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I was reading through Christian Renewal this afternoon, and I noticed a block titled "Relativism now the majority view in America."

Anyways, the answer a survey turns out is often representative more of the organization conducting it, than of the truth of the matter (it's all about how the questions are phrased). I'd consider myself a believer in absolute morality, but in that survey I'd probably classified a relativist. I think that whether an action is right or wrong does vary according to circumstance, albeit in a controlled fashion.

• Case 1: Consider some action, X, that is in the absolute sense not immoral (is it a sign that I've been in school too long when I start defining variables in my sentences?). If a person, Y, believes that God says that he/she should not do action X, then I believe that if Y does action X then they've done wrong (as they've acted contrary to what they believe that God demands of them). That said, this does not excuse a person who performs an act that they believe is either morally-neutral or morally-required, but which is in the objective sense immoral.
• Case 2: This is the relatively common example given of where person A can save person B's life is by stealing C (needed medicine, food, etc) from a closed drug/grocery store when they can't find the owner, otherwise person B will die.

I'm not quite sure what position to take on the issue in case 2. I don't think you can really find some point when B is nearing death beyond which the action of breaking into the store would become moral. Consider Jesus' words in Mark 2:23-27 as a possible example of situational ethics.

So, what are your thoughts on this issue? Am I just missing a distinction between morality and ethics?

I posted a couple of digicams before, but now I've pretty much settled on a list of 3 digital cameras that I'm considering, and I figured that I'd spit out the list and see if you had any feedback to offer. All of the cameras below have roughyl 5 megapixel sensors:

• Canon Powershot A610 - this is a new camera from Canon, coming out about now. It's got a 4x zoom lens, which is a little longer than the others. It's the most expensive of the models I'm considering, but when you compare costs of memory cards, it might work out roughly the same as the Sony. I'm still waiting for reviews of this, but it sounds like a fairly nice camera.
• Konica Minolta G530 - My sister has the 4 megapixel variant of this camera, and the results it's produced haven't been bad. It's also got the fastest startup time I've seen for a digital non-SLR (0.8 seconds). Henrys.com, where about half of my lenses have come from, is actually auctioning one of these on eBay at the moment. An auction they did of the same camera the previous week ended at about $250CDN, so this might end up being the cheapest if the auction ends at the same price this time. It's downside, though, is a proprietary battery, and from what I recall it's only good for a couple of hundred shots (the other two cameras both use AA NIHMs).
• Sony Cybershot DSC-W5 - Very impressive battery life for a digicam, and what should be a good lenses. Also relatively fast startup time for a digital non-SLR, but easily beaten by the G530 in that respect. The downside, as mentioned before, is that it only likes memory sticks.

Following in the footsteps of the recent discussion of infant baptism, I figured that I would spent a little time on what the book Credo calls the Anabaptist error on the doctrine of the virgin birth:

The Anabaptists taught that the Lord Jesus took His body from heaven, and so did not receive His flesh and blood from the blessed virgin Mary. Since Mary was conceived and born in sin, they argued that Christ would have been sinful if He had taken her flesh and blood. For them, Mary acted like a funnel, a route through which Christ passed without in any way being affected by it in His person. Note how the passages above show this to be wrong. Ultimately, the Anabaptists made flesh and blood to be sinful in itself.

The "passages above" referred to here are Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23, and Hebrews 4:15 and are found in the World English Bible as follows (assuming that I don't make a copying error this time, as I did in the original post on baptism):

Isaiah 7:14 - Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Matthew 1:23 - “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son. They shall call his name Immanuel;” which is, being interpreted, “God with us.”

Hebrews 4:15 - For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.

It's a little bit interesting to see how, although the first bit of Matthew 1:23 is stated as a quote of Isaiah 7:14, that they are a little bit different in their wording (I guessing that this is due to one coming from a Hebrew manuscript, and the other from a Greek one). In the NIV, Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23 come out the same.

Anyways, three things come to mind when I think of these passages:

1. Views at the time on pregnancy: I think that the views at the time of the birth of Christ were still those of Aristotle. His views were something along the lines of the male providing sperm which contained the complete essence of a child, with the mother basically being nothing more than a source of matter.
2. Modern views on pregnancy: Modern biology would suggest that beyond the point of conception, the mother and developing child are genetically distinct. The mother provides oxygen and other nutrients for to the child via the placenta, but this is merely a meeting point at which transfer takes place with the circulatory systems and blood remaining distinct.
3. Language: Given the views at the time on how children came to exist, and also the one-time nature of the event, I'm just wondering if we might be hitting some sort of barrier in terms of usable language (ie. an inability to differentiate the start of pregnancy from modern views of conception is - something which they didn't really know of at the time).

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Given the above, I'm finding it a little difficult to say that scripture disproves this so-called "Anabaptist error". Beyond providing nutrition - which would contain none of her genetic material - did Mary provide anything more than the funnel view of Anabaptism allows? Feel free to disagree (and to try to persuade me).