Life, love, slavery, and crucifixion in antiquity.
Readership: All
Author’s Note: This post is based on a discussion between Jack and NovaSeeker, and is augmented with a curation of comments on Σ Frame about ancient Roman culture. Links to the original comments are contained in the first word of the paragraph.
Reader’s Note: I’m no expert in history, so I make no claim of authority concerning the content of this post. Instead, I’ll only state that the views contained here reflect those of our readers.
Length: 3,500 words
Reading Time: 12 minutes
Rome? Who Cares About a Bunch of Pagans? Aren’t we Christians?
The Roman Empire is something of a historical Rorschach test: how one reacts to it, conceptually and viscerally, tends to be very revealing of the person, much more than it is of history itself.
Rome was the foundation of the West, and the foundation of Christendom. It was the basic substrate on which everything that came later in the West was built — institutions of religion, state, law, language, culture, and the like. The influence is pervasive and vast, and persists well into the present-day in all of these areas, in nations that are both Catholic, Protestant and now Secular in cast. Rome’s legacy therefore cannot be ignored without remaining ignorant of the roots of much of our current practices and culture, particularly on an underlying, institutional level. In many respects, Rome (and the broader Greco-Roman culture that Rome enshrined in itself) simply is the West in its foundations.
And yet life in Roman times was, of course, in many ways rather different from our own. This is to be expected, given the great span of time involved, and the many changes in technology, economy, ideas and political structures between now and then. This article will examine some of these areas of Roman life, as they were lived during the time of the Roman Empire.
Life under Roman Law
The ancient Romans were strict disciplinarians, with very harsh punishments imposed for significant crimes and defeated enemies, such as scourging with cat-o-nine tails and crucifixion. The Appian Way is a road in Italy whose history is a poignant symbol of this. In 71 AD, the Romans crucified 6,000 rebels along a 200 km. (120 mi) stretch of the Via Appia from Rome to Capua, serving as a gruesome reminder to anyone traveling that way that the Romans should not be reviled. That is an average of one cross every 33.3 meters! (109 ft.)
A payslip made from a sheet of papyrus shows a Roman soldier was left penniless 1,900 years ago after the military took out fees for certain items. The document was made out to a Gaius Messius, who participated in the Siege of Masada that was one of the last battles during the First Jewish-Roman War. The receipt shows Messius received 50 denarri as his stipend, but fees for barley money, food and military equipment were taken out that totaled to the amount of his full pay.
The Romans, who had a professional army, prohibited soldiers from marrying at all until they completed their service. Oftentimes, a Roman legionnaire’s retirement pension was a piece of land in the province where he served.
A Roman legionnaire might serve his entire career in Gaul, receive a piece of land there, marry a local girl, buy a few slaves to work his land, and live the rest of his life in Gaul. That’s one way that they Romanized the provinces.
Slavery was prevalent, accounting for roughly every third person living on the Italian peninsula. The Romans (and the Ottomans) often conquered their neighbors and made slaves of them.
At one point, both the Greeks and Romans had very strict rules against homosexuality (see below), infidelity, etc. Pagan Europe, at points in time, had the death penalty for two crimes: homosexuality and being a coward.
The Romans extolled discipline and virtue for most of their history until the point where their society was in full on decline.
Sex
Pagan cultures were highly sexualized. The Roman paterfamilias was buggering his catamite, and also using his other slaves for sex at times.
Francine Rivers wrote a novel series called Mark of the Lion set in the time of the Romans and the early church. One of the main characters in the series is a woman through whom the author goes into veiled depth about the extremely sexually deviant depravity of the time.
The NT epistles were written to men and women in a MORE sex saturated culture than us. Men and women were openly having sex with temple prostitutes, with their father’s wives (1 Corinthians 5), and so on. Pederasty/pedophilia (men having sex with young boys) was common in Greek and Roman culture. By contrast to these common practices, scripture called these men and women to avoid sexual immorality and avoid sex with anyone other than their spouses.
AT the same time, it is dangerous to associate Greco-Roman sexual mores with post-Sexual Revolution values. Current values are gynocentric whereas Greco-Roman ones were patriarchal. I highly recommend the book, From Shame to Sin, by Kyle Harper (PDF review) as an excellent resource on Greco-Roman sexual values and the Christian values that replaced them. Modern values are alien to both Greco-Roman and Christian values.
[What does fornication even mean? Apparently, some protestants say what is commonly called fornication is in fact your wedding ceremony (and the “fake” wedding ceremony of exchange of consent/tokens of consent was created by the pagan Roman church’s additions). All argued in meticulous detail from the KJV Bible with no possibility of a deciding authority.]
Around the time of Christ, the Roman poet Ovid wrote a famous work about “how to attract the opposite sex” called “The Art of Love” (Ars Amatoria), in which he said, regarding illicit sex:
“Whether they give or refuse, it delights women to have been asked.”
Apparently nothing has changed, except for now blue-pill churches try to teach us that women are always our moral superiors. And Feminists claim that Ovid was a misogynist.
Abortion
The Greeks and Romans used abortifacient herbs, and performed uterus-scrape abortions. But then, maybe that’s one reason why the Romans had no-fault divorce way back in the 1st Century BC.
Abortion was common in ancient Greece and Rome. Abortifacient herbs have been known since prehistory. Obviously, all of that is far more advanced today than it was in antiquity, but it’s not new. It’s relatively new in the Christian West, but it’s not new in the world.
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
Ecclesiastes 1:9
Abortion and infanticide were both common enough in the early Roman Empire that the Church (and likely the Apostles themselves) felt the need to preach against both of them. (See the Didache.) Both abortion, and infanticide were common among the Greeks and Romans. The Church has been fighting both since its inception.
Marriage
Greco-Roman culture had its own sex of difficulties but at least it was easy to get married. Marriages were arranged or contracted for economic reasons rather than romantic compatibility.
In Greco-Roman culture women were married early while men were married later in life but were free to sow their wild oats with prostitutes or take advantage of slaves (of either sex). Marriages were in any case either arranged or they were an economic/social contract. That doesn’t resemble our modern dating market at all. There is a book called, The First Sexual Revolution, by Kyle Harper, which goes into detail on Greco-Roman sexual ethics as well as the Christian ethic which replaced it. Both are totally alien to our current cultural view of sex.
All successful religions are elite religions. Christianity provided obedient, virgin wives for the Roman elite. Then the Christian Romans were able to cooperate better than the pagan Romans, so the pagan Romans lost. Then Constantine came in and replaced the official state religion with Christianity and it was all over by then.
The core relationship with the wife was never seen as being based on sexual satisfaction, and so the lack thereof was not a valid reason for upsetting the marriage. This has been changed, and not to the way it was in pagan times, when the paterfamilias had the status that he had in the Roman family — it was changed into a form that did not exist also in Greco-Roman times. The lack of sexual satisfaction on the part of either spouse as a valid reason to dissolve a marriage does not appear until our times — it is new, and it has having a devastating effect.
Divorce
Rome eventually adopted a form of no-fault divorce, but because of the entire social structure, there was not the cultural expectation and pressure inside marriages relating to marital sexual satisfaction being a critical driver of this — and there is no historical evidence that it was. There were likely some Roman aristocratic women who did precisely that, but this did not create a culture in Rome that emphasized sexual satisfaction in marriage — if anything the high degree of tolerance for extra-marital sexual activity for married persons, especially for the paterfamilias (which is contrasted with today, where such activity remains highly scorned socially especially when engaged in by men) would indicate that it was expected that to some degree the marriage would not provide the degree and kind of mutual sexual satisfaction that is expected in many circles today.
H0m0sexuality
Greco-Roman culture was far more sexually immoral than ours. It was so grossly immoral, that the Corinthian Christians didn’t even know that it was wrong for them to have sex with the 1,000 prostitutes of the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth. And yet, St. Paul never told the Corinthians that “some of the biblical laws on sex need to be suspended until conditions improve.” Just the opposite. (See 1st Cor 6:15-20.)
Greek and Roman men used to keep young boys (catamites), whom they would castrate to prevent them from becoming masculine, and use to satisfy their sexual urges (which their wives could not satisfy), because they “placed human sexual satisfaction at the center of their definition of human flourishing”. And there was plenty of lesbian sex, too. None of this is new. See Romans 1.
“Effeminatus” in Latin also had the meaning of “passive/receipient partner in gay sex”. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans were culturally against gay male sex, per se, provided that the male adult (in Greece) or citizen (in Rome) was not an “effeminatus” (i.e., he was the “active” and not the “passive”). (More than you want to know about this is here.)
I think Paul was likely intending to capture not only these and, unlike the ambient Greco-Roman culture, he did not want to draw a moral distinction between “active” and “passive”, so included both “effeminates” and “homosexuals” to make sure it was clear that all participants in gay male sex were clearly covered (and, I would argue, female homosexuals as well) — again, precisely because this was different from what the ambient Greco-Roman culture believed, when it came to “active” role male homosexual activity (passive role activity was viewed as unvirtuous for adults and/or citizens).
NS: Rome also had lots of gay acts, especially among the young, but no “gay identity”. Love and sex were a part of life, not the center, but there were some rules around sex, just not Christianity’s rules. Affection among members of the same sex was common and accepted. Sexuality was also more “fluid”, although perpetual same sex affiliation (to the exclusion of hetero family life) in free adults was shunned and not accepted. Familial loyalty and building up a firm familial foundation was everything, as was playing one’s role in the social order virtuously (as Romans defined it). Rome had its own different set of internal problems and contradictions, but it was, in many ways, similar to the civilization that has persisted in East Asia, albeit in a European vein, which differed based on the underlying philosophical differences between ancient Greek ideas, on the one hand, and ancient Indian and Chinese ideas, on the other.
Spirituality
The Romans had a large panopoly of god and goddesses that are well known today as Roman mythology, with Zeus being the King of the gods and Venus being the god of “love”. Religious practices largely consisted of rituals and a general reverence towards the gods. This pantheology, and the widespread acceptance of the same, allowed all of the societal conditions described above.
The philosophical culture of Roman antiquity had a wider and much more pervasive influence in the socio-spiritual realm, building on Greek topics such as political equality, political rights, authority, tyranny, free citizenry, the influence of superpowers, and a national republic.
During the time of the earliest church there remained a great cultural influence from Greek philosophical schools, principally of three variants: (1) neo-Platonic Gnosticism, (2) Stoicism, and (3) Cynicism (as defined philosophically, which is very different from the contemporary uses of the words “stoic” and “cynic”) in the ambient culture, and even while the early church fathers railed against Gnosticism, Stoicism, and Cynicism, that was mainly because that thinking was widespread in their churches, because it was the prevalent thinking in the ambient intellectual culture of late Rome.
Christianity was introduced precisely at the zenith of Roman power and influence, and this is how Christianity came to be spread across the civilized world so quickly.
One of the immediate impacts of Christianity is that it upset that apple cart of Venusian “love” and rampant fornication, because Christianity had absolute rules about sex, no matter what stage in life, and absolute rules about gender expression as it relates to sex, just as the Hebrews did. There was a major culture clash between the Greco-Roman ancient culture, which in many ways is more similar to what persisted in China, and the Hebrew one, but via Christianity the Hebrew vision prevailed and “alternative sexualities” were suppressed, filial piety was chipped away at over time and replaced with absolute loyalty to God, the “virtuous life” (key in both the Roman and Confucian systems) was replaced with Christianity’s vision of holiness through grace and standards which are not achievable by human effort (contra Rome and China). The entire order was turned on its head rather deliberately.
“25 …they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”
Romans 1:25 (ESV)
The Roman Empire essentially crumbled from within as it reached peak decadence, which followed a long period of prosperity and power. In other words, in that case God’s judgment (since the rise and fall of all empires is according to His schedule) looked like more like Romans 1 than Genesis 19.
The Historical Influence of Roman Culture
The entire western culture is built on an amalgamation of Greco-Roman-Gothic values that have been whitewashed with a veneer of Christian values.
Feminine superiority is a major element in the element of Germanic mythology that was absorbed, in parts, into Western culture through the contact between the Germanic gothic tribes and the Romans. That’s where a good deal of the much more prominent devotion to Mary in the Western Church (as compared to Eastern Christianity) stems from; women dominated that society in ways that aren’t noted often in history studies. For example, the weregild for a woman was twice that of a man in the same social class, because women were more valuable than were men, due to having the rarer reproductive resource. Later, concepts like chivalry and courtly love were integrated into Western culture approximately 800 to 900 years ago, of course, long before contemporary feminism.
These elements were incorporated into Western culture in roughly the same process. The influences of Christianity and the influences of folk religions were an ambient part of Western culture, and there occurred a blending of both of the elements together in terms of the mind, mindset and identity of the average Christian. Even though the Church itself never explicitly endorsed Chivalry and Courtly Love as doctrine (that is, until the advent of Churchianity), the average Christian growing up in this culture had these ideas impressed on their mind, their mindset, and their identity, and saw that as being merged with their “Christian” identity as well. Thus, these pagan influences came into the church “through the back door” by means of a de facto cultural merger on the personal level.
I would argue that “Christianity” as it evolved once embraced by the elites of the Roman Empire, was destined to bring us to exactly where are today.
Dalrock has shown that the anglo West is just emerging from a thousand years under sway of the Romantic Tradition as evidenced by chivalry and its long tail influence in male/female relations. The majority of people, at least in America, are much influenced by Romanticism and Romantic expectations. The “conservative”/tradcon Right has staked-out Romanticism as the ethical and spiritual foundation of their lives. Romanticism even rules their churches, because it’s a female-supremacist system.
The Modified Continuation of Romanesque Pantheism
The trouble in the West is that in the post-post-post enlightenment phase that we live in, we are now neither fish nor fowl. The Christian replacement of Roman virtue with its own values has been abandoned by many, and soon by almost all. The emergent world, however, isn’t really a reification of the pre-Christian system and its esteem for virtue (as exemplified in, say, the writings of Marcus Aurelius or even Seneca), as much as some Christians like to say that it is — would that it were so, really.
No, we are replacing the prior Western systems — Greco-Roman and then Hebrew/Christian, the combination of Athens, Rome and Jerusalem that made the West itself — with …. nothing. Nihil. That is the problem.
The “drafters” of the contemporary “vision” are anti-vision: the idea is for everyone to make his/her/its own vision, with no cohesion — nether the Greco-Roman one, nor the Christian one, nor the Confucian one, etc. Rather it’s Novaseeker’s vision for Novaseeker, Jack’s vision for Jack. There is no cohesion. Would that we were simply repaganizing — as Christians we could deal with that, because we’ve had the argument with pagan philosophy already — we know how to engage that adversary. We are having a much harder time, however, with the new and different challenge that is facing us, a challenge that wasn’t presented to the Christians who were dealing with the world of Greco-Roman paganism.
It’s a natural cultural cycle for a society trying to ‘outsmart’ God and his Word, and not just for Christian cultures. Romans 1 says that “Professing to be wise, they became fools” (v. 22). Even pagans know what God wants them to do, because God has written His law in their hearts (Rom. 2:15), and revealed His nature through them through nature itself (Rom. 1:18-21).
That’s why even pagan cultures often arrive at conclusions found in the Bible, even though they never read the Bible, often times before the Bible was even written.
Cultures discover God’s will either by reading the Bible, or by generations of painful trial and error (sometimes both), but eventually a generation comes along that thinks they know better.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 19 that God intended from the beginning (quoting Genesis 1-2) for human sexuality to be confined to marriage, which Jesus, quoting Genesis 1-2, defined as a union of one man to one woman for life.
But, every generation since the Boomers knows better, right? We know that heterosexual promiscuity is better. In fact, it empowers women. So do birth control pills and abortions.
Oh, and homosexual promiscuity is even better.
Oh, and transgenderism is even better.
What’s next? Pretty much all the depravity in Leviticus 18.
Buckle up. It’s going to be bumpy ride.
Conclusions
In the end, the legacy of the Roman Empire in our contemporary world is mixed and complex. Some elements of our culture are traceable to the ancient Greco-Roman heritage, while others are Christian in origin. Still others arose due to the “bringing back” of some of the ideas of the Greco-Roman era during the Renaissance and the working out of those ideas, and their expansion, in during the “Enlightenment“, which created a new synthesis: a kind of “Nouveau Greco-Roman Revivalism with a Christian Base” … which itself has now collapsed on itself due to the rise of a skeptical attitude towards reason itself in the wake of the 20th Century and the advent of Post-modernism.
However, because of the importance of the Greco-Roman “piece of the puzzle”, its legacy will always be controversial and, for Christians, the history of the confrontation with Roman paganism 1500 years ago will always be formative.
Related
- Ancient Origins (Riley Winters): The Roman god Bacchus as a Christian icon (2014 October 21)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Moon Day Review – The Feminine Empire (2019 May 6)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Progressive (2020 November 10)
- Σ Frame (Novaseeker): The Amalgamation of Western Culture (2020 December 2)
- NATSAB (Pete Rambo): Interesting quote from the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (2021 May 27)
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Interesting. My ancestry is German Catholic (1/4) , Yankee WASP (1/8), Italian-Austrian(1/8), and Anglo-Celtic Hillbilly (1/2). I knew all the great grandparents and extended family pretty well. By far, the most gynocentric were the WASPs. The German Catholics were by far the least being slightly less patriarchal than tribal Muslims. They were a couple generations removed from the medieval system which persisted in southern Niedersachsen well into the 1800s – very Roman, very Catholic.A womans place was as a nun or the mother of 10+ children. If you killed your wife putting too many babies in her you replaced her with a younger one as my great great grandfather (“papa” since Catholic) did.
I think it’s some combination of west of hajnal line -essentially Germanic – genetics combined with something in certain (Anglo?) Protestant culture that produced gynocentrism.
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If you look at how Japanese culture has changed in two generations, it kind of undermines the “genetics” theory I think. This is a society that, in our parents and/or grandparents lifetime, committed suicide by stabbing themselves in the belly and moving the sword around. Women took the “cowardly” way and used a knife at the throat. This was common, not some outlier extreme activity….just a part of their culture. Now the offspring of that generation has men who keep an electronic pocket girlfriend/wife they smile sheepishly at.
Culture is powerful. People are natural mimics.
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I cite the genes part because it’s neglected and I think it explains part of human behavior. I agree humans are malleable, just not infinitely or equally so. I never claim culture doesnt matter. Why I mentioned W of hajnal genes and AngloProtestant culture.
Japanese are heavily Anglcized by force in origin but are relatively less cucked than Anglos.
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Not to belabor this but Japanese culture often has to be censored for sexism and homophobia for western audiences. Not just today – this was happening in the 80s and early 90s when I was a kid.
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Actualy the censoring of japanese films goes back to the 50’s/60’s it only became noticble to everyone because of anime by the the 80’s/90’s!
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There was a popular video game I played in the early 90s. In the original Japanese version you had to beat up a flamboyant, leather wearing homosexual “boss” character. Censored.
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Cameron your talking about segas streets of rage 3 for the genesis or bare knuckle 3 for the mega drive in japan!
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Even Anglo-Catholicism is likely very gynocentric.
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A payslip made from a sheet of papyrus shows a Roman soldier was left penniless 1,900 years ago after the military took out fees for certain items. The document was made out to a Gaius Messius, who participated in the Siege of Masada that was one of the last battles during the First Jewish-Roman War. The receipt shows Messius received 50 denarri as his stipend, but fees for barley money, food and military equipment were taken out that totaled to the amount of his full pay.
It became common for military commanders to pau pensions or bonuses to their troops from their private fortunates, which created a situation where the troops owed a greater loyalty to their commanders than to the government of Rome.
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Initial analyst:Outsmart god?This world?Why was ole’ sinead o’ connor never called out as the ”adversary”for ripping up the picture of pope john paul the2nd?Women privilege/feminine imperative among (catholic?)culture maybe?Wheres the anger of ms.baldy at in the secular or christian-MANosphere to this very day?
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Joe Pesci called her out. She’s always been angry that bald women can’t be priests. She became a priestess in some made up thing “Irish Anglican Episcopal Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church of cueball heads” or some sh!t.
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Red Pill Apostle:
If you read this – my emails are not getting through to you. Check your spam folder. I don’t know what else to tell you.
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Thanks Deti – just sent you an email from another email address to see if that works.
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I should point out that From Shame To Sin and the later mentioned The First Sexual Revolution are one and the same book. I’m guessing some of my comments found their way into this post, because I erroneously cited it as The First Sexual Revolution instead of From Shame To Sin. I think I misremembered the title of a review as the title of the book itself when I made that comment.
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A few other things worth adding:
Marriage was so divorced (pun intended) from being based sexual fulfillment or romance that a Roman man would be derided if he was perceived to be too infatuated with his wife.
That is precisely what happened to Pompey, who was mocked behind his back for being too interested in his wife.
In general Roman men were expected to have a Stoic sense of moderation about things, including sex. Whether a man visited prostitutes, took advantage of slaves, or buggered boys it was all to be done in Stoic moderation. That doesn’t quite line up with the idea that “they placed human sexual satisfaction at the center of their definition of human flourishing”.
Brothels were ubiquitous and many (possibly a majority) of the prostitutes were slaves. Servitude in a brothel was even sometimes used as a judicial punishment. One wonders what this means when considering Paul’s writings about the prostitutes is Corinth.
There actually was something resembling a “gay identity”. Astrological texts show that Roman culture was familiar with the idea that a person could be inclined from birth toward homosexuality.
There are also records of homosexual couples of the same age and social status holding wedding ceremonies, although such marriages had no legal force. Such couplings were frowned on but they did exist.
It’s important to remember that Roman sexual ethics were a Shame Culture not a Guilt Culture. That is also something to take into account when you’re reading New Testament writers who are reacting against Roman culture.
Enlightenment sexual ethics are, by constrast, based not on Shame or Guilt but Autonomy (aka holy Consent).
The two great sins of modern sexual ethics are violating someone’s Autonomy (hence the worship of consent) and preventing a person from exercising their Autonomy (hence why the LGBT community is willing to use legal force to make you accept them).
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“It’s important to remember that Roman sexual ethics were a Shame Culture not a Guilt Culture. That is also something to take into account when you’re reading New Testament writers who are reacting against Roman culture.”
Isn’t that the direction were heading in now, more of a shame culture than a guilt culture? Women seem to be shaming men about everything these days, e.g. MGTOW, Player’s more skillfully playing the ‘SMP game’ with them than they had in the past (pumping and dumping), good men (marriageable) refusing to marry the CC riders or single mommies, men ghosting women who show any interest in having a relationship instead of just a hook-up, etc. etc.
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Shame based culture’s are the norm. Guilt based cultures are rare. NW euro countries are the most guilt based. That leads to high trust which has great advantages but is vulnerable to exploitation.
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Cameron,
It would seem that a guilt based culture would have to be founded on a system of moral absolutes. NW European countries and by extension the US, being of a Judeo-Christian ethical background (at least up until the 20th century), seem to model what you wrote. This would fit with race hustlers exploiting the concept of white guilt, even though slavery ended a century and a half ago.
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You’re not the first to remark that Cancel Culture, [a wonderful idea, culture should have been canceled a long time ago], resembles traditional Shame Culture.
Main difference being, at least in comparison to the Roman variety, straight white males are on the bottom of the totem pole. The values are inverted.
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My company has been in the news for the white male privilege course the VPs have to take. It’s been going on there for years.
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Guilt is based on shame. When sluts were shamed they felt guilty. So there is no distinction between shaem based and guilt based. Fake distinction.
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Scott’s knowledge would help here. Guessing guilt is more a result of internal self policing. Shame is more external – other people know what you did.
You feel guilty whether you got caught or not.
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Cameron, I think you are right to an extent, but the distinction is mostly semantic.
Liberals have appropriated the word “shame” much like “pride” and “brave” and so many others.
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In a Guilt Culture, conformity is enforced by getting people to internalize an absolute moral code. A moral violation is wrong whether or not others know about it. The individual is trained to feel guilt, which can be purged by confessing, making amends, and facing whatever punishment may result if the violation is serious enough. The Christian concept of sin and confession is a classic expression of Guilt Culture.
Guilt: “What I did is bad”.
A Shame Culture enforces conformity by fear of external sanction. Asian cultures are the archetypal examples, where maintaining “face” is paramount.
Shame: “I am bad, because what I did caused me to lose face in front of others”
There is a good reason why the Kyle Harper book I cited is called From Shame To Sin.
To illustrate, compare the Christian with the Greco-Roman view of homosexuality.
Guilt: homosexual acts are inherently wrong.
Shame: It is proper for a free Roman the “top” whenever sexual activity takes place. Exactly who a Roman man penetrates doesn’t matter so much, as long he’s the one doing the penetrating. On the other hand it is shameful for a Roman man to take the passive, female role. As for slaves or prostitutes, well, they don’t have any honour to begin with. Either way homosexuality isn’t seen as wrong per se, it’s a matter of who takes which role and the social status associated with each.
Guilt is present in Shame Cultures and Shame is present in Guilt Cultures, of course. These aren’t rigid categories.
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In regard to “guilt” and “shame”, it helps to distinguish the difference between personal guilt and shame, and guilt and shame as they are defined by cultural anthropology. I think this discussion is making reference to the latter, but there are some who remain confused about this distinction. I covered the cultural anthropology aspect in several previous posts, most notably these.
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Guilt: homosexual acts are inherently wrong.
Shame: It is proper for a free Roman the “top” whenever sexual activity takes place. Exactly who a Roman man penetrates doesn’t matter so much, as long he’s the one doing the penetrating. On the other hand it is shameful for a Roman man to take the passive, female role.
In this connection, it is important to understand that much of the “pushback” against the Christian position on homosexuality is based on the move away from RvG to HvS in the culture.
The Christian condemnation of homosexuality, from the religious perspective, is RvG — it is an act which is a sin. It is an act which creates personal guilt. It doesn’t, from a Christian point of view, make a person, as their totality, “shameful”, but it does make them guilty of the sin of engaging in homosexual sex. So Christian morality says with respect to people who engage in homosexual sex that we are to “love the sinner, but hate the sin” because while the sin creates real guilt, it doesn’t blot out their personhood — sin is something you do, not something you are, under RvG (leaving aside Original Sin, for the moment).
Someone coming from an HvS point of view (whether Christian or secular) has problems with that approach, because from an HvS point of view a “sin” is something that makes one shameful as a person. The distinction between the person and the sin isn’t made — they are merged, such that declaring someone as engaging in sinful acts makes that person a “shameful person” in total. So from this perspective, even if you say you are loving the sinner but hating the sin, this rings false to people’s ears if they are coming from an HvS perspective, because when someone is criticized for engaging in sin, that criticism is heard/received from an HvS-perspective person as saying that their person is shameful. And so such people tend to say that the adage of “loving the sinner, hating the sin” is merely a smoke-screen/cover/platitude to cover up the underlying feeling that the person who has committed the sin is a shameful person, and therefore less worthy of being loved.
As Jack notes in his prior articles, the perspectives are blended and merged, they occur together. Christianity as a system is an RvG system, but many Christians are de facto HvS, or they grew up in Christian families and cultures or churches that were de facto HvS, and so their understanding of how Christianity works is HvS and not RvG. This has come up again and again and again in the fighting about homosexuality, on both sides of the issue, ironically.
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Nova please define those acronyms. ….vs guilt. …..vs shame. Sorry for being dense.
[Jack: It’s in the posts I listed above.]
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Righteousness vs Guilt = RvG
Honor vs Shame = HvS
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Hey, yesterday when I was running errands…..an Asian Activist group was protesting “crimes against Asian Americans” at city hall in Fresno, all of them under 30. All had signs that said “Asian Hate Stops When White Racism Ends” or something like this. It was a group of almost 100 people
Funny, even in Fresno….99.9999999999999999999999999% of all non-Asian on Asian crime is conducted by another racial group “that cannot be mentioned”
Asian Americans have swallowed the Kool-Aid here too. A shame. They were for almost 100 years considered the “model minority” so to speak. Now? Just victimhood, and we can’t call out the real culprits. That would indeed be “racist”
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It’s always white people’s fault. Always.
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RPA
My main point is how cavalier most people are in light of the more you know,the more guilty you are for not doing right!MainlyTHIS:JAMES3:1”Not many of you should become teachers,my fellow believers,because you know those of us who teach will be judged more
Strictly”!How many take that serious!?
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Almost everything that is happening in the west today, of which sex is a small part, is because today’s people have not read history. Western history. They don’t even know where their own traditions, language, culture, politics, law, and society come from. Like, not at all. I am just as guilty of this as anyone – I have a good sense of history, but it’s thumbnail sketch version/35,000 feet view.
I had a classics teacher in high school – taught Latin, Western history, Ancient and Medieval History – who told us repeatedly that American society was paralleling Rome step for step, chapter and verse, from stem to stern. I didn’t really get what she was talking about, but I sure as hell do now. She also was very clear about war –
“The Civil War was not a war to end slavery. It was about states’ rights vs. federal power, and at bottom it was about MONEY, honey. All wars, every last one of them, are about who will get the money, who will get more money, who takes the money, and who is forced to give up money.”
In our ridiculous narcissism, we think history began with our own consciousnesses. We think that we are the very first people in human history to deal with these things. We think no one else has ever dealt with sexual lack, inability to get what you want from life, women, marriage, and work; divorce, or sexual depravity.
The “drafters” of the contemporary “vision” are anti-vision: the idea is for everyone to make his/her/its own vision, with no cohesion — nether the Greco-Roman one, nor the Christian one, nor the Confucian one, etc. Rather it’s Novaseeker’s vision for Novaseeker, Jack’s vision for Jack. There is no cohesion. ….. We are having a much harder time, however, with the new and different challenge that is facing us, a challenge that wasn’t presented to the Christians who were dealing with the world of Greco-Roman paganism.
That can’t last. What will happen is that a culture/society will conquer us and impose their language, culture, politics, law, etc. on us. A new hegemonic culture will emerge and will impose its will on vanquished societies – of which ours will be in the next 50-100 years.
Empires don’t last forever. Our narcissism in the US was our severely erroneous belief that ours would. The barbarians are at the gates. We are watching the United States crumble and fall, in real time.
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Thats what always happens!But most people never see or read the GREATBOOKSFORMENtm!Even here in the manosphere alot seem to think books were purposely written for women to read also?Most men including most kings in history could’nt read or write!Maybe thats why st.paul instructs wives to ask their husbands questions at home¬ in the church?Deti has known about GREATBOOKSFORMEN for many years!He like I know far more than we ever say right,deti?
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Prof – Paul’s instructions in Corinthians for wives to ask their husbands was primarily due to God’s ordained authority hierarchy. A woman asking her husband questions on theology and him subsequently teaching her reinforces the structure. He uses the same rationale in Titus when he does not permit women to be in positions of authority over men (elder/teacher) because it inverts the structure.
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The US certainly won’t last forever, but its demise isn’t coming very soon. Several reasons for that.
No other civilization has the military heft to unseat the US, and that military hefty isn’t going to simply implode, either. Someone will control the vast amount of disproportionate, raw power that the US military has, whether it is the US or a successor to the US state, not someone else.
The name of the game, in terms of power, is moving beyond the “nation state” phase of the game. It hasn’t moved past it quite yet, but that’s where it’s going. States will continue to exist, but the real power will be (and in many ways already is) operating at a level above the nation-state level, and manipulating nation-states via its power. Nation-states, and the military and cultural power that they project, will be permitted to continue more or less as long as it serves the actual power holders, who are globalist/supra-national in scope and identity, for that to be the case.
====
Much more likely scenarios involve the internal change of the US from its current arrangements, socio-politically, to a successor arrangement by means of generational change which creates a situation of far greater political consensus, and allows long-standing American “particularities” to be dismantled. This would occur in a consensual way, again by means of a stronger future political consensus, once the Boomers and most of Gen X are gone, and the US military will support the changes because the succession will be consensual and evolutionary in nature. The successor entity may still be called the United States, or it may be called something else, but its internal composition will be completely different politically, constitutionally and demographically. And the successor will remain a strong nation-state, perhaps still the strongest individual one, while no longer being an absolute global hegemon, while the emergent international order will be once again multi-polar in nature.
The successor will not be utterly different from what came before, but still identifiable as “American” in comparison to other cultures. It will not be a white, middle-class society, but a mostly brown, mostly underclass society underneath a small, mostly white and Asian, techno-expertised overclass which rules on behalf of the ownership class. The overall ordering will emphasize unity, diversity, equity and so on as the governing ideology and framework for public morality, and will be nominally electoral in a republic/democracy vein, while the actual power is monopolized by the small expertised group on behalf of the owners — as it largely already is today. The role of moderated/influenced/controlled news, entertainment and social media in constructing and maintaining this successor will be paramount, and is already manifest in its early stages.
Christianity will persist in the successor in some form. My best guess on that is that there will be a “mainstream” form that is tolerated and an “underground” form that is technically legal and tolerated but widely and deeply discriminated against privately in the new social and moral frameworks. The latter will therefore be a small group. The former may remain a sizeable group (if much smaller than it was historically) if it is capable of adopting the new emergent social/moral paradigms — if it isn’t, it will fade in importance.
None of that is set in stone, and what actually happens will of course not be exactly like that. But some version of that is much more likely than an absolute displacement of the United States by a totally different successor civilization from another part of the world.
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Agree in principle. After the Roman Empire “collapsed” sure, the immediate effects were great….but many parts of the empire continued to “function” normally in practice despite the lack of central authority depending on the province, ability of the local governor and loyalty to him in that area……..the startings / stirrings of the feudal system
Even after the surrender of Nazi Germany. Many a bureaucrat still had work…most people did still have jobs. sure, cleaning the ruins of the bombed out medieval cities, cigarettes for about a year became legit currency along side Reich Marks and the new Deutsch mark. People suffered in lack of housing, electricity, rationing….but things did stabilize….it took another decade to get to the standard of living pre-1939 invasion of Poland…..
Even in Venezuela, dire situation….but the lights are on albeit sometimes partially. People are up looking for work, their daily commodities…….it hasn’t become “mad max”
Even the grinding to a halt of the Soviet era of Russia and Eastern Europe. Stores empty, the whole stinking mess falling apart, still food to be found…….a transition…..very little (if any starvation). More of a “rusting apart” if you will…..
Probably more like Orwell’s “1984” in some way or ways. People housed……basics, well…holding. Elevators no longer repaired “take the stairs brother, its good exercise!”
Ramshackled slums, there was beer and sex still to be had (that will never go away). Just a “falling apart” if you will.
There will be a more turmoil to come…….open street fighting, production halted. I pray it doesn’t turn into a “Cultural Revolution” a la China 1966-1968. The suffering caused by that was a scale of an actual civil war. Millions died, and the system didn’t care (it actually played both sides advocating it). It was “meant” to purge the intellectuals, the middle class, the ones with some ambition, people who would be a nusiance to “the people” and of course the old, the sick, the disabled…….
A total collapse of the USA on all levels would throw the world into such chaos, the elite cannot and will not allow that.
It will be a sad trapping of “what once was” but I don’t foresee “mad max”
Who knows I could be wrong. A technological elite, their support and layer of people who do okay and serve them……..and a massive multi-colored poverty that may have food, access to beer, sex, porn, and stupid things like a lottery or “bread and circuses” type of thing. Most freedoms will be gone or so watered down…….
The elite cannot have 99.99999999999999999working in brotherhood on communes. They don’t want that, they know they could be easily overthrown. It will be slow decline, weeding out, idioacracy kind of thing………
I’ll stop..this could be a discussion of its own
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Predicted by some to be like the worst aspects of Brazil, India and the EU. Best guess is non-elite white people will exist as hicks in the countryside.
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True redpill alert!Everybody thinks I did’nt notice the elephant in the room yesterday?Female supremacists?You mean like the great diana of the ephesians?Who fell from heaven like satan?&all the good decent people of the day proudly beat on boys in her/his honor,as they still do today?But lets talk more about ”options”,”life scripts”&GAME right?
FEMINAZISM predates the church&some lesbian child molestors in seneca falls in the 1800s!
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Slavery was a flashpoint, and it became an issue. A legitimate one, but not the sole cause. It was used like an issue in any other war. “If we don’t stop Hiler our women will be raped” and “If we don’t stand up to the Communists, Christmas will be made against the law” (that sort of thing Slavery was used for in the Civil War). What was the result? Reconstruction and a MASSIVE federal power grab concerning the states, especially in the defeated South. It set the stage of what was to come with the Federal reserve and of course the federal powers for WWI , the New Deal, WW II, Great Society and every other agency since.
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In practice the United States ceased to exist when the South was not allowed to secede. States are no longer joined by choice, but by force, and the nuclear option for checking federal excess by walking away from a bad deal is gone. The federal government now has even less incentive to govern in such a way that is acceptable to all states.
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When I lived in Vermont as a college student…..there was “supposedly” a clause to let Vermont leave. Nonsense. When I lived in San Francisco, there supposedly is a clause that to let the City separate from the rest of California into a “city-state”. Nonsense.
Texans claim proudly that they cannot “leave the Union at any time. It is guaranteed in the State Constitution.” Nonsense. The Civil War proved that. (Texas joined the confederacy.)
In New York State, many say there is a clause that allows NYC to be separated from the rest of the state. Nonsense.
All wives tales, rumors. The Civil War proved pretty much, no state, city or area is “leaving” the Union without dire consequences from the Feds.
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Off topic,
Just wanted to post a plug for Jack Phillips’ new book, “The Cost of My Faith”.
Went to the cake shop to pick up some brownies and he was selling these at the counter.
Got an autograph:
“Liz-
I hope that you are encouraged as you read my story- Enjoy!”
🙂
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Yes, and even those few remaining of the previous generations who just KNEW that America was invincible (I’m talking here about the so-called “Greatest” Generation and the Silents) are now admitting that it’s all over. Rarely ever does one hear the mindless woofing of “USA! USA!” that was the reflexive response to any evidence of America going off the rails. They won’t usually admit to the collapse being in progress, but they won’t dispute you anymore when you bring it up, either. That’s probably the most honest response we’ll ever get out of them; they just can’t flat-out admit that they were both wrong and misguided. When you realize after eight or nine decades of life that everything you were ever taught to believe about your country and your society was a lie, it’s traumatic enough to destroy you.
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I have noticed now that there is no where you can go to escape woke.
Even on linkdin, which is supposed to be a site to make professional connections, I now get suggestions like “here are some black influencers you should follow and amplify.”
It is unabashed, naked and makes you wonder with a cold shiver “what happens to me if I don’t follow and amplify these?”
It occurred to me just last night, again. I was on DiscoveryPlus trying to find a cool forensic crime show to watch, and there is a whole section entitled “uncovering racism and injustice in America.” And I thought the only good thing that MIGHT happen is people will get sick of this. Like, this level of in your face thought control will be shunned, because it is becoming a coercive cartoonish caricature of itself, and people might just sequester it as nonsense.
One can hope.
But I think the civilization that is replacing the former “America” is what is being shaped here, ala Novas comment above. It’s pretty creepy.
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Like, I don’t want to watch shows in that section of DiscoveryPlus–not because they might not have a point to make, but because I don’t like being manipulated into what to think that openly and blatantly.
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But I think, I am my father’s son. This is exactly why he left Yugoslavia. He could not tolerate smiling and repeating the lie. But there is no America for me to flee to.
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Serbia is probably less woke.
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Even on linkdin, which is supposed to be a site to make professional connections, I now get suggestions like “here are some black influencers you should follow and amplify.”
It is unabashed, naked and makes you wonder with a cold shiver “what happens to me if I don’t follow and amplify these?”
LinkedIn has become a woke cesspool ovrr the last half decade. Even though, to give credit where credit is due, it has been instrumental in landing me my last three jobs, it is still hyper-obssessed with things that have nothing to do with professional networking and everything to do with echoing and amplifying the “feelings” of the “important” demographics.
One of the things that most amazes me about LinkedIn is that so many people editorialize so freely on the site, using their real names and current position descriptions, apparently insouciantly unaware (or unconcerned) that current or future employers can, and almost certainly will be looking at their LinkedIn history, as they use every other social media outlet to track people.
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Scott be old-school like other natural aloof alphas &watch jack klugmans quincy M.E. tv show!
It was way before total woke culture!
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Eh I don’t know……..Internet commercials on YouTube make it seem 50% of the USA is black. Most couples now on commericals always involve a black man and a white woman. I go to the book store (Barnes & Noble) whole tables and sections now: “African American Voices” / “Racism In America” and “Her Story” (feminist revisionist history). In the media area “Celebrating Female Voices In The Studio” (and always some quasi-cute woman with a guitar being featured)
In the magazines “Black Voices” and “African American Interest”
I don’t see any African Americans in this bookstore, or Latin….mostly whites and Asians. The rare black dude I see is in the business section, or checking out travel books.
I had to ORDER a copy of Steinbecks “The Grapes of Wrath” (and that takes place HERE in the Fresno area) because they don’t keep classics like this on hand anymore.
Tons of Environmental Activism stuff on tables. Lots of Rachael Maddows face on some new “groundbreaking” book she has published about hating Trump or whatever
Look, The black experience is an American experience. I was pro black so to speak where I grew up, long before I ever mety a person of this background. Plenty of dumb people “in the city” too Imight add. A persons color doesn’t make an exception for justplain stupidity. I have a deep, deep love for jazz, soul, gospel and “soul food” and I thought that Iceberg Slim as a fiction writer was WAY ahead of his time. I just though and believed and was raised that “it was all ours” because we were all Americans (thank you Mr. Langston Hughes).
People bean counting about how many diverse friends they have, or what background. Can’t take a joke……but then talk about how black AMericans are “such great entertainers” (isn’t that racist???? or making a cross assumption?????)
This whole thing is now so absurd, and I think many balck Americans know this too. This country elected by a comfortable majority a black man as president twice. Sorry. Not buying this “racism” and “institutionalized racism” thing anymore. Perhaps at one time I could say or stand on practical injustices…..but now??????
Frankly speaking, if the black man is supposedly under my thumb, why can’t get him to do my dishes????
A joke! A joke! Sue me. If we had more HUMOR on this stuff like we did in the 1970’s and 1980’s perhaps we could get over some of this. If racism is Americas “dirty secret” it certainly can’t keep it one.
AS you were
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Most couples now on commericals always involve a black man and a white woman.
Again, same as we see with the Kardashian complex. It’s push advocacy, like we saw in the time from 2000-2015, where it seemed around 50% of major characters on TV programs were gay. When the powers that control what entertainment contains have decided that they want to push and promote something, they disproportionately misrepresent it in entertainment, because “narratives matter”. They’re right about that — narratives/stories/drama persuades on a deeper and broader level than propositional arguments do. And right now they want to push BM/WW pairing, very obviously.
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Nope. Y’all either don’t watch a lot of TV (if so God bless ya) or aren’t paying attention. Over the past 5,6..whatever years the pairing they push is WM/BW. It started VERY abruptly as if the few major ad agencies all got a memo. They already accomplished making the BM/WW pairing normal and hip quite a few years ago. WM as a group not super enthusiastic about BW (no group of men is as Steve Sailer has showed with stats). The message they send is BM get your women and you better be grateful you WM cuck to get the black goddesses that BM (as a group) reject.
Encouraging BM to pair with BW would help BW but their instincts are destructive not charitable.
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You are part right and partly wrong, Cameron.
Right about the media push to normalize WM/BW pairings. Wrong about the idea you insinuate that black women’s “rejection” by black men is any kind of statement about the attractiveness of black women .
It’s far more complicated than that, but I don’t have the time I need for a Nova-style expository comment.
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Whelp. Kohl’s doesn’t seem to have that memo handy I guess.
Their homepage for “pride month” features a polyamory couple, which is BM/BW/WW, as you can see here: https://www.kohls.com/catalog.jsp?CN=Assortment:Pride (you have to let the pictures cycle through to see it). Rob Derer had this on his Twitter yesterday.
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Cameron’s observation is correct. It’s not that there are NO portrayal of BM/WW pairings. It’s the numbers of BW/WM relationships displayed has exploded. Having seen up close the difference generationally, it’s certainly a chicken egg question. But the black men with white women meme is old news. NYT wrote about what Cameron has observed.
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Their realy just trying to get incels&the MGTOW to beleive theirs more women dating&marriage options&oppertunities out here!Is’nt going to work with the vast majority of them because womens nature is the same period all across the HUMAN RACE!!!No matter what so-called racial realists say!!Hence part of the reason for the GBFM vs roissyinDC/citizen renegade/heartist war all those years ago!!The other main part was something about evo-pysch and something called GAMEtm!!No one knows what those things are,certainly not myself,right!?
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I don’t generally watch TV or films, other than sometimes out of the side of my eyes when someone else is watching, so it’s likely I have missed out on the onslaught of WM/BW couples being portrayed.
I wonder whether the portrayal of such pairings in the media will substantially increase the number of them in real life, as it appears to have done with the BM/WW pairings, which have certainly risen a lot in real life, at least around here, in the past 10 years or so.
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Actually we don’t watch a lot of it either.
I do however, peripherally keep an eye on the black femininity scene ( it’s a whole thing), and those bloggers and YouTubers follow it closely.
I still think that -whether it was the couple of occasions when I was young- or with our daughters now, it’s more a function of cultural interests and affinity than media influence. Media is a part but not the sole driver.
But I could be wrong about that.
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You don’t have to watch the networks or cable to see this. I watch a lot of YouTube videos on a variety of topics – they show lots of commercials. I don’t know if the newer streaming platforms like Netflix show commercials since I don’t use them.
I don’t know that black women are physically unattractive to black men. I’m not black but my guess is black men defect from black women because black women are aggressive, loud don’t act super feminine, etc. In general of course. This may be matriarchal strong black woman culture – who knows. “Defecting from” probably a more accurate phrase than “rejection of.”
We’ve discussed this before. What I resent is being propogandized. People are gonna choose who they choose – don’t need propoganda
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I do have a TV. I use it pretty much for only playing my Atari 2600. If TV, or if PBS even made decent productions. I would probably watch a bit more. I did watch “Mad Men” occasionaly over its run because of the amazing detail to sixties design and fashion. Masters. I was a decent show. Had its moments.
“Nova” on PBS is so woke now. Everything is about climate change, and the mean old USA causing it. I liked the “History Channel” back in the early / mid 1990’s. Really great stuff…..but now everything is about or ties to Hitler, aliens, or stuff that has little to do with history.
This series on PBS “Cosmos” (1980) was probably the pinnacle. Carl Sagan even to my ten year old mind when I watched this “just broke it all down” to a level I could understand. Where is the justice? He also was professor at nearby Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. We upstaters back then were so proud
Clip from Cosmos.
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Marty Stouffers Wild America was my favorite PBS show. Atari 2600 – there’s some memories.
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Cameron nothing beats GBFMS wild&great manosphere educational commenting or the 16-bit era of the genesis&snes- now thats some good gaming!!
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SEGA! Nintendo sucks.
Me first video game system was the Vectrex. You couldn’t beat up effeminants on Vectrex.
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As a child this frightened me, the classic WBGH Boston PBS….then usually the start of “Masterpiece Theater” (which meant it was time for bed) or “Mystery”
Ah…..PBS today???? Really nothing. Sure, News Hour isn’t too bad…but everything is woke, hate America and really just like any other network…..oh no commercials??? Yeah, five minutes before every program telling you the sponsors of said program.
Anyway…..
WBGH logo on PBS 1970’s thru 1980’s
Mystery Intro 1980’s. Vincent Price was the best host, but DIana RIgg also was good…
And of course “Masterpiece Theater” PBS was a stellar network, and at one time, it was a decent alternative to much of mainstream commercial networks.
Ah memories! Btw…the only problem with Atari was no pause for many of the arcade games….thus going to the bathroom is impossible with most of them
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We watched Benny Hill. It was funny, and it was a bit risque for the time.
I bought a 2600 after that console was way past its prime and you could get games for a few bucks in clear out bins. Our older boys played 2600 games at their grandparents’ and had a ball.
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