freeman3 wrote:I thought the following about the history of Christian thought on marriage was interesting. http://www.danielrjennings.org/ThisHist ... rriage.pdf

freeman3 wrote:Oh I don't know--one might think that someone is loony who believes in an unseen all-powerful entity who will grant eternal life if you just believe in him in spite of the fact that there is no proof that he exists. Just depends on your point of view I guess...
The guy may be a loon but he has compiled quite a bit on information on the subject.

freeman3 wrote:Good points though the universe also had an infinite amount of time to get it right...It does seem rather odd that God would wait seven million years after we diverged from Chimpanzees and probably 40,000-50,000 years after modern humans evolved to start talking to one group of people in Israel some 3,000 years ago...But human beings are too dumb to understand God's plan (oh wait that was Zimmerman saying the shooting of Travyon was part of God's plan, I am getting confused).

danivon wrote:Evolution is not 'luck'. Sheesh!

danivon wrote:Correct, it is not 'a plan'. Eventually, you may come to understand what it is, and perhaps intil then you could refrain from the sneering falsehoods?

Dunno, but he seems a bit of a loon

The unexpected course of the Protestant leader in seeking a bigamous marriage was largely conditioned by two factors: he was weakened by a licentious lifestyle, and his marital relations were about to bring scandal on all Protestantism. Within a few weeks of his 1523 marriage to the unattractive and sickly Christine of Saxony, who was also alleged to be an immoderate drinker, Philip committed adultery; and as early as 1526 he began to consider the permissibility of bigamy. According to Martin Luther, he lived "constantly in a state of adultery and fornication."[1]

Philip accordingly wrote Luther for his opinion about the matter, alleging as a precedent the polygamy of the patriarchs, but Luther replied that it was not enough for a Christian to consider the acts of the patriarchs, rather that he, like the patriarchs, must have special divine sanction. Since such sanction was clearly lacking in the this case, Luther advised against bigamous marriage, especially for Christians, unless there was extreme necessity, as, for example, if the wife was leprous, or abnormal in other respects. Despite this discouragement, Philip gave up neither his project to secure a bigamous marriage nor his life of sensuality, which kept him for years from receiving communion.

Philip easily gained his first wife's consent to the marriage. Bucer, who was strongly influenced by political arguments, was won over by the landgrave's threat to ally himself with the Emperor if he did not secure the consent of the theologians to the marriage, and the Wittenberg divines were worked upon by the plea of the prince's ethical necessity.

Thus the "secret advice of a confessor" was won from Luther and Melanchthon (on 10 December 1539), neither of them knowing that the bigamous wife had already been chosen. Bucer and Melanchthon were now summoned, without any reason given, to appear in Rotenburg an der Fulda, where, on 4 March 1540, Philip and Margarethe were united. The time was particularly inauspicious for any scandal affecting the Protestants, for the Emperor, who had rejected the Frankfort Respite, was about to invade Germany. A few weeks later, however, the whole matter was revealed by Philip's sister Elisabeth, and the scandal caused a painful reaction throughout Germany. Some of Philip's allies refused to serve under him, and Luther, under the plea that it was a matter of advice given in the confessional, refused to acknowledge his part in the marriage.

danivon wrote:The falsehoods are:

1) That the theories of evolution and the origin of the universe boil down to just luck

2) That the current state of science is that we 'know'. The whole point is that it is the best available current theory that maintains. It may persist until the year 5000, it may not.

Yeah, freeman's post came across a little superior, but he was responsing to your dismissal of someone else as being a bit of a loon.

Anyway, what was interesting about freeman's original post was the description of the attitudes of Luther and Calvin to the idea of divorce and remarriage. I decided to see if what it said about Philip of Hesse' bigamy was corroborated.

Seems he did at least give tacit consent, if not full approval.

Weird.

rickyp wrote:Or are you just discomfited to learn, once again, that your presumptions are mistaken, so you resort to ad hominem ?