timeimmortal

The Book of Leviticus is an interesting read, although it should be noted that the shifts in topic can be rather glaring at times. Leviticus 14 seems primarily concerned with leprosy and the response of the community to a leper, and Leviticus 16 concerns the “holy place” (presumably there the Ark of the Covenant was kept), and also discusses sin offerings. And wedged between these two wildly divergent topics is Leviticus 15, which concerns male and female “discharges”.

The first half of Leviticus 15 concerns seminal discharge by a man, and concludes its treatise on the attendant ritual uncleanliness that accompanies a discharge of semen with the following observation:

[18] If a man lies with a woman and has an emission of semen, both of them shall bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the evening.

I don’t think it needs to be said that when one is reading the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, one should be mindful of the common euphemisms for sex. In the Book of Genesis, the term “know” is the typical euphemism for sexual intercourse; “lies with” is also used quite often, especially in the articulation of the law of Moses.

Possible Objection #1: We could just take “lies with” at its plain meaning, and assume that it does not refer to any actual act of sexual congress.

Response to Objection #1: True enough. But were we to concede that point, we would likewise have to concede that Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 do not refer to any homosexual sex act. And I think most faithful Christians would disagree with just such a conclusion.

Anti-Marian Christians tend to believe that even if Mary did have sexual intercourse, this would not would not have prevented her from e.g. being called “blessed” of all nations. This is technically true, but where some anti-Marians have gone wrong is with the assumption that, under Jewish law, “sex in marriage is not sinful”, that “Mary would have in no way defiled herself by having sexual relations with Joseph, her husband.”

Let us come back to Leviticus 15:18, then. The verse would seem to suggest that, according to Jewish law, any sexual act between a man and a woman that results in an emission of semen renders both man and woman unclean until the evening. It’s a minor defilement, admittedly, but it is still a ritual defilement.

Jumping ahead to Leviticus 20:10, we note that adulterers — male and female — are to be put to death. Given the absence of mention of any death penalty in Leviticus 15, it is probably safe to assume — since pre-marital and extra-marital sex carry death penalties under Levitical Law (c.f. Levititus 20, almost the entire chapter) — that Leviticus 15:18 refers to normal sexual relations between husband and wife (or between a man and a slave woman, as per Leviticus 19:20-22, but that is another matter).

Let us be clear, then: if a husband and wife have sex, and if there is a discharge of semen as a result of that sexual act, then this results in a minor ritual defilement for both man and woman: both are unclean until the evening (presumably, this means the next evening). So when the concerned anti-Marian Christian objects that proper marital sexual relations do not bring defilement upon the couple, he or she is actually incorrect, and perhaps a bit ignorant of Levitical Law.

I will grant, of course, that Christians do not need to follow all the ordinances of the Law of Moses (although most Christians tend to think that at least a few select ordinances thereof are still binding), because Christ has fulfilled the law. But let us not forget that both Mary and Joseph were Jews, not Christians, and would have lived according to the law. Had they had any sexual relations, they would certainly have observed the tenets of the law pertaining to seminal discharge…and in doing so, they would have been following the extant covenant between God and mankind at the time.

Now, it would be tempting to jump ahead at this point and begin looking at, for example, the Gospel of Luke. However, before we do that, we need to look at the Book of Numbers for a moment, and at what I am sure is, for many Christians, a little-known aspect of Jewish religious devotion: vows of sexual abstinence taken by women, married and unmarried.

A friend of mine once put to me an example concerning the orientation of hypothetical magnetic dipoles in a hypothetical box. From within the box, it appeared that the orientation of the dipoles was randomly shifting; from the outside of the box, it was apparent that no such thing was transpiring, as one could plainly see the small toddler with the magnetic toy playing on and near the box.

I tend to think of this example when people talk of evolutionary developments as being unpredictable products of mere chance. I do not contest that such things are unpredictable; I contest, very sharply, the notion that pure chance alone had a hand in the developments. We are inside the box; we cannot see if anyone is playing with a magnet outside of it. Perhaps, on that basis, we can be forgiven for reaching the wrong conclusion. Nevertheless, it’s still the wrong conclusion.

I say this to preface a mention of this rather fortunate discovery of direct evidence of evolution in action, because while I lament the attribution of the event to purely random chance, I nevertheless acknowledge that it’s an exciting discovery, and a bit of a shot in the arm for those who oppose the theory of evolution on some principle (especially my fellow Christians who do so):

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

…

Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.

The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens.

…sometime around the 31,500th generation, something dramatic happened in just one of the populations – the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use.

Indeed, the inability to use citrate is one of the traits by which bacteriologists distinguish E. coli from other species. The citrate-using mutants increased in population size and diversity.

…Lenski turned to his freezer, where he had saved samples of each population every 500 generations. These allowed him to replay history from any starting point he chose, by reviving the bacteria and letting evolution “replay” again.

…The replays showed that even when he looked at trillions of cells, only the original population re-evolved Cit+ – and only when he started the replay from generation 20,000 or greater. Something, he concluded, must have happened around generation 20,000 that laid the groundwork for Cit+ to later evolve.

Lenski and his colleagues are now working to identify just what that earlier change was, and how it made the Cit+ mutation possible more than 10,000 generations later.

In the meantime, the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome. Instead, a chance event can sometimes open evolutionary doors for one population that remain forever closed to other populations with different histories.

Discoveries like this affirm my faith in God, I find, because they carry with them a profound sense of wonder and amazement at the subtle, yet profound, intricacies upon which all of creation is constructed. In a sense, I pity those who assert that God must have made things in the exact manner suggested in the Book of Genesis, because the God of such a literalist interpretation of the Bible is so much smaller, so less magnificent. The God who knows each created thing down to its tiniest detail, and (moreover) who envisioned and breathed into being each such detail is so much larger, and so much more personal as well.

And it is staggering, to me, to think that God still so loves the world that He is willing to again make the processes of His creation apparent in even the tiny bacteria of the lab; indeed, His love is poured out on them too, and they respond in magnificent ways to it.

Discoveries like this, to me, don’t speak of chance; they speak of revelation — natural revelation, to be specific. They speak of a God who continues to desire to reveal His ways and mysteries to an inquiring, open human mind. As David Warren and others have pointed out, the whole ideal of science — that rational inquiry will be rewarded by way of evidence and discovery — has at its core a very Christian sensibility, echoed in the words of Christ: “And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

James McGrath writes in to provide some alternative commentary on the issue of Battlestar Galactica’s Theology, which I discussed in this article.

I thought I’d draw attention to some of the posts on my blog about BSG and theology (I’m a religion professor who is also a fan), such as :

http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008/05/gospel- according-to-gaius.html

http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008/04/bartlestar- theodica.html

I’d welcome your comments!

While I could say more for Professor McGrath’s opinions regarding Bart Ehrman (my own views on the “problem” of evil and theodicy are well known; I don’t see the existence of evil and/or suffering in the world as any kind of challenge to the Christian conception of God, and regard those who use said issue(s) as an objection to Religion as being, shall we say, rather deluded themselves), some of his views on BSG and the theology of Gaius Baltar’s new religious movement (itself a derivation of the Cylon religion) are rather interesting.

For example, McGrath remarks thusly concerning the first episode of the latest, and final, season of BSG:

In the BSG Season 4 premiere, entitled “He That Believeth In Me“, a more relevant verse would seem to be “Whosoever seeks to save his life will lose it…” Gaius Baltar moves from an unwilling Messiah disgusted by the gaudy Hindu-style flashing votive lights surrounding his picture, to one who seems genuinely willing to give up his life to save another. The “one true God” has yet to be explored fully as a concept on the show, but in the mean time, interesting questions continue to be asked about how we live our lives and what matters most to us.

I observed to my wife, while we were watching the latest episode of the series to date, that Baltar seems unable to avoid some manner of beating in each and every episode he has been in this season. I’d have to go over all the episodes again (we have them on tape), but I can’t recall yet a time when Baltar has not been pistol-whipped, choked, or punched during the course of an episode since the fleet departed the Ionian Nebula

And in each and every case, Baltar’s personal sufferings have been intimately relevant to the narrative of the show. Indeed, through examples as varied as the knife attack on Baltar in the head to Galen Tyrol attempting to choke him, the series has demonstrated in almost every episode this season that the God whom Baltar is preaching effects His plan for humanity in part through human suffering.
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Nicholas writes in to correct a mistake I made in this article, and to comment on it as well.

“[R]ecent discovery that the Amazon molly fish reproduces asexually”. Er, no. It was discoved in 1932. That’s why it’s called the Amazon molly, after the legendary female warriors. The news is the publication of a paper attempting to quantify how long it should have taken to become extinct, and wondering why it hasn’t.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/8/88

But I agree that human science is unlikely ever to explain everything. On the other hand, none of the big Religions explain anything. “This or that god did it” is not an explanation. It’s a cop-out.

I’ve corrected the origninal article, although I observe that the error did not substantially damange the point being made.

As to Nicholas‘ second point, in a way it is a cop-out to claim that God “did it” is a satisfactory answer to questions about origins, if in fact one is advocating God’s activity in contrast to what the evidence suggests took place (i.e. evolution). If one is preaching a dichotomy, then certainly one’s invocation of divine action is a cop-out.

But of course, that does not mean that God is not the artist behind all creation; it simply means that instead of adopting an “either/or” stance toward evolution and faith, one must adopt a “both/and” stance. Yes, humanity evolved, and yes, evolution was “guided” (if the Reader will permit the use of a somewhat clumsy term for it) by God.

Nicholas may feel compelled to argue against my having said that, and may feel the need to label even the “both/and” stance as a cop-out. And maybe it is. Equally, then, it is a cop-out to argue that evolution was unguided, which most atheists do.

As to whether religions explain anything, I think the first question that has to be asked is what we expect a religion to explain, and then what a religion really should explain. Galileo said it best, I think, in his letter to Christina, when he observed that the purpose of the Bible (and, by extension, the Church, of which he remained a faithful member until the day of his death) is to teach one how to go to Heaven, and not to teach one how the heavens go.

I think there is merit in looking to Scripture and coming away with the generalized understanding that God is responsible for all creation, but certainly there can only be folly in looking to Scripture and expecting to come away with a complete understanding of the methods and means by which anything — planets, plants, humans, whatever — arose. The Book of Genesis communicates important truths, but does so through the context of an origins legend.

Conversely, if one is looking at Scripture in the hope of better knowing the mind of God, or if one is seeking out the road to salvation, or if one is looking to discover what sanctifying grace is behind — and, indeed, enables and makes fruitful — a truly moral life, then religion has a lot to offer, and explains much.

Update: Mark Shea muses on a related topic:

in a universe governed by a supernatural God, it’s not at all odd to suppose that, now and then and for his own purposes, God may choose to fulfill the Harvard law of animal behavior and, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, do whatever the heck he wants.

The main thing that irks materialists is that God appears to have no reverence at all for carefully controlled laboratory conditions. He eats with tax collectors and sinners, not to mention granting miracles to unkempt shepherd kids and French peasants with no standing in the community of those determined not to believe. He has the gall to miraculously heal people at Lourdes and cause the sun to dance before countless thousands and Fatima, but since these documented events are not sufficiently reverential of the rules of the scientific game, they are tossed out by the high priesthood of materialsts.

All this merely means that lot of reality is not subject to scientific examination. Science can (and does) take a look at miraculous claims. But even in the fact of something spectacular (like Peter Smith’s regrown eyes after they were destroyed by silver nitrate solution) all it can do is say, “Yep. The eyes sure are healthy. Don’t know why.” For the “why”, you need to apply to the nuns who asked for Mother Cabrini’s intercession. (By the way, I have a friend who actually had lunch with Fr. Smith.)

Some people, who mysteriously pride themselves for being “rational” reject supernatural explanations out of court, no matter how bleedin’ obvious the miracle is. That’s because they confuse “reason” with pig-headed committment to shallow materialism no matter what. I prefer to actually use my reason for thinking. So when a paranormal claim is shown to be bunk, I have no driving need to believe otherwise. But similarly, when a supernatural claim gives ever indication of being supernatural, I have no driving need to reject it.

Not all claims of the supernatural are claims of the divine. Some of them bear strong earmarks of the demonic. Unlike many moderns, I find nothing a priori ridiculous about that either. The Church’s ancient claim that there are non-corporeal intelligence (angels) and that the some of them have chosen to rebel against God has much to recommend it in both scripture and in human experience. So I see no particular reason to doubt it (beyond the knee-jerk materialism of the present age). I think such agents can have effect in our world and I think the wisest thing to do when you encounter a person of intelligence and good will who claims an encounter with such a being is to take them seriously, just as you would such a person if they claimed to see a plane crash.

The skeptical answer to all such claims is “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” That slogan is, to put it kindly, rubbish. Extraordinary claims require evidence. Period. It is extraordinary to claim that light is both a wave and a particle. But the evidence point to the fact that it behaves that way anyway. Physicists did not have to perform seven Herculean feats to show this. They simply had to show that light behaved like a wave and a particle. In the same way, the evidence for the Marian apparitions at Lourdes don’t have to consist of proofs so incontrovertible that every last person on earth is compelled to accept it. It simply has to be sound enough that it’s bloody hard to explain it any other way.

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is simply a psychological justification for saying, “I will refuse to accept anything that challenges my comfortable materialist worldview.” You can do that. But don’t insult my intelligence by calling it “rational”. Rational people follow the evidence where it leads. Pig-headed ideologues ignore inconvenient evidence…

I wonder, O Reader, if perhaps Nicholas falls into the category Mark Shea is describing above? There is, after all, a certain sort of person who confidently asserts that religion has nothing useful to tell us precisely because s/he refuses to regard as useful those things which religion does indeed tell and explain to us.