"Be fruitful and multiply" for people who are infertile

[Calm]

9 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

know the one ox story, are there more?

I would have thought you were into early modern church history as well as older.

My great, maybe great great gran was called and set apart to be a midwife after she had received medical training.  Part of her calling was blessing and anointing  mothers for birth iirc.

Edited March 30, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

45 minutes ago, manol said:

If you want to know why the practice was discontinued, I can tell you what conclusion my investigation led me to, which is a bit different from the official explanation. 

You know I want to know, lol.

[telnetd]

On 3/28/2024 at 3:41 PM, Calm said:

You are ignoring the “replenish the earth” commandment part of it.  That can be done by anyone.

Do you mean like  "Be fruitful, and or multiply, and or replenish the earth ... "?

[Pyreaux]

48 minutes ago, telnetd said:

Do you mean like  "Be fruitful, and or multiply, and or replenish the earth ... "?

Or, give your handmaiden to do it for you, or marry your dead husband's brother, in polygyny or adopt, as the law of adoption dictates the child is legally a "begotten" child. There seems to be many old alternative ways to fulfill the commandment.

[ZealouslyStriving]

5 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

Or, give your handmaiden to do it for you, or marry your dead husband's brother, in polygyny or adopt, as the law of adoption dictates the child is legally a "begotten" child. There seems to be many old alternative ways to fulfill the commandment.

In fact an adopted child cannot be disinherited.

[Pyreaux]

13 hours ago, manol said:

If you want to know why the practice was discontinued, I can tell you what conclusion my investigation led me to, which is a bit different from the official explanation. 

Yes, please. I think when the Deuteronomic reform pushed the entire royal court out of their roles in the religion and priesthood, losing the court diviners, priestly women, and divining women. A lot of "Wisdom" (divined revelation) seems to come from women, the Prophetess Deborah councils a Royal Priestly Judge that doesn't have much revelation of his own. I think the Medium of Endor was legit, a Midianite, so wasn't under the restriction of Mosaic law punishing non-priestly Israelites who divined, until Saul's law forbids all divination. I think women and our spiritual gifts are underutilized, we have the tools, but because we lack the foundation for it, we are scared of it. My Mormonism often informs my reading of an old Hebrew text, and the old text then informs my Mormonism with the expanded incites. The role of women in the religion is found and I see some rejuvenation of it in Mormonism with women regaining their place in temples and rituals, I just think they might need to be made into Oracles.

Edited March 30, 2024 by Pyreaux

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 3/28/2024 at 3:41 PM, Calm said:

You are ignoring the “replenish the earth” commandment part of it.  That can be done by anyone.

Not really - this is a problem that occurs only in translation. Here is the NIV:

Quote

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

The same word is translated as fill in Gen. 1:22 - in the KJ (in the earlier parallel instructions to the fish):

Quote

And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

It's not an alternative to multiplying (procreating) - it is a repetition of the same commandment. The same commandment is given to all the animals/fish/birds - it is what comes after that differentiates humanity from the rest of creation, not this part.

[Calm]

55 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Not really - this is a problem that occurs only in translation. Here is the NIV:

The same word is translated as fill in Gen. 1:22 - in the KJ (in the earlier parallel instructions to the fish):

It's not an alternative to multiplying (procreating) - it is a repetition of the same commandment. The same commandment is given to all the animals/fish/birds - it is what comes after that differentiates humanity from the rest of creation, not this part.

Good to know, I caught I was in error when you responded above, but was wondering why.   Thank you. 

[manol]

13 hours ago, Calm said:

You know I want to know, lol.

 

2 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

Yes, please.

*takes a deep breath*

My recollection of some of the specific circumstances around the dialing back and effective discontinuation of women giving blessings is fuzzy so I welcome correction from anyone who knows this stuff better than I do. This is going to start out looking like my train of thought has left its tracks but it will tie back in eventually.  Drawing from my questionable memory:

Following the Manifesto there was a schism with a significant minority of Church members believing that plural marriage should continue to be practiced. I'll refer to this group as the Fundamentalists, and if that term is inaccurate or offensive, please correct me!

Apparently the Fundamentalists had a pretty convincing narrative, backed by not only decades of prophetic and apostolic teaching on the subject, but also by an alleged revelation to John Taylor that mandated the preservation of plural marriage. Perhaps their strongest validation was that they could trace their authority to perform plural marriages to one or two LDS apostles who had given it to one or more of their founders. So they could claim that even if Wilford Woodruff WAS doing the Lord's will to discontinue the practice within the mainstream LDS church (which was a condition imposed by the US Government for Utah to become a State), their group had the MISSION and the AUTHORITY to preserve and continue plural marriage. My recollection is that the Fundamentalists published and circulated a booklet which made a strong case for their position.

Meanwhile the mainstream LDS church found itself on the defensive. They had just made a 180 degree reversal on one of their core doctrines without the benefit of a powerful and convincing “thus saith the Lord” revelation, AND some of their leaders were continuing to practice plural marriage. The original Manifesto had to be bolstered by the Second one (they're both in the D&C). I'm skipping some details.

My recollection is that the mainstream LDS church either did not challenge the alleged John Taylor revelation or their challenge was not overly convincing, and perhaps most significantly they did not challenge the claim of the authority to perform plural marriages having been transmitted to the Fundamentalist founders by the LDS apostle(s).

What the LDS church DID do was this: They asserted that priesthood could ONLY be exercised within and in alignment to the LDS church's priesthood lines of authority, which originate at the President of the Church then continue in an orderly fashion to the apostles, to the stake presidents, to the bishops, to the elders, and so on, such that the Lord's house is a house of order.  (I realize this description of the hierarchical structure is not precise.)  So every priesthood holder acts only with permission and authorization from their superiors in the priesthood hierarchy. Unless a person holds BOTH the priesthood AND the keys (the ecclesiastical authorization) to use it, anything he does citing priesthood authority is invalid in the eyes of God. Obviously by this argument the Fundamentalists, having broken away, were “out of the loop” and could not validly exercise any priesthood authority any of them had been legitimately given at one time.

This turned out to be an effective rebuttal of the Fundamentalist claims.

But the Fundamentalists weren't done yet, and now we're FINALLY going to tie back in to our original topic. The Fundamentalists came back with this argument:

Women in the LDS church were blessing and healing people, so obviously power and authority from God are not limited solely to the LDS priesthood lines of authority. This wasn't a perfect counter-argument because the women were not citing priesthood authority, but it did establish a precedent that could theoretically apply to the Fundamentalist claims of power and authority from God being valid without going through the LDS church's priesthood lines of authority.

My understanding is that THIS is when and why the LDS church began to discontinue and discourage the practice of women giving blessings. Women blessing and healing people was, and presumably still is, seen as potentially undermining the Church's stance that priesthood lines of authority are vital and exclusive.

One quick anecdote: I was friends with a woman who had been a Cajun traiteuse (healer from a tradition that uses the laying on of hands) before her conversion to the LDS faith. She completely abandoned her healing practice so as to honor and not be in competition with the LDS priesthood. She genuinely did not want to rock anyone's boat (or pirogue, as the case may be). I respect her choice, but wish things could have been otherwise for her and for those who would have learned and benefited from her as a healer.

Edited March 30, 2024 by manol

[Calm]

Quite interesting and quite possible from what little I know (I have a wide, but not particularly deep awareness of church history).  The whole centralization, correlation, standardization etc trend could have been triggered by the schism. 

Edited March 30, 2024 by Calm

[manol]

26 minutes ago, Calm said:

 The whole centralization, correlation, standardization etc trend could have been triggered by the schism. 

And I know far less about those aspects of church history than you do.

Edited March 30, 2024 by manol

[Kenngo1969]

On 3/29/2024 at 12:13 PM, manol said:

... There was a time in my life when I was very much alone, and God/the universe/whatever sent me love disguised as a cat. 

As glad as I am that you received "love disguised as a cat," I hope that, in the intervening years, that even as alone as you might feel sometimes, truly, you are never alone.  

This might be corny, but I'm going to run with my initial [perhaps corny] impulse, and post it anyway  : 

  And this one:

And, as someone who usually loves to listen to a fairly wide variety of music, this one, which (I kid you not), in the dark valley of a deep depression, was the only song I listened to for about a year (thank you very much to the very fetching Ms. Carey):

And this one:

 

[manol]

13 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

As glad as I am that you received "love disguised as a cat," I hope that, in the intervening years, that even as alone as you might feel sometimes, truly, you are never alone.  

This might be corny, but I'm going to run with my initial [perhaps corny] impulse, and post it anyway  : 

  And this one:

And, as someone who usually loves to listen to a fairly wide variety of music, this one, which (I kid you not), in the dark valley of a deep depression, was the only song I listened to for about a year (thank you very much to the very fetching Ms. Carey):

And this one:

 

Thank you, my friend.  Thank you very much.

[Kenngo1969]

3 hours ago, manol said:

Thank you, my friend.  Thank you very much.

As always, Sir, you're quite welcome!  I'm proud to call you My Friend.  

[Stargazer]

On 3/28/2024 at 7:29 PM, telnetd said:

But neither could Adam and Eve, at first.

Hadn't thought about it in that way. Is it reasonable that they might have had marital relations while in the garden, but before the Fall? I had always thought that they hadn't done that due to lust having not entered into their lives until they ate the fruit. But I think now that that must be an unwarranted idea. 

[The Nehor]

6 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Hadn't thought about it in that way. Is it reasonable that they might have had marital relations while in the garden, but before the Fall? I had always thought that they hadn't done that due to lust having not entered into their lives until they ate the fruit. But I think now that that must be an unwarranted idea. 

In the early Catholic conception it was argued that they would have children without lust at some point if the Fall never happened. They could conceive and have children but there wouldn’t be sexual pleasure involved because that was part of the Fall and every time they copulated they would have had a child because otherwise it would be pointless.

Have a flowchart about when it is okay to have sex that applied for most of the Medieval period:

[Stargazer]

12 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

In the early Catholic conception it was argued that they would have children without lust at some point if the Fall never happened. They could conceive and have children but there wouldn’t be sexual pleasure involved because that was part of the Fall and every time they copulated they would have had a child because otherwise it would be pointless.

Have a flowchart about when it is okay to have sex that applied for most of the Medieval period:

The lack of arrows indicating directionality had me going in loops for a bit.

But that might have been an additional intention of the chart.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

In the early Catholic conception it was argued that they would have children without lust at some point if the Fall never happened. They could conceive and have children but there wouldn’t be sexual pleasure involved because that was part of the Fall and every time they copulated they would have had a child because otherwise it would be pointless.

Have a flowchart about when it is okay to have sex that applied for most of the Medieval period:

Got to ask, why Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday?

[The Nehor]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

Got to ask, why Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday?

Friday was part of penance, same reason you didn’t eat meat on Fridays back in the day.

No idea about the other days. Note this came from penitential texts. These were probably not strictly enforced or taught. Whether John and Jane Q Peasant knew all these rules….quite possibly not.

[telnetd]

15 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Hadn't thought about it in that way. Is it reasonable that they might have had marital relations while in the garden, but before the Fall? I had always thought that they hadn't done that due to lust having not entered into their lives until they ate the fruit. But I think now that that must be an unwarranted idea. 

What about the animals, who were given the same command?

[Stargazer]

1 minute ago, telnetd said:

What about the animals, who were given the same command?

Don't know! Wouldn't even know how to speculate about that.

[telnetd]

On 3/30/2024 at 12:02 PM, Pyreaux said:

Or, give your handmaiden to do it for you, or marry your dead husband's brother, in polygyny or adopt, as the law of adoption dictates the child is legally a "begotten" child. There seems to be many old alternative ways to fulfill the commandment.

Concubinage for New Testament Christians as well?

[telnetd]

2 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Don't know! Wouldn't even know how to speculate about that.

Here are a few scenarios for the animals:

• they were ignorant and gained knowledge when Adam and Eve ate the fruit.
• they were impotent and gained the ability when Adam and Eve ate.
• they were both ignorant and impotent and gained knowledge and ability when Adam and Eve ate.
• they already had the ability and knowledge before Adam and Eve ate.

[Stargazer]

4 minutes ago, telnetd said:

Here are a few scenarios for the animals:

• they were ignorant and gained knowledge when Adam and Eve ate the fruit.
• they were impotent and gained the ability when Adam and Eve ate.
• they were both ignorant and impotent and gained knowledge and ability when Adam and Eve ate.
• they already had the ability and knowledge before Adam and Eve ate.

My choice of scenario is bolded above.

Realistically, animals have been freely procreating for a few billion years. They have also been dying and evolving for the same period.

[Pyreaux]

1 hour ago, telnetd said:

Concubinage for New Testament Christians as well?

Polygyny wasn't necessarily abolished in the New Testament; it was outlawed in Roman law. I'm not actually suggesting bringing it back as the solution to infertility, I'm saying it definitely was a solution. A barren wife fulfilled the commandment by going to lengths to find a surrogate mother, and therefore any like-examples of Surrogate Parenting surely must fulfill the commandment also. Wouldn't you agree?