One thing that struck me in class today was Dr. Schuler's reference to Aeneas carrying his father and the household gods to safety. It made me think more about Philo's division of the Ten Commandments into two groups of five. The first four commandments seem at first to be dealing with a different topic than the fifth does. But Philo explained that the way we treat authority cannot be divided from our treatment of God. Philo said that we may think that we serve God even when we do not honor our parents, but if we do not honor our parents, we are not honoring God. This is actually very reasonable, because by not honoring our parents we are breaking God's law. Philo also seemed to point out that the way we treat our parents influences the way we treat God. If we do not honor our earthly fathers, who gave us life, we probably will not honor our heavenly Father, who gave us AND our fathers life.
At this point, you may be wondering why I brought up Aeneas in this post. I started thinking about this incident after Dr. Schuler mentioned it during the discussion. I realized that if Aeneas had left his father, he would have also left the household gods that his father was carrying. He would have dishonorably left both his father and the gods to ruin. Also, this chain of Aeneas holding his father, who was holding the gods, created a hierarchy for the family. The gods were above the father, and the father was above the son. I may have drawn implications out too far, but this really grabbed my attention.
P.S. I commented on Michelle Nellsch's post.
No comments:
Post a Comment