{"id":1620,"date":"2005-10-05T10:35:51","date_gmt":"2005-10-05T10:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html"},"modified":"2005-10-05T10:35:51","modified_gmt":"2005-10-05T10:35:51","slug":"the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html","title":{"rendered":"The problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the DVC post below, there’s a question of what does it matter if Jesus was married?<\/em> And what’s the problem with talking and wondering about it?<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s the problem, touched on by another commentor:<\/p>\n

There’s no mention of a wife of Jesus in the Gospels. <\/em>No indication, whatsoever that he was married, and the old argument from silence doesn’t work either. There was no motivation for the evangelists to be silent on any marriage. They are not silent about any other of Jesus’ relations, not silent about his relations with the people of his home town. They name the (many of the) women who followed him in his ministry and remained faithful to him to the tomb. If, for example, he and Mary Magdalene had been married, it’s pretty clear that the evangelists would have pointed that out.<\/p>\n

But they don’t.<\/p>\n

So the problem with Oh, let’s play around, imagine…what’s the harm?<\/em> is simply that it undercuts the authority of Scripture and diminishes the centrality as the Gospels as authoritative, reliable sources for our understanding of the life, identity and ministry of Jesus. It makes them the equivalent of our own imaginations, wishes and dreams.<\/p>\n

Which they’re not. No matter how much we would like to justifiy our own idolatries, our own priorities, our own "story,"…they’re not. <\/p>\n

Teaching people that the Gospels are not authoritative is, in the end, a deliberate act of sabotage, hiding the real Jesus from people because we like our gospels better.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the DVC post below, there’s a question of what does it matter if Jesus was married? And what’s the problem with talking and wondering about it? Here’s the problem, touched on by another commentor: There’s no mention of a wife of Jesus in the Gospels. No indication, whatsoever that he was married, and the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe problem - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The problem - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the DVC post below, there’s a question of what does it matter if Jesus was married? And what’s the problem with talking and wondering about it? Here’s the problem, touched on by another commentor: There’s no mention of a wife of Jesus in the Gospels. No indication, whatsoever that he was married, and the…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-10-05T10:35:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The problem - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The problem - Via Media","og_description":"In the DVC post below, there’s a question of what does it matter if Jesus was married? And what’s the problem with talking and wondering about it? Here’s the problem, touched on by another commentor: There’s no mention of a wife of Jesus in the Gospels. No indication, whatsoever that he was married, and the…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-10-05T10:35:51+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html","name":"The problem - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-10-05T10:35:51+00:00","dateModified":"2005-10-05T10:35:51+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-problem.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The problem"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}