В «Пра́вде» нет изве́стий, а в «Изве́стиях» нет пра́вды.
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[checks chessboard, notes king on side]
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Something tells me soon after priests are ALLOWED to marry they’ll be REQUIRED to marry …
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Do you think they will accept homosexual marriage that soon? 
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You will note that in Soviet Union, one truth but many reports (the literal meaning of Izvestiya).
This goes for most religions.
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Saul of Tarsus said it was better to marry than to burn. So logically he was endorsing equal marriage as a way for gay people to avoid going to Hell.
This is why theologians are so unpopular with Protestants.
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Methinks they doth protest too much
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Isn’t that passage a source, if not the source, of the idea of priestly celibacy in the first place? Paul said, “But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” (English Standard Version)
In other words, those with self-control/self-denial are superior persons to those weaklings who give in to lust, but the weaklings should at least marry to partially curb their filthy urges.
But anything can be reinterpreted to say anything:
“…he gives thanks to God from the bottom of his heart because he knows and he feels that he never deserved one minute of this pleasure.”
I note that “burn” in the KJV has been interpreted as “burn in Hell” by some of the more uncompromising theologians.
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It annoys me when Protestants - who say they are Bible literalists - fiddle with the text. Because the Greek merely says
κρεῖττον γάρ ἐστιν γαμῆσαι ἢ πυροῦσθαι.
“Better it is to marry than burn”.
“With passion” is not in the original text. Protestants nowadays seem to feel the need to expand it. Saul might have meant that but he did not say so. Which is why those of us who regard Saul of Tarsus as a nasty little man who infiltrated the early Church and started it on the way to messing up people’s minds, prefer to take him literally.
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Amen to that. Whenever I get stuck having to attend a church service (not often now), and they read from Paul’s letters, and then conclude by saying “this is the word of God”, it’s all I can do to not shout, “didn’t you say this was a letter from Paul to the Galicians or whoever at the beginning?”
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You gotta find yourself a better church!
As a non-Christian, I don’t have a church at all.
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Can the Greek for “to burn” be used metaphorically for lust? If so, there is still room for ambiguity.
The Roman Catholic church knows where it stands:
“But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to be burnt.”
—Douay-Rheims Bible
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One need not flow from the other, though that makes sense.
I was raised as a Universalist. My minister, she is amazing, and a long time student of Thích Nhat-Hanh
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“Church” seems to be a specially invented single-purpose word that is used to stand for the Greek term ekklesia which meant “assembly” when the New Testament was written …
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Church comes from kurikon, which is Greek as well, and means something like “lord’s house”.
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Did it? When I was doing this stuff I was told that in Koine it retained the meaning of “called out” (ek + kles) because its members were called to be disciples.
agree.
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You mean the Word of God can be ambiguous? Stone the blasphemer!
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Well. The Church - any organized, evangelical religion, actually - is alllll about increasing the flock - ever seen an old-school Roman-Catholic family? And it would be so NICE if they could also set examples to their flock as to what to try to achieve in a good Catholic marriage.
But the Easterns have been doing this since the Great Schism of 1054, right? And it’s worked pretty well for them, it would appear.
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Evangelical literally means preaching the gospel, so yes. There are plenty of non-evangelical religions, Judaism and Zen Buddhism to mention two. The rabbi is expected to make three attempts to put off potential converts, and the Zen Buddhist story is of how a would be disciple had to present his severed arm to the master to get himself taken seriously. Jesus does this too; the rich young man is told to sell all he has and give it to the poor.
Cynics have suggested that the real reason for priestly celibacy was so the Church could pay parish priests less.
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