet and preacher John Donne’s 17th-century sermon: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I am not all here, I am here now preaching upon this text, and I am at home in my Library considering whether S[aint] Gregory, or S[aint] Hierome, have said best of this text, before. I am here speaking to you, and yet I consider by the way, in the same instant, what it is likely you will say to one another, when I have done. You are not all here neither; you are here now, hearing me, and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else, of this text before.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Donne was known to his contemporaries as a masterful speaker, and this passage shows why: In just a few sentences, he calls his congregation’s attention to their distractedness and admits that even he, the preacher is only partly focused on the here and the now. In other words, Donne uses the distraction he shares with his audience to forge both a community and a moment of attentiveness. </p>
<p>Its rhetorical flair aside, Donne’s sermon expresses an old and fairly orthodox Christian view about distraction’s ubiquity. The most influential early exponent of this view is St. Augustine, one of the Church Fathers of Western Christianity. In his autobiographical work, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=sDdRAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=augustine+the+confessions&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjrkK33xs_YAhUCy2MKHWb2DHcQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=augustine%20the%20confessions&f=false">The Confessions</a>,” Augustine observes that every time we pay attention to one thing, we are distracted from infinitely many other things. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202349/original/file-20180117-53314-1hamt37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202349/original/file-20180117-53314-1hamt37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202349/original/file-20180117-53314-1hamt37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202349/original/file-20180117-53314-1hamt37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202349/original/file-20180117-53314-1hamt37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202349/original/file-20180117-53314-1hamt37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202349/original/file-20180117-53314-1hamt37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Augustine, Lightner Museum, Florida.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tiffany_Window_of_St_Augustine_-_Lightner_Museum.jpg">Louis Comfort Tiffany via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This simple observation has far-reaching implications. </p>
<p>First, Augustine sees attention and distraction as merely different aspects of the same action. But instead of moralizing these aspects, he finds the inevitability of distraction to be a fundamental feature of the human condition, that is, the very thing that distinguishes us from God.</p>
<p>Augustine’s God is not only omniscient and omnipotent but also <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120111.htm">omni-attentive</a> – not a term that Augustine uses, but he describes God as being able to attend to all things in both time and space simultaneously. </p>
<p>This is a complicated claim, but for now it is enough for us to see its consequences: Human creatures may aspire to be God-like in their acts of attention, but every such act produces more evidence that they are in fact humans – which in turn will make them appreciate attention even more. </p>
<h2>What is the relevance of distraction?</h2>
<p>The modern anxiety about distraction betrays a good deal about us. Insofar as we associate attention with power and control, it reflects our fears of losing both in an increasingly unpredictable cultural and natural climate. We also find ourselves living in an economy where we pay for cultural goods with our attention, so it makes sense that we worry about running out of a precious currency.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202351/original/file-20180117-53295-1ddvtg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202351/original/file-20180117-53295-1ddvtg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202351/original/file-20180117-53295-1ddvtg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202351/original/file-20180117-53295-1ddvtg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202351/original/file-20180117-53295-1ddvtg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202351/original/file-20180117-53295-1ddvtg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202351/original/file-20180117-53295-1ddvtg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Distraction, a valuable experience?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/daliscar/28176621700/in/photolist-JVSxYq-s9yu9L-HUXXs-F6F7f3-i8SCMd-9vAzN2-W8gdZ4-x8T3v-dU9Epk-AedDdL-7Kf6BE-5zBZ4R-9xxf8P-4p43bQ-4gjVkU-FAk2H-qV9Yjy-pyvcJh-brXyci-V7X8SP-HHWonJ-oVQZYN-BQp7X-4vAtF6-FqhpG-qgUcbp-exocB3-QVwsDJ-asV1xj-8A2oaR-tPNPV-Uub4FL-7A7nv6-6ULtbt-9W5d5q-5oYjVk-eeqeNP-84R3R-8DMvx-9qZgdm-6ZKCPC-kUPawn-gwmAC2-bzTo93-6FKjPY-qFHjF5-MeoyfH-5VnWpq-hnnoBc-dAaBqG">daliscar1</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is then intriguing to see how historical Christian views about attention and distraction both foreshadow some of these anxieties and counter them. For Augustine and his followers, attention was a rare and valuable experience, perhaps even more than for us since they associated it with the divine. </p>
<p>One might expect that as a result they should have simply dismissed distraction. The fact that they didn’t is what gives their thoughts continuing relevance today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87580/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Marno received funding from the Hellman Foundation and the Andrew D. Mellon Foundation. </span></em></p>We disapprove of distraction and consider attention as being valuable. What if they were, in fact, morally charged words, referring to the same behavior? Here’s what early Christian monks thought.David Marno, Associate Professor, University of California, BerkeleyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.