Virgins DO NOT have moral agency. Non-virgins DO, under conditions.
Targeted Readership: Men
Theme: Female Agency and Accountability
Author’s Note: This post pieces together several excerpts of posts and images that once appeared on Artisanal Toad’s Hall, hereby resuscitated after a few hours combing through The Wayback Machine.
Reader’s Note: This post was requested by Derek L. Ramsey, AKA ramman3000.
Length: 3,700 words
Reading Time: 20 minutes
Introduction
First of all, I’ll say a few words about Artisanal Toad for those readers who are unfamiliar with him. Artisanal Toad is believed to be a polygynous Mormon. He boasted of having two “Ninja” wives, but it could not be ascertained how serious he was about this claim. He was a frequent commenter in the Classic Christian Manosphere and started his own blog in August 2013. He posted long essays quite regularly up until he stopped posting altogether in December 2017. Then in early 2019, he vanished from WordPress without any farewell.
Toad held controversial stances on sex, marriage, adultery, divorce, lesb!an h0m0sexuality, polygyny, and prost!tut!on. The most interesting thing about his contribution to the Christian Red Pill Lore is his unique interpretation of sex and marriage that was based entirely on scripture and stood completely on its own merit. He used this interpretation to support all his arguments, and no one could definitively prove that his interpretation was wrong (going on a point-by-point basis). Over the course of his 4 years of blogging, in addition to the basic explanations of his stances, he addressed a number of larger arguments that concerned many of the controversial implications that would result if his views were widely accepted as Biblical Truth. After a time, it became evident that the majority of his readers just couldn’t stomach it — even if it were true — mainly because of the implications. Apparently, this is why he stopped blogging.
Read on and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Links are provided for those readers who wish to further investigate Toadistry. Toad preferred the NASB, so that is what I’ve linked to here.
Male Authority is Preeminent
“The man was authorized by God to begin marriage because marriage begins the family and family is the container in which children are to be brought into this world. That is truth. Children need both their biological mother and father working together to raise them. Children need both their parents to work together to raise them. So, how does this begin?
First is the change in status as the man leaves and goes out from under the authority of his father and mother to be the head of his own house. The man has sexual intercourse with the eligible virgin and she becomes his wife. When this occurs, according to Jesus (Matthew 19:4-6), it is God who makes the two “one flesh” in a spiritual joining that the Apostle Paul said was the same as the spiritual joining that makes the Christian a member of the body of Christ (Ephesians 5:28-32). It is a great mystery. Thus, the “one flesh” portion of Genesis 2:24 is the spiritual joining that is the act of God and cannot be the act of man. This act of God occurs when the man penetrates his wife and they have sexual intercourse…”
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Theology For Men of the West: Biblical Marriage (2017/3/11)
Sexual intercourse is an act of man that produces marriage and pair bonding (under certain conditions). The “becoming one flesh” is an act of God that happens during sex. Thus, Toad notes that “becoming one flesh” is concomitant with coitus, but sexual intercourse and “becoming one flesh” are NOT the same thing. “One flesh” refers to the spiritual pair bonding that occurs as a result of virginal coitus. Therefore, sex can produce “one flesh”, but the pair bonding aspect of sex / marriage requires virginal sex and/or the power of God. A sexual relationship that is lacking any of these aspects is debased.
To support this argument, Toad observes that the Hebrew word, “dabaq”, used in Genesis 2:24 (where man and wife become one flesh) means the exact same thing as the Greek word “kollao” in 1st Corinthians 6:16 (where a man and a prost!tute become one flesh). In Matthew 19:5 (written in Greek), Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24, and the word used here is “kollao”, thereby establishing the equivalent meaning of dabaq and kollao.
Virgin Sex constitutes a Natural Marriage*
This is one of Toad’s primary claims that underpins all his other arguments.
“As we’ve just seen in both Exodus 22:16 and Deuteronomy 22:28-29, sex is what makes the two married, which is exactly what Genesis 2:24 said. In 1st Corinthians 6:16 we discover that the Hebrew word “dabaq” that gets translated into English as “cleave” or “joined” in Genesis 2:24 actually means sex. There is no ceremony and nobody has to preside over anything or solemnize anything, all that’s required is sex…”
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: The Lie That Caused The Adultery Epidemic (2016/6/3)
So essentially, Virginal Sex = Marriage.
“A man begins a marriage to a virgin with the act of penetration (sexual intercourse) and with that act he gives his consent and commitment to the marriage. The virgin is automatically married by that act, provided the man was eligible to marry her, because she has no agency as a virgin. Unlike a virgin, a widow or a legitimately divorced woman has agency. She must agree to be married before the act of intercourse will make her married.”
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Theology For Men of the West: Biblical Marriage (2017/3/11)
The first part carries the implications that (1) every non-virgin woman is married in the eyes of God to the first guy with whom she had sexual intercourse, and that (2) she commits adultery with every other guy she may sleep with — including a man she may be currently formally married to (if he wasn’t her first). (3) If a man formally marries a woman who is not a virgin, and her first partner is still living, then the marriage is essentially institutionalized adultery. Under these assumptions, Toad estimated that 80% of marriages among Church-goers is adulterous!
In the same essay, Toad gives further evidence that virginal sex constitutes a natural marriage.
“All women are virgins when they marry. The act of penetrative sexual intercourse with the virgin is what begins a marriage and Scripture does not require any other act, which is why the woman who was sold by her father to be a concubine (Exodus 21:7-10), the woman who was captured in battle (Deuteronomy 21:10-14), and even the woman who was r@ped (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) were all married with that act. News Flash: The virgin’s consent is not required. This means whether she knew she was being married or not, whether she wanted to be married or not, with that act she is married. And the Churchians will screech over this, but Scripture is clear what the words of the text mean because the Apostle Paul showed us.”
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Theology For Men of the West: Biblical Marriage (2017/3/11)
Another very controversial point here is that virgins who have sex become married by that act, whether she knows it or not. Every non-virgin woman is married to her first partner!
* I’ve added the adjective “natural marriage” for clarity. I believe this would also be considered a covenant marriage as well.
Virgins DO NOT have Agency
“In Genesis 3:16 God issued his first judgment on mankind, saying “he shall rule over you.” I have written about this before and effectively God declared women to be incompetent and appointed their [father or] husband as their guardian. While it might be argued that prior to Christ the husband-wife relationship was primarily a master-servant relationship, it cannot be argued that the father-daughter relationship is anything but a guardian-ward relationship.”
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Ho, ho, ho. (2016/12/14)
This further supports the presumption that male authority is preeminent. This agrees with Sharkly’s stance. Male authority is also present in the act of sex / marriage.
“The act of coitus is the man’s consent, agreement and commitment to marriage. It is automatic if he engages in the act but he has a choice in whether to engage in that activity.
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Ho, ho, ho. (2016/12/14)
IOW, Sex is an act of commitment from the man. This transfers the woman from her father’s authority to the man’s. If the sexual intercourse happened without the father’s knowledge, he can annul the union if he disagrees (Exodus 22:17).
In Toad’s Churchian Challenge (2017/3/17), Artisanal Toad went over some of the same scriptures already mentioned to explain why he believes virgins have no agency.
“…when the virgin has sex with a man, she is married to that man whether she knew it or not, whether she agreed to be married or not. A virgin does not have agency and she can be married against her will without her consent. This is proven by the fact that in Exodus 21 a woman could be sold by her father to be the wife (concubine*) of a man whether she agreed or not. In Deuteronomy 21, we see that a woman captured in battle can become the wife of a man whether she agrees or not when he has sex with her. In Deuteronomy 22 we see that the virgin not betrothed who is r@ped (and it is discovered) is married to the man who r@ped her.”
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Toad’s Churchian Challenge (2017/3/17)
* Toad notes that both a wife and a concubine are both married. The difference between a wife and a concubine is that a wife has certain rights and privileges that the concubine does not.
Moreover, the virgin is a ward of her father and can therefore be married off against her will, or r@ped / seduced into sex / natural marriage. Being a ward of her father implies that she does not have agency.
Under these conditions, sex alone will establish the man’s authority over her and produce a one flesh bond. The virgin is therefore married to him because she does not have agency nor authority over herself.
Non-Virgins DO have Agency
“The woman who is not a virgin and not married does have a choice and absent her agreement sex is meaningless. We already addressed this issue and the relevant portion is this:
Numbers 30:3-5 is specific as to the authority of the father over his daughter and Exodus 22:17 clarifies that even if a daughter’s agreement to marry resulted in the act of marriage, the father (in the day he heard of it) had the authority to forbid her agreement, thus nullifying the resulting marriage. He refused the agreement to marry for her and thus the sex did not create a marriage. Numbers 30:9 is very specific in detailing that the widow and divorced woman have agency, in that there is no-one with the authority to review their agreements. Whatever agreement or vow they make is binding on them. It follows that they cannot be bound by an agreement they did not make. Likewise, the Apostle Paul (in 1st Corinthians 7:39) is clear that the woman who is no longer bound is free to choose whom she might marry, only in the Lord.
If the father has the authority to refuse marriage to the extent that the act of coitus did not make her married and the widow or divorced woman has the same authority over themselves, how can they be married unless they agree to be married? It stands to reason that if the father had the authority to refuse agreement and thereafter sex did not make the virgin married, then the refusal to agree by the non-virgin was sufficient to prevent marriage.
A non-virgin may be eligible to marry, which means that she may marry. However, [a man’s] vow to marry her is meaningless unless she agrees to marry him because that man is not in authority over that woman and he cannot make a vow that binds her unless she agrees to it. The woman has no authority over the man (and never will), so the idea that her failure or refusal to agree to his vow somehow grants her authority over him is ridiculous.”
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Ho, ho, ho. (2016/12/14)
Here I’ll add one caveat about Toad’s last sentence. In Sexual Authority and Sanctification (2022/8/8), I described how 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 stipulates that a married woman has authority over her husband’s body. This is the only area and context in which a woman has authority over a man.
Consent
Of Virgins
“Genesis 2:24 contains no mention of any requirement for consent by the woman. We know the consent of the woman is not required because a father can sell his daughter to be another man’s wife (concubine) as described in Exodus 21:7-10. The woman captured in battle becomes the man’s wife (Deuteronomy 23:10-14). The eligible virgin becomes the man’s wife due to being r@ped by him if they are discovered (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). The eligible virgin could consent to have sex (she was seduced) which resulted in her marriage, her father had the authority to forbid her agreement (consent) thereby annulling the marriage that resulted from the act of marriage that followed her agreement (Exodus 22:17). Because a virgin can be r@ped into marriage against her will and over her objections and she can agree to be married only to have her marriage annulled, we conclude that the virgin has no agency.”
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Marriage, Whores and Churchians (2017/1/11)
Although virgins can be seduced, they have no agency and therefore can neither give nor deny consent. This agrees with what Donal Graeme said, that virgins have no way of Knowing When To Escape, and that agency is imparted through carnal knowledge.
Of Non-Virgins
“The non-virgin woman [whose husband has died] has agency and is free to choose who she marries (1st Corinthians 7:39), which means she cannot be r@ped into marriage. Therefore, sex alone cannot make her married because she must consent to the marriage.”
“It should be noted that the issue of prostitution comes after a long series of posts that demonstrate that the virgin is married when she has sex, even though she doesn’t know about it, and the issue is somewhat complicated because of that. The thing is, the issue of consent depends on the woman’s status and it is the responsibility of the man to deal with that.”
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Ho, ho, ho. (2016/12/14)
On the last part above, Toad agrees with the Liberal Progressive’s emphasis on a woman’s consent — under the condition that she is a non-virgin, unmarried, and sexually liberated from her father’s authority. Essentially, harlots have agency, even though they are not formally married.
Toad’s account may explain why so many modern women have latched on to the idea of consent as being an important issue to them. If they are sexually liberated non-virgins and free agents, then maybe it is truly a thing.
Accountability
“The number one thing about the ideal man (and Job is the leading candidate for an example) is the implied accountability for his wife. The Godly Christian husband is commanded to love his wife as Christ loves His church. The best example of how this actually happens is in Revelation 3:19, in which Christ is speaking to His church:
“Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. Be zealous therefore and repent!”
In other words, the husband presents his wife as “having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless” by holding her accountable for her behavior. Just as Christ says, He will hold accountable those whom He loves. A Godly man is a just man who does his duty, but what the feminist narrative cannot tolerate is a man who holds a woman accountable. This is the feminist perversion of the ideal husband.”
Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Perverting The Ideal Husband (2017/2/7)
Basically, men are responsible for holding their wife / wives accountable.
Summary
In summary, what I’ve gathered from reading through Artisanal Toad’s posts are the following points.
- Virgins have no agency.
- Virgins are under their father’s authority until married.
- “Becoming one flesh” (i.e. cleaving / clinginess / pair bonding), is created by God.
- Virgin sex always leads to “becoming one flesh” / cleaving, and this is what constitutes marriage in God’s eyes.
- Sex usually leads to “becoming one flesh” / cleaving, but maybe not always, depending on the context.
- A woman having sex with any man other than the one who took her virginity is committing adultery.
- Since many women marry a man who wasn’t their first (while the first is still living), most modern marriages are therefore a form of institutionalized adultery.
- Because virgin sex constitutes natural marriage, there is no such thing as premarital sex, unless the couple agreed not to have sex until a prearranged time.
- Formal marriage (and the idea of premarital sex) was an invention of the church that was introduced as a means of power and control.
- Men have the authority to “take” an eligible virgin to wife, with conditions.
- Sexual intercourse is an act of marital commitment from the man, so men should only have sex with a woman he is willing to marry.
- The husband is required to feed, clothe, and shelter his wife (or wives), and also teach them and hold them accountable.
- Married non-virgins are under their husband’s authority.
- Married women are agents under their husband’s authority.
- If a wife exercises her agency as a wife poorly or irresponsibly, then her husband is responsible for dealing with that. However, the husband also has the authority to deal with her as he pleases, up to and including divorcing her.
- Fathers have the power to annul their daughter’s natural marriage by their word.
- Women who are not virgins and whose father annulled their natural marriage should remain in their father’s house and under his authority, but they are able to choose their own husbands. (Fathers are urged to vet her choices.) Under these conditions, women become free agents.
- The women in (17) can have sex outside of marriage and it would not be a sin unless done outside her father’s knowledge and/or permission.
- Fathers should not allow their daughters to do (17), as it would bring shame on the entire family.
- For women who are free agents (i.e. 17), their consent (and by extension their father’s too) is required for sex and/or marriage.
As you can see, there are points here that would strike just about everyone the wrong way; Complementarians, Churchians, Feminists, Liberals, Progressives, Trad-Cons, men, women… Yeah, just about everyone. To me, this suggests that Toad is on to something regarding the Biblical model of marriage (which is now all but forgotten).
The crux of the whole issue is, as Toad pointed out, how we define marriage.
Conclusions
As you can see, Toad’s views align with what we’ve covered in the past about female submission, masculine authority, and the integrity of marriage.
Toad’s Biblical interpretation of sex and marriage brings together many of the topics about female agency and consent that we’ve covered so far, and it also accounts for many of the confusing issues surrounding agency that have come up.
To wit…
- Toad’s stances on agency and consent of virgins and women in general agrees with Donal Graeme’s and Rollo Tomassi’s views, respectively. Furthermore, Toad gives a Biblical explanation of how it works.
- Toad’s views agree with Dalrock’s observations that everyone is in denial about the moral agency of women (i.e. non-virgins).
- Toad explains why even married women lack agency, as Deep Strength described.
- Toad’s views align with Catacomb Resident’s assertion that Covenant Life must come first, and he explains from a Biblical standpoint how the issues of authority, the transfer of authority, the duties of authority should work within the Covenant.
- Toad agrees with Sharkly’s stance that Male authority is (or should be) preeminent, and his interpretation of scripture explains how that authority is transferred from father to husband through the act of sex / marriage.
- Toad’s explanations ties together the important necessity of managing and teaching women through operant conditioning, as deti explained.
- Toad says all responsibility is (or should be) on men, and this supports the obligations that Headship imposes on Men, which I observed in Headship Authority Takes Work (2022/8/12).*
- We’ve already determined that sexual promiscuity debases marriage. Toad’s account fully explains how this works, and why so many modern women are unhaaappy in marriage (because they’re living in adultery).
- Toad’s discussion of consent can be extrapolated to explain why many women have latched on to the idea of consent as being an important issue to them (because they’re sexually liberated).
* Readers will note that the current condition of society has undermined male authority so much that implementing this paradigm of Headship is extremely hard or even impossible.
The only thing that readers might find objectionable is Toad’s definition of natural marriage, and only because of all the messy consequences that would result from admitting all this as God’s truth.
On a personal note, I can see how Toad’s vision of marriage aligns with Jesus’ statements in Matthew 5:27-32, and His description of marriage in Matthew 19:3-9. I can also see the overall wisdom of regarding virginal sex as the primary act that establishes a marriage, and I will put this idea across to my daughters. But yet, I also believe Western society is far too corrupted in both body and mind for this to be applicable in the present day and age. We are living in an age of harlotry and consent.
I hope I’ve presented Toad’s arguments accurately. Readers who are better read on Toadistry are welcome to suggest additions and/or improvements.
Related
- Dalrock: Why so many wives wish their husband would cheat (2012/3/11)
- Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Theology For Men of the West: Adultery (2017/3/12)
- Artisanal Toad’s Hall: Theology For Men of the West: Biblical Marriage (2017/3/11)
- Jim’s Blog: Female sexual preferences (2022/9/11)
- Σ Frame: Do women possess moral agency? (2022/11/2)
- Σ Frame: Donal Graeme on Female Agency (2022/11/3)
- Σ Frame: Rollo Tomassi on Female Agency (2022/11/4)
- Σ Frame: Dalrock on Female Agency (2022/11/7)
- Σ Frame: Deti on Female Agency (2022/11/8)
- Σ Frame: Deep Strength on Women’s Agency (2022/11/9)
- Σ Frame: Sharkly on Women’s Agency (2021/11/10)
- Σ Frame: Catacomb Resident on Moral Agency (2022/11/11)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Jack on Female Agency (2022/11/23)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Kyojiro Kagenuma on Women’s Agency (2022/12/5)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Zippy Catholic’s View of Female Hypoagency (2022/12/12)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Bruce Charlton on Agency (2022/12/13)
- Σ Frame (Red Pill Apostle): Red Pill Apostle on Women’s Moral Agency (2022/12/15)
- Σ Frame (Jack): D. Bradley on Women’s Moral Agency (2022/12/16)
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Σ Frame 
This post on female nature is right up there with ‘Female Sexual Preferences‘ on Jim’s Blog. Both have really shaken up my little snowglobe. This blog has become a valuable source and collection of new ideas for me.
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Agreed. My snowglobe too is really shaken up, have to go back and re-read all this Toadistry.
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I grew up in a church (The Church of Christ) whose ministers all taught some form of the “you are married to the first person you ever had sex with” and “if you are the spouse that leaves, you can never be married again; you have to crawl back to the cheated on spouse and beg them to let you back or be single forever” doctrines.
And at the time of my divorce, I was hoping they would actually enforce the second one, but they caved under the “he was neglecting me through very subjective and nebulous ways, therefore I am exempt from this marriage” argument.
One of the 5 elders actually did make the second argument to her, and she actually said she would rather be seen as an adulterer by the church and take her chances on finding true love than stay in what she described as “a life prison sentence”.
That last part, by the way, is how people with “agency” talk. “I am willing to accept the consequences so I can have what I want.”
But the 4:1 vote meant none of that mattered anyway. It was seen as all my fault because I was not a “servant leader” or whatever.
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It is as Toad said. Married women (non-virgins in general) have a semblance of agency. MORAL agency is yet another matter. She would have displayed moral agency if she repented, submitted to you, and accepted your marriage as being permanent.
As I recall, you were her first. Is that right?
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@Scott,
Whoopty-friggin’-doo! That just means she can’t attend that-there Church of Christ. I mean yeah I guess that’s “agency” but there’s no real consequence to her. Now if we lived in a strict Eastern Orthodox society where she was excommunicated and shunned by her neighbors – well then it might be agency on her part to make that decision.
My favorite part (sarcasm) of your 1st marriage experience is when she revealed to you afterward that when you two married she considered you “a good start.”
“Men marry hoping their bride will never change; women marry hoping the groom will.”
Idealistic vs. opportunistic.
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Maybe no earthly consequences, but there most certainly are/will be spiritual consequences. Of course women of such disposition have such short time horizons and completely so lack understanding of cause and effect as to be completely unable to comprehend this.
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cameron,
I have 3 older divorced female neighbors. From what I can see from the coming and goings, 2 have dated some, but nothing stuck. Their houses are in disrepair and I can’t imagine that they don’t get lonely at times. One drives an hour to Atlanta for work every day, pulls her car into her garage when she gets home and closes the door. (I work from home so I see patterns in behavior.)
All this to say that there are consequences. They may not involve social stigma that other societies have, but sin has a way of working itself into life and making living harder.
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I agree RPA but I guess the point is from the perspective of Scott’s ex at the time, there weren’t really serious (foreseeable) consequences so it’s not like her “agency” was getting much of a workout.
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We need to be careful not to mistake God’s timetable for consequences from “there weren’t really serious (foreseeable) consequences so it’s not like her “agency” was getting much of a workout”.
Some things we do get immediate beat downs. Other times it takes a looooong time for the penalty to show up (I’d argue that this is the worst kind of penalty because we don’t get the painful feedback to correct our behavior). Some things God stays his hand because of his mercy and works on us other ways, assuming we are his and he is somehow working all things for good in our lives.
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Yes I agree RPA. I’m saying from HER perspective she wasn’t exercising her agency very much because there were no serious foreseeble consequences (earthly or otherwise). Obviously she didn’t believe what her church taught eternal-consequence wise and the lack of practical earthly consequences (financial, reputational, her ability to just church-shop and find another church to suit her taste, etc.) means society predictably wouldn’t hold her accountable either.
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@Cameron232
Earthly consequences is a mercy in enabling repentance that would prevent the eternal consequences.
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Right! I’ve actually heard those words used before, or rather a paraphrase of them. “I don’t care about the consequences, I just want to be happy (have what I want).”
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This is how the churchians rob men of their agency in a feminized culture.
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It’s been long enough now, Toad died around the time his blog shut down. He was on his second marriage.
He only had one ninja wife (he might have wished for two of course). I believe they met at VA hospital while he was getting treated for something. She was a nurse and quite a bit younger than he was but was very enamored with him all the way until the end.
But from what I understood, he was another man who was chewed up and spit out by the divorce machine with his first wife.
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I saw him say he has two SUPERMODEL ninja wives. Who could beat up most of the other commenters. I know you’re a real person. Has anyone verified that he wasn’t an elaborate troll with a lot of time on his hands?
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I will always have a soft spot for toad for two reasons.
The first was that he opened my eyes to the Biblical teaching on sex and marriage (especially regarding the formal proof of dabaq). As an Anabaptist, I was raised to believe that sex created a permanent spiritual bond and that divorce was always wrong. But I had never fully understood the Biblical argument underpinning my own belief.
The second was that he was polite and respectful. While I was being excoriated at Dalrock’s blogs, he went out of his way to go to my blog and post this comment:
This is what led me to go to his blog and debate his positions. He never once called me names, censored me, or got emotional. He stuck to the facts, as he understood them, and rarely made any logical errors. I’ve been ever searching for another debate partner that talented.
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That’s interesting Derek. Somewhere I saw a Mennonite make this contention and it wasn’t a manosphere site. BTW, English clergyman Martin Madan, in his treatise, Thelyphthora, makes a case for coitus=marriage.
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Boy that seems like a non-sequitur. That’s sounds like saying that Toad has the power to interpret scripture infallibly and anyone that disagrees is just triggered by the implications of his infallible Biblical interpretation. And that doesn’t even get into the Orthodox/Catholic/Old Protestant objections.
Christ restored the original grace that was lost at the fall. This is true in general and for sacramental marriage in particular. Natural marriage reflects the innate tendency of humans to pair bond with the opposite sex but lacks the sanctifying grace of Christ’s restoration to the pre-fall state.
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Cameron,
I should clarify this statement as being an assessment of a rational set of arguments in a debate. Overall, Toad’s arguments were grossly objectionable to nearly everyone, as I said towards the end of the OP.
Yes, that’s kinda how it was. No one could take down his argument through logical discourse. Instead they took issue with the ramifications.
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I saw lots of people (including Dalrock himself) argue against him using the Bible and obviously Orthodox and Catholics can and did invoke their axioms/dogma/a-rational assumptions. I don’t remember many if any people using a “most men will have to leave their wives by implication” argument against him.
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Spoke with him briefly on Boxer’s blog a few years back. His posts on Dalrock caused Dal to ban him. I personally think it wasn’t Dal who really wanted to ban him…. It was his angry, petty and self-righteous peanut gallery of commenters that wanted Toad banned.
They got their wish.
His posts on Dal were and still are WAY over my head. Even reading this post, I am not getting it.
Since he was banned from Dalrock, I would assume his views probably are indeed biblical or have aspects of it because most of the red pill comments on Dalrock were far, far from being Christian…… and the commenters there couldn’t actually have someone there telling the truth about all of them.
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Toad’s positions are highly technical and logically consistent. Most of Dalrock’s commentariat was completely outclassed. I suspect Toad had a very high IQ (over 140) or was on the autism spectrum and had a spike of intelligence in precisely the splinter skill he excelled at. Normal people have trouble understanding such arguments, let alone making them!
Yes, they were completely based in the Bible, but his axiom was flawed. Toad believed that “Sex leads to becoming one flesh” (Genesis 2:24) and “Fathers have authority over their daughters, who have no agency” (Numbers 30; Exodus 22:16-17). His axiom was that authority took priority over one flesh bonding, creating exceptions. I challenged his axiom by arguing that no exceptions were required. But both arguments were completely Bible-based.
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That’s weird. Are we to understand that the Bible teaches that if a 58 year old crazy syphilitic homeless man rapes your 12 year old daughter that’s he’s her husband? As long as dad (assuming he’s alive to exercise his authority) doesn’t say “no.” Like the ultra-Calvinist God (boy I’m gonna draw fire for this one) that’s a God I wouldn’t worship.
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cameron,
Isn’t the biblical penalty for sexual assault execution? Wouldn’t that serve to free her?
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I guess RPA. So what if he takes off? These things do happen. “You’re married to the 58-year-old syphilitic rapist but don’t worry, when we catch him you’ll be free. In the meantime, enjoy the nunnery.”
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Cameron,
You are making a logical error that many others have made in addressing Toad’s views.
Toad’s arguments represent an entirely different social paradigm from what we are used to. The context is completely different. In addressing this paradigm, you must work within the tenets of said paradigm. You cannot copy and paste arguments and situations from one paradigm to another, or else it falls apart and doesn’t lead to a true conclusion.
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RPA,
Per Toad, consent by the party with agency (either a widow or a virgin’s father) is required for marriage. Without consent, the marriage is annulled and she is freed. Death is not required.
Rape didn’t always mean death. Death would free her to remarry, but could not restore her lost virginity. If a man raped an unmarried virgin (i.e. not betrothed), he had a legal obligation to marry her, that is, they were already married because they had sex. He couldn’t rape and abandon. Death was not prescribed, because forcing the marriage was the appropriate punishment, since he was forced to provide for her for the rest of her life. But, as Toad noted, a father could forbid the marriage, even if the punishment to the rapist was a financial penalty. Thus, a raped woman was not required to marry her rapist, it was up to the father to decide what was best for her.
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Jack, I literally have no idea what you’re saying. You’ll have to be more specific as I lack Toad and Derek’s high IQ. Or that of a college professor like yourself. Not being a smart-@ss. Seriously.
This sort of debate certainly reinforces my confidence in the Churches (EO and RC) of the circular reasoning axiom. If ultra high IQ spergs (Derek’s worthy debate partner) and even higher IQ normies like Derek, can’t come to a consensus then the Bible isn’t interpretable for 99.99999 percent of mere mortals. This is important stuff not splitting hairs over technicalities of no consequence stuff.
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I disagree on both points.
High IQ is not required to interpret the Bible. There is no high IQ requirement to being a prophet and, I suspect, high IQ actually makes it harder to be one. Someone at any IQ level under the guidance of the Holy Spirit—like a prophet—can intuit the truth (or falsehood) of a thing without understanding why a thing is true (or false).
Believing in a logical contradiction is always wrong. You do not have to have a high IQ to reject logical contradictions. You don’t even have to understand why it is a logical contradiction, or even that it is one. But, it is not possible for a prophet to affirm the truth of something that is a logical contradiction.
Logical analysis of the Bible is valid and important, but it is not complete. That is why the Bible both commands the use of prophets while requiring the congregation to examine what it prophesied. Similarly, the Bible praised the Greek Bereans, who examined the scriptures rationally to see if what was taught was correct.
Giving up on reason is just as inappropriate as giving up on prophets (as the church in the West has done).
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The average suburban Christian is not a prophet and most Christians are told to read their Bible. Since they don’t find a NT passage that says what creates marriage, they then have to dig further. Two high IQ people, yourself and Toad, argue back and forth. What chance do they have in gaining any sort of confidence? Almost no Protestant denomination I’m aware of, historically, takes either the Derek or the Toad position. They all had high IQ theologians.
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Are you sure about that?
First, Tertullian confirmed “sex=marriage” in the early church when he cited Mary, the birth of Jesus, and her marriage with Joseph.
Second, we have the evidence of non-Roman apostolic continuity (up to and including Anabaptists). According to Roman Catholic sources, some of these ‘heretics’ allegedly shunned marriage because they rejected the sacrament of marriage. Why would these protesting Christians reject the sacrament of marriage if they thought only an official ceremony was necessary?
Third, in the 20th century, I was indoctrinated that any—including premarital—sex created a permanent until death spiritual bond that spanned space and time. I was not told sex was a marriage ceremony or sacramental marriage, because it wasn’t (see below)
Fourth, as Deep Strength just noted…
…it would be an exceptional and sinful circumstance for extra-marital sex to take place. Marriage and sex are coterminous, so a denomination accepting the one automatically accepts the other for all normal circumstances.
Formally, “sex=marriage” means:
(1) “sex ⇒ one flesh bond”
(2) “marriage ⇒ sex”
(3) “sex ⇒ marriage” is supposed to be true and is always a sin when it isn’t. It is always true when sex is licit.
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@cameron232
Let’s compare the two positions:
Mine. No, she is not married because she has agency and she did not consent. The homeless man is punished under the law.
Toad’s. It is only a marriage if the father consents. When she tells him what happened, he can choose to annul the marriage (annul = it never happened). Under OT law, the crazy homeless man would still owe a financial penalty. But, if the father did not forbid the marriage, the daughter would be married, because rape isn’t unlawful and she has no agency.
So yeah, it’s weird, but it’s logical. Toad couldn’t accept that he believed an invalid axiom, so he was forced to accept these types of absurdities. These were not the only ones. For example, he thought male gay sex was sin but lesbian sex was not.
The axioms one chooses to live by matter, for they confirm all internal beliefs. His arguments were mostly internally unassailable and he confounded people. You can see that they are wrong, but it is hard to say precisely why. This is why I identified and attacked his axiom.
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Interesting Derek. What if she doesn’t have agency (moderate to severe mental retardation – not trying to be humorous) or is too young to have agency or understand (this happens in real life)?
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I don’t know enough to answer to that question.
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There are some interesting aspects of female virgin sex = marriage line of reasoning that fit with Calvinist theology on salvation.
— We are dead in our sin with no agency to save ourselves (Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13).
— God the Father picks us, very much against our sin nature that wants nothing to do with him (Ephesians 2:2-3).
— God give us to Christ to be bride/church (Ephesians 2:4-5; John 6:37; John 6:44).
— Once we are given to Christ he can’t lose us (John 6:39) so we are permanently tied to him.
The arrangement of Christ/church and husband/wife seems to align with Toad’s take on virgin marriage.
— The father has the ultimate authority to choose the groom.
— The father gives her and she does not have agency to either deny the father, nor go outside his will and consent on her own.
— Sex with a virgin woman is used by God to bind her to her husband in one flesh and this can’t be undone.
— She’s his forever in God’s eyes regardless of what she does.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but it is really good, and it seems to fit well with the analogy of the husband/wife being the earthly representation of Christ/church.
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The corollary of this is “adultery is a man offering marriage — having sex with — a woman who is already married to another man.” This is a key technical reason why Jesus forbid remarriage and called it adultery.
Speaking of controversy, he argued that r@pe was not sexual immorality because it wasn’t a violation of the law.
Besides myself, I know of no other manosphere blogger who posted deductive proofs to defend his claims. His formal argument on dabaq is persuasive.
Toad’s positions were pristinely internally consistent, which made them extremely difficult to argue against. He tended to destroy his critics in debate.
But his arguments were not externally consistent. In his article “Theology For Men of the West: Biblical Marriage”, I found a contradiction in his key position on Exodus 22:17. His theology required an implied exception to Genesis 2:24, but I proved that this was arbitrary that that he didn’t need one. I often allude to this on this blog:
His argument on Exodus 22:17 is absolutely critical to his notion of fatherly authority and the lack of female agency or ability to consent, but my retort invalidates his position. Unfortunately, he never replied to my argument. I went on to expand the argument on my blog:
In other words, the reason the father had a legal recourse is because a marriage occurred. Toad thought that sex produced a marriage, but that there was an exception when the father didn’t arrange it, as in Exodus 22:17. But there is no exception.
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Here is an archived link to “Theology For Men of the West: Biblical Marriage“. The link in the OP does not work.
[Jack: Thank you. Links replaced.]
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Your position is consistent with Numbers 30:3-5. Basically, a potential husband can’t convince a virginal young woman to marry (knock boots) and in doing so usurp her father’s headship over her without the father’s consent. After the “pledge” the young lass strikes outside her father’s knowledge it’s up to her father to decide to let it stand or not as is his right.
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RPA,
Both our positions implicitly support a father’s authority: we agreed that the father’s consent was required, but disagreed on whether the cleaving had occurred. He believed a father had the right of annulment, I believed a father had the right of divorce.
Toad carved out an exception to the rule (no cleaving without consent = no marriage), I did not (cleaving without consent = marriage, but with divorce option). Both preserved a father’s right, but we didn’t agree on what that right was.
The joke was that Toad believed in time travel, that a father could annul a marriage at any time (‘when he heard of it’), even if it were years after and the marriage had produced many children. I considered this position to be absurd and my citation reflects that.
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Can you provide the scripture that says a father can now no longer invalidate/divorce/annul his formerly virgin daughter’s union? I was of the impression that Jesus was reaffirming the Father’s original intent for marriage, not reimagining it as something different. Hence, “whoever divorces his wife” wouldn’t apply to whoever annuls his daughters union. Also, the “let no man put asunder” would then logically assume that a man can either now r@pe or seduce his way into a marriage contrary to the will of the virgin’s father, or else assume that God must not recognize the union as valid if it is contrary to the stated will of the virgin’s father.
Also, if you could help my scriptural ignorance, where does the Bible say that the daughter whose virginity was taken, but whose marriage was annulled by her father, could then be given or sold to another man to be his wife or concubine, or have sex with others?
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Jesus forbid most forms of divorce. To save time, see Deep Strength’s 8-part series on divorce. Divorce is only justified “if your wife committed sexual fraud prior to marriage”, that is, she falsely claimed to be a virgin.
Marriage requires consent. If there is no consent, there is no marriage. Adultery—which includes prostitution—is not marriage because it is illegitimate: the parties are unable to consent. Rape is not marriage either, because both parties did not consent. Her father cannot annul that which did not take place.
Premarital sex is a sin, but it is also consensual. Because it happened by consent, it isn’t sexual fraud. Thus, they are married. As I noted in another thread, the very premise of the law of Exodus 22:16-17 is that a marriage actually took place and the father is entitled to receipt of the dowry and the option to carry out a divorce.
But, if they are Christian, they are now forbidden to divorce. The reasons Jesus gave for divorce only cover fraud, not marriages formed through informed consent. No father can override Jesus’ ban on divorce. The new covenant does not allow the Mosaic exception.
There is no separate category for seduction. Either she has agency and can consent to marriage, or she has no agency to consent and it is rape. If the former, she is married and cannot divorce. If the latter, she is not married, cannot divorce, and her father’s rights are unaffected.
Alternatively, what if you reject my view on consent? Because the one-flesh bond is permanent until death, if you assume a marriage takes place even without consent (i.e. strict sex=marriage), then the punishment for rape and adultery must be death, to free the innocent party to marry another. The alternative is permanent celibacy. Either way, the father has no role.
Under Mosaic law (as confirmed by Jesus), a divorced woman was permitted to remarry (see: Deuteronomy 24:1-4). This is different for a Christians, who are not permitted to remarry because they are not permitted to divorce in the first place.
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Alternatively, what if you reject my view on consent? Because the one-flesh bond is permanent until death, if you assume a marriage takes place even without consent (i.e. strict sex=marriage), then the punishment for rape and adultery must be death, to free the innocent party to marry another.
That’s what I believe. It’s pretty simple. And the fact that rape and adultery aren’t currently punished as capital crimes, in accordance with God’s law, is, as Martin Luther predicted, why we’ve descended into such an immoral mess.
Licit sex = marriage/unity, illicit sex = separated/death.
Faithful = eternal life/united with Christ.
Unfaithful = eternal death/separated from God.
Woman’s relation to husband mirrors man’s relation to Christ.
Husband images Christ(God), wife images church.(not God)
You’d think God would have mentioned this simple model somewhere.
Cough, (Ephesians 5).
I see you answered my request for the relevant scripture with a link to DeepStrength’s website. I’ll take that as your admission that scripture never directly states your inferences.
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Infer what you will. Jesus made it clear enough that divorce and remarriage were disallowed, but people refuse to accept it. I tire of rehashing the same old arguments. Since DS did all the work to “prove” it, I cite his work, which is itself well cited by scripture. I’m not going to make my own post—full of scriptural references—on the topic because it would be redundant.
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WordPress suspended Toad’s blog.
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I always had the impression of it being that way, but I couldn’t say for certain, and I don’t know the reasons for the suspension either.
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I have no insight as to why Dalrock banned him except he would constantly throw up an absurdly long wall of text AND his positions became increasingly nutty. He wasn’t banned for a long time when he made the case that coitus=marriage. He started making all sorts of crazy claims like it’s fine for Christian men to have sex with whores on the side and he kept talking about his supermodel ninja wives (and he was serious). If you met someone like this in real life you’d assume you’re dealing with a madman but somehow in use-a-weird pseudonym internet land we assume this is a normal person arguing in good faith. He expressed the view on marriage for a long time before Dalrock banned him.
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That was why Dalrock banned him. Toad was claiming
— male adultery is OK
— male polygamy is OK
— concubinage is OK
Toad also derailed post discussions with irrelevant points and tried to pull post discussions to those three topics.
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He also had a habit of assuming that those who disagreed with him weren’t disagreeing in good faith but rather were triggered by his positions, the way women would also be triggered by his positions: “No! Not him!!”
That wouldn’t work with me since his positions wouldn’t affect my loser-who-married-my-HS-sweetheart @ss. My wife and I didn’t fool around with others although we did fornicate with each other.
However, I’m sure I couldn’t match his 140+ IQ autism.
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@cameron232
I’m pretty sure you are being facetious, but the proof (absent an IQ test) is in the quality of his arguments and aberrant behaviors.
It is well known that when you get into very high IQ levels (and/or autism) that your social skills plummet and people think you are a bit (or a lot) insane. The aphorisms “smart people are stupid” or “smart people have have no common sense” comes from this general principle.
I have a child who tested as gifted (IQ >= 130). One of the things they looked for in the evaluation as evidence of being gifted is—I kid you not—aberrant behaviors, like academic underperformance, inability to focus and concentrate, and negative social interactions.
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Derek, does your gifted son repeatedly claim in a serious tone that he is married to two supermodel ninja wives who can beat up the people he’s arguing with?
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To the humor. Your comment made me laugh. But am I the only one who remembers that AT claimed to have two ninja wives and a third nice wife? I never took these claims of ninja wives beating people up seriously. I’m convinced it was a humorous form of social posturing or strutting.
To the serious. 130 IQ is gifted and usually more-or-less functional (as an adult). Genius IQ is 160, a full two standard deviations higher. The negative effects are much more pronounced there. I only know one person with an IQ that high. I wouldn’t wish such a high IQ on anyone, even my worst enemy. My guess about AT’s IQ is only speculation, an inference. I obviously could be wrong.
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I know a guy with an IQ of around 160 – he got a perfect score on the old SAT. He is a PHD aerodynamicist (Stanford) and has a master’s in guidance, navigation and control systems. He is completely normal – very down to earth and non-weird.
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If he also successfully married and had kids, this would make him quite unusual (and probably a national treasure).
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Derek, He is indeed married. To a woman who also has a PHD from Stanford. I believe it is in operations research. We wanted to hire her but she was a stay at home mom. They have two children, a boy and a girl.
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I had read that above 140 IQ was where “genius” started. And so I have accordingly referred to myself as a genius before. And your description serves as resounding proof: “academic underperformance, inability to focus and concentrate, and negative social interactions.”
Cameron232, sometimes when people object to your reasoning, but then fail to offer any sound reasoning for their objection, it can make one wonder if their objection is not an emotional reaction, or just a reflexive reaction, as opposed to a disagreement based upon sound reasoning. And sometimes accusing others of just being emotionally triggered gadflies with no logical argument, might just be a person’s method of trying to goad the objectors into responding with their own substantive arguments so that you can actually address their objections. I wasn’t part of the manosphere back then, but, perhaps that was what the Toad was attempting to do.
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Cameron-
A person with an IQ that high and not weird is really rare.
I’ve tested a small handful of people who ended up above 135 and that’s where the cut-off for weird tends to be.
It’s a function of relatability because people like that contemplate things that most of us do not have on our radar.
For success on all dimensions, the sweet spot is 115-125.
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A person in that range is not going to invent any awesome new technology. But they will have a novel idea once in a while, and be curious enough about the world to engage with it in a profoundly positive and influential way.
Also, when they are in the company of those of average intelligence, they have enough emotional and social intelligence not to be smug and condescending.
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This is probably true, and there are A LOT of commenters and bloggers in the manosphere with this trait. It is absolutely off-putting and makes your eyes glaze over regarding everything else they write.
I have no idea if any of these people are “geniuses” just because they say so. Show me a printout of your raw WAIS or S-B scores administered by a licensed psychologist or psychometrist and then I’ll believe it.
If you don’t you are just some guy on the internet.
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Some of these “geniuses” predicted we would have sexbots and artificial wombs by now.
Dumba$$es.
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Careful, your IQ is showing. 😉
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Maybe, but unlike probably the majority of keyboard warriors, I know my precise full scale and sub scale IQ scores because as first years we all tested each other for practice.
And I never talk about my IQ.
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Declaring oneself a genius reminds me of the veterans who come into my office for their disability claims with their fantastic stories and memorized list of criteria.
“No sh!t there I was. We were on a super secret mission that no one knows about, which is why it’s not anywhere in my record. We were on patrol in this area of butt-fvck Afganistan where we weren’t supposed to be. Then we got hit by sniper fire and rolled over an IED. The .50 cal went down, but I fixed it with a rubber band a stick of gum and saved the whole platoon! Now I have nightmares, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response and difficulty maintaining and establishing meaningful relationships.”
Sure buddy. It’s weird that you talk like a psychologist though.
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Several of my fellow students actually went to the trouble of having their clinical supervisors sign off on them so they would be valid.
You know, in case they wanted to join some stupid club like MENSA someday.
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My wife is a school psychologist … I was one of her practice dummies when she was learning test administration years ago.
The thing I most distinctly remember was the fist time she pulled out the Woodcock-Johnson test kit. I stared at it for a moment not really believing what I was seeing and then asked if she though it was funny, and she did not know what I was talking about.
Here you two very intelligent professors who create a cognitive abilities test and don’t give a thought about their names when naming the test after themselves. I still smile when I imagine the conversation these two colleagues had over naming the test.
“Johnson should come first.”
“No. I believe firmly that Woodcock coming first will be something people will remember!”
The possibilities are endless which is why it strikes me as funny all these years later.
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@RPA
I think it would be basically impossible to talk about that test without snickering and cracking jokes…
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RPA
Tracking.
I’m the only one of the psychologist friends I have who think that one has a funny name.
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caterpillar,
I pointed out the obvious to Mrs. Apostle and she had never thought about the name combination that way. Neither had any of her classmates.
Mrs. A is cued in now and we still snicker about the test even though it’s not as widely used in the school systems here as it used to be.
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Scott,
I had a hunch this would be the case.
The name reads like a double entendre line from an Austin Powers movie.
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Mensa is just a way to charge nerds for a worthless club membership. And they claim to take the top 2%, so it really isn’t that exclusive. There are groups which are far more exclusive, but still run the same basic scam. Trust me, because of my test scores, I used to get that sort of crap in the mail every day in high school.
LOL I must not have gotten the memo. 🙂 Either that or I enjoy triggering you. LOL
I comment at another site where half of everybody there claims to be a genius. Its never bothered me. What if they are? What if they aren’t? Who cares?
My father, both a Mennonite and a civilian, was actually conscripted by the US government to design their DEW line radar system for them because of his otherworldly intelligence and his degrees in both physics and radio, before the state department would agree to grant him a visa to let him leave the country to build Christian radio stations like he felt called to do.
So even though I’m a marginally a genius, I grew up in the shadow of a man who was a genius among genii. He had a photographic memory and has memorized his slide rule. He could operate it in his head with more precision that the other physics majors using a real one. When computers came along he wrote the first program to 3-D plot the antenna propagation from phased antenna arrays. And years after his retirement, the head engineers from VOA and some of the world’s other largest radio networks were still calling to consult him to find out how he had pulled off things they were still not capable of.
I grew up knowing I’d never be as smart as my father. So, I guess I don’t fear people with super high intelligence. It’s kind of like getting to talk with my dad again.
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Meh
“Triggering” is something that happens to millennials when they are confronted with the sight of a Halloween costume they don’t like or when they get misgendered.
A genius is a clinically defined phenomenon that I happen to know how to identify. It’s not by the word of the subject.
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Most graduate programs still require you to learn how to administer, score and interpret it.
The last time I saw one was during my residency on the neuropsych rotation.
It was a kid (18) who had a stroke. His W-J data set from school was available. This was fantastic because it served as his baseline/premorbid intellectual functioning for the purpose of rating the disability.
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All this agency talk, and especially Toad’s and Jim’s take on female agency, make a few things clear.
1) What you do on earth matters.
2) Who a woman admits into her orifices matters. When she allows a man into her orifices, it matters. It’s not just sex, it’s not just flesh and friction and feel good.
3) A woman’s first sexual experience matters. She never forgets it and it has lifelong natural implications.
4) Women always gravitate to the men of their youth. I know at least 3 women who have left long relationships and marriages, and returned to men they were serious about in their late teens or early 20s. It’s not super common, but it’s common enough that I’m seeing a trend.
Sure, you can keep a woman away from the men of their youth. The price for that is a dull lackluster sex life for her, no sex life for any man dumb enough to commit to her, and probable divorce r@pe. He, not she, will pay the heavier price, once again demonstrating women’s ability to escape consequences for their agentic decisions.
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Yes. I’ve mentioned this before but it’s at least theoretically possible that the man has to share paternity with previous men. Officially “discredited” science but there are publications by legit scholars (the latter would be dismissed as “Ayatollah science” but the female scientist has a high scholar rating) raising the possibility. Would be interesting if western science looked into this as Chinese and Iranians will be dismissed as crazy misogynists.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20626678/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35843387/
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Right. It’s theorized that when a woman absorbs a man’s semen, i.e. his genetic material, her body’s DNA changes, especially her reproductive tract and especially her uterus. The more different men’s semen she absorbs, the more her DNA changes. Those DNA changes eventually are expressed in her offspring even if those men never supply sperm to get her pregnant.
There’s evidence for this in fruit flies; but not in humans. Not yet, anyway.
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There has been suggested evidence for telegony in humans based on the physical appearance of offspring not matching up with heritable traits of fathers or mothers. In other words, father and mother have child, father’s paternity is conclusively established, but child displays physical traits s/he does not share with either biological parent.
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A standard DNA test will not reveal evidence of telegony. You cannot find evidence to support telegony by testing offspring DNA. There’s no way to find evidence of DNA changes in a woman who has had multiple sex partners. Sure, you can observe a woman over time who has had a number of sex partners and maybe, maybe, see some physical changes in her, but most of those changes can be explained by substance use/abuse, lifestyle choices, and advancing age.
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could be RPA/deti. I think Liu said there are observed, documented cases in China and the Chinese are fairly homogeneous. The famous case is the mare bred by the Scotsman (don’t remember his name) but there are supposedly many examples in other animals e.g. domestic pigs. Anyway it would be interesting to see it studied but my guess is westerners won’t.
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I know next to nothing about biology. I took one college course. I assume they assess paternity by sampling either a large number of SNPs or a large number of alleles. I assume some “changes” caused by either DNA or mRNA could also be epigenetic. You also wonder about the turnover/recycling rate of the relevant somatic cells. Some are very long lived, even permanent (e.g. neurons I think?). Others short lived. The lining of a woman’s ueterus? IDK. Maybe it’s recent sex partners? Or maybe Weismann was right.
Anyway one is tempted to tell his sons, “virgin or nothing” but I guess you would doom them to no marriage/kids. Catholicism doesn’t require either physical or moral virginity for a valid marriage.
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thedeti,
“There has been suggested evidence for telegony in humans based on the physical appearance of offspring not matching up with heritable traits of fathers or mothers. In other words, father and mother have child, father’s paternity is conclusively established, but child displays physical traits s/he does not share with either biological parent.”
Probably better, and more simply explained, by recessive genes. For example, a former neighbor who is Jamaican has a cousin that for all intents looks Caucasian even thought he has 2 black parents. This is common enough in Jamaica that people aren’t all that surprised when it happens. The trade route that went through Jamaica and the mixing of people groups means there are many traits coded in people’s genomes that are latent. One day they unexpectedly show up in a child.
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Recessive genes are supposed to be the explanation behind the Scotsman’s mare. In either case I’m not super trusting of Wikipedia’s science (and I guess mainstream scientific “consensus”) after the whole Coronus and Coronus-Vaxx thing. Particularly WRT biology and climate science.
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I was under the impression this only happened if the woman had male offspring from previous relationships. That the boy left behind part of his dad with her.
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Scott:
I don’t think it’s male offspring leaving behind their genetic material. I read the articles Cam submitted above as suggesting it’s a woman’s uterine tissues absorbing and incorporating DNA from prior male sex partners, as well as fetal DNA getting into maternal blood.
From the first article:
A search of the literature of cell biology and biochemistry reveals several plausible mechanisms that may form the basis for telegony. These involve the penetration of spermatozoa into the somatic tissues of the female genital tract, the incorporation of the DNA released by spermatozoa into maternal somatic cells, the presence of foetal DNA in maternal blood, as well as sperm RNA-mediated non-Mendelian inheritance of epigenetic changes.
Translation to ordinary-speak: He shoots his stuff into her. She absorbs his DNA from his sperm and it becomes part of her. She gets pregnant and the fetus’ DNA gets into her blood and becomes part of her (keep in mind this can include aborted and miscarried fetuses as well as fetuses carried to term).
From the second article
after the previous male sperm entry into the female reproductive system, those sperm which do not participate in fertilization penetrate into the somatic cells of the uterus and store their genetic/epigenetic information there. The sperm of the next partner reaches a location in the female reproductive canal where it exchanges information with the uterosomes and obtains the proteins and non-coding RNAs required for fertilization, development, and implantation.
Translation: The uterus absorbs nonfertilizing sperm from prior male partners and stores the genetic information from that sperm. The next partner’s sperm that actually knocks her up interacts with prior genetic information from other male sperm and some of those proteins and RNA is used in fetal development.
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If telegony is true, and women are literally being changed at the DNA level with every man who ejaculates into them, this has a lot of implications for women and for marriage. It also would explain a lot.
It gives “one flesh” a whole new meaning. It is evidence to support husbands and wives becoming “one flesh”.
I hate to say it but it would be evidence supporting the proposition that a woman is “married to” the first man who ejaculates into her vagina. She has literally become “one flesh” with that man.
It explains why husbands and wives start physically resembling each other over time. Over a lifetime of sex a woman absorbs, or should absorb, a few gallons of semen from her husband. That’s a lot of his DNA.
It explains in part why a woman having had sex with lots of different men tends to masculinize her. All that different male DNA is literally turning her into a man.
It would explain in part why a woman having had sex with lots of different men can have problems getting pregnant and problems carrying to term, as well as the possibility of birth defects. These articles talk about the woman’s body absorbing the DNA and RNA of different men, and the creation/secretion of proteins from that RNA used for fertilization, development, and implantation. If a woman has all this modified DNA and RNA from multiple people in there, that can’t be good for the promotion of pregnancy. It would seem to me that all this different and modified DNA and RNA would contribute to infertility, miscarriage, uterine incompetence, and birth defects. (But hey, I’m just reading this and thinking about it and drawing logical conclusions. What do I know?)
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I’m ignorant about biology beyond college sophomore level. It could be baloney but if it were proven true it would bolster men’s natural desire for exclusivity. The idea would be, “You women get guaranteed 100% maternity. You’d sh!t a brick if someone tried to switch babies on you. Men, who are investing in you, want 100% paternity.” I think someone referred to telegony as micro-cuckoldry.
Anyway, don’t expect western science to actually look into this whether it’s true or false.
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This would also explain and support the Catholic position that the only place a man is morally permitted to deposit his semen is into his wife’s vagina. That practice promotes them becoming “one flesh” and literally makes husband and wife into the same natural person.
This changes the woman, but doesn’t change the man. This makes the woman change to suit the man; rather than vice versa. During sex, nothing goes into the man. Woman doesn’t go into man; but man goes into woman. He plants his flag. He deposits his seed. He stakes a claim on her. (She does not plant or deposit anything, or stake a claim on anything.) He does not change, but she does.
What changes in him is that his heart is turned toward her. Or at least it should be.
Her role in this is selecting the man whom she allows to put himself into her. Or, rather, the men in her family pick that man.
Interesting parallels with Christ and his Bride, the Church. The Bride signals her willingness. Christ puts His Holy Spirit into each believer. He plants His flag, deposits His seed, and stakes His claim. That causes changes in each believer from the inside out, at the fundamental level.
Christ remains unchanged, except that He is turned toward each believer. He turns toward His Bride, and receives her unto Himself.
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Some excellent observations from deti and RPA. Yes, a lot of truths shine forth from Toad’s approach to the scriptures.
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Deti-
I get it, I just had not heard of it. This is what I was talking about.
https://www.science.org/content/article/bearing-sons-can-alter-your-mind#:~:text=DNA%20from%20male%20fetuses%20can%20remain%20in%20mothers'%20brains%20for%20a%20lifetime&text=Giving%20a%20whole%20new%20meaning,woman's%20brain%20throughout%20her%20life.
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I remember the articles one of which Scott posts. As I recall, researchers couldn’t be sure where the DNA comes from as it shows up in some women who have never had a male child or any child. Possuble sources: abortion (spontaneous or medical), vanished (male) twin, sex with men. Researchers were unsure.
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My oldest boy has a smirk that when the camera catches it just right looks exactly like his older half-brother. Its not possible to tell if he got it from Mychael, or based on the above phenomenon, or something else?
Its weird because my kids all have very strongly present traits, mostly from me. Both of my daughters look exactly like my mom at the same age. It will be interesting what the ratio of DNA sources is when we do the 23 and me thing.
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I don’t know if there’s anything to this. I could see where it happens but is rare and or very small effect. Maybe the turnover rate of somatic cells makes it only occur in the case of recent pairings. I would think you’d see it much more often given how promiscuous men and women are. It would be a powerful argunent for chastity. The Russian Orthodox Church was pushing this teaching but they were attacked for Putinism and scare mongering.
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Men want ownership. We want to “own” our women. We want the women who marry us to be “ours”, to belong to us.
Women want to be owned, to be “claimed”, but only by top men. Women absolutely hate the idea of being “owned” or “claimed” by a “less than” man.
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thedeti —
The link between number of sex partners and pregnancy issues is easier explained by time. Ride the CC and get to your late 20’s then desperately try to lock down a guy so she can have a kid between ages 30 and 34. This is the beginning of geriatric pregnancy range, not most fertile and easy to conceive range.
I won’t rule out foreign RNA creating cellular changes. The order, in a grossly simplified explanation, is DNA to RNA to protein expression. Those proteins are essential for our bodies for, well, everything. If an RNA sequence is changed then that protein could change materially assuming foreign RNA could get into the host’s cells without an engineered deliver mechanism. Whether or not this means significant changes to the body/mind is yet to be fully determined (just ask anyone brave enough to do research on the new mRNA based vaccines), but from anecdotal observation at least, there does not appear to be drastic cellular changes in women who are global zinc banks. This, to me at least, points to women who are used by many men for pleasure as being much more prone to negative psychological effects, which is an observation with much more robust accumulation of data behind it.
Scott —
The article you linked to is interesting. The observations are based on a small sample size but they are could warrant further research. My first thought when I read the observation of male baby cells in mother’s brains potentially decreasing the incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease is stem cell therapy. It was the differentiation of baby cells in mice mommies that made me draw the analogy.
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Conversely, when a man wants only sex from a woman, he doesn’t want ownership. Because with ownership comes responsibility, and he doesn’t want to be responsible for a woman he’s using for sex.
A man doesn’t claim a wh0re. He doesn’t want to “own” her. He wants to use her; or at most, rent or lease her. He’s not looking to “buy” a wh0re.
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Got my height, and blonde hair from my dads side. Face, and build……well, I look like a dead ringer for her father (my taid) except much taller, blue eyes and blonde hair (well…when I had hair :-))
i did three different genetic test, all about the same…a percentage off here and there
50% Celt (red dot on North Wales and Isle of Man and a few small Scottish Island off the southwest coast in the north Irish Sea)
20% shows mostly Poland, but Czeclozlavkia, Latvia, Lithuania
22% shows what is now the Rhine / Rhur Valley in modern Western Germany and deep eastern France (my dad threw a fit over that, he said “No way are we Huns!” )
I have a Polish last name, but have more genetics from Western Europe and Wales than Slav / eastern Europe. Odd how people way back still got around 🙂
About 8% says “West Africa” in what is now Nigeria. So I got a bit of “soul” going on too 😉
I am assuming the German / French comes from the Napoleonic Wars. During Napaleons retreat from Russia……half a million of his men deserted when they hit what is now Poland.
As for being a bit black. Have no idea. Could have been the Macro…….going WAY back or it could have been countless other situations. through history.
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I see the break up of a virgin marriage as a profound moral tragedy, but not one that requires all of the rest of what AT and others suggest.
Its like Back to the Future II.
My first wife and I are on an alternate timeline that cannot be repaired because there is no Delorean time machine.
Morally, we SHOULD be married now, going on 28 years. There is a LOT to think about there.
If I could go back to some point where the marriage was salvageable, would I?
Then I would never meet Mychael. Would I still have memory of Mychael? Our four kids would not exist. Would I remember THEM?
The solution was messy, and it worked out, but I do know that what happened was deeply wrong and could have been avoided given different circumstances.
Whatever I did wrong in the marriage, I have paid for in this life and then some through depression, guilt, anxiety, shame, suicidality, etc.
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Some would argue that the believer is not under bondage (perhaps the marriage bond) if the unbeliever departs. And despite whatever she claims regarding Christ, if she leaves her husband because of her own selfish refusal to reverence her husband, who is the image of Christ, and to serve him as she should, then those actions, and her subsequent adultery with the janitor, prove that she cannot possibly be one of the redeemed. Since we are told that those who do such things have no inheritance in the kingdom of God.
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This is actually not super far off from the Orthodox (capital O) position. Basically, they say something like, the person who left with such a scorched earth, in your face, I don’t care what happens in eternity attitude is behaving as if they are/were not in a Christian marriage, therefore the abandoned party is good to go.
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Just realize the word “wife” is just an English-biased translation of the Hebrew word for “woman”, that they had no separate word for wife, and you can move beyond Toad’s partial truth to the true truth: the Hebrews had no such thing as marriage or matrimony. They just “took a woman”. That’s it. A man didn’t leave his father and mother to cleave to his wife but to his woman. This wife business didn’t exist. Its also why polygammy was allowed. Women were property and a man could take as many as he could afford. Their becoming one flesh surely just refers to their offspring being a combo of both their flesh. Women were merely property and this is why the OT has a harsh penalty for a man raping a taken woman but not a virgin, because she isn’t any man’s property yet so its not stealing. Not coveting your neighbor’s woman and not coveting your neighbor’s donkey go together for a reason. I don’t think the NT is even that different except that polygammy magically disapeared and there is no a puah to “love your woman”—note there is still no separate word for “wife.” The Brits invented marriage it seems to me. Because its with English that the distinction between “woman” and “wife” arises. A lot of what we today think Christianity is or even the Bible is is based on English, is British stuff being put into it by the translators. Modern Christianity is a British creation. That’s my new thesis. The idea that there was a “marriage” “ceremony” comes to us via the Book of Common Prayer and ita ceremony “till death do us part” “with this ring I thee wed” and so on.
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In modern, standard German, one uses the words for man and woman for husband and wife, respectively: Mann, Frau. There are also words for spouse, Gemahl (husband) and Gemahlin (wife), Gatte (husband) and Gattin (wife), which are simply the same words but declinated for gender [or sex]. Typically, Germans use Mann/Frau, and I’ve only read Gemahl and Gatte in literature.
Other curious attributes of German include salutations. Formally, one addresses ‘Marie Meier’ as ‘Frau Meier’, regardless of marital status, which I always internally translate as ‘Woman Meier’ instead of ‘Ms./Mrs. Meier’. For men, one formally addresses ‘Maik Meier’ as ‘Herr Meier’, and ‘Herr’ is also used as sir or lord in various contexts.
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Question for you, Will:
Has the title “Fräulein” (“Miss” in English) fallen out of use in the German-speaking countries like “Miss” has in the English-speaking world? When I lived in Germany 45 years ago it was in everyday use, but is that still the case today?
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I have only heard ‘Fräulein’ used ironically or jokingly. I think I’ve seen it in older books (fairy tale collections), but really people just use ‘Frau’ for all salutations for women.
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No. Christians in antiquity had marriage ceremonies accompanied by nuptial masses, exchange of tokens of consent, etc. One can argue that it was a Roman corruption of pure, primitive Christianity (like we were arguing about Mariology) but I don’t see how it can be a creation of the British who weren’t anywhere near becoming “English” when this was going on.
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Can you prove any of this was pre-Pelagius? (circa 380 AD) If not then its British.
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Yes pre Pelagius – marriage ceremonies initially outside churches with nuptual masses. I will have to find the references. If you have time maybe you could look too?
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We can safely assume polygamy disappeared because Jesus was against it. He and the Apostles only ever assumes one wife when speaking about marriage.
Marriages in the OT involved a bride price or a dowry, making them formal enforceable contracts between father and son-in-law, for bride prices see Jacob who had to work for Laban, or David who paid 100 foreskins to Saul for his daughter. For a dowry see Tobias who received half of Raguel’s wealth on marrying Sarah.
In ancient Christianity marriages were either civil (Roman) contracts or informal contracts that were nevertheless recognized by the church. A man living with a concubine or slave girl could not be baptized unless there was a reasonable expectation that the relationship was permanent, i.e. a widower who already had legitimate heirs had no reason to contract a civil marriage so the church would recognize his relationship with a concubine or slave (though this was controversial, see Hippolytus criticizing the Pope over it), but a young man without heirs could not be baptized if he had a concubine because the assumption was that the relationship was temporary and he would eventually put her away and marry, see St Augustine who had to get rid of his concubine when he decided to get baptized.
In the middle ages the church would sometimes attempt to enforce formal marriage rituals but that was not always practical and there were debates about it, see Gratian vs Peter Lombard.
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Dave Sora,
We have the testimony of Tertullian and St. Ignatius as to elements of sacramental marriage and certainly contradicting the proposition that marriage is created by simple intercourse, consensual or non-consensual.
Tertullian (ad Uxor., II, 9) mentions the oblation that confirms marriage (matrimonium quod ecclesia conciliat et confirmat oblatio).
“that marriage which is made by the Church, confirmed by the Holy Sacrifice (oblatio), sealed by the blessing, which the angels proclaim and which is ratified by our Father in heaven”
St. Ignatius to St. Polycarp: “It becometh men and women, when they wed, to marry with the consent of the bishop, that the marriage may be after the Lord and not after concupiscence”.
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Also since the customs were well established in the western empire by the 300s, I don’t know how something Pelagius created in 380 could have spread so widely.
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It would seem that considerable diversity in custom exists since in the sacrament of marriage the ministers are the husband and wife. The essential elements have to be present.
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Your axiom is showing. Tertullian said Mary was not yet Joseph’s wife because they hadn’t had sex yet.
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That doesn’t sound like the axiom that sounds like “Tertullian wrote two different things and my Tertullian quote can beat up your Tertullian quote.” It would help if you would supply the quote and reference. The Tertullian quote I gave is very direct: “marriage which is made by the Church, confirmed by the Holy Sacrifice (oblatio), sealed by the blessing, which the angels proclaim and which is ratified by our Father in heaven.” Is there a direct quote that coitus creates marriage?
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And in any case the Catholic Church teaches that marriage is created by co-consent and made indissoluble (by any power on this earth) by consummation. This was debated I believe by Gratian vs. Lombard that dpmonahan references in this comment section.
Mary and Joseph did not have the sacrament of marriage because our Lord had not yet established even baptism. Christianity is a sacramental religion. Should we be surprised? The entire point of the religion of God incarnate is that God works in real, physical ways through His physical creation not just on our hearts and minds (though He certainly does this too).
Joseph and Mary had a covenantal marriage or, perhaps, a natural marriage if you will. Christ restores the grace that was lost through original sin from the Fall. How can he have done that in Joseph and Mary’s case when He hadn’t even been born?
If they had been married after our Lord instituted His sacraments, then before they had sex the description would have been “ratum sed non consummatum.”
You’re welcome to categorize this latter thought as part of the axiom. No problem. I invite other readers to remember that the axiom is an a-rational or pre-rational assumption it doesn’t mean “wrong.” Sola Scriptura also an axiom.
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@cameron232
The citation from Tertullian out of the Catholic Encyclopedia is incorrect. After saying that the marriages of Gentiles as ignoble, he says that a Christian wife has the greater dowry, because she receives “…from the goods of him who is rich in God.” It is because she is Christian that her marriage is different. He continues:
Is he not talking about the marriage of the Church to Christ? The marriage of Christ to the church is established by the sacrifice of Christ, witnessed by angels, and consented to by the Father. Then, in the next sentence…
…after discussing the heavenly marriage (of Christ and Church), he states that even on earth the mere ‘children’ marry with their father’s permission: just as the heavenly Father presides over the marriage of Christ and Church. He continues…
Here he completes the comparison. A Christian marriage is superior because each human partner is married to the same Master. This is just Ephesians 5, restated. Moreover, he echoes the mutual submission of Ephesians 5:
So eager are Roman Catholics to invoke their Axiom, that they completely miss the point of what Tertullian says. The reason a Christian marriage is so beautiful isn’t because they had a church ceremony, it is because it mirrors the marriage of Christ and the church.
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First, by these words do you mean Tertullian is mistranslated as he is quoted in the Catholic encyclopedia or are you saying the CE (and Catholics’) understanding of the quote is wrong?
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The Roman Catholic translation at New Advent is more explicit:
The word “cement” mirrors that of “cleave” in Genesis 2, which means to glue or cement together. The Church does not cleave a husband and wife, they do that themselves when they have sex and this is not unique to Christian marriages. But the church does cleave (or cement) to Christ, which is confirmed by the Sacrifice of Christ.
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At the least, the quote appears incoherent with the translation in its full context, but it is possible that both are wrong. I’m only asserting the former: the misquotation is an apparent misinterpretation. I’ve not delved into the original language.
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I think he’s talking about Christian marriage. There is always the comparison of Christ to his bride present since the Holy Mystery of marriage mirrors Christ’s marriage to His Bride.
As far as I can tell, he doesn’t say the Church cements to Christ it says the Church cements matrimonii. Other translations say “the Church arranges” (…..the Sacrifice strengthens, …….). Yet another says “which the church reconciles and strengthens.” I’m not qualified to tell you which translation is superior. The Latin is matrimonii quod ecclesia conciliat. I have no idea how you can have an assured mirror comparison with “cleave” in Genesis 2.
Now we’re arguing over the interpretation of non-canonical writings.
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This is one of the few areas where the RCC is different from Holy Orthodoxy. It’s why they allow a deacon to preside over the ceremony. In Orthodoxy, the priest administers the sacrament to the couple, not each of them to the other.
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Neither you nor I created this problem. The translators did. Historicity, not canonicity, is what matters. Both New Advent and Phillip Schaff use “cement”. I don’t know why, but it makes sense of the context.
Cement is synonymous with glue, or ‘cleave’ in Genesis 2:24. To “cleave together and become one flesh” is to bind into one unit: “Cement ⇒ One Flesh”. Jesus quoted this to the Pharisees to show the permanence of marriage, and Paul did so regarding prostitutes.
Why wouldn’t Tertullian use cementing/cleaving with becoming one flesh? It was natural—re: Genesis 2:24—to refer to both together. The third sentence after “cement” is:
This is complete unity of body and spirit. In the next two sentences he further advocates equality:
It’s mutual unity, as a few sentences earlier “Let her be on an equality with him on earth.” Moreover, the banquet of God is the marriage feast of the Church and Christ, corresponding to the church he had mentioned earlier.
I can see why Tertullian is considered a heretic! In the Chapter where he allegedly requires a Church officiated marriage ceremony, he uses the same logic for the complete unity of husband and wife in the church: in teaching, exhortation, encouragement, fasting, prayer, and prostration. That’s not very patriarchal of him, yet somehow he is an expert on church teachings on marriage?
Tertullian cited Genesis 2:24, so conciliat as “to unite, bring together” as equivalent to ‘cleave’ is a natural choice for translators.
Even if we set aside the Christ/Church analogy, “[a Christian marriage is] united by the church” does not imply a marriage ceremony. A Christian marriage tautologically requires the couple to be united and equal within the church of Christ. Tertullian says so explicitly, contrasting those within and without the church. The essential character is that they are believers (i.e. the church), not that they had an officiated ceremony, which he never mentions.
Interpreting it as “to procure”, “to arrange”, or “to make”, fits even less naturally with the context. It begs the question that the church was responsible for marriages, and this just doesn’t hold up to historical scrutiny: families arranged marriage and, as Tertullian noted, fathers gave consent.
As for sex=marriage, Tertullian said in “On the Flesh of Christ”, Chapter 23:
But, if you read the full chapter, Tertullian says that she became married to Joseph when Jesus broke her hymen:
Why do you cite him as a church authority on what constitutes marriage? His logic requires the belief that “breaking the hymen” (normatively, sex with a virgin) is marriage.
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@ramram3000
Unity and hierarchy isn’t inherently contradictory. One of the Church Fathers used the example of the Emperor and his army or empire to denote the role of head and various parts of the body. The Authority of the Emperor over the Empire.
Patriarchy is both unity and hierarchy. Our relationship with God is both unity and hierarchy.
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In Sexual Authority and Sanctification (2022/8/8), I described how 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 stipulates that a married woman has authority over her husband’s body. This is the only area and context in which a woman has authority over a man.
Maybe you said this in the post from August.
It’s clear from the context of the scripture that the married woman’s authority over her husband’s body is limited to using his body for sex. She has the right to his body for sexual satisfaction and fulfillment, including pleasure and reproduction. Essentially, she has the right to have him pleasure her and impregnate her. But, this scripture does not give her authority over anything else.
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Yes I agree RPA. I’m saying from HER perspective she wasn’t exercising her agency very much because there were no serious foreseeble consequences (earthly or otherwise).
Yes, and this why the sin persists. Without immediate negative consequences there is no feedback to correct the behavior, thus leading to the conviction that there really are no consequences for sin.
This isn’t unique to women, but it is by far more prevalent in the weaker sex.
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Yes, capital punishment for capital crimes is a method by which you put away evil from among you, according to God. It helps people foresee the consequences, especially if they’ve had to help participate in the stoning of others for that same crime. The sights, the sounds, the mechanics of throwing, (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) there’s something there to suit every learning style.
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These fringe arguments always amuse me.
The Law of Moses is not explaining an ideal in any these circumstances. Instead, it is trying to find a just and equitable position in light of actual sin. Pre-marital sex even with a virgin does not make a marriage.
Given in ancient Israel, women were supposed to be virgins at marriage. If a man seduced them they would have a very difficult time finding another husband. Hence, the most equitable solution in ancient Israelite culture would be for them to get married which is why the law suggests that in Exodus 22 and Deut 22. It’s a relative punishment for both of them requiring them to get married when in all likelihood they just wanted to have fun by having sex (like the people of today). The father even gets veto rights in Deut 22 and the man/husband can’t divorce her like a normal marriage under the Law of Moses (Deut 24). Again, relative punishment for lack of self control.
Yet these solutions to SIN are treated by the sex = marriage proponents as if they were the ideal situation and apply to all cases between men and women.
Nah. No one should take this nonsense seriously.
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Yep.
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This is an oversimplification. I do not argue from the law. Citing from Genesis, Jesus, and Paul is sufficient. The examples from the Law are non-essential confirmatory evidence. I recently cited an early church father whose argument implied that sex=marriage, showing that this view persisted well into the first couple of centuries of early Christianity.
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@ Derek,
AT’s posts literally argue from the law that sex = marriage as confirmation of his specific interpretation of Genesis 2 without taking into context why the Law may be that way. I explained a couple potential points that argues that the Law shouldn’t even be confirmation of Genesis 2 because it wasn’t intended for that purpose.
Even if you personally don’t that’s not what the topic of this post is about. Views persisting don’t make them right either. We all know that some of the early Church fathers had some warped views on sex too.
This makes AT’s points questionable at best, especially in light of Jack’s claim in the OP that his detractors had no counterarguments…
In other words, maybe his logic is good if his premises are right, but no one should be contesting the logic anyway when the premises aren’t good.
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DS,
This stance presumes assumptions that are not necessarily true.
Genesis 2:24 and Jesus’ description of marriage in Matthew 19:4-9 could be interpreted as alluding to an ideal. OR, it might be read as a statement of fact. “That’s just how it is!” “That’s how God created things to be.” Here, it should be noted that both sex / marriage and God’s judgment in Genesis 3:16-19 predated Moses. IOW, the Mosaic Covenant is an addition to the Adamic Covenant.
The situations described in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy could be called sin or transgression, depending on the context. But Toad’s arguments don’t claim that these situations are ideal. Toad’s approach was to look at all these scriptures describing sex and marriage in various contexts and to draw some general conclusions about the nature of sex and marriage.
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The basic tenet of the logic being used when evaluating the rules around sex and marriage is that these rules tell us about what God intended for sex and marriage.
Similarly, having the death penalty for murder tells us about the value on innocent human life. The punishment for breaking the rule is indicative of the truth, which in the case of murder specifically that people are created in God’s image and we are not supposed to take that life unjustifiably.
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@ Jack,
That’s the point though.
The sex = marriage proponents use these scenarios as support of their specific interpretation of Genesis 2. They do not take into great context that the Law is not talking about a Genesis 2 marriage but a solution for blatant sin.
I can easily make the case that marriage in Genesis is composed of 5 distinct parts including:
I. Father giving the daughter to the man — God giving Eve to Adam
II. Separating from family(s) — leaving father and mother
III. Coming together [to be with and live with] — joined to his wife
IV. Having sex — becoming one flesh
V. In the presence of witnesses [traditionally with a wedding celebration] — in this case, Father/Jesus/Spirit and potentially angels.
Not necessarily all in that order. Occasional exceptions apply.
Consummation of the marriage is required (that we all agree), but it is not the only thing that is required for marriage to exist.
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DS,
The larger point is that such solutions for sexual sins and transgressions indicate the nature of sex and marriage itself. If sex did not constitute marriage in the most fundamental way, then such solutions would either be different or not necessary.
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So premarital sex is okay then…..
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LastMod,
Only within Toad’s paradigm, and within that paradigm, there is no such thing as premarital sex.
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I called pre-marital sex sin several times in my comment. So no.
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Only with a virgin. Otherwise its adultery because she’s married to her first. Therefore in reality ALL SEX is sin. Hello Marcion, you were right after all.
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Interesting discussion. I don’t favor the legalistic precision of Toad’s arguments, but I generally concur with the basic thrust of his argument. I’ve posted about sexual boundaries myself, and have noted how our society, government, etc., militates against even small moves toward divine justice.
Whether or not telegony can be confirmed as a natural biological process, I would say that there is definitely a supernatural process that is not discernible to our senses. When and where God chooses to manifest such things will never satisfy logic and reason, but it works to accomplish His purpose.
As a side note, I’m prudish enough that I often read this blog with a browser that blocks the images. You’ll have to decide for yourself where to draw the lines; it genuinely makes me feel defiled to view that much female flesh. It’s a major factor in my preference for spending time out in the boonies.
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It confirms God’s observation of the World being in enmity to God. I just wish there was a sharper line between real Christians and false brethren.
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Then by God. May Divine Justice prevail regardless. As Pharoah’s Army were utterly crushed by God.
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It’s hard to listen to multiple wife arguing Christians when it directly violates the 10 commandments. Seems like everything out of that camp is a brain twister from the serpent.
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Wait a minute, polygamy was against the ten commandments? Then why does the OT Law allow for multiple wives? Is God inconsistent?
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AngloSaxon, see DS’s comment here:
Jesus seems to be making the same argument in Matthew:
Jesus restores the grace a pre-Fall marriage. Adam only had one wife.
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Adam had one wife sure, and Adam’s sons married their sisters. Who here wants to go back to that!
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What I find absolutely appalling is that a man takes a wife and then decides that his first wife is inadequate and he wants another. What man in his right mind takes the crazy (any women less than 4 crazy is probably a pretty dude) and drama that wife one doles out and decides he wants to double down on THAT?! I firmly believe a psychological disorder is the only logical explanation for polygamy, but then I’m not a mental health professional. Maybe Scott could give us some insight. 🙂
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How the hell do you know the intentions of a dude who took multiple wives? So you’re judging David for marrying multiple women, as supposedly he decided his first wife was inadequate. How the hell do you know his intentions. Can you read minds?
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RPA,
First of all, you’re juxtaposing OT polygyny onto the modern (and formal) MMP. Of course, it’s not going to work.
From the accounts given in the OT, your presumption might apply to Jacob and Leah, but most other polygynous marriages seemed to be rather settled in the arrangement. I believe this is because clan Headship was the norm.
According to Toad’s view, polygyny still exists today in the form of the 80/20 rule coupled with serial monogamy and spinning plates, AKA a soft harem.
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AngloSaxon,
What I know for a fact is that I am much better at reading minds than you are at picking up tongue firmly planted in cheek humor. 😉
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Its hard to do online sometimes….
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Also, since you mentioned King David, ever notice how the kings back then seemed to go off to war a lot? At the perfect time of year for camping and hanging out with the bros they head out for a few months leaving their wife behind.
I think that is what Saul was doing until David came along and messed it up. The Philistines are camping on one side of the valley, the Israelites on the other. They have to keep up appearances so their women don’t catch on because as soon as one side wins they know they all have to go home. So Saul and the Philistine king work it out where Goliath taunts, the Israelites pretend to be afraid and both sides get to go camping with their buddies for a few months in peace without having to do any actual fighting.
It was perfect. They could sit around the campfire debating battle strategy. “A bigger sword is going to work best.” “It’s not the size, it’s how you use it.” Not a single nag for months and they can do what they want. Then David hears Goliath and in a fit of youthful exuberance messes up the whole arrangement.
See, mind reading is really as hard as one would think.
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@RPA
This is genius exegesis!! I can’t believe I never noticed that in the text before!! :joy:
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If men were truly honest with themselves they would admit that the following would be the ideal (from a man’s perspective):
You have the one wife who you are crazy about. She’s the one who takes your name. She lives in your house, has the place of honor. THE wife. You take care of her like your most prized possession. You have children with her. A life, a home.
And about 100 side chicks who are not particularly important to you.
It’s just super taboo and frowned upon.
And most men cannot ever pull that off. Strictly enforced hard monogamy was the solution and it works if you stay on it as a society.
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Well I’ve only had one va-jay-jay but I can’t imagine they’re much different woman to woman. I’ll take a pass on the 100 side chicks.
Mine’s the type of sentiment that makes (some) women’s heart go “awwww!” but that sentiment doesn’t make them more attracted to you. Probably less attracted.
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I don’t like it when women go awwwww, Its insulting.
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Cameron you would be a total fail as nation-founding apex patriarch. 🙂
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Like all men with functioning ‘nads I am not immune to concupiscence but I also have a strong bluepill streak of idealizing non-serial monogamy. Yeah I’d be a bad choice for patriarchal founding father. Gains you zero attractiveness points.
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It sounds like you are thinking too much. Just grab multiple chicks and go for it like Jacob.
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I think AngloSaxon is right cameron.
But if you struggle with overthinking and idealizing non-serial monogamy, try rethinking about the situation. It’s more concurrent monogamy, which is way better and will let you be the national founding apex patriarch that lays latent inside you.
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“What man in his right mind takes the crazy (…) and drama that wife one doles out and decides he wants to double down on THAT?! ”
Having more solves the drama as I commented before. The drama is caused by women having been created for polygammy and therefore being bisexual. Unless you’ve got enough of them to satisfy each other when you aren’t paying attention to them then they go nuts. Theoretically. Ask Solomon. He was supposedly the wisest man and all and he had thousands of slores.
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Sorry I did make a mistake for some reason that phrase got switched up in my head. But it’s said elsewhere. We are not going to have a functional society with men with 3 wives and 2 men alone without children forever. Those people have no interest in its future. We are just seeing the tip of this surface in our own society with people clamoring mgtow won’t clean up Chad and stacys mess.
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Cameron,
I hate to break this news to you, because I fear it might incite curiosity that can lead to no good.
They are not all the same. Not even close.
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As an author of classic literature whose name has slipped my mind once wrote,
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Scott, I was under the impression they were all warm and wet. I know a few of them are so cavernous you can find your keys and drive out but hey mine’s pretty awesome so I’ll stick with it. But you know I gotta post this again for fun:
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r/K biology.
I mean my K-strategist approach of “one-itis” hasn’t made me a national patriarch but with 8 kids I’ve been pretty successful from a Darwinian point of view. Yeah a K patriarch with multiple wives would do even better.
Edward Dutton, the Jolly Heretic, believes that the r-strategist people (male and female) will actually be selected against in 21st century conditions because those oriented towards lots of sex with lots of different people tend to use contraception and abortion a lot.
Slow and steady wins the race.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310758428_Slow_and_Steady_Wins_the_Race_K_Positively_Predicts_Fertility_in_the_USA_and_Sweden
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I noticed a flaw in many of our discussions on this blog and in many of my discussions with Christians. That flaw is to drill down so hard on a specific topic in the Bible that we forget to inform ourselves of the rest of it’s relevancy. I am by no means a master at being able to do that but it’s not rocket science and you don’t have to have a super IQ to know what the Bible says. For example and forgive me because I’m sitting in my work truck eating lunch… The Bible says that you shall not make prostitutes of your daughters and thus defile the land. Sexual contact of most kinds involves an exchanging of fluid and an argument could be made that this is the reason a woman should only be with one man her entire life. Thus the telegony thread. The way I see it is that when we obey God we don’t have to worry about following the laws of man…. We can take it simply on faith that what God says in his Adamic, Mosaic, Prophetic, and New Testament law is the truth and if we don’t understand it so be it, but we obey it anyways the same way a child obeys his father by not touching the hot stove even though he may not understand why. Once we venture outside of God’s law we begin to be creative like God has made us to be, but creative in our evil. Once a woman and a man have sex they’ve jumped to the consummation of marriage regardless of any ceremony or covenants. And yes the father can reject the man and you can call it annulment or divorce, it’s the same thing. The financial penalty is paid because the now non-virgin needs some way to be supported and have a dowry because the way it should be is that unmarried non virgins should be a thing that is unheard of in the Assembly of Israel and in the church and it should be shameful. It is obviously now not a shameful thing and is often celebrated. Venereal disease develops among women who are shared among men which points to the verse Paul uses after describing homosexuality about them receiving the penalty of their error. Again we simply have to stay within the confines of what God tells us and we will be okay… kind of like Gandalf telling the dwarves and Bilbo not to wander off the path in Mirkwood. Thankfully, Jesus made a way back to the path but we don’t change the path or lower the bar.
I see the Mosaic law and all the rest of the Bible as a simple computer program full of if-then statements. What is miraculous is that they all agree… If it appears they don’t agree, additional conditions from elsewhere in the Bible provide illumination.
I agree with the Toad in that married men do not commit adultery if they sleep with an unmarried woman because if they have sex with a woman the Bible requires them to marry that woman, and Polygyny is nowhere condemned by God. If they do not marry her they contribute to the general defilement of the land via the sin of whoredom…. creative evil. In our modern day we have allowed men to create whores and use whores without any consequences.
The Pharisaical traditions of men established since Jesus Christ walked the earth via the Roman Catholic Church and other false teacher hirelings are the water we swim in when we read our English Bibles with our modern minds and we miss the truth of the actual word of God.
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The bad premises and axioms of Toad lead to the endorsement of Prostitution which Dalrock mocked.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/righteous-prostitutes-spreading-their-legs-free-of-sin/
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It is amazing to see how people can read the same arguments and come to completely different conclusions about the matter.
In Taiwan, children who are in the know use the phrase “get married” as a playful and polite euphemism to refer to two people / animals / entities / objects having sex. In English, I suppose the equivalent phrase would be “going together”, which is more explicit about the intercourse and has less emphasis on the commitment. Clearly, children in Taiwan recognize that there is an emotional / spiritual component to the relationship that is not well regarded in the West. My observation is that sex = marriage is so simple in concept that even children can comprehend it. But yet, western adults get tied up in fits over this idea, and try to tack on all kinds of conditions and qualifications.
Maybe this is exactly what Jesus was warning against in Matthew 18:3, Matthew 19:13-15, Mark 10:13-16, and Luke 18:15-17.
Note that the passages in Matthew and Mark follow immediately after Jesus’ discussion with the Pharisees about marriage and divorce.
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My question is the next logical step then. Like I know my wife had very ungodly “relations” at one time as a child and was raped once even. Now she is a Christian and we have 4 kids. What should be done about this information?
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Is this a serious question?
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Yep.
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What do you mean by what is “the next logical step”?
I don’t know everything and I’m not even sure what you’re asking.
When did your wife have “ungodly relations”? How old was she? What exactly do you mean by “ungodly relations”?
All women develop their agency in my view at or around the age of accountability, which is usually determined to be around 13. For sex, in my opinion, you don’t really have sexual agency until you’re at least 16. So if she had “ungodly relations” before age 16, that’s before her agency kicks in. If 16 or older, she made a decision to have those “relations”, she’s responsible for it.
I admit the 16 year old age cutoff is arbitrary. Draw the line where you want. I will simply tell you that sexual agency kicks in before age 18 – by that I mean the ability of the person to understand what is involved in sex, and the decision to engage in it. I do not advocate for this. I do not believe unmarried people should have sex. I am NOT saying that underage people should have sex. I am NOT saying that underage sexual conduct should be decriminalized or deregulated. I am stating only the reality that a 16 year old understands what is involved in it and can be responsible for the consequences of the decision to proceed with it.
What exactly do you mean by “r@pe”? What, exactly, did she say happened when she was “r@ped”? How old was she when this happened? Were one or more intoxicants involved? (A lot of what women call “r@pe” isn’t really r@pe; hence the quotes around the word and my asking pointed questions.)
A woman is not responsible for having been r@ped. I mean real, actual r@pe. I mean forced to have sex, against her will. But, again, I don’t know at this point what you, or she, mean by “r@pe”.
As for the rest of it, I don’t know what you mean by what the next logical step is. Has your wife repented of her past behavior? I can presume she probably has if she’s now a Christian and has been faithfully married to you and borne 4 children to you. If she needs help with that, help her. If she needs prayer for that, pray for her. (You should be doing these things anyway.) She, like any wife, needs your leadership, your direction, and your guidance. So give those things to her to the best of your ability.
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Jack
If you believe the response to Cliff Fontenot above is inappropriate, please delete it or put it into moderation.
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Cliff,
Welcome to Σ Frame!
I assume “this information” refers to the content of the OP. Without any further information given about your situation, I would say there is nothing to be done. However, it should give you a greater appreciation of the grace you and your wife and family have received from God.
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I agree, the post above begs the question, what do we do about this. For me the question answered itself, and I am now divorced and no longer in that relationship, whether or not God viewed it as “adulterous”, I can certainly attest that it was one unholy mess from start to finish.
My parents were doing missionary work in Africa before I was born. The mission policy was to use that verse regarding the multiple wives that most of the village chiefs had. To just leave things be, if all was well. Although the mission agency didn’t approve of polygyny, they also didn’t want to bust up families and then see disowned wives turn to prostitution to provide for their consequently fatherless children. That seems to me, at first glance, to be sound advice.
If your marriage isn’t on the rocks, and if you’d like to have your 4 kids have two parents living in harmony and providing as best an example as you can, considering the situation, then carry on as you now find yourself having come upon this knowledge. Pray for god’s mercy to not hold your past sins and ignorance against you, and to give you the wisdom to teach your own children aright, to avoid the situation in which you now find yourself.
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Toad’s writings on this get to the essence of what differentiates marriage as a unique union. Simply, what act makes a man and woman married?
What parts of the marriage act / ceremony / promise / commitment are essential?
Is it a promise? Non married couples make promises of love all the time, we don’t necessarily call that a marriage.
Is it a ceremony with a promise? Maybe…. Does it have to be in a church? Can only a specific person (priest? pastor? friend?) conduct the ceremony? Do you have to say certain words? None of us would likely agree on the details here.
Does your family have to “give their blessing?” Does it have to have a certain number of attendees? Do certain people have to be there? Is a party necessary?
Does the state/government need to be involved? A “license” necessary?
I think Toad’s argument is none of that is essential. What makes marriage different than any other relationship you have is sex with the person. That is the essential differentiator, and he’s claiming the bible (and Jesus) made the same point. Man and woman become a married couple (one flesh, unionized) when they have intercourse.
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If anything other than sex with a virgin and her father or guardian’s consent is required, or sex with a widow and her consent, All-Wise God forgot to specifically explain what. Which leads me to conclude that nothing else is required.
Here’s how God relays the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah:
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This will always be where the rub between the sola scriptura and confessional/sacramental tribes cannot reconcile.
Those of us who do not accept the proposition that all revelation stopped at the death of the last apostle are just as convinced of our understanding of how Truth is revealed as the other side is of theirs..
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I don’t know about other Protestants, but I’m not opposed to their being more revelation and prophecy being delivered through men. I just have no sure way of knowing if God vouches for it.
If Saint Scott gets a word from God, and Saint Jack tells me that he thinks it’s authentic, I’m still not convinced. I could test it by scripture to make sure it isn’t obviously contrary to the already delivered text, but that still doesn’t prove it was from God.
When my dad was chief engineer for the world’s largest Christian radio network, there was a junior engineer’s wife who kept getting “words from the Lord” about how their business ought to be run, that usually sounded like stuff her husband might have thought, and usually had to do specifically with the projects her husband was working on. The mission warned the husband numerous times that if his wife didn’t quit sharing her unwelcomed “divine revelations” they’d have to part ways, and I believe that’s what eventually happened. She kept on trying to tell the place how they had to operate, as if she was God, and I believe it eventually cost her husband his job with the mission.
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Scott, Sharkly,
Prophecy is discussed in 1 Corinthians 12-14.
I’ve written about prophecy many times before. Current Trends in Prophecy (2020/3/13) and Warmer Winds Shall Waft Anew (2020/5/27) offer a concise summary of my views on this.
The majority of prophecy is self-confirming.
For example, one time a student asked me what she should do after she graduated. She had a degree in business (under the direction of her parents), but she hated business. She had an interview coming up, and she didn’t even know if she wanted that job. Well, it just so happened that the day before, I was talking with another business student who told me about all the different branches of business. At the time, it was interesting, but meaningless to me, since I’m not a business major. But after that student asked me what she should do, I immediately knew she should work in HR, considering her friendly personality. I told her, “Go to the interview, and tell them you want to work in Human Resources.” She did and she got the job, even though she had never taken a class in HR before and didn’t even know what it was all about. About 4 months later she came back to campus and told me, “I love my new job! Thank you for telling me about HR!” Then I knew my conversation with the other student did not happen by random chance. It was all part of His plan. So you see, this kind of prophecy is self-confirming. When stuff like this happens frequently, one can get the hang of it.
The prophecy that isn’t self-confirming is what you have to be careful of. For example, if someone tells you something like, “You need to donate money to this organization”, a red flag should come up and you should do a little bit of your own research to determine if that is something you really want to do. The interesting thing here is that if you should ever pray about whether to give money to somebody, you will always get a confirmation. So even prayer cannot always be of service.
There are several things that can help identify truth in this area.
1– Having a finely tuned sense of discernment. (1 Corinthians 12:10; 14:32)
2– The reputation and track record of the prophet. (Deuteronomy 18:22)
3– Testing the spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:3,10; 1 John 4:1-6)
4– The confirmation of 2-3 witnesses. (1 Corinthians 14:29; 2 Corinthians 13:1)
5– Congruence with scripture. (1 Corinthians 14:37-38)
6– Careful examination. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)
7– The edification of others (1 Corinthians 14:3-5,31)
Prophecies that predict the future are very rare, but have somehow come to be the stereotypical image of prophecy. A better concept of this phenomenon can be apprehended by understanding how prophecy can impact people’s conscious decisions, and then this creates larger changes that lead to an alternate future. Looking back, it seems like the prophet predicted the future, but in reality, all he did was make people aware of some things.
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As seems to often be the case, when we discuss something here, Bruce Charlton is discussing it on his blog. Three days ago he said this:
He blames this partially on the prevalence of lying and the focus on destruction rather than creation, but his primary explanation is that men have rejected the spiritual and divine. Few commune with the divine.
Historically everyone believed in prophecy and it was a social group phenomenon. Having prophets in a church was completely normal and expected, because of course God would speak with people—as a group—directly. But we no longer have this social framework.
Prophecy is now individual. The example above shows this.
Instead of prophecy being the default experience, it is now someone you must opt-in to experience. You must make a conscious effort, and the results will almost certainly be individual.
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Ramman3000,
Thanks for sharing those posts from Bruce. I had missed those.
From reading those posts, I got the impression that the reason why prophecy is now limited to individual spheres is because of Individualism. We discussed this not too long ago — here and here.
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@Jack,
Now that you mention it, this applies to what I said up thread. Prior to Jesus, when a virgin had sex with a man, he could not claim they were married without the father’s final say, even though they had the marriage ceremony (i.e. sex). The virgin had no agency at all on this legal matter. But when Jesus revoked divorce, he effectively cancelled the father’s patriarchal rights and implicitly shifted agency to the Christian woman. Her actions — whether to claim rape or not — now determined under binding Christian law whether or not she was married from that point forward.
As with Jesus’ teaching on divorce, he ushered in a different era, an era in which women were now under moral obligation by God to reject premarital sex in a way they were not previously, an era of agency and individualism. This is mirrored in salvation itself, which in Christianity is a matter of personal belief.
But Judaism was first based on group faith. Individual faith was rewarded, but punishments were doled out according to what the group faith was. There were atonement sacrifices made for the people as a whole (e.g. the ‘escape goat’), even though individual sacrifices were pious. The Year of Jubilee was a corporate act. Consider how Abraham’s reward for individual piety was a group reward, largely in his ancestors. Job’s reward for faithfulness was the rebuilding of the family group and its inheritance.
With the fall of Israel as a nation, the [mostly Gentile] Christian faith became individual. There was no corporate Gentile faith, at least not until Christianity became the state religion in the 4th century, but even then it wasn’t the same as the Jews being God’s people.
This must also be a reason why polygamy was immediately shunned by Christians, despite there being no explicit condemnation of the practice. Polygamy is inherently a corporate practice. Individualism — and female agency — assumes monogamy.
Artisanal Toad had a problem with female agency because he was working in an OT paradigm. But Jesus set up a new paradigm, and like it or not, it included greater female agency. The reason Tertullian said that a husband and wife are equal in worship and teaching in the church must be this greater understanding.
When you started this series, I said that the question of female agency was not interesting, but I didn’t really say why. As you noted, a child can understand that sex = marriage without needing it described using formal logical syntax (as I did above). In the same way a child can understand female agency. It’s so obvious to me that it is the case, that I fail to understand how anyone can say otherwise. But the reason for agency is individualism.
Even with the plain Anabaptists or perhaps Ed Hurst-style Covenant Christianity individualism is there, even if deemphasized. True OT-style patriarchy is never coming back. It can’t.
If you do a “Ram-Man on Women’s Agency” or a “Bruce Charlton on Women’s Agency” (which might be a challenging post since I don’t believe either of us have directly opined on the topic), the logic dictates that Christian individualism (including Christian prophecy and Christian mysticism) necessarily and logically implies female agency, and it has for nearly 2,000 years. A very boring question indeed.
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RamMan3000,
Fascinating insights. There is one error.
Should be individuality. See my comment about the difference. Also, individuality in no ways supercedes the structure of authority. Otherwise, exercising agency becomes rebellion.
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I do miss Toadie. had some fun interactions with him in comments.
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You know, “premarital sex” is just rampant in our world, and even in the church. But, if Artisanal Toad is right, then we’re living in an “adulterous generation”.
Somehow I recall “adulterous generation”, but not “fornicating generation” being mentioned in the Bible. Hmm.
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“It’s not a sin for a Christian woman to be a prostitute but it is a sin for a Christian man to use the services of one” is an odd position to take. I guess Artisanal Toad is a big fan of the Nordic Model of prostitution law.
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