quote:

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Paul was, like all of his time, unaware of the fact that same sex attraction is as natural to homosexuals as opposite sex attraction is to heterosexuals.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Barnabas62;

quote:

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Paul was, like all of his time, unaware of the fact that same sex attraction is as natural to homosexuals as opposite sex attraction is to heterosexuals.

---

"Same sex attraction" NOT a problem. Same sex sexual acts, problem.

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quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
Might that not mean anal intercourse (with men), rather than same sex acts? This, I believe, is how it was understood in the early Christian centuries.

And Paul does not condemn it, he simply refers to it.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

Conservative Christians also proscribe heterosexual sex outside marriage but that doesn't stop it happening

How do you go about 'enforcing' these things?

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quote:

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Paul was, like all of his time, unaware of the fact that same sex attraction is as natural to homosexuals as opposite sex attraction is to heterosexuals. It simply wasn't in his mental map.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
People are going to have sex whatever their sexual orientation happens to be. You can't stop them. You can't legislate against these things.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I think it was Rowan Williams (in his salad days) who observed that the polemic in Romans 1 is about "unnatural behaviour". Paul was, like all of his time, unaware of the fact that same sex attraction is as natural to homosexuals as opposite sex attraction is to heterosexuals. It simply wasn't in his mental map.

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quote:

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As always, I think you have to get at the underlying principles which motivated the author. Of course anyone is free to argue that I'm reading this stuff from a 21st century perspective. Maybe I am?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
Reading Romans and Leviticus, we used take the attitude "Hate the sin, love the sinner" which still is AIUI the present RC position.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The biblical position overall is that 'naturally' in the first sense people are meant to love/be-attracted-to other people simply as people, but that sex is intended only for those who are married (which by biblical definition is heterosexual). All other sex acts, straight or gay, are unnatural in that first sense, no matter how much they may 'come naturally' in the second sense to sinful men.

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quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
I'm know nothing about Patristics, but I read an article by James Alison who said this was the only understanding of this verse up until the Fourth Century.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
I'm know nothing about Patristics, but I read an article by James Alison who said this was the only understanding of this verse up until the Fourth Century.

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This would be the same James Alison who actively supports a pro LGBT agenda then?

I rather feel as if he's is reading into the text - the same crime that those anti to the LGBT agenda are accused of committing.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

People are going to have sex whatever their sexual orientation happens to be. You can't stop them. You can't legislate against these things.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
I'm know nothing about Patristics, but I read an article by James Alison who said this was the only understanding of this verse up until the Fourth Century.

---

This would be the same James Alison who actively supports a pro LGBT agenda then?

I rather feel as if he's is reading into the text - the same crime that those anti to the LGBT agenda are accused of committing.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
I think you have to see a bigger picture of what Paul is doing with "unnatural" in Romans. He starts in Romans 1 and builds up his argument about unnatural, then drops the bombshell: Christians being granted salvation by the Hebrew God is "unnatural" -- same word as the sex acts in Romans 1.

If unnatural means "not morally licit" then our salvation as non-jews is as bad as gay sex.

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quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:

quote:

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
I'm know nothing about Patristics, but I read an article by James Alison who said this was the only understanding of this verse up until the Fourth Century.

---

This would be the same James Alison who actively supports a pro LGBT agenda then?

I rather feel as if he's is reading into the text - the same crime that those anti to the LGBT agenda are accused of committing.

---

This attack on Alison is a total non sequitur.

Either a statement about the understanding of a verse up until the Fourth Century is factually correct, or it isn't. It's got absolutely nothing to do with how you read the text, it's a question about how other people read the text.

I can know how most people pronounced Voldemort in Harry Potter, prior to J K Rowling's revelation that most people have got it wrong, and I've never read any of the Harry Potter books.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Barnabas62;
The word/concept 'Natural' is used in the Bible
in two distinct ways depending on context. It can either mean "Natural as in the way God created things to be", or it can mean "Natural as in what 'comes naturally' to sinful men in a fallen world". Paul is saying that acts of 'gay sex' are unnatural in the former sense, but natural in the latter sense.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
If the comment were factually correct it would be confirmed by others reading and commenting on the passage. As far as I know or can discover, it isn't (confirmed that is). It's therefore a reading on the text but not the final authority - which weight of evidence tends towards the "traditional" interpretation.

---

I think the point is that the specific claim being made is NOT an interpretive point about the right way to read the passage, but a historical point that the "traditional" reading can't be traced in extant sources earlier than the fourth century, although other readings can.

I don't know if that's true, but if it isn't, it ought to be immediately falsifiable by patristic scholars. If no one can contradict James Alison on the point, that carries more weight that if no one has specifically confirmed it, and I suppose I believe him.

But it doesn't seem to matter very much to me. The "traditional" reading may well be older than the sources that we have for it - and may even have been controversial. But more importantly, wouldn't almost everyone agree that if Romans 1 condemns male/male sexual activity in circumstances X (whatever X may be), then we can extrapolate the principle to female/female sexual conduct in equivalent circumstances. There's no significant body of opinion represented on the Ship (as far as I can tell) that a same sex relationship between men would be wrong, but functionally the same relationship between women would be OK.

Why? Because in considering the rightness of an action, the gender of the actor is a morally irrelevant consideration.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Sure, SvitlanaV2 and I think the 'international brand' thing applies to Orthodoxy too as well as to Roman Catholicism.

I was thinking about things on a local level but I take your point - and yes, it's more about prevailing social conditions than simply matters of biblical interpretation - none of which take place in a social vacuum either, of course.

On another issue, one of the things I find strange about the conversative position on this issue is how particular sexual orientations can be seen as 'natural' but expressing one's sexuality in line with that orientation isn't.

If people are 'naturally' gay then surely it can't be sinful for them to express their sexuality that way?



It only makes sense to see gay sex as inherently sinful if one believes that a gay sexual orientation is also inherently sinful.

How can one be natural and t'other not?



I've never quite understood how conservatives can square this particular circle.

It only makes sense to me to regard homosexual acts as sinful in and of themselves if one regards homosexual orientation sinful or if one doesn't believe that same-sex orientation exists and that those who engage in same-sex sexual activity are doing so not because they are orientated that way but for other reasons - they prefer it, they want variety, they like to be transgressive or whatever else ...

I don't get that.

What am I missing?

The conservative line seems to boil down to, 'the Apostle Paul didn't like it so it must be wrong ...'
 

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Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
@ Ricardus

Physis is a rich word. This gives us some idea of its varieties of historical use. Personally, I can see that I'm reaching a bit when the word "intrinsic" comes to mind. But that's what I see. Regardless of what the law said, Paul thought it was intrinsic to men that they would want to have sex with women. That looks like the meaning to me. Which is why I think he was blind to the possibility that for some men that would not be true.
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
One of the things I find strange about the conversative position on this issue is how particular sexual orientations can be seen as 'natural' but expressing one's sexuality in line with that orientation isn't.

If people are 'naturally' gay then surely it can't be sinful for them to express their sexuality that way?



It only makes sense to see gay sex as inherently sinful if one believes that a gay sexual orientation is also inherently sinful.

How can one be natural and t'other not?
[...]

The conservative line seems to boil down to, 'the Apostle Paul didn't like it so it must be wrong ...'

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
It only makes sense to see gay sex as inherently sinful if one believes that a gay sexual orientation is also inherently sinful.

How can one be natural and t'other not?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Eliab:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
Reading Romans and Leviticus, we used take the attitude "Hate the sin, love the sinner" which still is AIUI the present RC position.

---

I can't do that. And I'm beginning to doubt that any modern person of good will can.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eliab:
Why? Because in considering the rightness of an action, the gender of the actor is a morally irrelevant consideration.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
I think you have to see a bigger picture of what Paul is doing with "unnatural" in Romans. He starts in Romans 1 and builds up his argument about unnatural, then drops the bombshell: Christians being granted salvation by the Hebrew God is "unnatural" -- same word as the sex acts in Romans 1.

If unnatural means "not morally licit" then our salvation as non-jews is as bad as gay sex.

---

To the Jews it is. He's not though saying that gay sex is ok thereby making our salvation ok.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Eliab:
Why? Because in considering the rightness of an action, the gender of the actor is a morally irrelevant consideration.

---

That can't be true if gay sex or marriage is illicit.

---

I think that might be Eliab's point, that there's at least potentially something inconsistent about the way we've moved to treating gender as unimportant for a variety of purposes but not for others.

My experience with discrimination law tells me that people often misunderstand that it's not about saying "you must never take a person's gender into account", but it's actually about saying "only take a person's gender into account when it's relevant".

So one of the base questions here is: do we think that the gender of each person in a relationship is relevant. If so, why?

Another base question when it comes to Biblical interpretation is: do we think God only gives commands that are sensible and good and helpful, or do we think God is capable of being capricious and making a rule without a rational reason for it? Do we actually argue from a perspective that God would only really say gay sex was illicit if there was a rational reason for saying that, and then look to see if there's a rational reason, or do we just say that God doesn't need a reason and that God is perfectly capable of thinking "yeah, so 2 guys can in fact have all the important features of a relationship, but I don't care, I just don't want that happening. Ick."
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
Well said.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
@SvitlanaV2 - I've always understood the Apostle Paul's apparent aversion to heterosexual marriage to be linked to the fact that at the time he wrote the Epistle to the Romans he was convinced the world was going to end very soon - and certainly within his own lifetime.

His views about mutual concern within marriage - including the sexual aspects - could be regarded as quite enlightened in the 1st century - but I'm told it was quite in line with contemporary rabbinic teaching.

Also, I've heard it said that the Apostle Paul must have been married himself at some point in order to have attained to the level he had within the rabbinic orders that existed at that time - but I can't cite sources for that contention.

The point I'm trying to make is that the Apostle Paul was writing in what he considered to be exceptional circumstances - the imminent end of the world and the return of Christ - and that whatever our views are of his stand-point it's broadly in-line with traditional Jewish understandings of the time - only perhaps ratcheted up a bit in terms of 'puritanism' in the light of the new order he felt part of and was helping to inaugurate.

As I've mentioned before, it seems that he opposed prostitution more vigorously than previous generations of rabbis might have done, but this also was in keeping with a more rigorous moral code that was developing within contemporary Judaism at that time.

Of course, what the Apostle was doing was setting all these things - natural vs unnatural - marriage and celibacy - in the context of Christ and the Church - hence the more vigorous line on prostitution - you can't take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute ...

I'm not saying that we ignore or set aside Pauline teachings - but what I am saying is that we need to look at the theological points he's making - and let's face it, he's doing a limbo dance to accommodate views that most Jewish people at that time would have found unacceptable ie, that Gentiles should be admitted to the Covenant without having to observe the ceremonial aspects of the Jewish law - and circumcision and so on.

As far as the same-sex relationships aspect goes, then that's tricky as we clearly know a lot more about issues like sexual orientation than people knew in the 1st century.

I can understand the point Paul. here is making - about the connection between original sin and inclinations to temptation and so on - but how about those conservative Christian traditions which don't take the 'Western' line on original sin? Such as the Orthodox?

Many Orthodox would take a similar line on same-sex relationships to conversative evangelicals or conservative RCs.

I'm also unconvinced about the argument that adultery might be 'natural' to some people. A propensity towards adultery - in terms of cheating on one's partner - isn't a purely heterosexual sin, surely?



What would be considered wrong in the case of adultery isn't the actual sexual orientation of the perpetrator - whether they were gay or straight - but the deceit, the breach of trust and the harm caused.

What seems to be being said by conservative Christians, it appears to me, is applied uniquely to homosexuals.

Heterosexuals are allowed to express themselves sexually - within ideal parameters ie. monogamous marriage.

But homosexuals aren't permitted to express their inherent or intrinsic sexuality (which even conservatives appear now to agree is intrinsic) in any way, shape or form.

The only option available to them is celibacy.

Heterosexuals are allowed the choice, all things being equal - whether to marry or to remain single and celibate.

Homosexuals are allowed no such thing. They must zip up and shut up as it were.

I don't see any corresponding demands levied on straight people. Conservative heterosexual Christians can rail as much as they like that they are subject to similar strictures - but the fact is, they aren't.
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Gamaliel

Thanks for your comments about the biblical texts.

I didn't say that only straight people are likely to be adulterous. My point was that monogamy as a permanent state may be hardly more 'natural' than celibacy for much of humanity.

Your idea that adultery is only wrong because of the deceitfulness and disappointment is interesting. Perhaps in the future some Christians might become more open to mutually agreed polygamy. Depending on the circumstances, there might be some advantages to it; and plenty of biblical justification.

Regarding the psychology, I suppose one problem with trying to align Christian teachings with the current secular thinking on sexuality is that, AFAICS, current thinking doesn't offer wholesale support for sexuality as a clear and fixed state, and hence as a basis for lifelong 'Christian' monogamy. Fluidity seems to be the order of the day. A recent study says that almost half of young people aged 18-24 see themselves as neither exclusively heterosexual nor exclusively homosexual.

Bisexuality never seems to come up in the discussions here, but it's clearly something that many young people think about. The idea that you have to 'choose' to live with one orientation and then never waver from it may be very hard for some people. Moreover, how are some bisexual youngsters going to make a 'choice' to live in one way or the other if they don't engage in sexual experimentation first? What if they make a choice and marry without experimenting; if they divorce later and remarry according to the other facet of their sexuality should their churches be okay with that?

I'm a libertarian, and feel that there should be more churches that are okay with some or all of these different permutations of sexuality and sexual behaviour. And these churches should promote themselves vigorously, so that young (and older) people know they exist. But the idea that all churches will or should interpret the Bible in this way is problematic to me. I just don't see that every church would benefit. Many would lose members, including members who've faithfully and perhaps painfully embraced self-denial in their own sexual lives, for whatever reason.

I can't speak for the RCC or the Orthodox, but the whole point of Protestantism, surely, is that you're not shackled to a single institution whose teachings conflict with how you want to live your life. You 'interpret' the Bible according to where you feel the Spirit is guiding you.

[ 02. October 2015, 15:03: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
Erm - Svit - I didn't have to "choose" to be straight and didn't need to experiment either to know I was attracted to girls and not to blokes.

It's not like trying the menu at a world food buffet to find out what you like.
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
I find the following rule handy when interpreting the New Testament: some of the things Paul says are a bit daft.
 

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Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Paul.:
I'd love to say that what then happened was that I went back to the Bible and looked for a different interpretation in much the way you describe it in the OP. I didn't and I'm not sure I was able to given where I was. So it kind of "broke the Bible" for me. I think I understand the OP and follow the logic - but it feels like a trick. Like a way of holding together an obviously wrong reading with the idea that the passage is nonetheless inspired. I want to believe it but I'm not sure I can.

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quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Eliab:
Why? Because in considering the rightness of an action, the gender of the actor is a morally irrelevant consideration.

---

That can't be true if gay sex or marriage is illicit.

---

I think that might be Eliab's point, that there's at least potentially something inconsistent about the way we've moved to treating gender as unimportant for a variety of purposes but not for others.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Erm - Svit - I didn't have to "choose" to be straight and didn't need to experiment either to know I was attracted to girls and not to blokes.

It's not like trying the menu at a world food buffet to find out what you like.

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SvitlanaV2: If they're in a more liberal church they may feel free to live with a gay identity. But how many churches would allow them to engage with both?

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quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
In reality, of course, we live in a culture where churchgoers (let alone those outside the church) don't really accept religious authority structures as the arbiters of their personal lives or personal morality. That's not what we use organised religion for nowadays. Our faith is much more personal, and we engage in organised religion for other reasons.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
In reality, of course, we live in a culture where churchgoers (let alone those outside the church) don't really accept religious authority structures as the arbiters of their personal lives or personal morality. That's not what we use organised religion for nowadays. Our faith is much more personal, and we engage in organised religion for other reasons.

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It just goes to show that people attend churches on their own terms. They have become spiritual consumers not believers.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
In reality, of course, we live in a culture where churchgoers (let alone those outside the church) don't really accept religious authority structures as the arbiters of their personal lives or personal morality. That's not what we use organised religion for nowadays. Our faith is much more personal, and we engage in organised religion for other reasons.

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It just goes to show that people attend churches on their own terms. They have become spiritual consumers not believers.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
Have I got this right, EM? It is Christianity that we're talking about here, yes? You know, that belief system founded by the guy who said all that negative stuff about religious authority systems, who was accused by said systems of, amongst other things, ignoring the oppressive constraints laid down by such systems. Sheesh!

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quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Your idea that adultery is only wrong because of the deceitfulness and disappointment is interesting. Perhaps in the future some Christians might become more open to mutually agreed polygamy. Depending on the circumstances, there might be some advantages to it; and plenty of biblical justification.

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quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I can't speak for the RCC or the Orthodox, but the whole point of Protestantism, surely, is that you're not shackled to a single institution whose teachings conflict with how you want to live your life. You 'interpret' the Bible according to where you feel the Spirit is guiding you.

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quote:

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mousethief: Finally, some honesty about what Protestantism is all about: making up your own religion as it suits you.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Finally, some honesty about what Protestantism is all about: making up your own religion as it suits you. But seriously, this sounds like "soul competency" which the Southern Baptists in the US have officially rejected. Are there any Protestant bodies who still hold to soul competency?

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
But seriously, this sounds like "soul competency" which the Southern Baptists in the US have officially rejected. Are there any Protestant bodies who still hold to soul competency?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Stejjie:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
But seriously, this sounds like "soul competency" which the Southern Baptists in the US have officially rejected. Are there any Protestant bodies who still hold to soul competency?

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According to the Southern Baptists website, they still hold to it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:

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Originally posted by Stejjie:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
But seriously, this sounds like "soul competency" which the Southern Baptists in the US have officially rejected. Are there any Protestant bodies who still hold to soul competency?

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According to the Southern Baptists website, they still hold to it.

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You're a UK baptist aren't you Stejjie/ Isn't this compatible to what baptists generally believe?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Stejjie:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
But seriously, this sounds like "soul competency" which the Southern Baptists in the US have officially rejected. Are there any Protestant bodies who still hold to soul competency?

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According to the Southern Baptists website, they still hold to it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Stejjie:
I'm also not sure it means what mousethief seems to suggest in his reply to Svitlana: it doesn't mean you have a free rein in what you believe, or a "pick and mix" view of Christianity (surely the Southern Baptists would be the last to accept that); just that, ultimately, it's between you and God.

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quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
'Soul competency' is new to me. Googling shows that the term was first articulated and explained by a theologian in 1908, and so was not a foundational Baptist concept.

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quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
The Wikipedia article says that soul competency means each person has the liberty to choose what his or her conscience or soul dictates is right. The Baptist Union (Great Britain) Declaration of Principle says that each church has liberty under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to interpret and administer God's law.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I've had Orthodox Christians - albeit of a more 'zealous' or fundamentalist bent - tell me that I'm 'inventing my own religion' - to which I've riposted that I'm doing nothing of the kind, simply following leads and threads that we've all inherited from them - many moons ago ...

My question to Mousethief would be where does 'soul-competence' or an apparently overly individualist approach end and 'theologoumena' - which I understand the Orthodox are comfortable with - begin?

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quote:

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Obviously, groups like the Baptists are going to be looser - by and large - on creedal and conciliar declarations - although, in some instances, such as most Southern Baptists, pretty strict and prescriptive on particular interpretations of particular texts.

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quote:

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How is that substantially different, say, to an Orthodoxen who says that the Proto-evangelium of James is 'pious legend' or RCs who ignore Papal strictures on contraception?

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
The Wikipedia article says that soul competency means each person has the liberty to choose what his or her conscience or soul dictates is right. The Baptist Union (Great Britain) Declaration of Principle says that each church has liberty under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to interpret and administer God's law.

---

Which would not be soul competency but parish (or if you prefer local-church) competency, surely? I can see how one could argue the former from Scripture*. The latter? That's a harder sell.

_____
*Although Paul's call to admonish one another seems to tell against it.

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quote:

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hatless: It's only lacking the big black hats that stops us being Orthodox.

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quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
It's only lacking the big black hats that stops us being Orthodox.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
It's only lacking the big black hats that stops us being Orthodox.

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Big black hats? You're thinking of Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. Our bishops by and large wear gold hats, our priests many colors, and our male laity, none. Women can wear whatever they want.

But you do not have a top-down hierarchy that gets to call the shots, unless I am very mistaken.

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quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
But I didn't think Orthodox hierarchy got to call the shots. I thought the past did that. Isn't 'we never change' your motto?

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quote:

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:

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hatless: It's only lacking the big black hats that stops us being Orthodox.

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I have a beard (although probably not long enough).

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quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
The limits to interpretation are partly imposed by the text, but partly by all the other people that text also belongs to. Bible study is a public activity.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stejjie:
I'm also not sure it means what mousethief seems to suggest in his reply to Svitlana: it doesn't mean you have a free rein in what you believe, or a "pick and mix" view of Christianity (surely the Southern Baptists would be the last to accept that); just that, ultimately, it's between you and God.

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I can't slide a knife between those pavers. Can you explain what you see as the difference? How outrageous must my claims of hearing the Holy Spirit speaking through Scripture be before you --or other Baptists-- cry "too far!"? At that line, soul competency dies.

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quote:

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Basically it means the God-given freedom and ability of persons to know and respond to God’s will.

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quote:

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With this competency and freedom comes responsibility and accountability. Choices have consequences.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Stejjie:
I personally would take that further and suggest that doing this is absolutely essential - but would still want to hold on to that it's down to you what you do with what you hear as you seek God through these and, the biggie for Baptists - Scripture, which kind of gets "trump card" status over the others.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
MT has answered my question to some extent but I'm not sure he understood what I was getting at with the RC reference - probably because I didn't express myself clearly.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Stejjie:
God reaching out to all people and all people having the capacity to respond to him.

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quote:

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In one sense, I suppose you're right - you can believe what you want and no one can tell you otherwise. Freedom of religion, especially from government control, is a biggie for us (though sometimes I feel we're lacking in the 'extending it to others' department).

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quote:

---

But "accountability before God" is the key thing here: if you get it wrong (whatever 'get it wrong' means), then you've got to answer to God about it and you can't blame anyone else. As it says further down on that website,

quote:

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With this competency and freedom comes responsibility and accountability. Choices have consequences.

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You can't just do/believe what you want then claim soul competency as a defence if it leaves you in a mess.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by hatless:
It's never the self versus the world, because there is no self without the world.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
'Soul competency' is new to me. Googling shows that the term was first articulated and explained by a theologian in 1908, and so was not a foundational Baptist concept.

---

That does not follow. I am sure you could find a Baptist or three who will say that although the term was not yet coined, the concept it denotes was there all along.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
But no earthly authority can tell me to knock it off. If I believe God is telling me to shoot women going to abortion clinics, I may get arrested and thrown in jail, and if I'm mature enough rejoice that I am suffering for the sake of the gospel, but under soul competency there is no ecclesial authority that can say I was wrong about what God wanted.

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Originally posted by Eliab:
Although the flip side of that is that there's also no earthly authority to tell you that you must shoot women going to abortion clinics.

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But no earthly authority can rightly require me to believe something that seems to me to be obviously wrong, or do that which is evil.

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Where we have a problem with the RC, Orthodox, Anglican and similar is that they are basically 'Constantinian';

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that is, derived from the era when the church was wrongly connected with the state in contradiction of scripture.

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Originally posted by hatless:
And there's a symmetry in that it may be that the book, as in a folded and bound set of pages or codex as opposed to a scroll, was a product of Christianity. Travelling scriptures. Stick a leather cover on, slip it in a fold of your robes and head off to another country, whereas a scroll must never be taken out of doors, only unrolled with care, and be stored in a cabinet or a large jar.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Where we have a problem with the RC, Orthodox, Anglican and similar is that they are basically 'Constantinian';

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Zzzzzz.

quote:

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that is, derived from the era when the church was wrongly connected with the state in contradiction of scripture.

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Both the RCC nor the EOC predate Constantine by some hundreds of years. The Anabaptists, on the other hand, were derived from the individualism and anti-authoritarianism of the Reformation. This game plays both ways.

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
AIUI the church pre-Constantine was neither RCC nor EOC exactly as currently practised.

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Surely you can't speak about a 'Roman Catholic Church' (as opposed to 'the Roman branch of the Catholic Church') until there was the distinctive doctrine of the interpretative supremacy of the Pope, which again AFAICS was actually post-Constantine.

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I'd think it would have been similar in the early church which was of course rather like Anabaptism.....

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Of course it absolutely was NOT.
 

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Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :
 
Why wasn't the early church Anabaptist? All movements, Protestant, Congregationalist or Pentecostal find sympathetic support in scripture and also in earlier Christian traditions. Benedict and Francis of Assisi, for example, would clearly have both been members of the Baptist Union of Great Britain had it existed when they were alive.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Assuming that is, that the BUGB would be comfortable with the Marian devotion and high sacramental theology that Saints Benedict and Francis held to ...

Perhaps it would be. I chuckled at a story told by an Anglo-Catholic priest friend.

He was at an Anglican conference to which a prominent female Baptist minister was among the speakers.

Before she arrived to give her presentation, he was sitting over coffee in the waiting area outside the lecture theatre. Nearby, some evangelical Anglican clergy were deep in conversation and - unaware that he was a FiF Anglo-Catholic priest, were busily slagging off the Catholic wing of the CofE.

Terrible ... all those bells and smells, all that Mariolatory, all that fiddle-faddle ...

Just then, the Baptist minister arrived and, recognising one of the evangelical clergy, approached their table and gave effusive greetings. Unaware of what they'd been talking about she immediately launched into an account of her visit to Walsingham.

'I've just come back from Walsingham ... how marvellous! I had a fantastic time! Have you ever been? No? You really should, it's wonderful ... I joined in the devotions to Mary at both the RC and the Anglican shrines - so moving, so prayerful, so ...'

The faces of the evangelical clergy at the table dropped ...



So, perhaps you're right. Perhaps Benedict and Francis would have been good BUGB Baptists ...


 

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Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :
 
Effusive? I can probably guess who that was!

Tradition establishes breadth. It's not really about ruling out the new and the different. We can all appeal to it and interpret it anew.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
I suspect you can, but I've forgotten the woman's name so couldn't help you there ...

Meanwhile, hatless, you would certainly make a good Anglican. I suspect you knew that already ...



Meanwhile, I'm chuckling to myself as to how St Francis's stigmata, for instance, might play out at a Baptist Union committee meeting ...

Regional Secretary: So you're telling us that you had a vision and afterwards were left with marks corresponding to the wounds of Christ?

St Francis: Yes-a, that's-a-right ... would like to see them? Here, let-a-me strip off all-a my clothes ...

Regional Superintendent: Really, this is most irregular ...

Chair of Bible Study Committee: Steady on, do you have chapter and verse for that?

Regional Superintendent (sighs): He's not going to quote Galatians 6:17 at us is he?

St Francis: No, but I showed them at the last Church Meeting and they all-a agreed that is was-a ok. The vote went 60/40 ... but then ze Treasurer intervened to say it would attract more donations to the building fund - so we voted again and it was unanimous ...

Regional Secretary: Ah, now you're talking!

Regional Superintendent: Why didn't you mention this before? The Perugian province of the Umbrian region could do with some imaginative fund-raising initiatives ... perhaps this ... this stigmata thing might help?

Chair of Bible Study Committee: I'm not convinced of your exegesis but the plan sounds feasible to me ...

St Francis. Gracie.
 

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Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The Anabaptists managed communal Bible study before widespread literacy by people who could read reading to others and those others learning the texts as much as they could. Accounts suggest that they were generally more biblically knowledgeable than their opponents. I'd think it would have been similar in the early church which was of course rather like Anabaptism.....

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Why? One of the most obvious traps of historical analysis is 'reasoning' along the lines of "this historical group was the 'good guys', so naturally they were exactly like me!" It's almost as bad as "this historical group was the 'bad guys', so naturally they were exactly like my present day enemies!"
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Also, there is a very obvious anachronism too insofar as there was widespread illiteracy in the 1st century too, just as there was in the 16th.

The idea of 1st century Christians sat around engaging in post-Reformation style Bible studies is a fatuous one.

That's not to say that Christians in the first centuries didn't debate or discuss theological points - of course they did. There's the famous quip by whoever it was (I've forgotten the source) who said that you couldn't visit the barber in Byzantium or have your horse groomed without the barber or the groom asking you whether you believed the Spirit proceded from the Father or from the Father and the Son ... and so on.

Of course, there wasn't a great deal of lay Bible study as such in the late middle ages but literate people were 'consuming' the scriptures in some form or other - through Psalms and daily offices, Books of Hours and so on.

So, no, any resemblance between early Christian practice and that of 16th century Anabaptists or their modern day descendants is purely coincidental ...

That's not to disparage Anabaptism nor discourage its proponents - they've got some excellent values and strike a note at times that needs to be heard - but to imagine that they are somehow closer to 1st century Christianity is a fond notion.

Of course, I'm not saying that High Mass at the Brompton Oratory or what goes on at one's nearest Orthodox parish is exactly the same as what went on in the early Church either.

I agree with hatless that all of us - of whatever tradition - base our practices in our own particular understandings of scripture and tradition and we have all evolved from whatever went before ... nor am I saying that the practices of the Anabaptists have little or no precedent in scripture or tradition ...

But to claim that the early church looked and felt more like our own churches and assemblies than any one else's is a pretty daft claim all round.

I've been there, done that.
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
I've been wondering a bit: the religions that were competing with Christianity at 1C, like the Mithras cult for example, did they have a structure of written letters that were passed around? To what degree did this contribute to Christianity 'winning' in the end?
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
To be fair to 16th and 17th Anabaptists, they did develop a fairly high level of scholarship within their own communities. Some of them were also quite 'mystical' in a kind of medieval and more 'Catholic' way that some of their modern day descendants might find embarrassing.

Catechesis in the historic Churches has always been somewhat hit and miss - and I've heard enough of eye-rolling stories from both RC and Orthodox priests to convince me it's still an issue in those Churches today.

Overall, I've heard that theological education across much of the Orthodox world is in a pretty parlous state - and that's not me saying it, that's the Orthodox themselves.

That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, of course.

The Reformed, and I'm sure the Anabaptists, are no slouches when it comes to the study of the scriptures - but in some circles, I suspect, their approach can be rather narrower and less holistic than you might find among some of the other Christian traditions.

I am making very broad brush generalisations there as there are exceptions to every rule.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
That's an interesting point, Le Roc.

I suspect, in the case of Mithraism that what we would be dealing with is something where the teaching/values were transmitted almost exclusively by ritual and symbol rather than the exposition of sacred texts.

The cult of Mithras was similar to Freemasonry (and I'm not positing a direct connection) in that you learned particular rituals, passwords and codas in order to progress through each level.

It was also a lot more restrictive in its appeal - primarily to military men and officials - whereas Christianity was broader in scope.

Of course, I would say this wouldn't I, but in the case of Christianity you have a both/and thing going on - the performance and transmission of dramaturgy and ritual (primarily in the eucharist) and the exposition and proclamation of beliefs from sacred texts.
 

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Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
I've been wondering a bit: the religions that were competing with Christianity at 1C, like the Mithras cult for example, did they have a structure of written letters that were passed around? To what degree did this contribute to Christianity 'winning' in the end?

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The Anabaptists managed communal Bible study before widespread literacy by people who could read reading to others and those others learning the texts as much as they could. Accounts suggest that they were generally more biblically knowledgeable than their opponents. I'd think it would have been similar in the early church which was of course rather like Anabaptism.....

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Why? One of the most obvious traps of historical analysis is 'reasoning' along the lines of "this historical group was the 'good guys', so naturally they were exactly like me!" It's almost as bad as "this historical group was the 'bad guys', so naturally they were exactly like my present day enemies!"

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Had my tongue slightly in my cheek when I wrote that - but clearly the early church was a long way from the formal institution that arose by the end of the 4th Cent, and the Anabaptists patterned their church life on the NT evidence so naturally the two would be significantly 'rather like' each other.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Had my tongue slightly in my cheek when I wrote that - but clearly the early church was a long way from the formal institution that arose by the end of the 4th Cent, and the Anabaptists patterned their church life on the NT evidence so naturally the two would be significantly 'rather like' each other.

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Here's this version of church history in graphic form.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Had my tongue slightly in my cheek when I wrote that - but clearly the early church was a long way from the formal institution that arose by the end of the 4th Cent, and the Anabaptists patterned their church life on the NT evidence so naturally the two would be significantly 'rather like' each other.

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Here's this version of church history in graphic form.

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Here's this version of church history in graphic form.

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Very funny - but NOT my version of Church History, as it happens.

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And still not actually answering the important points I made earlier.

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And the assorted sniping here, while quite funny, is not really answering my point that
a) a church redefined to be part of the state has changed in ways which put a big question mark on its interpretative competency, and
b) it was that state church and its derivatives/successors which went from simply teaching "Christians consider gay sex to be wrong" to the much nastier position that "Our 'Christian' state must impose Christian standards on all and therefore must criminalise and persecute those who engage in gay sex". A pretty good example of a serious lack of interpretative competency....

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Originally posted by hatless:
Why wasn't the early church Anabaptist?

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by hatless:
Why wasn't the early church Anabaptist?

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Because the early church was hierarchical and sacramental.

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by hatless:
Why wasn't the early church Anabaptist?

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Because the early church was hierarchical and sacramental.

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And recognised infant Baptism, making re-Baptism not just unnecessary but heretical.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
1. In the British context, of course, various churches and clergy can make noises in the direction of parliament, but no one is really obliged to pay much attention.

2.And many clergy and laity alike ignore or defy some of the teachings of their own denominations.

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by hatless:
Why wasn't the early church Anabaptist?

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Because the early church was hierarchical and sacramental.

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And recognised infant Baptism, making re-Baptism not just unnecessary but heretical.

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The early church would resemble Judaism, would it not? The variations and additions occurring over time.
ISTM, the early Christians would need a lot of "instruction" to fit into the contemporary churches of their spiritual descendants.
 

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Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :
 
Early Church is not a precise term, but if we look at church life as Paul knew it, the first NT churches, it appears not to have been hierarchical (a hierarch is literally a high priest) and to have been informal and variable in its breaking of bread.

Two generations later, still within the NT period, the servants of the churches start to be called elders and considered worthy of respect because of their position - we're rapidly heading towards office and status, though still far short of anything you could call a hierarchy.

Who was the first high priest or bishop in the modern sense, I wonder; someone able to exercise control through an authority structure? Not Irenaeus or Clement or Ignatius, I'd think. Late 3rd Century, probably.

Similarly the origins of infant baptism are unclear, as is the style of worship and church life in the beginnings. I find the view that Christians found their place within the groups of God-fearers, the penumbra of non-Jewish worshippers that formed around synagogues in Graeco-Roman communities persuasive. So I don't see the churches importing many Jewish practices into their worship, though they would have had a Jewish flavour.

This is a fun area for guesswork. If we all wrote an essay describing our visit to a Christian church in Ephesus in 180CE you could probably tell at once which 21st Century denomination we belonged to. You might even be able to distinguish between a Methodist and a URCer.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Well, it does seem that the Apostle Paul was prepared to be a lot more 'authoritative' on some things than others - he didn't seem to have qualms about stating when he believed he was speaking ex cathedra, as it were, or when he was allowing lee-way and wiggle-room ...

Not that I think that he or any of the others was wandering around with a triple-tiara or wearing a funny hat ...

The infant/adult baptism thing is a condundrum ... I was once strongly credo-baptist but from what I can gather from what I've read about the 'Early Church' - in all its forms, so far as we can gather - both infant and believers' baptism ran concurrently - and that still applies today in the historic Big C Churches - the Orthodox will baptise both infants and adults - and in some jurisdictions - controversially - even adults who have been baptised previously in other Christian churches.

I think you're right that if we were all to write an essay imagining a visit to a 1st or 2nd century church it'd say more about our respective denominations and traditions than it would about the imagined church itself ...

There was a risible example in Arthur Wallis's 'The Radical Christian' back in the early 1980s in which he imagined a visit to 1st century Ephesus. It sounded like his own restorationist house-church only in togas ...

I had a lot of time for Arthur, but that went too far ...

When I first read the sub-apostolic Fathers - Iranaeus, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch - I was struck by how 'sacramental' and heirarchical the whole thing sounded. I'd gone there to check out and to mine 'proof-texts' for the continuation of restorationist style 'apostles and prophets' rather than nasty bishops, priests and deacons ... and there I found the second and third generation of Christians apparently practising things I would associate with the Orthodox and RCs (although not yet in a fully 'realised' form) ...

I've been challenged by that by some Baptists. 'That's not what I saw when I read it ...' which may or may not say something more about them than it does about me - or perhaps it says something about both of us?



Who was it who said that the first century church disappeared into a dark tunnel at the close of the century to emerge around the middle of the next with Metropolitan bishops, priests and deacons?



I'm sure there was plenty of variation - I've read that scholars have identified at least 30 distinct forms of Christianity in the first centuries - some of it rather Gnostic, some of it closer to what gradually emerged as received orthodoxy ...

I don't think any of us can, say, point to the Brompton Oratory or to Butt Lane Baptist and say, 'there you are, this is closest to how it would have been ...'

I'm not even sure it's the right question to ask.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Proponents of traditional episcopacy do draw on hints and suggestions in Clement and the others - the way they appealed to some notion of apostolic succession for instance - the way they expected some of their comments/suggestions or instructions to apply to other places beyond their own immediate setting ... the rather 'high' way they talk about elders representing Christ and so on ...

It's all there if you've a mind to find it.

If we've a mind not to, then we can come up with alternative explanations.

I'll be accused of post-modernism again, but it's back to the thing about assessing things through the lens of whatever tradition we adhere to or have been most influenced by.
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
"Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."

Ignatius of Antioch is pretty darned early as these things go. If you want to say that this kind of ecclesial hierarchy is wrong, then the church went wrong long before Constantine. What it sometimes sounds like some Evangelicals are saying is, as soon as the ink was dry on John's gospel, the entire church disappeared, only to reappear in Wittenburg 1400 years later.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Yes, that was one of the quotes I had in mind, Mousethief ... and imagine my shock as an earnest young restorationist evangelical when I found it ...

'That can't be right ... they all went to hell in a hand-cart as soon as the ink was dry on the pages of the NT ... the fools, the goddarn fools ...'



No, actually what I thought was, 'Heck, perhaps we've overlooked something? Perhaps ... just perhaps ...'

I'm still working on that one 30 years on ...



It all depends, of course, how we understand these things. The Apostle Paul makes some pretty hyberbolic statements too - 'I bear in my body the marks of Christ' and so on and who the heck knows what he was on about in saying that he was 'filling up what was lacking in Christ's afflictions ...'

Colossians 1:24
http://biblehub.com/colossians/1-24.htm

I still don't think I've ever seen a satisfactory explanation of what he was on about there any more than I've ever seen a satisfactory one that attempts to square the circle between Paul in Romans and James in his 'right, strawy epistle' ...

But's that another issue ...

I think the safest thing we can say - he said hedging his bets - - is that whoever we are we share some kind of family resemblance to those first Christians - otherwise how would we even recognise one another or begin to dialogue?

And that what later developed into the full-on heirarchical three-fold ministry thing - bishops, priests and deacons - was there from a relatively early stage ... how early is impossible to determine - but the seeds were there ...

Of course, the same seeds could have grown in a different direction - history is full of what-ifs - but the fact is, they grew in the direction they did - whether we like it or not.

We can either try to place bean-poles alongside them to train them in the direction we would prefer or we can try to prune things right back and hope to start again ... which is of course fraught with difficulty if not an impossibility.

We are all of us who we are because of who has gone before.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Of course, what Ignatius meant by 'bishop' wasn't what RCs and Orthodox understand by the term ... he wasn't referring to an heirarchical or sacerdotal function, he was referring to an 'elder' - just as the Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Brethren ... [delete as appropriate] have today ...



Whatever he did mean by it, it's pretty clear that things did develop in that heirarchical direction ...

What evangelical Protestants and other 'low' church people would assert, of course, is that this wasn't ideal and not the trajectory that things should have followed ...

The onus is on the RCs and the Orthodox and other episcopal or heirarchical churches to prove that it was and on the lower church types to prove that it wasn't ...

Ultimately, it's a 'faith decision' either way - however much chapter and versing we might engage in ...
 

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Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
Early Church is not a precise term, but if we look at church life as Paul knew it, the first NT churches, it appears not to have been hierarchical (a hierarch is literally a high priest) and to have been informal and variable in its breaking of bread.

Two generations later, still within the NT period, the servants of the churches start to be called elders and considered worthy of respect because of their position - we're rapidly heading towards office and status, though still far short of anything you could call a hierarchy.

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Originally posted by hatless:
The author of Acts tells us that the post resurrection disciples restored their number to the magic twelve. He also tells us that the total number of believers numbered about 120, and that they were in Jerusalem. I'm not sure how accurate this is; I suspect there is a lot of surmise here. But it doesn't look anything like the creation of a hierarchy to me. A hierarchy needs levels of authority and well-defined roles and probably titles. People love titles.

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Gamaliel: I've seen with charismatic house-churches how apparent informality and bonhomie can mask naked ambition and jockeying for position.

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
1. In the British context, of course, various churches and clergy can make noises in the direction of parliament, but no one is really obliged to pay much attention.

2.And many clergy and laity alike ignore or defy some of the teachings of their own denominations.

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1. No one is obliged to pay ANY attention - unless of course they want somoen to beat up or project their anger onto.

2. True. That's me as well. There are those in my own "denomination" who are gay - more openly so now - in contradiction of the ministerial "rules." There are others, like Steve Chalke, who look for change on a wider approach to the same issue.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
The author of Acts tells us that the post resurrection disciples restored their number to the magic twelve. He also tells us that the total number of believers numbered about 120, and that they were in Jerusalem. I'm not sure how accurate this is; I suspect there is a lot of surmise here. But it doesn't look anything like the creation of a hierarchy to me. A hierarchy needs levels of authority and well-defined roles and probably titles. People love titles.

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"The Twelve" (capitalized!) seems a lot like a title, and a group set aside with special authority. They seemed to have the authority to delegate tasks (defining roles!) and set up additional layers of hierarchy. You've even got examples of this group setting policy and controlling the actions of field agents. Even within the Twelve you seem to have an "Inner Circle" consisting of Peter, John, and James.

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Plus I'm not really sure what your usual hobby horse about church/state separation is supposed to prove about your claim that naturally the first century church had Bible study just the same way modern anabaptists do. It seems, at best, a tangent.

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Originally posted by hatless:
The author of Acts tells us that the post resurrection disciples restored their number to the magic twelve.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
ISTM that nothing legal is stopping Baptist and other clergy who currently conduct legal marriages from conducting SSMs if they want to. The problem appears to be that most of the clergy who would like to do so are wedded to denominational restrictions. Few of them are willing to risk their jobs and/or denominational affiliations the way that Steve Chalke has done.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
The author of Acts tells us that the post resurrection disciples restored their number to the magic twelve.

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Those were not the disciples. Those were the apostles. There were many many disciples. Mary and Martha and Lazarus were disciples but not apostles.

On the day of its birth the church already had a hierarchy: the apostles and everybody else. Then they created the diaconate before the ink was dry on Acts 2. And Paul is already using "episcopos" ("overseer") and telling Timothy what to demand from them. Timothy not being one of the 12, nor was Paul, but under Paul and over the episcopoi in his locale. Sounds pretty darned hierarchical to me.

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Again, Steve writes as if there is one, single, incontrovertible way in which a term derived from the NT - in this case 'born again' can be understood. The various Christian traditions understand it differently. A sacramentalist would understand it very differently to how an evangelical understands the term.

Which brings us back to the interpretation and to the tradition thing again. As ever.

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Croesos;

quote:

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Plus I'm not really sure what your usual hobby horse about church/state separation is supposed to prove about your claim that naturally the first century church had Bible study just the same way modern anabaptists do. It seems, at best, a tangent.

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Neither is a tangent; two separate points.

Somebody queried the possibility of Bible study in a relatively illiterate society and I pointed to the historical record of the ways Anabaptists achieved sufficient biblical awareness for meaningful discussion/interpretation by the church/congregation as a whole rather than totally individualistic. A similar (NOT absolutely identical) kind of situation seems to be implied for the NT church as well, and certainly possible for them.

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So, how does that apply to the URC minister I know whose soteriology and baptismal polity differs from yours and who is, and never has been, part of a state-church construct?

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That was me, commenting on the difficulties involved in your proposed "right" style of hermeneutics in the absence of "the printing press and widespread literacy". I note you completely ignored the former in favor of a lot of hand-waving about the latter.

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Croesos;

quote:

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That was me, commenting on the difficulties involved in your proposed "right" style of hermeneutics in the absence of "the printing press and widespread literacy". I note you completely ignored the former in favor of a lot of hand-waving about the latter.

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As I understand it, even without printing presses the early church had fairly good access to the Septuagint version of the OT, and clearly the Gospels and Epistles were copied and spread around from an early and were fairly available when the original apostolic eyewitnesses had died out. Scriptures were adequately available in the earlier context, until the RCC went restrictive and effectively banned vernacular Bibles for the laity. Even with printed Bibles available, early Anabaptists would probably have access roughly equivalent to, say, mid-2C Christians when the arguments over Marcion took place.

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:


It's all moot anyway. Steve Chalke has written and done what he did (performed a SSB in a baptist context) and he's received no censure. The precedent has been set and the door is wide open - provided the local church agree that it is ok to do it, then practically and legally it can be done.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I'd accept that a 'sacramentalist' in a non-state church has, or at least can have, a somewhat different view to one in a state church. But history rather suggests that when you baptise everybody indiscriminately you end up with a lot of nominal Christians who have little reality of personally facing their sins, repenting of them, and understanding they need a changed relationship to God. And they have little motive to go beyond outward and superficial conformity to the state requirement of, well, outward and superficial conformity!

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I'd accept that a 'sacramentalist' in a non-state church has, or at least can have, a somewhat different view to one in a state church. But history rather suggests that when you baptise everybody indiscriminately you end up with a lot of nominal Christians who have little reality of personally facing their sins, repenting of them, and understanding they need a changed relationship to God. And they have little motive to go beyond outward and superficial conformity to the state requirement of, well, outward and superficial conformity!

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This is true of the second generation in any church. The only way to prevent it would be to forbid the children to go to church or learn about the faith until they're adults.

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quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
Eliab's point is that we are really disagreeing about the nature of God. And that is even more scary, because it's about big questions, imperatives and absolutes.

In relation to gay sex it's about sin and holiness, what they are, about whether inclusion matters all that much, about whether what I and lots of other people used to think could possibly be overturned - are there revolutions where God is concerned, or does God change not?

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Yes, that's exactly it (and put better than I put it). This is about views of God.

I don't think that God changes. So that means that if the Bible is God's word, it must always have been possible to read Romans 1 (for example) morally. If God is not anti-gay now, He never was, and therefore the anti-gay reading of Romans 1 was never inspired by him.

But that means, of course, that I come to the Bible with a very definite view that some things are simply out of consideration as unworthy of God. My obedience to scripture isn't unconditional.

I think we all do this to some extent. The reading in my church yesterday exhorted slave-owners to treat their slaves "justly and fairly". To me, that makes as much sense as tell rapists to treat their victims "justly and fairly". So I ignore the endorsement of slavery as unworthy, and take as the inspired part the message that we have moral duties to people even when society would condone the very worst exploitation. I imagine that everyone these days reads those passages similarly. No one is particularly troubled about whether the Bible is really OK with slavery, because we're sure that God really isn't.

For quite a long time I read the anti-gay passages as mysterious - not knowing whether God was really against homosexuality or not. I couldn't see what was so bad about being gay, but I was unconvinced by any revisionist interpretation. I was grateful that the activities that appeared to be condemned weren't ones that I was tempted towards, and therefore pleased that I could leave it to gay Christians to work out what they should do.

I'm not as comfortable with that any more. The whole gay marriage debate happened - on the Ship and in wider society, and showed me two things: one, not only could I see no good reason why homosexuality is immoral, neither could anyone else; and two, the anti-gay movement was able to recruit thousands of otherwise kind, sane, reasonable Christians to a campaign of astonishing pettiness and spite. For no other reason than what St Paul once wrote to a church in Rome as a bit of a tangent to his main argument about universal fallenness.

I don't trust the Church to handle this scripture with the caution that is appropriate for a command whose reasons are not fully understood. It isn't safe to give us a scripture that it is even possible to read as anti-gay - because we'll hurt people with it. So I want to be able to say that I trying to be a committed follower of Jesus, trying to learn about God from the Bible, and from that perspective argue that I think the anti-gay side is absolutely and undoubtedly wrong. There are no good reasons to be anti-gay, AND that the Bible doesn't add one. The only way I can do that is to say that an interpretation of the Bible which teaches evil is always out of consideration. Whatever the plain meaning, whatever the (human) author's intention, I simply will not accept that reading, and think that anyone doing so is sinning.

So I clearly don't get my ethics from the Bible, and I'm arguing that it's not merely acceptable but obligatory to ignore what looks like the plain meaning of scripture if that meaning is morally wrong. The difficulty I have is that recognising that I am now saying this, and want to continue to read the Bible in this way it, can I really claim to be a "Bible-believing Christian" any more?
 

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Posted by JimT (# 142) on :
 
I'd like to contribute a couple of things to this discussion.

The first is, that my perspective is that of a preacher's kid who never bought the Christianity I was presented. What I eventually bought was the radical reforms of Christian-based Unitarianism of the early 1800's. I tried modern Unitarianism and found it an unsatisfying hodgepodge of belief systems to which I could not relate except for those that were rooted in Christianity.

I think that I approach things much the same way that hatless does, and I know that he knows that. Christianity is where I come from, but some kind of "Humanism" is where I've gone, and I like to make connections back and forth with others who do the same.

The recent discussions on The Ship have prompted me to venture into the mind of Paul and his writings on the proper place and role of sexual relations. For the first time, it occurred to me that the Romans 1 and 2 chapters could reflect an assumption that homosexuality always takes place as a form of adultery in an otherwise heterosexual person. Perhaps, in an ancient world that punished homosexuality with death, homosexuals voluntarily lived as heterosexuals and when "outed" would plead for mercy that it was an isolated incident triggered by an excess of natural desire that would never be repeated. They might have even believed it themselves. Perhaps Paul ranted in Romans that in the old days, people became so perverted that they left their natural heterosexual behavior behind and willfully abandoned themselves to unbridled, unchecked lust that went so far as to have sex with their own sex, a disgusting and obvious perversity to any chaste heterosexual.

Part of my considering this possibility comes from reading Corinthians 7 again, and seeing Paul portray natural sex not as a means to procreation, but a "burning" that tempts one away from pleasing God. Interestingly, he describes it not as a "burning" to satisfy oneself, but to satisfy someone else, thus laying the foundation for it not being a sin, despite the fact that he said it is better to be avoided altogether. Having defended it's having a permissible side, he circumscribes its permissible boundaries as satisfying one and only one other person, bound in marriage, with vows made before God that they will not stray into pleasing more people, lest they both stray from God.

I wonder if Paul would have seen things differently if he had the perspective many of us have, that homosexuality is not a craven form of adultery, but an alternate form of chastity.

As a postscript, I would add that I found it surprising that these "anti-gay" passages I mentioned said nothing about sexual desire having a primary purpose of procreation. He says it is a dangerous temptation that must be tightly controlled and limited; avoided if possible. That means Paul said it is better not to have children, unless you just can't stand the burning to please someone else sexually. No doubt he didn't worry about the human race dying out because he thought the world would end soon. And there he was just plain wrong.
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
...which may raise questions of what Paul's own experiences were. Did he have a family that fell apart? Did he have trouble with his own desires, whatever they were? Did someone hurt him? Did he just swear off the whole thing, and drag that baggage into his writing?
 

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Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by JimT:
For the first time, it occurred to me that the Romans 1 and 2 chapters could reflect an assumption that homosexuality always takes place as a form of adultery in an otherwise heterosexual person.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
[We] may raise questions of what Paul's own experiences were. Did he have a family that fell apart? Did he have trouble with his own desires, whatever they were? Did someone hurt him? Did he just swear off the whole thing, and drag that baggage into his writing?

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quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:

But Paul, as JimT notes, has a very different view of marriage. It's not quite romantic, but it's full of a sense of the importance of intimacy

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well, celibacy is still valued in some traditions - most notably in those with a tradition of monasticism or celibate clergy.

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quote:

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Originally posted by JimT:
For the first time, it occurred to me that the Romans 1 and 2 chapters could reflect an assumption that homosexuality always takes place as a form of adultery in an otherwise heterosexual person. Perhaps, in an ancient world that punished homosexuality with death, homosexuals voluntarily lived as heterosexuals and when "outed" would plead for mercy that it was an isolated incident triggered by an excess of natural desire that would never be repeated. They might have even believed it themselves.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
One could argue that the comparative rarity of celibacy within the Roman Catholic community and other faith communities which incorporate forms of monasticism is an indication of how much it is valued ...

After all, the rarer something is, the more it tends to attract value.

The whole point of valuing celibacy, I'd have thought, includes a consideration of its comparative rarity.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
If there was a need for them, and if resources allowed, the offspring of temple prostitution were kept and reared. Boys can become priests or eunuchs, and girls priestesses/prostitutes. They could also be sold off as slaves, if the temple needed cash.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Unlike the priesthood, which hasn't always been a celibate vocation within the Western Catholic tradition, the monastic vocation can't be anything but a call to celibacy ...

The clue is in the title - Mon (mono) - astic.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Rome does a U-turn on clerical celibacy at some point. After all, it makes special provision for married Anglican priests to join ... under particular conditions.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Garasu:
On the other hand: given that monastic refers to living alone, why does it in practice involve living in community?

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Originally posted by Garasu:
Are you saying that to me or to Gamaliel?

It being Gamaliel who said that monks had to be celibate because of the etymology.

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Originally posted by balaam:
Then he was forgetting the Celtic monasteries where some were mixed in gender and had married monks and nuns, such as Whitby.

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Some URC places these days don't do Paedobaptism anyway so are effectively Baptists/Anabaptists in practice.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

As for celibate clergy in the RCC. I didn't say it wasn't important to RCs, simply that married clergy were common in the Western Church until the 12th century - so there'd be a precedent for Rome to reverse its current policy should it so wish. I certainly know RCs who see no theological objection.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eliab:
C) The Bible can still be inspired even if the surface meaning is obviously wrong. Even if I grant that the true meaning of the text is what it appears to be, I'm free to disagree with it, and look for the divine inspiration of scripture in such nuances of meaning that tend to mitigate or subvert the author's wrong intentions.

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quote:

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a "meta" example of scriptural interpretation [...] contained in Numbers, one of the five books of Moses which are traditionally considered to be the oldest parts of the Bible. So what's being portrayed is a debate over scriptural interpretation that took place before there's even 'scripture'.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
This thread was too far gone to re-open. Not interested. Sorry....

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quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
This thread was too far gone to re-open. Not interested. Sorry....

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Originally posted by Eutychus on the other thread:
But I can't get away - so far - from heterosexual monogamy as an archetype in the Bible, although not a few people here have almost persuaded me otherwise.

It follows that I see the Church as having some responsibility to uphold that archetype.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

The thing I still can't get away from, though, is that it takes a man and a woman to produce a baby.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The research is into the benefits of having a percentage of the population being homosexual.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
The thing I still can't get away from, though, is that it takes a man and a woman to produce a baby.

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Originally posted by mdijon:
Separate but equal also contains some element of enforcing a role on a particular group.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Another great point. Since I posted that I've been challenged, off the boards, as to whether it's right to say that the church has a responsibility to uphold the (hetero) archetype.

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Because I am female
I am expected to aspire to marriage
I am expected to make my life choices
Always keeping in mind that
Marriage is the most important
Now marriage can be a source of
Joy and love and mutual support
But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage
And we don't teach boys the same?
We raise girls to see each other as competitors
Not for jobs or for accomplishments
Which I think can be a good thing
But for the attention of men

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quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Eutychus, a basic concept in anti-discrimination law is that there are times when differences between people are relevant and need to be taken into account, and times when the same differences are not relevant and ought not to be taken into account.

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quote:

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To pick an easy example, there's a decent justification for separate male and female sport when size and strength are an advantage, because statistically men tend to be bigger and physically stronger than women.

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quote:

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So the basic question is: is the gender of the people in a marriage relevant? Why or why not?

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It's not same-sex marriage that's disrupted that. It's feminism. It's the assertion that a woman has an independent existence and will, separate from her function of providing children to a man.

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Separate but equal implies that biological ability to procreate is important to marriage. A very large number of people no longer agree that that is what marriage is about.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
"Statistically"? "Tend to be"? Transposed to marriage, those sound like great arguments for keeping hetero marriage to me.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Where I'm at is that it takes a man and a woman to make a baby and that (to put to use the phrasing I picked up from orfeo just now) "statistically" babies will "tend to be" produced by heterosexual couples for any future I can foresee.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Orfeo, to your earlier question:

If a given woman has equal strength and size to at least one of the men in a sport, as far as I can see if I apply your useful clarification of discrimination she is being discriminated against if she cannot compete.

The fact that what is true of her is "statistically" not true of what most women "tend to be" doesn't invalidate that at all.

Does that make any sense?

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quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Not an appropriate use of the phrasing.

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quote:

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More to the point, what does that have to do with marriage?

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quote:

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No-one ever seems that interested in excluding non-procreative heterosexuals from marriage.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Not an appropriate use of the phrasing.

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Why is it not appropriate? It's true, isn't it?

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Originally posted by orfeo:
You can't just lift examples of a general principle about what discrimination means and turn them around as if the situation were reversed. It makes about as much sense as white men complaining about reverse racism and reverse sexism.

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quote:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
I think what both of you (Eliab and Eutychus) are doing is thinking/proposing that there is only ONE purpose or reason for marriage, and that alone puts you at odds with thinking about marriage from earliest times.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
From where I'm sitting, there are objective differences between the CP and marriage which would make one a more desirable option than the other for some people.

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quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
It's not true that children "tend" to "statistically" have a biological father and a biological mother. They do have a biological father and mother. No equivocation necessary.

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quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
From where I'm sitting, there are objective differences between the CP and marriage which would make one a more desirable option than the other for some people.

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Namely?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
It's not true that children "tend" to "statistically" have a biological father and a biological mother. They do have a biological father and mother. No equivocation necessary.

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Okay. The (vexed) question then becomes: how important is it for those biological parents to be those by whom they are brought up? While the evidence may suggest the answer is "not very", I'm not sure that applies to the (to me) nightmare scenarious I outlined a few posts up. There's something significant (not superior) in there, isn't there?

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quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Unmarried people often raise children, and married people often don't raise children. (...) A great many same sex couples are going ahead and raising children anyway.

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quote:

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I don't see that it's necessary to answer that question when talking about marriage

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
From where I'm sitting, there are objective differences between the CP and marriage which would make one a more desirable option than the other for some people.

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Namely?

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As I recall, the couple invoked the patriarchal overtones of marriage as opposed to the CP. Which, if you compare the certificates, is a case that can be made.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
If you accept that there is indeed something significant there, and (draggging this back on topic) perhaps that it might possibly be portrayed in the early pages of Genesis, it might bring further clarity on other issues to hammer out just what that something is.

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quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
maybe the French are sufficiently enlightened that no-one thinks more/less of someone for having married rather than entered a PACS, or for having entered a PACS rather than marrying.

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quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Can you answer me one question: How does equal marriage threaten or affect straight marriage?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Can you answer me one question: How does equal marriage threaten or affect straight marriage?

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As far as I know myself, I don't feel that it does. I don't object to SSM being on the statute books here at all. What I am unsure about is whether, legal protections aside, it will deliver on expectations.

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quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
What expectations? SScouples have the same range of expectation that straight couples have.

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quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Some people are called to marriage, some are not. Why does it matter if some are gay?

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quote:

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"Historic" Christian marriage. In the history of the church, it didn't give a toss for nearly half of its history.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
In terms of the Bible, I have always preferred to ignore the clobber verses altogether and go for the messages of love and acceptance that are far more prevalent in terms of percentage.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
What expectations? SScouples have the same range of expectation that straight couples have.

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I think (but am by no means sure) that for some, same-sex marriage might offer the prospect of a sense of deliverance from feeling 'different' from the majority. While others will of course celebrate that difference, I think anybody in the former category is going to be disillusioned.

I'm not doing a very good job of expressing myself here. To put it another way, it doesn't seem to jive with the "different callings" approach Eliab hints at here.

But on further reflection I think this is again due to the confusion between the historic Christian understanding(s) of marriage and the civil one(s).

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There's a real problem with the idea that because someone acknowledges that they are different in some way, they must therefore emphasise (or "celebrate") that difference in all respects.

Some of these thoughts about how homosexuals should accept their different calling are a bit like saying that interracial marriage is a bad idea because a black woman might forget her skin tone.

The fact that I'm gay is undoubtedly a significant part of who I am, as is the fact that I'm male. That doesn't mean that I want everything about me and my life to be defined in those terms. I don't do gay work, I don't eat gay food. I don't do male work or eat male food, either.

That a marriage involving me would be a "gay marriage" is a statement of fact, not of purpose. When people talk about their partner, the gender of their partner is only rarely relevant to the topic under discussion, in the same way that when describing someone as a "French citizen" it rarely matters whether their skin is light or dark. It only matters if you're giving a physical description for some reason.
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
You* are phrasing marriage as a calling to diversity. It needn't be.

The history of marriage as heterosexual. That is cultural. Some cultures have cared and some have not.
And many cultures have "historically" treated women as property and others as slaves. So historicity isn't that strong a claim in my book to begin with.

*General and specific

ETA: x-posted with orfeo. But I started mine ages ago and was interrupted, so he is the xposter.

[ 23. February 2016, 23:37: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
 

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Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
Nor, Orfeo, do you have a gay birthday or celebrate a gay Christmas. That's why I'd like to get away from having gay marriage and instead look to removing gender/sexuality etc as a barrier to marriage.
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
I can only give a personal perspective. You and I are just not that different, Eutychus. I can go whole months without remembering that "I am a lesbian."
I see myself as being far more similar to the other boring middle-aged people around me with spouses and children and jobs and mortgages and hobbies than to any of the brilliantly plumaged LGBT people in popular media. I would guess I'm not the only one. Don't get me wrong, I admire the brilliantly plumaged and I value their input into the general discussion.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:

I see myself as a human being before I see myself as lesbian or gay.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:

I know there are those who are conflicted about it, but I don't hear nasty things being said in public about the divorced, and lo, I see them in authority in some churches.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:

Anyway, I am leaving the discussion now. I no longer really have a dog in the fight, having left the church because it couldn't face the reality of kind, faithful, hardworking gay and lesbian servants of God.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
There are vastly more passages covering sexual sins between heterosexuals - unambiguous in both language and meaning - that I don't hear being trotted out relentlessly to condemn the guilty to outer perdition.

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quote:

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Which is where I come back to my point about the many, many passages encouraging love and welcome for the "outcast." It seems to me that the nitpicking over those 4-6 verses inverts the Bible into a very wobbly legal document rather than sitting it firmly on the message of love, reconciliation and inclusion that saturates the words of Jesus.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Louise:
So it's now enough that a married couple produce a baby, but they must be judged on whether someone thinks the process of conception fits some idealised model they have (which just happens to discriminate heavily against gay people).

It does look a bit like wanting to find some way to hang onto heterosexual privilege by saying any other way people might do it must be wrong because it's not the normal 'heterosexual way', and then it all becomes a bit circular.

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quote:

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'But why would we want to define marriage in those terms - when it's good for us too and the LGBT folks to stop being hung up on it?'

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
But I honestly believe it is not loving either to trample over the sensitivities of those who feel differently.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

It's too facile to assume they're all homophobes.

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quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Imagine this is race, and not homosexuality. Do you have the same compassion?

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quote:

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Would it prevent you from discussing why their feelings might not be OK?

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quote:

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And imagine if you can what it feels like to the oppressed to have sympathy with the oppressors.

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quote:

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It is not that we lack the capacity to understand the difficulties of change, but it is not exactly a symmetrical issue.

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I know But at least we're talking

quote:

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So how do you approach it with compassion, but no compromise?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Should I find within myself compassion even towards those by whom I am repulsed? Yes, as a Christian I think I should.

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quote:

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Not in the slightest. What do you think I'm doing here?

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quote:

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Again, I feel like I have been pinned down by some sort of minority judo hold here. How can I know what it feels like? I can't. Does that mean "you win"?

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quote:

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Again, good question, a large part of why I'm here and why this is keeping me awake at night.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
Nor, Orfeo, do you have a gay birthday or celebrate a gay Christmas. That's why I'd like to get away from having gay marriage and instead look to removing gender/sexuality etc as a barrier to marriage.

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quote:

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...my ire would be reserved neither for gays nor divorcees but for slanderers. I am far more concerned about that category being in leadership than any of the others.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doublethink.:
I thought the biblical interpretation used, was to say the pertinent verses in the old testament referred to the worship practices of the cult of a false god (Molech I think) and those in the new testament were concerned with temple prostitution.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
The question is then whether the prohibition on gay sex falls inside the Mosaic Laws or the general laws, and Paul prima facie seems to have believed the latter.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doublethink.:
I thought the biblical interpretation used, was to say the pertinent verses in the old testament referred to the worship practices of the cult of a false god (Molech I think) and those in the new testament were concerned with temple prostitution.

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Ricardus offers a different breakdown here:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
The question is then whether the prohibition on gay sex falls inside the Mosaic Laws or the general laws, and Paul prima facie seems to have believed the latter.

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This seems more evident to me and, as I understand the OP, to Eliab. Which is more problematic.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Ricardus offers a different breakdown here:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
The question is then whether the prohibition on gay sex falls inside the Mosaic Laws or the general laws, and Paul prima facie seems to have believed the latter.

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This seems more evident to me and, as I understand the OP, to Eliab. Which is more problematic.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eliab:

Alternative explanations commend themselves to me only as a way out of the moral quandary of there otherwise being a clear ethical failure in the plain text of what I believe is sacred scripture.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by lilBuddha:
If the later is the case, he is an ineffective communicator, as fickle as any Greek god

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Tell me about it!
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
Thank you for the chuckle. Kinda needed it.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Crœsos:
Is there a way to make that distinction that doesn't rely on special pleading? Why are First Testament rules on homosexuality considered "generally applicable", but First Testament rules on menstruation (for example) are a special case only applicable to Jews?

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quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
homosexuality = wrong when that fairly clearly goes against Jesus teachings?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Crœsos, I'm indebted to you inasmuch as you first drew my attention to Zelophehad's daughters (as related here).

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quote:

---

That’s the context here. Moses speaks for God. The laws that Moses has just explained are laws given by God. And ever since the ground opened up to swallow Korah and his friends, no one in Israel has dared to question Moses’ authority or the justice of any of those laws.

Until now.

Now Moses is again being confronted, but not by clan leaders and respected well-known men. He’s being challenged by five sisters. The law, these sisters tell Moses, is not fair. God’s law is not fair.

Keep in mind that theirs is a world that hasn’t yet parsed out a thousand different words to create a distinction between justice and righteousness. If God’s law is unjust, then God’s law is not righteous. These women are not just challenging the authority of Moses and the authority of God, they’re challenging the basis for that authority. And they’re doing it right there in front of the tabernacle, “before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders, and all the congregation.”

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
If it was as clear as all that from Jesus' teachings, I think this issue would have been settled a long time ago. Jesus doesn't say anything either way on homosexuality, and does cite Genesis on man and woman becoming one flesh, among other references to hetero marriage.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
homosexuality = wrong when that fairly clearly goes against Jesus teachings?

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If it was as clear as all that from Jesus' teachings, I think this issue would have been settled a long time ago. Jesus doesn't say anything either way on homosexuality, and does cite Genesis on man and woman becoming one flesh, among other references to hetero marriage.

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quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Context is everything.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Context is everything.

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It's certainly not nothing, but it's a fact that Jesus alludes here and elsewhere to hetero marriage and says nothing at all that is unequivocally about homosexuality - either way.

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quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
Nor, Orfeo, do you have a gay birthday or celebrate a gay Christmas. That's why I'd like to get away from having gay marriage and instead look to removing gender/sexuality etc as a barrier to marriage.

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"Marriage equality" is indeed a better phrase for that reason. It does, though, sometimes have adverse side-effects in discussions with those whose whole believe is that it's not possible to be 'equal' because they find the difference incredibly important.

I have at various points, including a different Dead Horses thread, speculated as to how the ingredients of a gay wedding cake differ from a straight one. Perhaps the eggs of lesbian chickens are specially selected.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
My thought would be to evaluate against his overall message. And it is difficult, for me, to see any way Jesus would condemn SSM.

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Originally posted by Eliab:
it seems more likely to me that the link is between two things which the writer and his first readers would have agreed were wrong.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Is there a way to make that distinction that doesn't rely on special pleading? Why are First Testament rules on homosexuality considered "generally applicable", but First Testament rules on menstruation (for example) are a special case only applicable to Jews? There's no distinction made in the text that says "Leviticus 20:13 applies to everyone, but Leviticus 20:18 is just for the Chosen People".

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quote:

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an attempt to cite something as an exception to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exception.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Ethics are not revealed.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Ethics are not revealed.

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So what standard are you using? The views of "every right-minded Greek" (as per Plato)?

I think going with a majority view is actually a reasonable way to make ethical choices of right behaviour - but then leaves a problem when criticising others from different cultural backgrounds and when the majority is wrong.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Such things as demonstrable harm and human flourishing, MrCheesy, or even natural law should you be catholically inclined.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Think about it: why have we stopped inflicting the hideous forms of punishment actually revealed as appropriate in the Torah, much like the huddud penalties currently inflicted by Daesh, (and we have well into Tudor times), is it because Jesus further 'revealed' to us that we should be nicer? Have we stopped stoning adulterers because Jesus showed us it should be so? or because Paul alleviated the rule?

Same thing on gay sex or SSM: the. Bible. is. wrong.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Think about it: why have we stopped inflicting the hideous forms of punishment actually revealed as appropriate in the Torah, much like the huddud penalties currently inflicted by Daesh, (and we have well into Tudor times), is it because Jesus further 'revealed' to us that we should be nicer? Have we stopped stoning adulterers because Jesus showed us it should be so? or because Paul alleviated the rule?

Same thing on gay sex or SSM: the. Bible. is. wrong.

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OK, I think there is a gap between saying "ethics are not revealed", which appears to me to be highly problematic and saying "the revealed ethics of the bible are wrong".

To me it isn't a question of whether ethics are or not revealed, but as to which revelation is authoritative and why.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I care not a jot what Paul wrote if it's supposed to order my behaviour according to norms that would otherwise pass my understanding. Ethics are not revealed.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I care not a jot what Paul wrote if it's supposed to order my behaviour according to norms that would otherwise pass my understanding. Ethics are not revealed.

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I certainly turned a corner in my thinking when I came to see Acts, in particular, as descriptive and not prescriptive, and it's not much of a leap from there to seeing the epistles in the same light: a record of how the first Christians addressed the issues they faced with the light that they had, rather than all details being set in stone for all time.

Nevertheless, to be perfectly honest I still struggle with making a similar leap when it comes to homosexuality because male and female appears to me to be such a foundational thing, notably in the first chapters of Genesis.

Intellectually, I can readily accept homosexuality as part of life today, post-Fall - in much the same way as I do divorce and remarriage. Jesus' rather wistful words on this subject "but that is not how it was in the beginning" - and his accompanying acknowledgement of the need to accommodate this state of affairs - resonate with me in this respect.

I know this isn't acceptable to a lot of people because it puts homosexuality in the "not God's best" category (although for me, as stated before, that excludes neither great good nor grace, or inclusion).

So far, I haven't found a (to me) more satisfactory way of joining the dots between Genesis and where we find ourselves in today's world.

Just my €0.02.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Picking and choosing whist you will revere and what you will ignore is special pleading no matter how you do it.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
In the beginning were sexless anaerobic bacteria, then trilobites a few aeons down the line. Sexual dimorphism is very, very late... pace Matthew.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Nevertheless, to be perfectly honest I still struggle with making a similar leap when it comes to homosexuality because male and female appears to me to be such a foundational thing, notably in the first chapters of Genesis.

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quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
How am I not male?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I know the whole thread is about biblical interpretation but what if, just what if, as so many theologians have held (even very trad ones like Aquinas), morality were not something that is revealed. I care not a jot what Paul wrote if it's supposed to order my behaviour according to norms that would otherwise pass my understanding. Ethics are not revealed.

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Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Rather, when you yourselves know that these things are good; these things are not blamable; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness, then and only then enter into and abide in them.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
In the beginning were sexless anaerobic bacteria, then trilobites a few aeons down the line. Sexual dimorphism is very, very late... pace Matthew.

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You can read the second creation narrative that way, too - that humanity was originally without sex. In which case, the emphasis on it becoming two distinct sexes appears more significant, not less, does it not?

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
How am I not male?

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The text goes on to talk about the male and the female becoming one flesh...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I know the whole thread is about biblical interpretation but what if, just what if, as so many theologians have held (even very trad ones like Aquinas), morality were not something that is revealed. I care not a jot what Paul wrote if it's supposed to order my behaviour according to norms that would otherwise pass my understanding. Ethics are not revealed.

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It has just occurred to me - and this may hark back to the discussion about 'nature' right at the beginning of the thread - that there is an inherent tension between St Paul saying that the Gentiles have the law written on their hearts, and in the same passage that they are so corrupted by idolatry that they don't realise gay sex is wrong. (If that is indeed what St Paul meant ...)

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The existance of narakas and gods are irrelevant. Even the existance of the Buddha is not foundational. It is not coincidental that Christianity is less science friendly than Buddhism.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Well, you didn't say becoming one flesh was a foundational thing, you said that male and female was a foundational thing.

And it's incredibly critical that you tease that out, because all sorts of implications start being drawn out of it. It's a very dangerous thing to start suggesting that you're not fully male or female if you don't become one flesh.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Eutychus, you're also assuming that to become one flesh is to have sexual intercourse or beget children, but that's minority reading in the OT itself. As Prof. Brownson has shown, it frequently means nothing more than becoming kin.

Genesis 29:14 and Laban said to him, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh!” And he stayed with him a month.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Well, you didn't say becoming one flesh was a foundational thing, you said that male and female was a foundational thing.

And it's incredibly critical that you tease that out, because all sorts of implications start being drawn out of it. It's a very dangerous thing to start suggesting that you're not fully male or female if you don't become one flesh.

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Indeed. Which is an excellent reason for saying, as I did, that "male and female" is foundational - and stopping right there*.

That said, in the very next verse it goes on to talk about the man cleaving to his wife and becoming one flesh.

To drive a wall between those two verses is, it seems to me, about as ridiculous as trying to drive a wall between two consecutive verses in Leviticus, as Croesos decried just now.

All the more so in that the second of the two verses in question begins "For this reason..."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
It doesn't say "all men must...", but does it not suggest that - at least in the beginning (and as reiterated by Jesus, and Paul) - the idea was for a man to become one flesh with a woman, and not another man?

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quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It is not coincidental that Christianity is less science friendly than Buddhism.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
God does not say: here is a woman, the idea is for you to become one flesh with her. Rather God says God will provide some candidate companions and see which one you think is suitable. Before Eve comes along, Adam is shown all the other animals in the search for a companion. Which means that if Adam had fancied sheep, or aardvarks, we would be having a very different conversation here. It is Adam's acceptance of Eve as companion that marks her out as the appropriate one flesh. (As twenty-first century readers, we must believe Eve accepted Adam back, but that's not in the text itself.)

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It is not coincidental that Christianity is less science friendly than Buddhism.

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Without wanting to denigrate the achievements of Indian and Chinese mathematics, I point out that the experimental empirical scientific revolution took place in Latin Christendom.

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quote:

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Thus, clear unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, to medieval Muslim philosophers and scientists, to the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, to the secular sciences of the modern day.

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quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

I was not justifying Buddhism so much as offering explanation. Reading my reply, it could seem a little defencive, but it was more educational and to show where my POV comes from.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
If you're against driving walls between verses, maybe you should widen your scope beyond two verses. The first of which does NOT say "male and female he created them" in any case. That's Genesis 1:27. The verse before Genesis 2:24 is actually Genesis 2:23, which talks about Adam naming the flesh of his flesh as 'woman', and there are several relevant verses before that outlining the purpose of creating a woman - incredibly important for figuring out what "this reason" is. The words 'male' and 'female' don't appear in the passage.

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Because as far as I'm concerned I'm 100% male. Tick. Foundational requirement met.

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Congratulations!

But this makes me realise now that I overlooked something else you said (emphasis mine):

quote:

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I don't think it's much less dangerous to start saying that becoming one flesh is foundational, such that if you fail to do this you're not being a full human being.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
Well, it suggests that a particular man's idea was to become one flesh with a particular woman.

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quote:

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It is Adam's acceptance of Eve as companion that marks her out as the appropriate one flesh.

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The only normative idea the text seems to put forward is that a man must live with his parents until he's married, and then the couple set up at the wife's parents.

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And secondly, they are unequivocally used in the context of marriage. If male and female had nothing to do with becoming one flesh, why didn't Jesus simply quote the second verse and not the first?

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quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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And secondly, they are unequivocally used in the context of marriage. If male and female had nothing to do with becoming one flesh, why didn't Jesus simply quote the second verse and not the first?

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Because people would inevitably say he didn't need to because it was assumed from silence.

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Wait, are you trying to say an argument from silence should trump what is actually there?

It seems to me that you're making my point for me; if what you say is true, he spelled it out for the avoidance of all doubt.
 

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Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :
 
After all the context of his reply is a rabbinical dispute, in Matthew, so our Lord answers the rabbis in their own terms, and sides with Shammai's school, only allowing divorce for very serious offence, that is to say adultery, which incidentally could only be committed by women. The text is even more degrading to women than it is problematic for gay unions, but let it not deter us.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
It could also be that he's behaving like an ordinary rabbi and applying the fourth of Hillel's rule

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quote:

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As for becoming one flesh (rather than being one flesh) having a completely different meaning in Gn than in the rest of Torah, I'm really not sure I'm clutching at straws as you said. Why do you think it implies sex in this case only? and not merely kinship?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
After all the context of his reply is a rabbinical dispute, in Matthew, so our Lord answers the rabbis in their own terms, and sides with Shammai's school, only allowing divorce for very serious offence, that is to say adultery, which incidentally could only be committed by women. The text is even more degrading to women than it is problematic for gay unions, but let it not deter us.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And of course the text has sex between man and woman in mind, it's a story about the beginnings of humankind. It does not follow that all non-procreative sex is thereby disallowed, that's Roman madness.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And of course the text has sex between man and woman in mind, it's a story about the beginnings of humankind. It does not follow that all non-procreative sex is thereby disallowed, that's Roman madness.

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Sorry, missed this. I don't disagree with any of this. At all.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And of course the text has sex between man and woman in mind, it's a story about the beginnings of humankind. It does not follow that all non-procreative sex is thereby disallowed, that's Roman madness.

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Sorry, missed this. I don't disagree with any of this. At all.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I made my point badly, but you haven't convinced me that it's unreasonable to see the two being linked from the text.

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quote:

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Firstly, these two verses are quoted consecutively by Jesus in Matthew 19:4-5. So it would certainly seem that Jesus (or, if you prefer, whoever edited Matthew) saw them as contiguous in terms of ideas.

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When I use the word "foundational", what I have in my mind is along the lines of Jesus' words, also in Matthew 19, verse 8, about "how things were in the beginning".

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Let me briefly return to the case of intersex people.

...

Was that how it was in the beginning? no.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
It is Adam's acceptance of Eve as companion that marks her out as the appropriate one flesh.

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Because she is like him in a way all the other animals are not. But she is also different; she is female! That is the overriding distinction the text makes. If her sex is trivial, why not simply clone Adam?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And of course the text has sex between man and woman in mind, it's a story about the beginnings of humankind. It does not follow that all non-procreative sex is thereby disallowed, that's Roman madness.

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Sorry, missed this. I don't disagree with any of this. At all.

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Yes, you do!

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Oh, no I don't!

To clarify, I don't subscribe to the view that all sex should be procreative, or that Genesis is about procreative sex only (if it were, I would expect Genesis 2:24a to say "...become one flesh, and have lots of offspring").

I note what you're saying about Jesus' rationale for quoting these verses here - and in particular why it matters when he was having to factor in issues of kinship and property - but I do think the discussions about divorce have nothing to say as to whether "the two becoming one flesh" refers to sex between male and female, which is the point I've been trying to defend here.

quote:

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It’s also not very useful in settling matters in the current unpleasantness.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
It could also be that he's behaving like an ordinary rabbi and applying the fourth of Hillel's rule

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Whatever he's doing, it seems to me that the Gospel, just like Paul in 1 Corinthians, understands "becoming one flesh" in Genesis to be referring to sex, not kinship.

quote:

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As for becoming one flesh (rather than being one flesh) having a completely different meaning in Gn than in the rest of Torah, I'm really not sure I'm clutching at straws as you said. Why do you think it implies sex in this case only? and not merely kinship?

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I can only try and rephrase what I posted earlier. In the Bibles I regularly use, there appear to be two distinct expressions in Gen 2:23 and Gen 2:24.

I can readily accept that the examples you cite might be the same as or similar to the first one, "flesh of my flesh" (Adam's exclamation on discovering Eve), but I'd be very surprised to learn that they were the same as or anything but vaguely similar to the "two shall become one flesh" of Gen 2:24 (especially given how Matthew 19 and 1 Corinthians 6:16 seem to understand the term).

I'm willing to be surprised, but I haven't been so far.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Adam's exclamation is due to the fact that she is quite literally flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone because she was fashion out of his rib!

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it is further down the line that a man 'becomes' one flesh with a woman.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
I'm going to challenge my quoting and coding ability here in dazzling ways...

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I think that it's not inevitable, though, which I couple with the practical reality of what life is actually like for homosexual people and the psychological misery inflicted upon homosexual Christians over something that they have no control over, and resist inferences that aren't inevitable.

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There's a Latin expression used in law that means: "the express mention of one thing is the exclusion of the other", and it's an idea that must be used extremely carefully. It's that idea that you're using in your reasoning - that, within the topic of marriage which Jesus was undoubtedly referencing, the express mention of heterosexual marriage excludes homosexual marriage.

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Your notion of "foundational" still doesn't actually get you anywhere without claiming that the union of male and female is "foundational" as well.

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Which then raises serious questions about people who haven't formed a union with anyone, of either gender. Do you think being single is a consequence of the Fall? How about celibacy?

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There is a glaring problem with any kind of statement about "how it was in the beginning" and trying to apply it as general statement about "how things are meant to be". In the beginning, the population of the world was 2.

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I'm not sure I believe in a literal Adam and Eve; I incline more to a "federal head" view.

[my coding is not as good as your coding]

[ 26. February 2016, 07:54: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Your coding is fine, and I can live with "accommodated".
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

 

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Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Eliab:
it seems more likely to me that the link is between two things which the writer and his first readers would have agreed were wrong.

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Whereas I would argue the link is things that the writer knew his first readers would agree were wrong.

Which is not the same thing. And I think the difference is crucial because of how Romans 2 starts. It talks about "you" who have just indulged in judging others. Not "we".

The point, as I've long understood it, is to have readers feeling self-satisfied right before springing on them.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I think "male and female" is foundational in the sense that "that is how it was in the beginning"; God made two sexes. [deleted huge tangent on intersex people here] That seems to imply, but does not require, heterosexual sex.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Well, it at the very least makes possible heterosexual sex. In the beginning of course, God only made one sex, because he made Adam first and only made Eve later. Therefore it follows that the foundational sexual act is masturbation.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Well, it at the very least makes possible heterosexual sex. In the beginning of course, God only made one sex, because he made Adam first and only made Eve later. Therefore it follows that the foundational sexual act is masturbation.

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Not necessarily, there presumably was no need to have genitals if there was nobody else around.

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I think we may be reading rather a lot into this story FWIW.

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Originally posted by mousethief:


Which is okay if one is a young-earth Creationist. But if one has any time for evolution at all, it is a real stretch.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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And secondly, they are unequivocally used in the context of marriage. If male and female had nothing to do with becoming one flesh, why didn't Jesus simply quote the second verse and not the first?

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Because people would inevitably say he didn't need to because it was assumed from silence.

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Wait, are you trying to say an argument from silence should trump what is actually there?

It seems to me that you're making my point for me; if what you say is true, he spelled it out for the avoidance of all doubt.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

I think we may be reading rather a lot into this story FWIW.

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I blame the author. Skips between allegory, history, grocery lists, action stories and morality plays. Changes direction and tone with no proper transition, no consistant voice. It's crap for continuity. As a collection of related works, it struggles, as a cohesive structure it utterly fails. Should have added extensive footnotes at the very least and the publisher should have hired a competent editor.
No modern critic would deign to print a review, much less praise it. It's almost as if it were cobbled together by loads of different authors with different understandings and agendas rather than as the single, coherent narrative that many seen to ascribe.

It does have some lovely bits which could be extracted, though.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Well, one thing's for sure, neither Adam or Eve would have had a belly-button ... unless God had put one there to make them look like regular folks ...


 

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Posted by St Deird (# 7631) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eliab:
If I wasn't bothered about having to obey Paul's teachings, I'd have no serious doubt that he was anti-gay. And I'd be glad that human understanding of morality had advanced since his day to the point where I could be sure that he was mistaken.

Alternative explanations commend themselves to me only as a way out of the moral quandary of there otherwise being a clear ethical failure in the plain text of what I believe is sacred scripture. If the "temple prostitution" angle is all Paul meant to talk about, then he can still be right - so it's very tempting to believe that that is all he was talking about. And it is plausible enough to be a possible reading. But I also know that I wouldn't read the text that way if I didn't feel, in some way, that it was inspired by God.

My argument is that it is right to read less likely meanings into scripture, if the most likely reading would be immoral - whereas with any other historic document, we'd simply take the most likely reading, and decide that the author was wrong.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
My thought would be to evaluate against his overall message. And it is difficult, for me, to see any way Jesus would condemn SSM.

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Well, that's where we get into the arguments about what Paul meant.

As for Jesus, he might not condemn it, but he might not champion it either. We just don't immediately know either way.

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quote:

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Originally posted by St Deird:

I mean...

If I am having a discussion about ethics, and I say "Kidnapping small children, like fairies do, is wrong." - then surely my error in thinking that fairies exist and kidnap people doesn't negate my ethical point that we should kidnap people. Likewise, if I say "We should treat changelings well and honourably - even those that the fairies have not given the power of speech." then my ethical point about treating severely disabled people well shouldn't be lost under my weird beliefs that they're changelings left by the fairies.

I do not see why we should believe Paul to be correct in every point of theology. And, especially in Romans, I don't think he's going "Hey, here's a list of things that are wrong." His belief that homosexuality is sinful is tangential to his main point - and, I think, somewhat irrelevant to what we're supposed to be hearing from this passage of inspired scripture.

If inspired scripture said "Every day, as the sun's rotation around the earth causes the light to dim, we should pray." then we'd be pretty dumb to miss the point about daily prayer, and get caught up in the writer's incorrect understanding of astronomy - that's all I'm saying. [/QB]

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quote:

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Originally posted by St Deird:
especially in Romans, I don't think he's going "Hey, here's a list of things that are wrong." His belief that homosexuality is sinful is tangential to his main point - and, I think, somewhat irrelevant to what we're supposed to be hearing from this passage of inspired scripture.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
You seem to be implying that after the creation of Eve, God changed the human genome to include genitals. Man was sexless, and when God created his helpmeet, He decided (for whatever reason) to make the species capable of reproduction by making them sexual in the same way that every other vertebrate was sexual already, albeit as something of an afterthought.

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
It goes back to the Greeks. Aristotle? When humans were created they were four-legged, four-armed, and two-headed. Some were male/male, some male/female, and some female/female. Zeus divided them down the middle and ran a thread around the loose edge, drawing it tight and tying a knot -- the belly button. We now spend all our time running around trying to find our matching half.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
Well, it suggests that a particular man's idea was to become one flesh with a particular woman.

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I'm not convinced, because "for this reason shall a man". This obviously doesn't refer merely to Adam, if only because he had no parents to leave.

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quote:

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quote:

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It is Adam's acceptance of Eve as companion that marks her out as the appropriate one flesh.

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Because she is like him in a way all the other animals are not. But she is also different; she is female! That is the overriding distinction the text makes. If her sex is trivial, why not simply clone Adam?

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quote:

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quote:

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The only normative idea the text seems to put forward is that a man must live with his parents until he's married, and then the couple set up at the wife's parents.

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If you really want to be that literalistic, the wife's parents don't even get invited to the wedding, let alone provide accommodation, because in the text they don't exist at all, and indeed in the text there is no wedding, just a whole lot of cleaving.

---

quote:

---

All this verse says to me is that, um, foundationally, sex is linked with a change in one's place in the social system, leaving one subsystem and establishing another.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
It goes back to the Greeks. Aristotle?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

---

Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It is not coincidental that Christianity is less science friendly than Buddhism.

---

Without wanting to denigrate the achievements of Indian and Chinese mathematics, I point out that the experimental empirical scientific revolution took place in Latin Christendom.

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I was speaking of Modernity, but ...

quote:

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Thus, clear unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, to medieval Muslim philosophers and scientists, to the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, to the secular sciences of the modern day.

---

---

quote:

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I was reading an article speaking of scientific literacy in Christian countries like the US vs Buddhist countries. I will look try to find the article.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Possibly just me, but my impression of the vast majority of the OT is that if Adam had been offered a male buddy, he'd have taken that over Eve.

It is obviously true that for the vast majority of human existence, male and females were needed for reproduction. But equally clearly close male relationships were needed and were reflected in the OT as in many ancient texts.

If we really want to be literal about the Genesis story, then at some point Adam or his sons would have had to reproduce with Eve or their (unnamed) daughters. I don't think many would see this as a healthy form of behaviour to model!

---

You'd be surprised. The question was asked on a more fundy forum (it's a regular, "who was Cain's wife?") and got told that for my answer, which was that the stories weren't literal, could only go in "unconventional theology", and the only acceptable mainstream Christian answer was "his sister".
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
And that was OK because 1) so close to the Creation, there were no faulty genes to damage the offspring of incestuous relationships - and that goes for Seth as well, and the unnamed other offspring of Adam and Eve; and 2) God hadn't forbidden incest yet.

So I've read.

Don't these people realise the tortuous world they are creating?

No, of course they don't, they just paint themselves further and further into the corner of one of those distorted rooms that viewed from a particular point outside makes them look smaller and smaller like something out of Alice. They don't realise what they look like from outside, and how unlikely they are to convince anyone of their rightness.
 

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Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on :
 
1) as I've pointed out a few times on the Ship in various contexts, the original 'Fundamentals' were not as 'dumb wooden literal' as subsequent 'fundamentalists' have insisted on being - indeed many of those later 'fundies' would consider the 'Creation' article to be appallingly 'liberal'....

2) Even the strongest 'fundies' must at some point recognise 'non-literal' elements - I don't know anybody who thinks that "Jesus is the Lamb of God" should be interpreted that he was a four-legged infant sheep!

3) Even before Darwin there was recognition that the Genesis stories were not necessarily dumb wooden literal - apparently the early Anglican Colet suggested they were 'after the manner of a popular poet' or words to that effect. Modern thinking about 'primitive people' in general tends to the view that they would actually know that they were dealing with 'stories' rather than 'history as we understand it'. They wouldn't be bothered by questions like "Who did Cain marry?" or how, after murdering his brother, he managed to get the people together to found even the small settlement that would be called a city in those days.

In effect, this is an issue of 'genre' and of what genre the early Genesis stories are. I'd incline to the view that an appropriate, though not exact, parallel would be something like Orwell's "Animal Farm"; which is far from an exact or detailed account of the history of the Russian Revolution, but by telling the basic story in a different genre, points up and emphasises the key ideas; and also, by such devices as calling one of the pigs 'Napoleon', points to wider applicability.

Having said that, telling the story in such a genre means that while the historic details are simplified or otherwise adapted, the ideas/principles/morals of the story are emphasised and to be taken very seriously - in the current case, the teaching on God 'making them male and female' and the implications of that on the meaning of marriage and the proper use of sexuality....
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 

 

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Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Having said that, telling the story in such a genre means that while the historic details are simplified or otherwise adapted, the ideas/principles/morals of the story are emphasised and to be taken very seriously - in the current case, the teaching on God 'making them male and female' and the implications of that on the meaning of marriage and the proper use of sexuality....

---

quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
That is just begging the question. One can agree that the ideas/principles/morals are important without immediately declaring what the principles are, as you have just done.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
For that reason it obviously doesn't refer at all to Adam.

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quote:

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[you say] suddenly when the text says that a man must leave his father and motehr, the overriding distinction is of no importance whatsoever and when the text says 'a man leaves and cleaves to his wife' it applies without distinction to a man and wife and to a woman and husband. I think the interpretation inconsistently applies layers of literalism.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by St Deird:
Why does it matter what Paul thought, exactly?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
Am I misrepresenting you (and/or orfeo) if I say your position is that what goes before is about Adam choosing a human mate (who just happens to be female) in preference to the animals (and, incidentally, not choosing a female in preference to a male), and what goes after explains that this is why (some) humans go on to find a mate (who, in the example cited, just happens to be of the opposite sex)?

---

quote:

---

I mean, what's the name of the method of Biblical interpretation that allows you to take "male and female he created them" (a fact that no-one is denying, by the way, we all agree that both male humans and female humans exist) and combine it with something else a whole chapter away?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Orfeo;

quote:

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I mean, what's the name of the method of Biblical interpretation that allows you to take "male and female he created them" (a fact that no-one is denying, by the way, we all agree that both male humans and female humans exist) and combine it with something else a whole chapter away?

---

In this case, the combination was not done by Eutychus, me, or other later Christians but by Jesus himself (in Mark 10;6-7 and its Matthaean parallel). As a Christian I tend to assume he, as God incarnate, knew what he was doing with, in effect, his own words....

Non-Christians could disagree about Jesus doing that; and in that case they are free to disregard Jesus and his interpretation. I'm not forcing them to believe in Jesus....

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
For that reason it obviously doesn't refer at all to Adam.

---

I don't follow this, particularly your words "at all".

The words "for this reason" mean that what follows is explained by what immediately goes before. The issue is about the ways in which what follows is justified by what goes before, and the ways in which it is not (or need not be).

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

[you say] suddenly when the text says that a man must leave his father and motehr, the overriding distinction is of no importance whatsoever and when the text says 'a man leaves and cleaves to his wife' it applies without distinction to a man and wife and to a woman and husband. I think the interpretation inconsistently applies layers of literalism.

---

I'm trying to understand your criticism here. Are you saying I've explained away one part of the text (the specific detail of the man leaving his parents, not the woman) on cultural grounds (doubtless to do with the status of women at the time) and tried to uphold the other (the fact that the text mentions a man and his wife) as normative?

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Yes, largely.
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
It seems to me that almost everything about the phrase "man will leave his father and be united with his wife" is thoroughly disproved by reality.

In many (perhaps most?) cultures, the Western idea of a nuclear family doesn't happen. The wife leaves her family and becomes united with her husband's family - or sometimes the reverse.

Or looking at the biblical record - how many biblical men spent much time with their wives? Most of the heroes, judges and kings were fighting battles. Most of the prophets were wandering in the desert, messing about making models out of their own shite, etc and so on.

How many were content with living a quiet life with their wives and children, forsaking all other women and refusing to build any other kind of relationship that could threaten the created order? How many times are we told more about the men and their buddies rather than their wives? We know Elijah and Elisha - do we even know their wives names?

Perhaps this phrase in Genesis is some kind of Platonic ideal that exists perfectly somewhere in the stratosphere. Maybe up there it is written in some kind of perfect record of the way things should be - along with the diets we're supposed to be eating, the clothing we should we wearing, the length of our hair and the colour of the pomegranates we should dangle on the edge of our cloaks when entering the temple.

But in the real world, life is messy. Even if I believed SSM was not the ideal, there is plenty of evidence that biblical characters themselves did not live this ideal - so there is plenty of reason to give us license not to either. I'm not held by a single line from a work of poetry from thousands of years ago.

Men and women in long stable relationships are a very beautiful thing. But they can also be an awful thing. There is no magic formula here that means people of different genders are kind to each other (and "blessed") whereas couples of the same gender are not.

In a lot of ways it'd be a lot easier to believe in a religion where there was an obvious cause-and-effect between wrong behaviours and consequences. It just doesn't work like that.
 

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Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :
 
I've been reading this thread with great interest, alongside this theology of gender report which has some - to me - new concepts about the creation narratives and their purpose. Not as a model of "marriage" but to show that, contrary to the thinking of surrounding cultures, both male and female are made in the image of God and both good. (Page 18 and following.)

I'd love to get some of you along to be a part of discussions on this in my church as you do it far better than I do.
 

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Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :
 
I'm very sorry, I don't think that link is working and I thought I did everything right...
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
You didn't clear the initial http:// tag provided when you clicked the url button. this should work.

Second edit to add that I managed to screw it up as well. Good now, though.

[ 03. March 2016, 18:06: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
 

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Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :
 
Thank you for sorting that out for me.
 

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Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :
 
I read this thread, all of it, what is wrong with me?
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 

quote:

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Joesaphat: I read this thread, all of it, what is wrong with me?

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Heh. I think that if you search through the Dead Horses board, you'll find some threads on this subject that are much looooooooonger than this one
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
If I ain't said it above, as a neo-liberal I remember with head shaking shame the conservative monster I have been for most of my life, but I must love him too. He had to go through decades of ignorance and weakness before he encountered, at the right time, the concept of the trajectory of the progressive revelation of God that has continued for two thousand years after it was underway for a thousand years or two in 'The Bible'.

There's nothing apparent about Biblical homophobia. It stares you in the face like everything else that's at the older end of the trajectory.

The only way to Biblically interpret the Bible is from the bleeding edge of its trajectory.
 

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Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:

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Joesaphat: I read this thread, all of it, what is wrong with me?

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Heh. I think that if you search through the Dead Horses board, you'll find some threads on this subject that are much looooooooonger than this one

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quote:

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Joesaphat: It kind of gives hope...

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Yeah, for me too.

Have you read this thread? Can you give us a summary when you're done?
 

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Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:

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Joesaphat: It kind of gives hope...

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Yeah, for me too.

Have you read this thread? Can you give us a summary when you're done?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:

quote:

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Have you read this thread? Can you give us a summary when you're done?

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It's the one I had in mind, I read the first twenty pages or so. I wonder if some of those who wrote have now either changed their minds or would, at the very least, use a different tone. Some of the posts drip with disgust.

---

Here's an intersting compare-and-contrast between two posts by the same shipmate fourteen years apart. The first is on the thread you linked to and the second is on a Hell board.

The author's response when confronted with the change was waffly enough to indicate a reluctance to publicly reaffirm his former position, but also waffly enough to indicate the only thing that had really changed was his willingness to state his opinion openly and baldly.

[links are to a Hell board, where the language is occasionally Hellish]

[ 22. March 2016, 15:24: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Well, Crœsos, my views have shifted over that time too. Indeed, I credit the Ship with contributing to a shift in my views on many things, not least because it offers an opportunity for people with widely differing views who might not otherwise interact to do so.

I'm not sure, though, that throwing peoples' change of viewpoint (especially when it is, even if incrementally, a shift in your favour) back in their faces is a good way of making friends and influencing people. You can have seemingly incontrovertible arguments (you often do) and still fail to win hearts and minds, you know.

For my part, I'm grateful in particular to the people on the "other side" of this debate who've shown patience, grace and respect for me in our differences.
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
I don't know if I posted to that thread years ago, and to be honest I'm not keen to see what I said if I did. I often feel acute embarrassment when faced with my former self and opinions. Isn't that the way with everyone?
 

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Posted by Doone (# 18470) on :
 
Certainly true for me

[ 24. March 2016, 12:09: Message edited by: Doone ]
 

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Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
Well, Crœsos, my views have shifted over that time too. Indeed, I credit the Ship with contributing to a shift in my views on many things, not least because it offers an opportunity for people with widely differing views who might not otherwise interact to do so.

I'm not sure, though, that throwing peoples' change of viewpoint (especially when it is, even if incrementally, a shift in your favour) back in their faces is a good way of making friends and influencing people. You can have seemingly incontrovertible arguments (you often do) and still fail to win hearts and minds, you know.

For my part, I'm grateful in particular to the people on the "other side" of this debate who've shown patience, grace and respect for me in our differences.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I don't know if I posted to that thread years ago, and to be honest I'm not keen to see what I said if I did. I often feel acute embarrassment when faced with my former self and opinions. Isn't that the way with everyone?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Joesaphat:

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I don't know if I posted to that thread years ago, and to be honest I'm not keen to see what I said if I did. I often feel acute embarrassment when faced with my former self and opinions. Isn't that the way with everyone?

---

Heck yes, Cheesy, I was brought up in communism and Buddhism and reacted against it so much that I became an obnoxious Roman Catholic conservative... now I'm back to being a middle-aged liberal hippie, like my parents, and I meditate again. I stumbled across some sermons I preached twenty or so years ago and it made me want to cry.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibaculus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Joesaphat:

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I don't know if I posted to that thread years ago, and to be honest I'm not keen to see what I said if I did. I often feel acute embarrassment when faced with my former self and opinions. Isn't that the way with everyone?

---

Heck yes, Cheesy, I was brought up in communism and Buddhism and reacted against it so much that I became an obnoxious Roman Catholic conservative... now I'm back to being a middle-aged liberal hippie, like my parents, and I meditate again. I stumbled across some sermons I preached twenty or so years ago and it made me want to cry.

---

I, too, became an obnoxious Roman catholic conservative. Strange, is it not, who we often conspire in our own oppression? I wonder why that should be? Maybe a sort of self hatred is induced in us, and we think that rejecting our own homosexuality will somehow make it go away, and make us acceptable to God and the people whose acceptance we crave.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
# it ain't what you [plurally] wrote it's the way that you wrote it # [which differs wildly to my mind]

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quote:

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But now that we're winning marriage — now that victory is assured — the pope is willing to maybe think about supporting some type of civil union scheme. I'll say to the pope what I said to my evangelical Christian pal: that fucking ship has fucking sailed. What the pope is saying to gay people in 2014 is this: "Okay, now that you're winning marriage, here's an idea: give marriage back and we will give you civil unions... which we once opposed with the same intensity and in the same apocalyptic terms that we oppose marriage today. Is it a deal?"

No deal, Francis.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Penny S:
And there was me thinking that the anti-homosexual laws and so on in Africa had been initiated and encouraged by westerners. But I suppose that that is OK if the pastors agree with it.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
# it ain't what you [plurally] wrote it's the way that you wrote it # [which differs wildly to my mind]

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quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Crœsos post was blunt, but completely fair.
I would argue that blunt is often more respectful than being conciliatory.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Why must the oppressed always be the ones to "understand" and be "respectful"?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Why must the oppressed always be the ones to "understand" and be "respectful"?

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I never said that. Lack of respect and understanding on either side is a cause for concern.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

The backstory to my allusion to "hearts and minds" earlier on is a Pentagon strategy advisor explaining in all seriousness, at a conference I was working at as an interpreter, that his approach to counter-insurgents was to sit down and see if there was anyone who could be negotiated with, and if not, and I quote, "kill them all" (he was not a uniformed officer and I think he might even have been a civilian, so he wouldn't actually have been doing the killing).

At an intellectual level I can sort of see that this point might be reached, but I can't help thinking there must be a better way. All the more so, dare I add, for those of us enjoined to love our enemies and bless those who persecute us.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
Fair or not, in my case the "yield no quarter" approach (not uniquely by Crœsos) been a far bigger obstacle to me changing my views than anything else.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
In this exchange I've been thinking, not about the law, but about debating style. There's a kind of implacability that I find unnerving; but maybe that's just me.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
In this exchange I've been thinking, not about the law, but about debating style. There's a kind of implacability that I find unnerving; but maybe that's just me.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Maybe so, but could it be because this debate has little consequence in your own life.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
this is just the sound of people being themselves, and claiming the space in which to do so before God and in the face of the congregation.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

I'm sure part of it is personalities, not just issues, and it doesn't invalidate the arguments themselves. I'm just being frank and saying that for me, it doesn't do anything to win me to them.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

While equal rights and treatment is a great ideal, I think living with real-life diversity involves compromise; that's certainly my takeaway from the Jew/Gentile debate in Acts, for instance.

A personal milestone for me on this thread was Orfeo saying he could live with "accommodated".

Perhaps the implacability of some is required to gain the accommodation sufficient for others; all I know is I'm much happier engaging with the latter tendency than the former.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
In this exchange I've been thinking, not about the law, but about debating style. There's a kind of implacability that I find unnerving; but maybe that's just me.

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quote:

---

This makes for a new and fundamentally different argument. For decades, the religious right has been arguing that their purchase on the moral high ground ought to result in their political triumph. The political opposition to that used to be a form of “yes, but …” — yes, these political preachers are correct about morality and immorality, but other factors need to be considered, or other complications have to be accounted for, etc.

Opposition to the religious right’s agenda on Tuesday [November 6, 2012] did not take the form of this “yes, but …” argument. It was simply, “No.”

It was not a disagreement about the political implications of the preachers’ righteous moral claims, but a denial of those claims, of their righteousness and of their morality. No, these political preachers are incorrect about morality and immorality. No, pretending that some “biblical definition of marriage” is a pretext for denying people their rights or delegitimizing their families is not good or decent or right. No, legal coercion compelling rape victims to bear the offspring of their attackers is not good or decent or right.

And that cuts to the core of the matter. That isn’t just a single defeat in a single election, but a fundamental rejection of the entire basis for why anyone, anywhere should ever listen to the religious right.

The religious right can no longer simply assert and assume that it has the moral high ground. If it wants to make that claim, it will have to argue for it, will have to explain why its absolute opposition to legal abortion and to civil rights for LGBT people is right or true or good.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
this is just the sound of people being themselves, and claiming the space in which to do so before God and in the face of the congregation.

---

I'm not sure this, specifically, is something that can or should be done implacably. The church is not about "claiming the space to be myself", it's about (in theory) "being one body with different members".

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
In this exchange I've been thinking, not about the law, but about debating style. There's a kind of implacability that I find unnerving; but maybe that's just me.

---

I think this pretty well sums up the moral bankruptcy of this kind of position. Sure, the debate is about someone else's rights/humanity/existence, but what really matters is whether you feel comfortable with the terminology used.

---

quote:

---

In some ways it's about maintaining authority.Fred Clark explains

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quote:

---

In a different way this goes back to asserting authority. Gay people can't "claim space" within the Church (that would be implacable and rude), they have to get permission from various authorities to be part of that "one body with different members".

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
Again, you are utterly misrepresenting what I wrote. I wasn't singling out gays. I don't think anybody should be "claiming space" (any more than I think anyone has some inherent "right to space" in the Church).

I certainly never insinuated that anybody should be having to ask permission from some dominant authority group (and yes, Thunderbunk, I wholly agree, failure of some members to acknowledge or welcome others is indeed a serious failure on their part).

---

How are you supposed to "welcome" people to somewhere they have no right to be? I'm pretty sure that the whole "you have no right to be here" message is inherently unwelcoming, no matter how nicely it's phrased.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Crœsos:
How are you supposed to "welcome" people to somewhere they have no right to be? I'm pretty sure that the whole "you have no right to be here" message is inherently unwelcoming, no matter how nicely it's phrased.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Crœsos:
How are you supposed to "welcome" people to somewhere they have no right to be? I'm pretty sure that the whole "you have no right to be here" message is inherently unwelcoming, no matter how nicely it's phrased.

---

Perhaps we're talking cross purposes here. The particular church I help lead says over the door that it's for everyone, and does its best to mean that.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
Because I think admission to the "space" of the Church, if one wants to put it in those terms, is on the basis of grace, not rights. That applies to everyone, and should not be forgotten by anyone.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Crœsos:
Saying you have space for people, but if they try to claim that space they're behaving in an unacceptably implacable manner seems like an overly convoluted way of saying "not welcome".

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
I've also conceded that there may well be a place for implacably asserting one's rights for a cause, but at the risk of repeating myself, I personally find it jarring in this particular debate space, in which there is usually, eventually, some give and take between long-term posters even of opposing views. Without this, I feel more as if I'm in a zero-sum game than anything approaching mutuality.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
However, marching in to "claim your space" . . . will not go down well.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
Neither do I look on any particular body as gatekeepers of the Kingdom of Heaven (or, if I had to nominate a group to be so, it would probably consist of tax collectors and prostitutes. . . . ).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
The space of the grace of God in which we all stand is not ours to claim, and I see the leadership's responsibility in ensuring both that everyone benefits from it and that nobody hijacks it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Crœsos:
You know what I find "jarring"? Treating the lives and rights of other people as some kind of abstract debating point and then acting shocked when people react strongly to suggestions that they are a lesser order of citizens and/or beings.

---

quote:

---

your whole argument seems like you're upset that those people (however defined) aren't deferential enough and act as if they're just as welcome at church as decent folk.

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quote:

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
Neither do I look on any particular body as gatekeepers of the Kingdom of Heaven (or, if I had to nominate a group to be so, it would probably consist of tax collectors and prostitutes. . . . ).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
The space of the grace of God in which we all stand is not ours to claim, and I see the leadership's responsibility in ensuring both that everyone benefits from it and that nobody hijacks it.

---

And you said you didn't know any gatekeepers!

---

quote:

---

It's interesting that certain people trying to claim space in the church is always interpreted as an effort to seize control through threats and violence ("highjacking").

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Crœsos:
You know what I find "jarring"? Treating the lives and rights of other people as some kind of abstract debating point and then acting shocked when people react strongly to suggestions that they are a lesser order of citizens and/or beings.

---

Sure. That point has been made by many people over time, and was made by Joan the Dwarf in her cut-out-and-keep post at the beginning of that thread, and believe it or not I do try to keep it in mind.

However, I don't thing strong reaction has to lead to, um, implacability. If it does, well that's your, um, right. It's just that I personally have to work extra hard to find your arguments persuasive precisely because of that attitude.

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