Hello good morning Mr**,
To have a good friend is far and foremost pleasurable for our life. I feel completely rejuvenated having chat with a couple of friends there.
Religious freedom is more important than life itself. If you say no to transfusions we all have to pay deepest respect to their decision no matter what the basis of their decision might be. It is their solemn, own freedom. Freedom of faith, which is a right guaranteed by Constitutions.
So I leave it to them. And here's my thought.
As you pointed out no meat has been banned under New Testament. Likewise in my opinion, blood is now OK for humans to make the most of from every aspects as much as we can.
Let' s think about the symbolic meaning of Redemption. This idea is very unique in Christianity. Blood of humans from Adam had been made unclean by original sin, yet Jesus redeemed its sin in his death on the torture stake. So humans are now eligible to get access to eternal life if they really repent.
Blood was originally used in pagan traditions in ancient times and of course in modern times contaminated blood causes many fatal diseases such as AIDS, hepatitis.
However once it is used and applied in completely sterile states, transfusion has been saving tens of precious lives and many other blood related products such as plasma, globulin have been a key to cure for many diseases. Then all of a sudden we understand why Jesus compared wine to his blood.
Then we also agree with the claim that blood stands for life made by you.
Doctor prescribed immunoglobulin when I was likely to suffer from tetanus three years ago, which is made of blood.
I know my idea is over-interpretation of the meaning of Redemption, but I believe scientific truth and religious belief go with in the long run.
My wishes,
Mer
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Meaning of Redemption
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That is an interesting set of thoughts.
ReplyDeleteThe text they quote (it's somewhere in Acts) says explicitly that all meat is okay except meat from strangled animals and sacrifices. It also orders Christians to refrain from blood, and that's what Jehovah's Witnesses stick to as the only denomination to my knowledge.
ReplyDeleteBlood, in fact, is a healthy food item, and of course you're right about the scientific proofs of benefits from transfusions and products made of blood. It won't move them an inch, though.
According to a book that I have been reading extra-curricular for the 'animal rights' component to my philosophy course1, 'Saint Paul tackles the question whether Christians should eat meat that may have been sacrificed to idols. His answer is that it is all right, provided you do not know that it has been sacrificed. His rationale is that to Christians the procedures of sacrifice are meaningless in themselves. A problem arises only if possible converts are put off by seeing you eat sacrificed meat knowingly'. The author references Corinthians 10:25.
ReplyDelete1. Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals, 1995; p170
Edit: Typo in name of Sorabji's book. There I am trying to be all academic...
Mm - a slightly different issue. To Jehovah's Witnesses, meat of sacrifices is not only explicitly prohibited, eating it knowingly is to participate in idolatry, i.e. devil worship (to them, certainly not to me!).
ReplyDeleteThat all meat is allowed is Acts 10:10-16.
I can't find the blood taboo; I think it's the Old Testament they quote.
ReplyDeleteRight. Genesis 9:5. The rationale is that the prohibition is given to Noah, i.e. is older than Mosaic law, and it's only Mosaic law that is rendered null and void by "the New Covenant".
ReplyDeleteAND Acts 15:19-20. It's actually in a discussion of circumcision.
ReplyDeleteRegarding blood: I'm a definite fan of 'black pudding' myself!
ReplyDeleteI'm not, but it's for purely personal and secular reasons. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you very much, I appreciate that!
ReplyDeleteLeviticus 7:22 -27 also prohibits having fat. This is much more practical in our times since it causes lots of diseases. I'm not sure if they follow.
ReplyDeleteThey don't. That's Mosaic law, and that doesn't apply to Christians.
ReplyDelete> it's only Mosaic law that is rendered null and void by "the New Covenant".
ReplyDeleteI thought this is the meaning of redemption, but I guess many knew already..
However the fact is this is given to Noah.
In 1442 in the council of Florence, session 11 as to Acts description this is interpreted as follows.
>It firmly believes, professes and teaches that every creature of God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because according to the word of the Lord not what goes into the mouth defiles a person, and because the difference in the Mosaic law between clean and unclean foods belongs to ceremonial practices, which have passed away and lost their efficacy with the coming of the gospel. It also declares that the apostolic prohibition, to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled, was suited to that time when a single church was rising from Jews and gentiles, who previously lived with different ceremonies and customs. This was so that the gentiles should have some observances in common with Jews, and occasion would be offered of coming together in one worship and faith of God and a cause of dissension might be removed, since by ancient custom blood and strangled things seemed abominable to Jews, and gentiles could be thought to be returning to idolatry if they ate sacrificial food. In places, however, where the Christian religion has been promulgated to such an extent that no Jew is to be met with and all have joined the church, uniformly practising the same rites and ceremonies of the gospel and believing that to the clean all things are clean, since the cause of that apostolic prohibition has ceased, so its effect has ceased. It condemns, then, no kind of food that human society accepts and nobody at all neither man nor woman, should make a distinction between animals, no matter how they died; although for the health of the body, for the practice of virtue or for the sake of regular and ecclesiastical discipline many things that are not proscribed can and should be omitted, as the apostle says all things are lawful, but not all are helpful.
So this is already settled in Catholic world.
As to the deference between order to Noah and Mosaic law, I don't think there's substantial difference since Pentateuch was thought to be written by Moses.
The Catholic church never believed that revelations stopped with the last text in the Bible, as Jehovah's Witnesses do - based on the last sentence of the Apocalypse. A formula not unknown from other texts from antiquity which means: "copyright: John".
ReplyDelete