God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible? - Page 7

[Liquesce]

Well huh.  There were a couple of sites that attributed it to Martin Luther's "The Estate of Marriage," but I looked at it and coming from that would mean more than a bad translation -- it would be an ideologically driven paraphrase.  I'm assuming it having appeared in an Armstrong book means that it was written closer to as quoted elsewhere, but you never know.

From The Estate.. :

A wife too should regard her duties in the same light, as she suckles the child, rocks and bathes it, and cares for it in other ways; and as she busies herself with other duties and renders help and obedience to her husband. These are truly golden and noble works. This is also how to comfort and encourage a woman in the pangs of childbirth, not by repeating St Margaret legends and other silly old wives' tales but by speaking thus, "Dear Grete, remember that you are a woman, and that this work of God in you is pleasing to him. Trust joyfully in his will, and let him have his way with you. Work with all your might to bring forth the child. Should it mean your death, then depart happily, for you will die in a noble deed and in subservience to God. If you were not a woman you should now wish to be one for the sake of this very work alone, that you might thus gloriously suffer and even die in the performance of God's work and will. For here you have the word of God, who so created you and implanted within you this extremity." Tell me, is not this indeed (as Solomon says [Prov. 18:22]) "to obtain favour from the Lord," even in the midst of such extremity?  

(The following paragraph was all about the virtues of a father washing his child's diapers.)  

[Turquesa]

Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil's fools.

As to his attitude toward women in childbirth, I'll post back when I get to the bottom of this.... 

[Turquesa]

Liquesce, here's a decidedly biased take on the matter that provides a little context.  Grain of salt with everything, but it is interesting. 

In context, the quote says something quite different than what Grisar and Maritian suggest. One can chastise Luther for his archaic medieval medical view that those who are chaste are sickly, while those who are married and producing children are healthy, but to make Luther into a woman-hater or that Luther didn't take pain in child bearing seriously is simply absurd, and not supported by the context.

If this author is accurate, he certainly doesn't "explain away" what Luther says in a way that makes it palatable to a 21st century feminist, but it does indicate that a little quote-mining may be going on....

 

[Liquesce]

So it is in The Estate of Marriage, just without direct use of the word "childbirth."  So much for my crackerjack "Ctrl+F" research methodology.  

And yeah.  In fuller context -- expressing the belief that to not bear children results in illness -- given the day and age it's not nearly so bad as it appears when pulled from context and put before a modern audience.  "It is better to have a brief life with good health than a long life in ill health" seems fair enough.  Bad medical understanding, but still fair enough.