Very recently, we were complete morons.
See page 3:
https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/server/api/core/...
See page 3:
https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/server/api/core/...
Written by Paul, generally regarded as pretty sexist when it came to women.
I guess astrophysicists have to deal with people who read Steven Hawking and think they’re brilliant physicists.
But Hawking is generally right.
It’s so insane how serious scholars are allowed to treat this area like it’s crap, ignoring the work done by serious philosophers and historians.
I guess I’m a bit sore because one of the most respected faculties of medieval history in America replaced their “Medieval History” courses with “Modern Conceptions of the Middle Ages” - which is the Middle Ages according to Shakespeare , Chaucer, and Tolkien.
There’s still good work being done here, but the stupidity is alive and well and being passed off as reality.
> Christianity swung between the Augustinian view that women had souls only to have Aquinas take up Aristotle’s position that women were incapable of reason and therefore had no souls
> The question of women having Souls was only resolved for the Church in 1950 with the promulgation of “The Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven” and the Papal Bull (De munificentissimus Deus 1950) which accompanied the creation of a special feast to commemorate this event
Pope Pius IX died in 1878. Did he proclaim that Mary was born without sin but she still didn't have a soul?
So, how many errors do we have to find in the paper before we just dismiss the paper as nonsense?
Here's a simple example out of many I could draw on: if women didn't have souls they wouldn't be able to receive the sacraments. That means no baptism, no chrismation, no Eucharist, no marriage, no reconciliation, and no extreme unction. It would be metaphysically impossible to be sacramentally married to a woman. C'mon. There would be no need to distinguish between sacramental and natural marriages if women were soulless because they'd be unable to confect the sacrament with their espoused.
The misreading of St. Augustine here has to do with a distinction he was making regarding Imago Dei. He pretty clearly believes women and men are spiritually/metaphysically equal, including as it relates to their spiritual dignity deriving from being made in the image and likeness of God. The passage that gets misread has to do with physical nature and its derivation from Imago Dei. I don't think it was a particularly important point and it's not something I've seen repeated elsewhere.
This is a notorious enough myth about Christian belief that First Things has a multiple articles addressing it: https://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/04/the-myth-of-soul...