The “gays were born that way” saying has taken on a life of its own and has a significant impact on public policy. Is it true? If it is true, does it matter? Some thoughts . . .
1. I’m highly skeptical of “proof” that it is genetic (either a “gay gene” or genetic predispositions), as these studies have all been proven to be false in the past. See the Gay Gene Hoax.
2. Even if it is genetic, that doesn’t change the morality of the behavior.
3. If it is genetic, the number of gays will be dramatically reduced in a generation or so. Heterosexual parents will be quick to abort their children with predispositions to be gay. And the Liberals won’t do much to stop them, because they typically love abortion rights more than gay rights. They haven’t changed their views even for gender selection abortions (which virtually all involve the murder of females), so they probably won’t change them for gays, either.
I think that would be a bad thing, of course, as I’m against abortions except to save the life of the mother regardless of whether the unborn has a predisposition to be gay.
4. I’ve seen lots of evidence that many people are gay because of sexual abuse and/or relationship issues. I agree that anecdotes don’t make a full case, but I’m talking about a lot of anecdotes from people who come across hundreds or even thousands of gays. I’ve read of many counselors who said that virtually all of their gay patients had been abused or had serious relationship issues. And here’s a quote from gay activist / journalist Tammy Bruce from The Death of Right and Wrong:
Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood – molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult. The gay community must face the truth and see the sexual molestation of an adolescent for the abuse it is, instead of the “coming-of-age” experience many regard it as being. Until then, the Gay Elite will continue to promote a culture of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and suicide by AIDS.
She wasn’t trying to dispel the “born that way” notion, but I thought her comment was compelling.
5. It doesn’t have to be one traumatic event. It could be the complete dynamics of a relationship in place from birth that would make someone think they were “always that way.”
6. Gays who choose that lifestyle would be predisposed to say they were born that way. Otherwise, the whole “civil rights” demands would have even less reasoning behind them.
7. How many times do you see a newborn and say, “Now there’s a gay baby!” Be sure not to unfairly stereotype youths as gay just because they have non-traditional characteristics. How about nurturing and encouraging them for who they are and what interests they have?
8. Why are some people so eager to insist on the genetic link? Seems kinda homophobic to me, as if they think the lifestyle would make an undesirable choice.
And don’t just say, “They are picked on, so who would want that lifestyle?” That reasoning wouldn’t apply to people with true genetic differences that have made people a source of disapproval in the past.
Also, gay approval is at an all time high – “pride” parades, recognition as employee network groups at many businesses, civil unions & marriages – even apostate church weddings, almost universally favorable media treatment, etc.
9. Here’s one lady who doesn’t claim she was “born that way.” She says feminism led her to lesbianism (go figure!).
Ms Wilkinson, Professor of Feminist and Health Studies at Loughborough University, said: “I was never unsure about my sexuality throughout my teens or 20s. I was a happy heterosexual and had no doubts. Then I changed, through political activity and feminism, spending time with women’s organisations. It opened my mind to the possibility of a lesbian identity.”
Hoo boy. My sole contribution to this one is this, with which I agree, from the Cathdral of Hope, in Dallas:
“Many lesbians and gays spend most of their lives trying, with no success, to persuade God to change them. It is like trying to get God to change your eye color. What option, then, is left to these persons? They have been told that they can’t be gay and Christian. Since all efforts have failed in their struggle not to be gay or lesbian, then their only recourse, according to the Church, is that they can’t be Christian. So, the Church has discounted or discarded as much as 10% of the population.
“If they are excluded from the life of the Christian community, who, then, will tell them of God’s inclusive love and of Jesus’ reconciling death? Are they left to assume that God is so narrow-minded as to exclude them for something over which they have no control and for a choice they did not make? When will the Church finally be brave enough to say with Paul, ‘in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female,’ gay or straight? God has enough love for all!”
To read the whole letter, from the Rev. Michael S. Piazza, go here:
http://www.cathedralofhope.com/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?&pid=225&srcid=305
Peace.
Hi E.R. – Piazza seems to be offering up a dangerous false dichotomy. I wonder why he didn’t consider abstinence, which is the prescription for single Christians.
I agree with comment number 2: “Even if it is genetic, that doesn’t change the morality of the behavior.”
My father was an alcoholic, most studies seem to think that I would be an alcoholic too. Does that make it ok? Heaven forbid!
There’s a lot of confusion about being gay and having a homosexual lifestyle. Is it possible to BE a homosexual and not have that lifestyle? I honestly don’t know. I think it’s possible to BE a heterosexual and not practice heterosexual acts. Most of us follow that pattern until some point in our teens or twenties and many people are celibate at some point later in their lives.
The real question in my mind (and I don’t know the answer) is if someone believes they are homosexual, but doesn’t follow the lifestyle, are they sinning against God and man?
I think this possibly falls into ER’s line of reasoning or at least may share some common parts of an answer.
Good question, Randy. Some may disagree but the Bible verses mentioning homosexuality typically focus on the behavior. Of course, our thought lives belong to God as well and we can sin in thought and deed. Being tempted isn’t a sin; giving into temptation in thought or deed is a sin – for all of us, not just homosexuals.
I think that, to an extent, sex is habit forming. So an early homosexual encounter might lead to a gay lifestyle.
I also think that our society is so quick to approve homosexuality that we tell young people who have had a same sex experience that they are gay before they have had a chance to really find out that they are not.
ER, if gays are excluded from a community I would have serious doubts about it being a Christian one. However any sinner who insists that the community change its values to accommodate him is probably in the wrong place.
Good points re. the addictiveness. Haven’t we learned how addictive all our sins are? Great distinction in the last paragraph.
“If they are excluded from the life of the Christian community, who, then, will tell them of God’s inclusive love and of Jesus’ reconciling death? Are they left to assume that God is so narrow-minded as to exclude them for something over which they have no control and for a choice they did not make? When will the Church finally be brave enough to say with Paul, ‘in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female,’ gay or straight? God has enough love for all!”
Is it really “brave” to be immoral and ignore God? The fact is many psychologists and researchers attempt to link multiple types of behavior to genetics. Serial rapists and serial killers, for example, are said (by some) to be genetically predisposed to their desires and have little to no control over their behavior. Does this mean rape and murder becomes acceptable Christian behavior? Many genetic predispositions are overcome; why are we to assume homosexuality (which I do not personally believe actually is a genetic trait) is any different?
Also, I’m curious how one “tries” not to be gay. I understand it may be hard to radically change feelings and desires, but isn’t that what Jesus is for? Doesn’t he lighten the burden of your sinful actions when you choose to accept him? Isn’t part of accepting Jesus rejecting the desires and sins of the flesh? We all have many ungodly “human” traits that society accepts. That does not mean God does.
I’d also like to say that I think the author might want to gain a better understanding of Paul before using him to promote acceptence of homosexuality by Christians. Should you welcome a homosexual to church? Yes, they need the Gospel just like the rest of us. That does not, however, mean that you should accept homosexual behavior as “okay.” Love the sinner, not the sin.
Well said, PJ. I’m pretty sure that Paul wouldn’t agree with the revised wording of Galatians 3:28. And I especially liked the “Isn’t that what Jesus is for?” question.
SST said “if gays are excluded from a community I would have serious doubts about it being a Christian one.”
Does that mean that Christians are perfect? Isn’t it possible that well meaning Christians might think they are doing the right thing by excluding gays? Remember that for almost 100 years, Christians in this country promoted the idea of slavery. Today, we see that as repulsive and sinful.
Many prejudices can be overcome through education. Once we see the person as a person, not a black person or a gay person, we learn to accept them. ** But I would not say that the one who is prejudiced is not a Christian, just not educated. **
I’m not saying we accept the gay person’s lifestyle. Neither do we accept the lifestyle of an alcoholic, a wife abuser an adulterer. We love the person, get to know the person and gently correct. As one author said “Like one beggar showing another beggar where to find a loaf of bread.” Basically, I was a sinner and now I’ve found Jesus and He set me free. You can be free too.
Randy, of course I don’t mean Christians are prefect, that would certainly exclude me. I was thinking more of a Christian community as a whole.
Not all Christian communities promoted slavery, some of them were strongly opposed to it. Some of my ancestors were threatened with hanging for their opposition;
though they managed to escape.
As for the last paragraph of you last post, I could not agree more. I should have done a better job on that part of my post.
E.R., there is hardly a single paragraph in that sermon you cited that doesn’t need to be addressed, but I think I should make a few points that may otherwise be missed.
1) About the Bible, Piazza asserts that “many of its instructions and laws are simply classified as less relevant today (e.g. prohibition against eating pork).” This ignores the clear teaching of the New Testament, that the new covenant explicitly does away with those dietary regulations: to act as if the church decided on its own to ignore kosher dietary practices is to ignore Christ’s teaching that food doesn’t defile, Peter’s vision in Acts 10, and the teaching in Hebrews 13:9 not to be concerned about dietary regulations.
2) Furthermore, while he suggests that in Matthew 19 Jesus embraces homosexuals when He talks about eunuchs, Piazza seems to miss the idea that Jesus was commending celibacy for eunuchs. Even if I were to grant that the invocation of the term “eunuch” could include homosexual individuals, the teaching about eunuchs would still exclude homosexual behavior. Old Testament and New, the Bible never condones any sexual behavior outside of marriage, so while Christ embraces eunuchs as part of God’s plan, it’s clear from this passage that they’re not under the matrimonial umbrella and are therefore prohibited from engaging in sexual behavior.
And even more importantly, Piazza misses the context of Matthew 19: yes, Jesus never directly addressed homosexuality, but in this passage He clearly endorses the view from Genesis 2 about our creation and the purpose of our sexuality: we were created male and female for marriage, marriage that is lifelong, monogamous, and clearly heterosexual. Because this passage makes clear God’s will for sexuality, we don’t need an explicit passage about every exception that lies outside that will.
If a math teacher tells you, 2, 3, 5, and 7 are the only single-digit primes, do you really need to ask about 4, 8, or 9?
And if Christ affirms that we are made male and female so that “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” do we really need to wonder about the impropriety of polygamy, adultery, promiscuity, and homosexuality?
3) Finally, Piazza does some serious question-begging in the passage you excerpt. He writes this, alluding to Galatians 3:
“When will the Church finally be brave enough to say with Paul, ‘in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female,’ gay or straight? God has enough love for all!”
When will say that in Christ there is neither jealous nor generous, neither drunken nor sober-minded, neither hateful nor gentle? There are thousands of ways to distinguish between human beings, and Christ doesn’t erase all those lines.
Later in this very epistle, Paul makes clear that certain groups of people are excluded from God’s kingdom:
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. – Gal 6:19-21
(Notice in passing that Paul includes sexual sin but not eating bacon.)
God has enough love for all, Piazza rightly declares, but how does he explain that those who engage in the sins listed here will not inherit the kingdom? This passage is in the same epistle he cites, and it’s consistent with Christ’s many parables of separation: the broad path and the narrow path, the sheep and the goats, the wheat and the weeds.
The Biblical answer is that, though God loves us all enough to send His Son to save us all and isn’t willing that any of us perish, our moral choices matter. I earnestly believe that God doesn’t exclude us from His family simply when we face temptation: even Christ was tempted. But we are called not to give into temptation, and to repent from when we do.
The question is, is homosexual desire a temptation to be resisted? Are homosexual acts sins to be condemned and from which people should repent? Despite Piazza’s very shallow argument to the contrary, the Bible teaches a clear “yes” to both questions.
But Piazza’s not simply urging churches to accept homosexuals as fellow sinners, but he’s rather asserting that we should accept homosexual acts as moral. The Bible does not give us the leeway to do that.
I think the problem with those who hold to the idea that homosexuals should be accepted without a change in their behavior probably discount the need to be born again. Paul talks about us being new creations. And if we truly are, born again and a new creation, then we turn away from that lifestyle.
That doesn’t mean the desires might not still be there, but we don’t act out upon them because we see our sin for what it is, gross and heinous. The problem I see with the Christian homosexual community is that they never truly address this need for change. They just look at it and keep right on going. They have lost the power of the gospel.
Yes, I admit that the struggles may remain, but the acceptance of those struggles should not if we are truly born from above.
“The problem I see with the Christian homosexual community is that they never truly address this need for change. ”
Timothy, I think you hit the nail right on the head. But I would go one step further. They not only don’t address the need for change, a problem common to many sinners, they have managed to convince themselves that their behavior, lifestyle, whatever, is actually not sin & therefore don’t believe there is a need for change. We’re all familiar with the mental gymnastics they go through to get there from the posts here on Neil’s blog.
The problem I see is the “church”. This is not meant to be a blanket condemnation of all churches, just a general observation. For whatever reason the church has abdicated its responsibility to preach/teach the Gospel to preach the cultural/social gospel of political correctness. You know, what other people do is their own business, etc.
My first thought as to why this gospel became so popular was membership retention or growth. But that doesn’t really make sense because all the major denominations that are on this bandwagon are actually bleeding members, if not splitting apart.
In retrospect, I think what we’re really witnessing is Satan at his finest. He’s done a masterful job of turning the concept of love as taught in the Bible into an invective to be hurled at anyone that dares stand against the new social order of tolerance.
Not sure I explained this as clearly as I want but I hope you understand what I’m trying to say.
What I find most striking about this argument is the eagerness to heal the symptom instead of the root of the problem. You quote Tammy Bruce: “Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood – molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult.”
If indeed people are not born gay as this blog suggests, there is a much higher calling than just admonishing homosexual acts. Wouldn’t it stand to reason we should be focusing on healing those wounds of the past–not merely the symtoms of those wounds. Christians should be desperately reaching out to people who have been hurt in such ways (gay or not) and understand that maybe the damage that has been done to them cannot be undone.
We still have an obligation to offer healing for victims, even if the result does not “wash the gay away.” Beating it into their heads how wrong their symptoms are doesn’t do any more good than a doctor telling you you need to stop having a fever without addressing what caused the fever in the first palce. Or giving a cancer patient a Tylenol. These symptoms cannot, and should not, simply be legislated away.
I’ll say the same thing I’ve said on a similar post.
I believe some people can be born with homosexual tendencies, although I believe it is primarily developmental issue.
That being said, just because someone has homosexual tendencies, whether genetic or environmental, does not give someone license to practice homosexual behavior.
Concerning ER’s post about gays praying for God to change them…
As with many males, one area of temptation for me is lust. By the grace of God I live in freedom from the things out there. I can pray all I want for God to “change” me, but the female body is something that will be attractive to me. Granted, it is slightly different, because I have my wife to fulfill that in some regard, whereas homosexuals don’t. Nevertheless, the temptation to indulge in the lust of the eyes is always out there.
If I used the same argument that gays and lesbians do, I could argue that I was born to check out other females and that no matter how much I prayed for God to change me, I will always desire that. Therefore, it is okay for me to be that way. However, I can pray to God for strength to resist those temptations and to fill whatever emotional needs I am looking to fulfill.
This is not to say I have as hard of a struggle as someone with homosexual tendencies, as there is a whole other dimension involved. I am just saying that I reject the argument that just because “I am born that way, God won’t change me, therefore it is okay to do that”.
Timothy said:
“I think the problem with those who hold to the idea that homosexuals should be accepted without a change in their behavior probably discount the need to be born again.”
While this may be true in some circumstances, it’s certainly not in all. My church teaches the Gospel, that we need to be born anew in Christ. Leave behind the ways of the world and follow in Jesus’ steps. We teach that when we do so, the world may well revile us. The rich and powerful, the religious and violent may very well send attack dogs after us. Our own human nature undo our best efforts to follow in those steps, but follow in those steps, by God’s grace, is what we ought to do, nonetheless.
On this particular action (which you consider a sin), we just disagree with you. We love the Bible. We seek to understand it by God’s grace and heed The Word. And in so doing, we come to a different conclusion than some here do on that particular “sin.” Just as you disagree with us on that issue and likely on other sins.
Because we disagree with you doesn’t mean that we reject God’s Word.
Timothy, I agree with Dan that some who condone homosexual behavior genuinely believe such behavior to be morally permissible, and that some even believe it to be Biblically permissible. Some affirm the concept of being born again but deny that homosexual behavior is part of our fallen humanity that we must deny and crucify.
The problem is, Dan, that the argument that the Bible condones homosexual behavior is quite weak, particularly in the face of Matthew 19, which affirms the declaration from Genesis 2 that we were made male and female for marriage.
And, honestly, not many who claim the Bible condones homosexuality actually do esteem it the way theologically conservative Christians do. They’ll pay the Bible lip service, but they do not hold it as being inerrant and uniquely authoritative. Instead they argue that our current understanding of psychology trumps the clear teachings of the Bible, so it’s not simply that we’re approaching the Bible the same way and just happen to come away drawing different conclusions.
“On this particular action (which you consider a sin), we just disagree with you. We love the Bible. We seek to understand it by God’s grace and heed The Word. And in so doing, we come to a different conclusion than some here do on that particular “sin.” Just as you disagree with us on that issue and likely on other sins.
Because we disagree with you doesn’t mean that we reject God’s Word.”
Actually, God is pretty clear on the issue…
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts,and creeping things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness,fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy,murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters,inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” Romans 1:18-32
I know that one’s a bit long, but it basically refutes the argument that differing views on sin can both be from a Godly perspective. How can you say you don’t reject the Word of God if what you speak is directly opposed to the the very Word of God? Whether or not homosexuality is a sin, from a biblical perspective, is not even a debate. I can understand the argument of homosexuality being genetic but (as I stated earlier) if it is, then it can be overcome through Jesus Christ. To say otherwise would be to humanize Him and basically say “All things are possible through God…as long as they’re not genetic.”
WOZ,
Yes, I agree. Far too many churches shy away from any level of church discipline at all. The end result is that sexual immorality runs rampant in many churches, both homosexual and heterosexual because no one is willing to bring about disciple (Matthew 18).
I have been in churches that disciplined members for sexual immorality and I’m convinced that it must be carried out for the benefit of the body of Christ. It purifies the body and warns others that they cannot live a lifestyle without consequences. The beautiful thing about it is that I’ve seen men repent from their sin as well, and become better fathers, brothers, Christians, etc. All because the church leadership was not going to let them sin without consequences. They were grateful. Someone loved them enough to say, “no, you are not living according to your confession. Repent, or be excommunicated.”
Exactly, PJ, couldn’t have said it better myself!
Bubba,
You are dead on as well. Too many pay lip service to the Bible and it’s authority, giving all kinds of excuses why they don’t follow it, etc. It’s sad to see this, but it’s rampant in the church.
Blessings
PJ wrote:
I can understand the argument of homosexuality being genetic but (as I stated earlier) if it is, then it can be overcome through Jesus Christ. To say otherwise would be to humanize Him and basically say “All things are possible through God…as long as they’re not genetic.”
Very well said. What is it that Paul says to Timothy?
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! 6 For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, 7 always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Blessings
I agree “paying lip service” to biblical teaching is rampant in church. Otherwise, the people of the US (a largely christian lot) would have risen up to oppose this immoral Iraq invasion in even greater numbers than we did.
As to HOW we can disagree, we just do. Just as you might support warring Christians even though I think the Biblical witness is clear on that point. Sometimes, believe it or not, Christians disagree on various sins.
But the biblical case in support of gay Christians is a different discussion than what we’re having here, so I won’t go into it. Suffice to say that there are maybe five verses in ALL of the Bible that support your view (you’ve quoted just about the entire biblical case against gay marriage and, of course, gay marriage is not even mentioned therein).
And those verses, in MY church’s prayerful opinion, don’t bear out your conclusions given the witness of the whole Bible. The point is, we are not heretical. We don’t hate the Bible. We love the Bible, we seek to follow in Jesus’ steps by God’s grace. We just disagree with your interpretation of those particular handful of verses.
Dana
Bravo and touche’. Very insightful. Your points should hit hard on this group. Why you are being totally ignored is a mystery.
My guess is that everyone else here would rather bicker over obscure verses than try to talk to the issues you brought up. Sorcery, Bubba? [rolls eyes] That whole passage, Gal 6:19-21 – it is completely impossible live without commiting most of those enumerations.
Quarrels? Isn’t that what this is?
Enmity? Isn’t that what many of you have towards gays? (be honest)
Sorcery? umm – yeah. If you even believe in it then you have very serious mental problems.
Anger? Who here hasn’t been angry?
Dissensions? What’s wrong with dissent? Dissension from what?
Faction? ROFL! That’s what most churches are!
And, of course, the infamous “…things like these” Fill in the blank. There must be something else you should feel guilty about!
This whole thread seems very petty. Dana brings a very sbustantive argument to the table and is being ignored for his/her insightfulness. Dana is absolutely right in saying that christians should be reaching out to help people who have suffered such injuries – if, in fact, you even remotely believe what you’re saying. It seems to me that most of you (oddly enough except for Dan and Dana) just want to blather on for the sake of the blather.
“They not only don’t address the need for change, a problem common to many sinners, they have managed to convince themselves that their behavior, lifestyle, whatever, is actually not sin & therefore don’t believe there is a need for change.”
Yes, I think that is a common stumbling block with many sins. It is easy to convince yourself that what you are doing doesn’t really hurt anybody, your behavior is not really what God had in mind when he condemned that sin.
I have been there more than once, and that kind of thinking is still one of my biggest temptations.
There have been a lot of good points made in these responses, more, I think, that I can comment on.
Dan, how many times must a teaching appear in the Bible for it to count? If you affirm the Bible’s inerrancy, wouldn’t that number be “one”?
Do you really want to argue that opposition to the Iraq war is more clearly required by the Bible than the principle that we are made male and female for marriage?
And would you mind telling me how the “witness of the whole Bible” undermines the conclusion drawn from Genesis 2 and Matthew 19, that God made us male and female for lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage?
I’m not sure you’ve ever been clear in either affirming or denying the inerrancy of the Bible, but I didn’t suggest you hated the Bible: only that many who believe homosexual behavior to be moral either deny the Bible’s unique authority or inerrancy.
Dan,
Just to be clear, you & your church are not disagreeing with PJ’s interpretation. You are disagreeing with about 2,000 years of interpretation & teaching by virtually every church father, historian, scholar and preacher that has ever studied the Bible.
I guess the question I would ask is what new discovery in manuscripts, historical evidence, exegesis or hermeneutics has been made in the last 30 years that changes the historical teaching & interpretation?
The issue about how someone is born is really pointless. It is a sin to act upon anything the Bible says is sinful. I was born for a desire of women. If I chose to have sex with someone who was not my wife then that would be sin.
“Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood – molestation by aparent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult.”….My sentiments exactly Neil!..courageous and great read!!!!
Of all the places that we should expect the Bible to be the reference point, it should be the Church. That is why this world is so full of trouble and wars, we have wondered away from accepting the Bible as the authority and have instead turned to intellect, culture and political correctness. We will be judged if we do not repent. I have intended to just read and stay away from posting, but I get so disturbed by the lack of emphasis on the whole nature of God, ignoring His holiness, justice and placing all or most of preaching today on His love (for which I am so grateful ).
Mark, about Dana’s comment:
My guess is that everyone else here would rather bicker over obscure verses than try to talk to the issues you brought up.
I can think of better ways to encourage discussion of Dana’s comment than to make accusations about people’s motives and to dismiss the Bible as “obscure.”
Bubba asked (off topic):
“Do you really want to argue that opposition to the Iraq war is more clearly required by the Bible than the principle that we are made male and female for marriage?”
Yes.
I raised that off-topic question, Dan, because you made the off-topic assertion that, if we weren’t paying lip service to the Bible, “the people of the US (a largely christian lot) would have risen up to oppose this immoral Iraq invasion in even greater numbers than we did.”
Since you want to make this argument, I encourage you to do so, at your blog if you think this particular thread is not the best place for such a discussion. Please, tell me how Genesis 2 and Matthew 19 aren’t clear in explaining why we were made male and female, or explain how opposition to the Iraq war in particular (or all war in general) is even more clear.
I don’t think you could argue either point very persuasively, but I do welcome you to prove me wrong.
(It is perhaps worth noting, Dan, that, in John 4, Jesus mentioned the many marriages of the woman at the well, but I cannot find any criticism of the Centurion in Matthew 8 or Luke 7.)
“Of all the places that we should expect the Bible to be the reference point, it should be the Church. That is why this world is so full of trouble and wars, we have wondered away from accepting the Bible as the authority and have instead turned to intellect, culture and political correctness. We will be judged if we do not repent. I have intended to just read and stay away from posting, but I get so disturbed by the lack of emphasis on the whole nature of God, ignoring His holiness, justice and placing all or most of preaching today on His love (for which I am so grateful ).”
Well said. God’s love IS important, but his holiness is paramount.
Also, on a bit of a side bar, I’d like to thank Neil for an excellent blog…and thanks to the many people who post here (even Dan and E.R…lol) as well. You have all made my bible studies more enriched and focused. God Bless!
To reiterate what PJ wrote, salvation through the cross of Christ wouldn’t have been possible without God’s love, but it wouldn’t have been necessary without God’s holiness: His holy justice and His immeasurable grace are both found in the cross, and neither should be de-emphasized.
“but I get so disturbed by the lack of emphasis on the whole nature of God, ignoring His holiness, justice and placing all or most of preaching today on His love (for which I am so grateful ).”
I think this comes about from failing to understand just what kind of love God has for his creation. I think God’s love is sometimes like the kind of tough love practiced by parents. The child does not think it is love at all, and it does not always work, but it is sometimes what love requires.
I know some people will say that this is limiting God’s power, but it is not my limit. God chose to give us free will and I am sure he knew exactly what that meant. I think scripture makes it clear that some will be lost.
WOW.. a lot of bible stuff here, in my mind totally irrelevant.
I follow my heart and what I believe are the teachings of Jesus and only Jesus.
I have two brothers.. Twins (rampant in my family as I too, have a duplicate) One fair skinned and freckled with curly auburn hair.. the other shines with his olive complexion, lighter eyes and fine straight hair. They’re close, they were treasured as children and have gone on to become an attorney and the other an architect. One has two beautiful children and a lovely wife and the other has a wonderfully artistic life partner. Neither in my eyes has sinned, neither was molested or abused as a child. Neither of my brothers owe any one any explanations or reasons for devoting themselves to the loves of their lives.
My beautiful brother was born Gay.. he was born loving art, music, clothes, hair, dolls, cooking and playing with girls! (which we loved!)
I couldn’t agree less with this article. Studies do show that children with lower levels of testosterone, or estrogen do tend to display behaviors that are commonly associated with being gay. It is not something that is learned, well unless you wish the count those who pretend, or act as if they are gay.
The argument seems to be very much based on the church, and quite frankly, the church is backwards in it’s beliefs.
“WOW.. a lot of bible stuff here, in my mind totally irrelevant.
I follow my heart and what I believe are the teachings of Jesus and only Jesus.”
I’m curious. Where do get your teachings of Jesus, if not from the Bible?
“My beautiful brother was born Gay.. he was born loving art, music, clothes, hair, dolls, cooking and playing with girls! (which we loved!)”
I don’t understand how these personal interests equate to being born gay…or even to being gay at all.
I’m not trying to be argumentative, I’m just genuinely seeking further explaination on both of these topics in your post.
I forgot to mention my thoughts on this passage.
“Until then, the Gay Elite will continue to promote a culture of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and suicide by AIDS.”
You seem to think that AIDS is limited to the gay community, and really that is ignorant. AIDS is widespread, why not just say that AIDS is a black disease? I’ve met people whose family members have died of AIDS in heterosexual relationships. And as for sexual promiscuity, not everyone who is gay is promiscuous, in fact many of them lead a normal life, in committed loving relationships. I can say this because I know a gay couple that has been together for over twenty years, of which both have AIDS. I can’t even touch on the drug/alcohol abuse, as it is also so incredibly ignorant, I really couldn’t decide how to respond.
“I couldn’t agree less with this article. Studies do show that children with lower levels of testosterone, or estrogen do tend to display behaviors that are commonly associated with being gay. It is not something that is learned, well unless you wish the count those who pretend, or act as if they are gay.
The argument seems to be very much based on the church, and quite frankly, the church is backwards in it’s beliefs.”
The key phrase in this statement (to me anyway) is “children with lower levels of testosterone, or estrogen do tend to display behaviors that are commonly associated with being gay.” Behaviors associated with being gay does not necessarily equal being gay. Also, to take it a step further, these behaviors can easily be learned (from environment, peer groups, etc.) as a way to compensate for their lack of “normal” testonsterone levels…which, by the way, are constantly fluctuating based on lifestyle choices (such as diet and exercise) anyway. You wouldn’t begin to see these so-called homosexual tendencies until further into the development cycle than birth.
But they can start at birth, it is a process, hormones don;t come into real play until puberty. provide some sort of evidence that everyone who is homosexual has some sort of sexual abuse in their past. Because I can say for a fact, that you will turn up many homosexuals that have no abuse, and it is just differences in their hormone levels.
I’ve met people whose family members have died of AIDS in heterosexual relationships. >
Can you vouch for the faithfulness of both people in this relationship? God’s plan for one man for one woman for life will not bring about aids unless acquired by a blood transfusion is what I have read.
Most of the people who say that God is Love and fail to also glory in His other attributes are obviously biblically illiterate. They have a god who is no larger than the imaginations generated by their own sin beclouded minds. How can they produce light (right thoughts of God) from darkness? I challenge any of these people to honestly read any one of the synoptic gospels (completely) and if they have the comprehension of a fifth grader they will realize that God is Holy and cannot wink at any lack of conformity to His moral law (sin), in any of its horrible manifestations (including homosexuality). That is the reason Christ had to live & die. He obeyed the Father (kept His law) perfectly for us, and suffered unto death as His father poured out His wrath upon Him, to pinish the sins of all who would believe that we might be fully accepted by God. After this becomes ours by faith, He then begins to make us Holy. Praise be unto Jesus! For He shall save His people from their sins!
Blood transfusion, needles, and contact with those who have AIDS, be is from cuts, medical reasons, etc. And the man in question works with students, so this is to say that you all may believe that homosexuals are wrong, but they teach your children. And in my opinion they do a good job, he worked with children that were emotionally disturbed as a behavior specialist, meaning his job was to help children with their emotional needs. If a homosexual is so confused with his own emotions, how would he help children?
And they were faithful.
For what it’s worth, I need no more convincing on the “born gay” topic than the reality that someone couldn’t “convince” me to be gay no matter what. I am attracted to women. Gay folk are attracted to members of the same gender.
It seems pretty ridiculous to suggest that it’s somehow learned or “traumatized” into an individual. How much trauma would it take to make you straight folk “turn gay”?
“But they can start at birth, it is a process, hormones don;t come into real play until puberty. provide some sort of evidence that everyone who is homosexual has some sort of sexual abuse in their past. Because I can say for a fact, that you will turn up many homosexuals that have no abuse, and it is just differences in their hormone levels.”
I agree that they can start at birth. My point was that any study relating hormone levels at birth to homosexual behavior when “traits” show later is not conclusive. There are no conclusive studies on this issue. The type of study you reference is based on a sample group and shows tendencies, not conclusive data.
Also, to respond to the “provide some sort of evidence that everyone who is homosexual has some sort of sexual abuse in their past. Because I can say for a fact, that you will turn up many homosexuals that have no abuse, and it is just differences in their hormone levels” segment…
I never stated that homosexuality is a result of sexual abuse or trauma. I merely agreed that it was certainly a possibility. I personally believe there are many factors that can contribute to the CHOICE of homosexuality (yes, I beleive it’s a choice). I am not entirely discounting that you can be genetically more predisposed to have homosexual tendencies, I just don’t think it’s as simple as “he’s born gay.” I can also believe that hormone levels can play an obvious part in effeminate behavior. However, effeminate behavior does not necessarily equate to homosexual behavior.
“For what it’s worth, I need no more convincing on the “born gay” topic than the reality that someone couldn’t “convince” me to be gay no matter what. I am attracted to women. Gay folk are attracted to members of the same gender.
It seems pretty ridiculous to suggest that it’s somehow learned or “traumatized” into an individual. How much trauma would it take to make you straight folk “turn gay”?”
While i certainly don’t think that a high percentage of homosexuals are “traumatized into homosexuality,” I do see merit in it happening. In fact, many male rape victims report feelings of arousal during the act. This, of course, does not mean they are gay, it is a physical reaction to the situation (many seemingly odd reactions can occur in the body during times of high stress). This arousal can lead to thoughts of “am I gay” by the victim. Some are so convinced, that they do choose to lead a homosexual lifestyle; even if only for a short period. Again, this is not meant to imply it is the case for ALL rape victims, or victims of ALL sexual trauma. It is just to say that it IS possible.
PJ.. have you known any gay folks their entire life??
PS.. I am “Bible illiterate.. I feel it was written by an iraqi or same sort. Please educate me as to which verses were WRITTEN by Jesus.
I will not use His name to justify hatred, bigotry of humankind.
Neil
Good post, but the resulting discussion is pointless. Such a divisive topic… Everyone has an opinion that won’t bend. Here’s mine: … never mind …
pointless…
All verses were written by Jesus. He is the second person of the Godhead. No scripture is the private opinion of sinful humanity. Read I Tim 3:16. In that passage it is stated that all scripture ( The Greek word translated “scripture” (graphe) means “writing,” is inspired of God (Theopneustos means “God-breathed”). All scripture, obviously verses. In other words, what God wanted communicated to us He moved upon men to direct their thoughts to record His infallible revelation:All Scripture. Truth only divides because of the existence of error. God is the source of all truth, those who resist truth try to resist God and blame truth because it divides and by nature rubs against their carnal natures which are at enmity against God ( Rom. 8:7).
Please read one of the gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke or John) in its entirety. Until then you are not qualified to engage in intelligent discussion on these topics, because you have no truth to draw from. Just your own subjective feelings. Especially on the person of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
“PJ.. have you known any gay folks their entire life??
PS.. I am “Bible illiterate.. I feel it was written by an iraqi or same sort. Please educate me as to which verses were WRITTEN by Jesus.
I will not use His name to justify hatred, bigotry of humankind.”
To be brief, as I really don’t feel this line of “debate” can will be fruitful for either one of us…
If by “entire life” you mean from birth, then no. If you mean from early childhood, then yes.
For your second statement. If you don’t feel the Bible is valid, yet (as you posted originally) you follow Jesus’ teachings, I simply asked where you get your teachings from. You sarcastically ask what verses were written by Jesus. By all means, point me to any teachings of Jesus that you study which were literally written by Him, and I’ll jump at the chance to read them.
As for the bigotry comment. I’ve already stated, if you cared to read, that Christians should not exclude or “hate” homosexuals. My exact words were, “love the sinner, not the sin.” Or to put it another way, hate the sin, not the sinner. I am a Bible believing Christian. The Bible, which is the inspired and inerrant Word of God, mentions homosexuality as a sin. That is where I stand.
And to let you know, I don’t view homosexuals as a “people.” In other words, I don’t view them as any different than any other person. They are sinners like you (yup, even you) and I. We, again as I stated earlier, all fall short of Gods glory. None of us, on our own merit, meet His standard. We needed Jesus to pay our penalty. That is exactly why we can’t “work” our way into Heaven…Gay or straight.
Well said PJ!
PJ: If you’re “wrong” on a sin – that is, you believe Sin X is not a sin and, as it turns out, it is – and you die having willingly been a participant in Sin X without repenting, are you doomed?
Hi all – great dialogue – thanks for everyone’s thoughtful and respectiful participation and for not letting it get overheated.
Re. Dana’s first comment: “If indeed people are not born gay as this blog suggests, there is a much higher calling than just admonishing homosexual acts. Wouldn’t it stand to reason we should be focusing on healing those wounds of the past–not merely the symtoms of those wounds. Christians should be desperately reaching out to people who have been hurt in such ways (gay or not) and understand that maybe the damage that has been done to them cannot be undone.
We still have an obligation to offer healing for victims, even if the result does not “wash the gay away.””
Dana, those are excellent points. I think that one of the consequences in the split in the church today is the distraction from helping people who need it. Those who claim the behavior isn’t sinful have no reason to help these folks because by definition they think there is nothing to help with.
Some people are doing things to help, though we could be doing more. Just being friendly with everyone is a start. My main irritation isn’t with the gays themselves, but with heterosexual Christians who preach pro-gay theology. Most (but not all) that I am aware of have other serious theological issues as well.
“It seems pretty ridiculous to suggest that it’s somehow learned or “traumatized” into an individual. How much trauma would it take to make you straight folk “turn gay”?”
Dan, do some research. Relationship and abuse issues are a factor. Also, did you read #9? She made a conscious choice and freely admits it.
So how much trauma would it take to turn you?
Must . . . resist . . . urge . . . to make . . . bad jokes . . .
Dan, we are talking about trauma in youths. If you want to speculate about what kind and how much, go ahead, but I don’t see how that refutes any arguments made here. I’ve already made the point that regardless of the cause it is a sin.
You read the whole Bible and just can’t see how we come to the conclusion that it is a sin. You even rationalize your “potentially” wrong interpretations by pointing out (rightly) that being wrong on that topic alone wouldn’t cost you your salvation. But that seems like a cop out to me.
OK. This is my second, and really, last comment. (I fibbed in my first post! Mainly, I meant I’d be out of town all day and unable to jine in.) (I was in Tulsa all day, Neil!)
((Paragraphs below are rated PG.))
I remember when I was a little bitty ER. I got into some of my big brother’s Playboys. I had no idea what I was looking at. I thought girls were gross. I’d never seen, nor wanted to see, what I saw in those magazines. I mean, I was, like 7.
My little peepee, apart from my will, apart from my experience, apart from my known, conscious desires, stood at rap attention at the mere sight of those nekkid girls. I was not onlyu surprised. I remember being alarmed! WTH?
Now, some of y’all will say that that’s God’s will — of course it did!
But what if my little peepee had reacted thusly to pictures of nekkid guys — as many gay men assert.
I’m not being silly, and I’m not intentionally being profane. This is a fact of my experience, and it colors my perception of the whole discussion.
But that’s all just biology.
When the church, in general, makes such a fuss out of the routine bearing of false witness that takes place in marketing and business by Christians in this country, and rampant obesity among church members, and leaders, and (name your sin), then I’ll get all bent out of shape about homosexuality.
Until then: Grace, grace, God’s grace! And NO MAN (or woman) can judge another person’s repentance.
The homosexual members of the Cathedral of Hope have repented of the greatest sin already: Fear, and self-righteousness, and false shame, before God. They stand blameless, as all Christians do, before God, pleading the blood of Christ (except for those, who, as in any church, are fakers and prretenders, or otherwise just looking for a free ride).
Heterosexuals for whom homosexual behavior is merely a “lifestlyle choice” will, under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, be drawn to repentance, or die on the vine and drift away.
Homosexuals caught in the culture-imposed lie that they truly are actually heterosexuals will either repent of their lies, or be liberated to be the people God meant them to be when he created them.
And, in the interim, ALL are to be welcomed fully into Christian fellowship, which, in Protestantism, includes the pulpit — for we all are sinners.
ER, I know you plan that to be your last comment, but I really am skeptical about this statement:
When the church, in general, makes such a fuss out of the routine bearing of false witness that takes place in marketing and business by Christians in this country, and rampant obesity among church members, and leaders, and (name your sin), then I’ll get all bent out of shape about homosexuality.
In my opinion, if homosexuality is a sin, then it should most certainly be addressed now: entire denominations are embracing this sin and even implying that those who don’t go along with them are bigoted and evil. Dan’s comments notwithstanding, I think the Biblical supporting for normalizing homosexuality is as weak as can be, so the subject ultimately hinges on the authority of Scripture. And, unlike obesity and corporate malfeasance, the issue of homosexuality impacts the institution of marriage — which predates even the fall — and the family, upon which civilization ultimately depends.
But I’m very skeptical about the attitude you’re taking. By referencing the church “in general” I’m guessing you’re providing a standard that can never be satisfied: the church “in general” will never address corporate fraud and obesity to a degree that would prompt you finally to look at the issue of homosexuality. And even in the off chance that the church reaches this bar, it’s not as if you’re clear on precisely which sins are more important: “name your sin” gives you the room always to change the subject.
Since it seems clear to me that the church will never do enough or be perfect enough for you to take seriously the subject of homosexuality, you ought to be honest and say that you’ll never take the subject seriously.
Don’t act as if how the church addresses other topics actually matters.
“1. I’m highly skeptical of “proof” that it is genetic (either a “gay gene” or genetic predispositions), as these studies have all been proven to be false in the past.”
I’ll limit myself to just saying that I think this statement is indefensible. If you have new evidence, you need to let the many researchers who have already looked into this topic know that their research is entirely false. That would be really embarrassing to the peer-reviewed journals that have published their findings, as well as the many organizations of scientists who have lent their support to the theory that sexual orientation is partially determined by genetic factors. It doesn’t take me long at all, even without access to many technical and scientific journals, to find studies linking genetics and sexual orientation whose findings are seemingly still in good standing.
No one has found a “gay gene”, and no responsible geneticist is likely to go looking for one, since generally that isn’t how genes work – there is no intelligence gene, etc. But there’s a pile of evidence of some level of determinacy in sexual orientation.
At the very least, please list “these studies” and list the studies which have demonstrated that their findings were false. I don’t even know what you’re trying to refer to here.
Hi Doug – Thanks for weighing in. I thought the discredited studies were fairly well known. And even if I listed them, I doubt the pro-gay theologians would change their mind. Plus, the post was too long already. I’m not saying I could never be convinced, just that I was highly skeptical and won’t just buy the distortions because the MSM likes how they support their worldview.
But mainly I didn’t see any need to expand given item 2.
“When the church, in general, makes such a fuss out of the routine bearing of false witness that takes place in marketing and business by Christians in this country, and rampant obesity among church members, and leaders, and (name your sin), then I’ll get all bent out of shape about homosexuality”
Two quick responses:
First-The church is not the one that started making the fuss. In fact for almost 2,000 years it was not an issue that was discussed because it was purely sin. It was the various LGBT groups that started “making the fuss”.
Second-When any of the others-”name your sin” start forming groups or put forth an agenda that twists & reinterprets Scripture to explain why whatever they’re doing really isn’t sin, then start demanding the church change it’s doctrine or teaching to agree with them, not to mention shoving their agenda down our throats, then I’ll definitely help the church start “making a fuss” about that also.
Okay, then start making a fuss about those churches that advocate unfettered capitalism. Start making a fuss about those churches that advocate materialism. Start making a fuss about churches that endorse militarism.
There are plenty of legitimate biblical issues to take churches to task on, ones that have to do with the very nature of God, rather than one biblically obscure “sin.”
As to the tradition thing, that has some legitimacy. We are not alone, but are part of a great crowd of witnesses, a historical line from which we learned and benefited.
But, historical traditions do not trump God’s Word. Sometimes, church tradition is wrong (think slavery, think indulgences, think Crusades, think “dancing”). And those few who oppose the wrong teaching are right to do so, even if they’re a small minority against a long history – hundreds or even thousands of years – of teaching.
The important thing is God’s Word. This, I’m sure, is a point we can agree upon.
Dan, I encourage you to re-read Bubba’s and Woz’s comments.
You claimed that once we fixed everything to your satisfaction then you’d get “all bent out of shape about homosexuality,” but I don’t think you mean that. You know we won’t fix everything, and even if we did you wouldn’t change your view. This allegedly “obscure” sin that happens to be dividing the church – and you’re squarely on the side of the dividers.
I don’t see any Methodist groups, for example, trying to change the Book of Discipline to advocate materialism and militarism. I do see the pro-gay theology groups doing that, and rudely interrupting General Conferences and such along the way.
BTW, many discernment ministries regularly take the word faith movement and prosperity gospel folks to task.
I’ve been part of churches and attended other churches where support of militarism and state was a given – US flags a-flying up at the front, “Onward Christian Soldiers” sung with some literalism on the fourth of July, etc, etc. It’s a given in most Southern Baptist churches in this region.
Also, while most churches would agree that materialism is a bad thing, there is a subtle support of it nonetheless. Look at the clothes and the cars and the padded pews and the latest and greatest in sanctuary design at many churches these days.
Ideally, if nothing else, this area of materialism should be an area where so-called Left and Right Christians could unite (as could many Muslims and Jews and atheists) – it’s a common thorn in all our sides and I think one of the world’s largest problems. But I digress…
And, btw, that was ER, not me, that said he’d get “all bent out of shape…” I’m bent enough as it is…
And, unless I’m mistaken, the “Book of Discipline” has it right on materialism and militarism (against both). There ARE Methodists out there advocating that the Methodist church live up to what it says it believes…
“As to the tradition thing, that has some legitimacy…But, historical traditions do not trump God’s Word. Sometimes, church tradition is wrong…”
Agreed. Sometimes church traditions are wrong. Interesting however, I never used the word “tradition” with regard to this issue. I did use the words exegesis, hermeneutics, scholarship, preaching & teaching.
I also asked in a previous comment what has changed that refutes what has been accepted exegesis, hermeneutics, scholarship (re; language & translation), teaching or preaching for almost 2,000 years. Saying that everyone who has taught or believed this position for the last 2,000 years is wrong doesn’t it make it so absent any new facts, evidence, historical findings, manuscript discoveries (actually anything) to show the errors in the historical position.
“There are plenty of legitimate biblical issues to take churches to task on, ones that have to do with the very nature of God, rather than one biblically obscure “sin.” ”
Once again, agreed. Unfortunately, this one Biblically “obscure” sin is splitting apart, if not destroying, major denominations (Episcopal, PCA, UM, ELCA, etc.). Churches that are not caving in to this new wave of teaching did not choose the battleground, they are only responding to the cultural onslaught.
“The important thing is God’s Word. This, I’m sure, is a point we can agree upon.”
Agreed. And that is exactly what this entire discussion is about.
Neil, I believe it was ER who used the phrase about getting “all bent out of shape about homosexuality,” but the sentiment is still the same from both, that we have more important things to deal with other than homosexuality: for Dan it’s capitalism, militarism, and consumerism; for ER, it’s obesity, fraud in the marketplace, and the oddly vague “name your sin.”
It’s worth noting, in passing, that the Bible doesn’t actually condemn individual economic liberty, expressed at the macro level as the free market and defended under the heading of capitalism. And the Bible doesn’t explicitly condemn the use of military force anymore than it condemns the use of force by the criminal justice system.
But the point that should be emphasized is, so far as I know, neither Dan nor ER uses these rhetorical tactics to encourage those who condone homosexual relationships. We have far more important problems, they’ll say to those who are speaking out against normalizing homosexuality, but are they also telling those who advocate redefining marriage to wait until we address issues like obesity and capitalism? If they are, I haven’t seen it.
To those who believe homosexuality is immoral, they say the issue is minor, obscure, and has nothing to do with “the very nature of God.” Do they say this very same thing to those gay couples who want to be accepted and married in a Christian church?
Of course I reject the notion that the issue is obscure and irrelevant. We were made male and female for a reason: both Genesis 2 and Matthew 19 is clear about this reason, and the reason is marriage between a man (male) and his wife (female).
It’s not like God first created us as androgynous beings; in the very first passage about humankind, it is clear that “male and female He created them.” After the fall, at Babel, God created the races and scattered us, and we see this curse beginning to be undone at Pentacost, but there’s no equivalent miracle in which our sexual identies are obscured. Even Paul, who wrote that there is neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus, also affirmed different roles for men and women both in the church and in the home.
Moreover, the institution of marriage was divinely ordained before the fall of man, and is the only institution that predates the fall. The bedrock institution of civilization, marriage is affirmed not only in Matthew 19 but in Paul’s metaphor of the church’s being the bride of Christ.
Scripture tells us that a man and his wife become “one flesh” — one organism — and in a very real sense that is true. Each human has a complete digestive system and a complete nervous system, but none of us has a complete reproductive system. An asexual organism has a complete reproductive system, but we do not, and a complete system can be formed by pairing up, not with just anyone, but with a member of the opposite sex. Human sexuality thus tells us a good bit about ourselves.
And it also does tell us a good bit about God, since in the Bible God reveals Himself in almost exclusively male terms. C.S. Lewis wrote that it’s natural to wonder whether that matters since God is not a biological being.
“But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favour of Christian priestesses but against Christianity.”
To reiterate my main point, I would agree with Dan that materialism is a serious problem with the Christian church. Will we see Dan tell those who support gay “marriage” to set that issue aside while we deal with materialism, just as vocally and consistently?
If we don’t, we should continue to teach passages like Matthew 6:19-21, we should condemn materialism, we should admit that we don’t do as good a job condemning materialism as we should, but we should recognize Dan’s rhetorical trick for what it is: a distraction to get those oppose normalizing homosexuality to lower their weapons so the other side wins.
It’s a compelling tactic insofar as it uses issues that we Christians ought to care about, but it’s a fundamentally dishonest tactic, because it’s not as if Dan is actively encouraging both sides to focus their attention on other things.
Well, I suppose I think the support of gay marriage is an important issue for me as a Christian, as it’s a matter of justice and, for me, the nature of God.
I’m saying I don’t see why the opposition to gay marriage would be anything but another sin which we might have differences of opinions on – and why those opposed would dedicate so much energy and money to the opposition. Cigarette smoking and alcohol are issues of some debate amongst Christians – are they sinful? Not? But I don’t see most churches today spending nearly the amount of time and energy in opposing/debating these issues. And rightly so. They are debatable points about individual sins.
For those who support gay marriage, it is a matter of justice for the Church and so it seems (to me) to be more essential to us than it would be to those who consider it merely a sin.
That probably makes no sense, but it does to me.
Dan, unless I’m misunderstanding (and I haven’t read all of the comments, so bear with me if I misunderstand or am repeating someone) you are saying that homosexuality is a debateable point among Christians. Not if you believe the Bible to be the absolute infallable written word of God. Leviticus 18:22 states clearly: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it [is] abomination.” There is no such thing as “merely a sin” Dan. Christians know that sin is what sends people to hell, and there is no way to cover sin except by Christ’s blood. All sin is equal in God’s eyes in that it can all condemn us, you must remember.
As far as the original post sixty some-odd comments ago, that homosexuals were born that way is just another proof that this current brand of liberalism is very “religious” in that they accept what they want to believe without proof. They are blind followers of blind pretenders.
Dan, your position makes very little sense to me.
First, you seem to write that those who support gay “marriage” can see the issue as concerning the nature of God…
Well, I suppose I think the support of gay marriage is an important issue for me as a Christian, as it’s a matter of justice and, for me, the nature of God.
…but you don’t afford the opponents the same freedom:
There are plenty of legitimate biblical issues to take churches to task on, ones that have to do with the very nature of God, rather than one biblically obscure “sin.” [emphasis mine]
The issue of redefining marriage deals with the nature of God or it doesn’t: that doesn’t change simply because of what side you’re on.
If we are right that homosexual relationships are sinful, then promoting them under the banner of justice is a misuse of that banner and ought to be opposed vigorously.
And you miss the fact that this issue cuts to the very heart of Christianity in the belief in revelation. Yeah, you say you love the Bible — though I still haven’t seen you clearly affirm its unique, inerrant authority — but you dismiss the question of whether homosexuality is sinful to “obscure” passages. You have no good reason to do so, because in both Matthew 19 and Genesis 2, we are clearly and emphatically told that we are made male and female for the purpose of marriage. To stand by gay “marriage” is to undermine the authority of these passages and, ultimately, to undermine the authority of Scripture itself.
We take this issue seriously because of what the Bible actually says about human sexuality.
Do you have a complete list of sins, then, that you could send my way? Don’t miss any of them, and please don’t be mistaken about even one, cause I don’t want to end up in hell because you gave me a faulty list.
Stealing – is that a sin? What about when the nuns in the Sound of Music stole the motor parts from the Nazis to save the Von Trapps – was that a sin? Thinking the world was created in more than six days: Sin or not? Bad tipping – is that a sin?
yes, Washed, there is no such thing as a “mere” sin. Just as there’s no such thing as a mere mortal having the corner on knowing all sins. Sometimes, we Christians debate amongst ourselves on the nature of various acts and cannot come to an agreement. This is one of those times.
You can say that homosexuality as sin is Not debatable if you believe the Bible, but that doesn’t make it necessarily true. I believe the Bible. I take its truths literally. I have been a Christian for over 30 years and been reading the Bible for over 40 years. I’m a deacon, Sunday School teacher and all around servant of Christ, in my better moments. I was taught to take the Bible seriously and I do.
And yet, for all that, I disagree with you on that particular notion.
====
And Neil, I wanted to return to this:
This allegedly “obscure” sin that happens to be dividing the church – and you’re squarely on the side of the dividers.
We, the church, have a disagreement on this sin (or not). Just as the church had disagreements on slavery, on “once saved always saved,” etc. That I’m on the other “side” of the fence from you does not make us the “dividers.” If one group (the Anabaptists, for instance) were to challenge the church as a whole on their support of militarism, in hopes of bringing us back to our roots, would that make the Anabaptists “dividers,” or would it make them prophets, or would it merely make them one group of believers who disagreed with another group?
From the Catholic point of view, should they consider Protestants as “dividers”?
Dan, I’m not disputing that sometimes divisions are good. I’d rather divide the church than water down its doctrine. But your point has been that orthodox Christians are being divisive. We haven’t changed our views on this topic. The attitude that some people have different viewpoints so we can never determine what the Bible really said is wrong.
Dan:
You can say that homosexuality as sin is Not debatable if you believe the Bible, but that doesn’t make it necessarily true. I believe the Bible. I take its truths literally. I have been a Christian for over 30 years and been reading the Bible for over 40 years. I’m a deacon, Sunday School teacher and all around servant of Christ, in my better moments. I was taught to take the Bible seriously and I do.
According to the Bible, why were we created male and female?
Neil, I’ve never said that orthodox folk are being divisive. I’ve not hinted at it. Clearly, we in the minority are staking a new relatively new position in some ways.
My point, when I’ve discussed this, has mainly been that there are sincere Christians who love and honor God and the Bible who disagree with those who are opposed to gay marriage – and that has been in response to those who’d cast out those who are gay or supportive of gays as “Not Christians.”
I’m making a distinction between disagreements between brothers and sisters on specific sins (is smoking a sin? is hardly a make-or-break Christian debate) vs larger questions of the nature of God and of God’s justice. When we’re talking individual sins (as serious as sins are), that doesn’t seem to me as critical as “How do we best Love, as God has loved?”
By all means, let’s discuss individual sins. I do it all the time. But it seems to me that we ought not let disagreements about individual sins to overly occupy our time, energy and resources as the Meatier Questions – moving on the weightier issues of the Gospel – justice, mercy and faithfulness – as Jesus tells us.
Neil, how widespread do we want this conversation to be? I don’t mind answering questions, but I don’t want to chase too far off-topic…
Why did God create us male and female? Because that’s the way God wanted to. Because we are created in God’s image and God’s image includes both stereotypical male and female traits. So that we can have children and families – including sometimes little gay children. So we straight folk can find a mate of the opposite gender. All kinds of reasons.
Just because one place in the Bible, it says that God created them male and female “for the purpose of marriage and breeding,” does not make that the ONLY acceptable reason for why God created male and female. Any more than God saying that he gave David his many wives can be taken to mean that we ALL ought to have many wives given to us from God. One verse does not a doctrine make.
“That I’m on the other “side” of the fence from you does not make us the “dividers.” ”
Yes, it does. You folks are the ones that want to change what has been historically accepted as sin-and one that was rarely discussed because of the very nature of its preverted & polluted nature. Please see my comments above where I have several times now asked you to explain what has changed that requires a rethinking of the historic (notice I did not say traditional) teaching of the Christian Church.
Since you folks are the ones demanding change, especially since it relates to something as important as Biblical interpretion, it is incumbent upon you to provide the reasons for doing so.
As for your straw man argrument about Protestants being dividers, at least they provided dozens (hundreds, thousands) of well reasoned, Biblically supported arguments (exegesis & hermeneutics) why they were doing what they did. The entire thrust of the Reformation was to get back to the Bible, not even further away from it. They were were not being led by the culture they lived in, they were rejecting it. You folks have nothing in common with the Reformers.
Dan, I don’t mean to take cheap shots, but you would never survive teaching my sunday school class. First of all, you need to work on your grammar, and second of all, you’re being highly inconsistent. You are, quite frankly, being a bad witness for Christianity.
If you took the Bible seriously, then you wouldn’t be trivializing sins that it makes very clear are sins. Did you read the verse from Leviticus? Go back and read it again. It doesn’t get any clearer. The word “abomination” in the Hebrew is not only a sin, but is something “morally disgusting.”
While I said any sin could send a person to hell, you disregarded the part where I said that Christ’s blood can cover it, and Christ’s blood only. We aren’t talking about stealing to protect someone from murder, and believe it or not, yes that was a sin. (Go back to the story of Abraham and the pharoah when he called Sarah his sister because he thought it would protect them, and ended up causing more problems, and God condemned it.) Yes it is a sin to believe that the world was created in more than six days, because if you do so you call God a liar or saying that you are smarter than him, which is essentially what you are doing by trying to justify gay marriage.
Finally, I’d like to reiterate what Neil says here, that we can not determine what the Bible says, or say we can’t determine it because of differing viewpoints. Remember that in the New Testament Peter and Paul had a disagreement upon the necessities of circumcision and such to become a Christian. However, Paul was right, and you don’t see Peter’s viewpoint expressed in any of his writings. My point is that they did not merely agree to disagree and say that there was no authority on it, but Paul “withstood Peter to his face,” until the issue was resolved.
Dan, there’s more than one vers that forbids homosexuality, condemns it, or refers to it in negative terms… don’t make me post the rest of them.
I know. There’s about five that seem to suggest homosexuality as wrong.
And you’re right. Men laying with men was called an abomination. And so is eating shrimp. And men who lay with men are to be killed. If you’re taking that to mean we ought to kill gays, then you better start arming up on those stones.
Washed, I’ve believed as you believe and only changed my position after much prayer and Bible study (and boy was I surprised to found out how light the Bible is on the topic when I actually started looking).
I have not expounded upon my biblical position because it’s not the topic here. I have done it at my blog in the past. My friend Michael has done an even greater study at his site. as have others. ( Here’s one.
Anyone can email me and I’d be glad to point you to the answer in great detail. I’m sure we’ll still disagree.
That’s why my comments have mostly had to do with How do we deal with this disagreement between us, than repeatedly making my case over and over again.
ohhhh! Can I have many wives? I think I might like that.
Dan, why would you be surprised at how light the Bible is on homosexuality? It’s not normal, people just didn’t think about it too much. It just wasn’t that big of an issue to be on their minds.
“…than repeatedly making my case over and over again.”
Come on. Somebody make the case again. Please, please. Pretty please?
And, Washed, my grammar is pretty danged impeccable, thank you very much.
[...and the word is spelled "debatable," not "debateable;" "verse," not "vers" and the phrase: "“merely a sin” Dan..." should have been ""merely a sin," Dan..." and the phrase: "Yes it is a sin..." should be "Yes, it is a sin..." Sorry, couldn't help myself. Bad Dan! Sinful Dan! Naughty Dan! Let's have a spanking...]
LOL – would that be a sin, Dan?
awright… you got me there, Dan.
*grins goofily and reminds self to not lecture people about grammer*
though the verse one was just a typo…
Dan, it was I — Bubba, not Mark — who asked about the Biblical purpose of our being made male and female.
Thank you for your answer.
Why did God create us male and female? Because that’s the way God wanted to. Because we are created in God’s image and God’s image includes both stereotypical male and female traits. So that we can have children and families – including sometimes little gay children. So we straight folk can find a mate of the opposite gender. All kinds of reasons.
I’m not sure much of this paragraph actually provides an answer to my question: According to the Bible, why were we created male and female?
“That’s the way God wanted it,” while true isn’t helpful and is not (I believe) taught in the Bible. Likewise God’s having male and female traits is conjecture, and while God told man to be fruitful and multiply, that’s not the clearest Scriptural answer as to why we were created male and female. And to say that it is so “we straight folk can find a mate of the opposite gender” is question-begging, because it doesn’t explain why there are two sexes in the first place.
This paragraph is better…
Just because one place in the Bible, it says that God created them male and female “for the purpose of marriage and breeding,” does not make that the ONLY acceptable reason for why God created male and female. Any more than God saying that he gave David his many wives can be taken to mean that we ALL ought to have many wives given to us from God. One verse does not a doctrine make.
…but it still has a lot of problems.
1) Biblically “marriage and breeding” isn’t the most precise answer.
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
The Biblical answer must also include forming a new family and becoming one flesh — that is, one organism.
2) It isn’t just found in “one place” in the Bible.
Matthew 19 cites this passage in Genesis 2, and who is the person quoting this passage? Jesus Christ Himself.
3) The comparison to David being given many wives is flawed in at least one respect: Jesus didn’t quote that passage and apply it to his contemporary circumstances, but He did precisely that in answering the question on divorce. Jesus applied our initial creation as male and female to the question of divorce in first-century Jerusalem, so it’s easy to conclude that our creation as male and female still matters in the modern world.
4) You have the temerity to argue, “One verse does not a doctrine make.” If you mean that context matters, I’ll agree with you, and the next time you invoke Romans 12:21 to advocate strict pacifism, I invite you to look four verses down to where Paul writes about the government bearing the sword.
But you don’t want to argue that context matters, because there’s nothing in the context of the entire Bible that suggests that Genesis 2 and Matthew 19 has a limited application to only some of us humans, created male and female. You can’t point to anything in the Bible that says this, and so you have to argue from silence that there might be other reasons that justify discarding the reasons given.
You prove my point. You say you love the Bible, you tell us you’ve been studying it for decades and are now a deacon and Sunday School teacher, and yet…
And yet, you don’t actually give the answer to a very simple question. You don’t quote or paraphrase what the Bible actually says about why we were created male and female.
And yet, you wrongly assert that the answer is given only once, when it’s given at least twice, in sections as prominent as the Genesis account of creation and in the teachings of Jesus Christ.
And yet, even though Jesus Himself affirms the reason in Genesis for why we were made male and female, and though He applies that reason to His contemporary setting, you dismiss that reason to be as irrelevant as David’s polygamy.
And yet, you argue from deafening silence that there might be other reasons we were created male and female, reasons that you apparently think limit the reason given in Scripture, so that the Scriptural reason applies only to some of us.
This is what support for the normalization of homosexuality does even to people who profess a love of Scripture: they contort themselves into incomprehensible positions to avoid facing what the Bible clearly, emphatically, and unambiguously teaches.
Since the authority of the Bible is a crucial issue for Christians, this tendency (and I would argue necessity) of gay “marriage” supporters to undermine its authority is reason enough to oppose them. They must be opposed in a spirit of love, but they nevertheless must be rebuked strongly, vocally, and as often as it takes to defeat their efforts.
Amen, Bubba. Couldn’t have said it better…
I think I’ll let this one alone now
“Since the authority of the Bible is a crucial issue for Christians, this tendency (and I would argue necessity) of gay “marriage” supporters to undermine its authority is reason enough to oppose them. They must be opposed in a spirit of love, but they nevertheless must be rebuked strongly, vocally, and as often as it takes to defeat their efforts.”
If you think this is an authority of scripture issue, then by all means, rebuke me. As I shall those who’d misuse the scriptures to endorse militarism, greed and hypocrisy. But I shall do so in love knowing that these folk are my brothers and sisters in Christ. I hope I can expect the same from you.
Yes. Bravo, Bubba. That should finish it.
Now we can just give them Civil Unions and be done with it.
Bravo, Mark. If the best argument in favor of opposing legal civil unions is “my religion is opposed to it,” then let that religion oppose it and go ahead and legalize gay marriage/civil unions.
See Dan, you just put yourself in trouble by including the word “marriage.” But I’m glad you see my point.
I agree with Dan on one point. We (I call myself a conservative right wing Christian) should point out all sins, not just homosexuality. Materialism, obesity (sometimes a sin). Smoking and drinking should be discussed and the sin in them pointed out (is drinking always a sin or just sometimes?)
A preacher I respected who was strongly conservative refued to condemn drinking. He said he thought it was wrong, but the Bible never said that, so he refused condemnation.
Dan and I disagree on many points, but I actually enjoy reading his comments. It lets me see what my friends and neighbors might be thinking. I believe he’s wrong on the gay issue, but I also believe I can’t change him. I can (and should) pray for him, but I can (and should) also pray for my own understanding and “search the scriptures daily” to gain God’s wisdom. Dan has obviously done this.
The question comes, if someone truly prays for widom, James said he will be given that wisdom. If their wisdom is wrong (as many here believe Dan is), does that mean they aren’t saved? Dan is right to draw analogies to other “sins”. Those who oppose him (myself included) should step back and listen to his argument and apply some other sin that they are more comfortable with to see how it measures up (grammar police will get me for that sentence).
Homosexuality is no more sinful than stealing. Yet how many people “fudge” their taxes or expense reports? Isn’t that stealing? And if they claim to be Christian, and continue to steal, are they really a Christian?
Listen carefully to Dan. He’s not just knocking down the wall between gay/straight. Whether he realizes it or not, he’s much wiser than that.
“Homosexuality is no more sinful than stealing. Yet how many people “fudge” their taxes or expense reports? Isn’t that stealing? And if they claim to be Christian, and continue to steal, are they really a Christian?”
I agree completely. Homosexuality is no different than any other sin. I think the reason it is brought up in society to such an extent is because many view it as a human rights issue…unlike stealing, which is believed to be wrong regardless of belief systems. As for why homosexuality was so debated in this particular forum, it is (and I can only speak for myself) simply because the blog topic was related to homosexuality.
To comment on Dan and his points…I too enjoy reading what he has to say (even when I disagree). As I stated earlier, this blog has been educational for me and has only served to keep me on task with my studies.
Randy, I’m sorry to disagree with you about Dan. He told me quite some time ago that he was on a mission. How many people that overeat, cheat or those types of sin are on a mission? Look back over time at the homosexual movement to normalize a lifestyle. Undermining the institution of marriage is quite different, in my eyes. Dan has an extraordinary zeal for his pacifism and homosexuality. If I could see the same zeal for leading people to Christ to receive salvation, I would be impressed.
I think some prayers have been answered on behalf of Dan because most of the time, his language has been improved to clear up some of the foul words.
Randy,
The difference between the other sins Dan is constantly bringing up (& the ones you point in your comment) & homosexuality is that no one is disagreeing they are sins. But Dan is saying that based on some new evidence, revelation, interpretation, whatever the historical teachings about homosexuality are wrong & it should no longer be considered a sin. It should now be embraced by Christians as normal & acceptable behavior.
This gets to the heart of what we believe about Scripture which is why so many of us are opposed to what he’s trying to say (& I have to personally admit I’m not quite sure what that is).
“The difference between the other sins Dan is constantly bringing up (& the ones you point in your comment) & homosexuality is that no one is disagreeing they are sins.”
I’d suggest that a good number of churches disagree with the thinking that militarism is a sin. Some openly embrace it. And I’ll agree that few would openly embrace materialism or consumerism, but they endorse it by their actions.
And I’ll criticize such behavior as unbiblical. I just won’t call those believers “not christian,” merely because they disagree with me on the Bible on those sins. That’s been my main point in all of this.
And Neil, as I understand him, is with me on this – merely disagreeing with another brother or sister about a sin is not an indication that you are hellbound. We can have in-house disagreements.
I only echo it again here today because I’m not sure that everyone is buying into that peace treaty.
As usual Dan, you managed to miss the point entirely, if not deliberately change it.
It must be lonely up there on that mountain…..
No, I’m surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, thank you.
Well we finally agree on something. Cloud would be the right word.
Some people preach hard against the sin of homosexuality while they ignore other sins. And as Dan noted, they even condone those sins. Some churches would say that drinking is a sin. I don’t believe so. If I’m wrong, does that mean I’m not saved? If some don’t believe homosexuality is a sin, does that mean they aren’t saved?
Who decides? Do we all take a vote and majority rule? If we (majority) decide something is a sin and Dan disagrees, do we kick him out of our club?
I disagree with Dan about homosexuality and I think he’s wrong. Given the opportunity, I will share with anyone the verses that I find that support my view. Dan has already seen those verses and he disagrees with my viewpoints. Does that mean I won’t meet him in heaven and he’ll admit that he was wrong? (I’m sure it won’t be me admitting that –
).
I’ve asked a lot of questions in the above paragraphs where I don’t claim to know the answer. But I know who DOES know the answer. And I have entrusted my heart to Him (I’m sure Dan would say the same). I’m not responsible for Dan’s salvation, only my own.
I won’t argue with Dan or try to correct him. And I sincerely hope that I do get to meet him in heaven one day, when we both know the truth.
I am concerned about the people that Dan talks to and that they will think he’s right. I am concerned for those that might think they are saved and are not. I’m also concerned about some of the heavy handed conservatives who preach hellfire and damnation for homosexuality, but ignore these other areas. They make it so much easier for Dan to confuse people. Instead, we conservatives should implore people to read the scriptures daily, to gather the truth for themself.
(Dan, sorry if that last paragraph comes out condemning, I don’t mean it that way. I disagree with you, but I do respect you)
s’okay. We cool.
Dan’s persistence in his two main issues seems to me like he is seeking validation. It is not that we think those are the only sins worth talking about, but it seems Dan thinks they are worth defending for some reason. When he can’t get agreement, then he diverts you to the war, rich vs. poverty and such as if we don’t care about those issues. That is pure speculation on his part to assume that he can change the subject on us and win his argument thusly, when we have not even expressed ourselves on them.
Randy said,
If some don’t believe homosexuality is a sin, does that mean they aren’t saved?
Who decides? Do we all take a vote and majority rule?
Randy,
Morality is defined by God, without our vote. We were created to be His image bearers (Genesis.). After God created Adam He created someone who would be the perfect companion in helping Adam fulfill his God given role in life( by which Adam would realize His reason for existing); namely to glorify God. Part of this glorifying his loving creator and friend would be be sexual intimacy with her to propagate the human race, as worshipers of God. In perfect wisdom and goodness God gave Adam & Eve the complimentary anatomical parts necessary to do this.
Note: God did not create & unite Adam & Steve, He created Adam & Eve. His plan is the only one approved by God, because it expresses HIS WISDOM, GOODNESS & HIS WILL.
Homosexuality is an obvious distortion of God’s order and wisdom, to say the least. Besides, the bible plainly teaches that homosexuality is a sin. I don’t understand the confusion here.
I don’t want to offend you in ANY way, but I don’t understand how a Christian can’t understand that it is God who defines sin, not humans. The first thing God does in converting a person from a life of sin & rebellion is to bring to that person’s conscience an alarming awareness that he or she has sinned against God. And that person seeing His own particular sins, with an awareness never known before, justifies God’s condemnation and finds refuge in the sufficiency of the risen Christ
Third, and final —
— comment! 
Dan and I basically are on the same mission, I think:
Inclusion, not exclusivity, for the church. Wide-open doors. Wide-open Communion. Open pulpits. To all sinners. For we are all sinners!
Speakign only for myself, although Dan migth agree: The church’s record on excluding people thought to be “less than” is horrendous. Indians were thought to be animals, with no sous, until the 1500s. Slaves were thought to be childlike and unable to make decisions for themselves; to a lesser extent, blacks were thought of the same during Jim Crow days; women were thought to be unworthy of the pulplit — all because of a combination of 1., a perceived state of sin or inability to receive Grace; 2., behavior, or, the inability, to engage in certain behaviors (make decisions, take care of themselves, etc.); 3., what “the Bible clearly says.”
Feh. Feh on it all. I may very well be wrong about homosexuality being a state of nature. I am not wrong about church history with other “others” — and I prayerfully, hopefully and, with a sense that this truly is a new wave of reformation, WORK to bring homosexual people into full fellowship with the church. Because, if we all are saved by the blood of Christ (which I believe whether one sees that as the actual holy mechanism for how God came to save humanity, or a useful metaphor extending from the fact that the first Christians were Temple Jews), then NO BEHAVIOR, GOOD OR BAD, comes into play. Works can’t save us, and works can’t condemn us.
And that’s all I have to say about that, etc., etc. Maybe.
“Men laying with men was called an abomination. And so is eating shrimp. And men who lay with men are to be killed. If you’re taking that to mean we ought to kill gays, then you better start arming up on those stones.”
Dan, there are several arguments you use that severely impact your credibility on this topic.
For someone with your “resume” (Deacon, Bible study, etc.) you should know that the shrimp and the death penalty arguments are just sound bites. Either you don’t know those are poor arguments (which would be bad) or you know they are bad and use them anyway (which would be worse).
You note that “gay marriage is not even mentioned” in the Bible as if that is some type of argument. Of course it isn’t mentioned. It says marriage is for a man and a woman and it says homosexual behavior is wrong. So why would it need to mention the oxymoronic “gay marriage” phrase?
Your “just a few verses” is bad reasoning as well. Why do you need more than a few clear verses? And what about all the verses on marriage and parenting, of which 100% refer to male/female marriages?
Is it all right if I disagree with you on the clarity of those five verses?
…or will that result in people further berating my intelligence, spirituality and walk with Christ?
I think that ER is making conclusions that are not fact in most conservative churches. We would welcome all people to come to our church to hear the gospel, but we will not marry homosexuals or knowingly have one in a place of leadership (or at least that is what I believe to be the case). It is not a matter of shutting anyone out or thinking that we can or want to condemn them to hell, but their is ONE Way of salvation and that is through faith in Jesus Christ, by grace. It does tell us to repent and be baptized, so repentance would indicate that if they were practicing homosexuals they would turn from it and become new creations in Christ Jesus. There are lots of sins that we are to repent of and turn from, so we are not just picking out the sin of homosexuality. It does not matter how many times it is explained that the majority of Christians do not hate the sinner, but the sin I guess because it just seems to go right over Dan and ER’s heads and they prefer to come back and beat the same dead horse some more.
oops, (there) is One Way.
And, if you’re willing to grant me the grace to disagree with you on that, would it be asking too much if I might disagree with you on the notion that the “shrimp and the death penalty arguments” are just poor arguments? I think they’re very nice arguments.
Evidently, you do Dan as I have seen you use them so many times, plus the polyester thing which you seem to have left off lately.
Dan, you claim to love the Bible and one who hadn’t read all your comments on other threads might infer that you believe that it is the Word of God. So go ahead and outline your shrimp, polyester and death penalty arguments that you use to dismiss Leviticus 18:22, one of the clearest verses in the Bible. While you are at it, please explain away the rest of the verses in Leviticus 18, because your shrimp and death penalty arguments would have to apply to those as well.
“Inclusion, not exclusivity, for the church. Wide-open doors. Wide-open Communion. Open pulpits. To all sinners. For we are all sinners!”
E.R., Jesus was inclusive in the sense of accepting all who came to him on his terms. But He is rather exclusive in that those who reject those terms and continue to live with their made-up terms of God are on the broad road to destruction.
There is one sin that we must repent of: remaining apart from, that is, keeping our selves apart from, that is, letting guilt, or shame, or pride, or fear, or idea, or doctrine, or rule, or behavior, or ANYTHING keep us separated from God and God’s grace. The rest is just details.
There are “many” sins we are to repent of? Feh. One sin: Rejecting God’s grace and living to oneself. Even Paul’s famous list of behaviors that “will not inherit the kingdom of heaven” was a common list of “bad stuff” bandied about in his day as “bad” by general consensus. God-inspired? OK. But Paul, inspired or not, seems to have pulled it off the top of his head the same way you or I might say to our kids, “OK, don’t tell lies, try to stay out of fights and don’t be a tattletale.” (It occurs to me that many readers here might very well hold tattle telling out as a virtue. Oh, well.)
Playing cards? Dancing? Drinking? Buying stuff on Sunday? Homosexualuity? Sins? These are all things that Christians of good faith disagree on.
And I’m sorry, but no one ever has a good response to the assertion that Romans is talking about temple prostitution (other than, “Is not!”) and no one ever has a good response to the assertion that the Leviticus holiness codes 1., are caught in a time-warp of culture, time and place, and 2., simply are irrevelevant to Christians (other than to say for 1, “Are not!” and for 2, “Are too!”).
Neil said: I wrote about Romans 1 and temple prostitutes and it linked to another 15 reasons why that was a bad argument. To characterize that as an “Is not” argument is wrong and a cheap shot. If you can rebut the arguments, go ahead, but dismissing them that way proves nothing. The temple prostitute argument is completely read into the text. The burden of proof is on the pro-gay theologians to explain why Paul would address temple prostitution without mentioning temple prostitution, and why he would mention women as well (I am not familiar with any issues with lesbian temple prostitution), etc.
And I addressed the implications of your Leviticus argument here. If those arguments are irrelevant then I suppose you think Leviticus 19:18 is irrelevant to Christians? (“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”)
Oh, and in answer question way above there about what has changed to make us read Scripture differently than our Christian forefathers: Social sciences, if not the hard sciences; psychology, in particular, if not genetics. That’s what. The church as a whole always comes around, but it always goes kicking and screaming.
Re, “But He is rather exclusive in that those who reject those terms and continue to live with their made-up terms of God are on the broad road to destruction.”
Well, not really. Not unless you mean the terms he laid out thast really ARE pretty clear: You know the do’s. He actually wasn’t that big on do-nots. Yes, yes, “Go and sin no more.” But what did Jesus say the breath before that? “Neither do I condemn you.” The church, ojn the other hand, has always, from the earliest days, been exclusive. And that’s another thing entirely, an earthly, human, carnal thing. No one can commune with God and not be changed. But no one can judge the repentence of another. Judge not? Not because it’s mean. Because. We. Can’t.
You might want to dig a little deeper into Matthew 7.
Mom, I didn’t say anything at all about “conservative” churches, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.
You know, I’m 43. I’ve been a Christian for 35 years. The older I get, the more mistakes I make personally and the more screwed up I see the world get — the church, especially — the more I believe that the church itself is the broad way. The narrow way is the way of sloppy Grace, trying to be honest about everything with all the people around you — sin AND salvation — and giving away a whole hell of a lot of what you earn, because it’s not ours in the first place. How many people do that? Not many. Very narrow, that way. I hop on, then off, all the time. That God that neither deathm nor loife, not etc., etc., can sdeparate me from the love of God, etc., etc.
So do you rely on Paul’s writings as Scripture or not? I may be mistaken, but I thought you considered his writings to be non-God breathed or at least optional. You just seem to quote him quite a bit.
OK, ER. I will concede that. It is as a rule, conservative churches that are trying to uphold the Word of God as Truth and the authority on moral issues though, so I am sorry I put that in there and attributed it to you.
Erudite Redneck said, “You might want to dig a little deeper into Matthew 7.”
In Matthew 7 digging just a few verses beyond verse 1, in verse 5 Jesus tell us how we OUGHT to judge. We need to consider our own sins first with an eye to correct ourselves as well, then we ought to judge others. Reading only part of a passage apart from its context is the surest way to stumble and gain no light from Holy Scriptures. Jesus also calls us to judge our brother in Matthew chapters 8 where he says, If your brother sins (this requires making a judgment) against you, go and show him his fault! The goal is to help the brother honor God by his repenting from sin and living as he ought.
We are also commanded (by Jesus) to beware of false prophets. Once again this requires making a judgment.
In all cases the word of God is the rule by which we make such judgments. God gave men brains and the ability to discern actions morally and has never called us to throw away this needful capacity.
Will – sorry about that – the “You might want to dig a little deeper . . .” line was mine. But I think your comments still apply to what he was saying.
Sorry Neil!
Neil, settle down. Ceap shot? I didn’t even know you’d written the stuff you linked to! How would I know? How funny. So you saw what I said as being personally dismissive! Hooty hoot hoot hoot. The blog don’t revolve around you and yer writing’ bubba. I’ll check it ‘em out.
Neil said: My bad, E.R. I didn’t mean to imply that you had read my pieces and dismissed them. I just meant that many people have put forth those arguments and to dismiss them as “Is not” is a cheap shot.
As for Paul, some Anon, just today, hit me with this:
“My God is wise enough and powerful enough to have the Bible written exactly as he wanted, and traslated many times exactly as he wanted. I read it, most I understand, some I don’t. When I get to heaven the parts I didn’t get will be clear to me. God help anyone who doesn’t take it as it stands.”
And I replied thusly:
“I b’lieve the Aon would tell you that he is let off the hook … because he doesn’t understand it. Further, ‘When I get to heaven the parts I didn’t get will be clear to me.’
“One wonders, tho, what the Anon does with confusing instructions on, say, how to assemble a book shelf. I wonder if he just puts it back in the box, waiting until heaven to have full knowledge asnd put it together? I doubt it.
“Faith, people, is not the same thing as KNOWLEDGE!
“And trusting that the Bible is pretty much THE best source for Christians to use to start to figure out what it means to be a Christian is NOT the same thing as swallowing it all whole, uncritically, and then covering one’s lack of prayerful meditation by pleading ignorance.
“‘Cause we ALL see through a dark glass! The difference is some of us keep trying to look thought it anyway, and some abdicate the admonition to ‘work out their salvation.
“(Note: I accept most of the epistles of Paul, and the epistle of James, as perhaps THE most authentic surviving writings from the earliest days of the faith. The important part isn’t whether I accept them or not, however; the important part is that the best of CHRISTIAN scholarship accepts them as authentic. Which is not the same dang thing as infallible or inerrant. Just authentic. And authoritative.)”
BTW, Neil, I b’lieve you done thrown up one of yer famous straw men! “ER doesn’t believe every word of the Bible, therefore he doesn’t believe it’s all Scripture, therefore he’s being inconsistent when he quotes from any of it or relies on it.”
“God-breathed” is a loaded adjective that is meaningless outside certain particular church circles. It’s jargon. “Inspired” means, um, inspired, and I believe ALL of the Bible as we know it today, and probably most of the writings tossed out at the councils, likewise, were inspired — but that don’t mean infallible or inerrant, and it for dang sure don’t mean “Jesus wrote the Bible,” as someone upstairs said, or came close to saying.
We just have some major different concepts of what some words mean, Neil. Inspired is one. “Sacred” is another. The Bible is sacred because of its place in Christian history, not because of the supernatural origins you, and many others, ascribe to it. “Holy” is another one, I’ll bet. The Bible as we know it because the Western Protestant church has set it apart as holy, not because God “breathed” it.
No, E.R., it isn’t just that I disagree with your views on the authority and reliability of scripture. It just seems to me that you are picking and choosing what you like. If you were quoting Shakespeare it would be different. But when Christians quote the Bible people tend to infer that they think it is the Word of God. Maybe because it claims to be about 3,000 times.
Dang it. I mean “Cheap” not “Ceap” and I meant “the blogosphere,” not “the blog,” at top, above. ‘Cause this blog does revolve around yer writing, as it should!!
OK. Then “judge not” is one of the inconsistencies in the Bible. And so, both of us are forced to “pick and choose,” although I’ll admit it. I choose “Judge not.”
Neil said: There is a big difference between inconsistencies and different contexts.
I’m being slightly facetious here. But seriously: We all got to work with what we got in “the” Bible, and it’s inconsistent — especially when seen as a “the” that must taken or left as a whole.
Neil said:
So go ahead and outline your shrimp, polyester and death penalty arguments that you use to dismiss Leviticus 18:22…
Seriously?
Okay (with the caveat that there are those out there who have done a much better job of explaining this position – I would strongly urge anyone wanting to hear a level-headed and Bible-loving explanation of why I believe what I believe to go to Michael’s Levellers blog and read that before dismissing my poor attempt at explanation. I will try to keep mine short, but it really needs a longer treatment.):
1. We are no longer under the OT law. We are under the law of grace. I agree with John Wesley who further illuminated Paul in saying:
Now although a believer is “not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,” yet from the moment he believes, he is not “under the law,” in any of the preceding senses. On the contrary, he is “under grace,” under a more benign, gracious dispensation. As he is no longer under the ceremonial law, nor under the Mosaic institution; as he is not obliged to keep even the moral law, as the condition of his acceptance…
2. Although we are not under the law of the OT, but of Christ, does not mean that we are “free to sin that grace may abound” as Paul cautioned against. It just means that the law does not apply to us in the same way. Nonetheless, we can learn from the OT laws.
3. In fact, many (but not all, thank God) of the OT laws are echoed as instructions for believers in the NT. We are still to love our enemies. We are still to not be oppressors of the poor and marginalized.
4. So how do we know what rules of the OT would still inform us today? Aren’t they all applicable?
In a word: No.
No one thinks that all of the laws from the OT are applicable today. Neil nor I nor Billy Graham nor anyone else is supporting the law that calls for us to kill “men who lay with men,” nor the law that calls for killing disrespectful children. No one believes that all of the laws are applicable today.
5. Then how do we know which verses in the OT apply to us? How do we know anything? We study, we reason, we pray. This is what Neil does to come to his conclusions, it’s what I do to come to my conclusions.
6. Some will say that the laws are divided into three types, ceremonial, moral and civil. The ceremonial and civil laws no longer apply to us, they say, but the moral laws do.
It’s an interesting idea and not altogether without merit. But where in the Bible does it tell us which laws are which? That’s the interesting thing. It doesn’t.
The divisions of these laws is an extrabiblical phenomenon. Wikipedia refers to the three divisions as having come from Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic church. I’ve never seen anyone offer anything more definitive than that as to why we should think that some laws are to be considered “moral” and everlasting while others can be written off as not applicable.
The OT itself does not refer to three categories, but, instead, refers to the Law as good and everlasting. Period. The biblical inerrantists are left clutching the wind on this one.
As I said, it’s an extrabiblical distinction. Perhaps not without merit, but not “from the Word of God.” And how would we know which category a given law falls within? Is “men shall not lay with men,” a moral law, but the very next words, “they shall be put to death,” NOT part of the moral law? Why? Who made that call?
7. And so I repeat, we are not under the law, but it is there for useful – but not binding in and of itself (a point we all agree upon since no one thinks all the Law is to be obeyed today) – instruction. To bear witness to the past and support the further teachings and illuminations of the NT.
8. IF we want to consider parts of the Law as ceremonial, though, then the passage about NOT having intercourse with a menstruating woman is usually thought to be of that sort of law. Why? Because to thus engage would make one “ceremonially unclean” in the Jewish thought of the time. Similarly, male/male intercourse would make one ceremonially unclean (and perhaps the reason why female/female intercourse is not mentioned?)
9. The thing is, we don’t know. These OT passages in and of themselves are not self-sustaining. There are various reasons to think that this may not apply to gay marriage. That isn’t to say that, IF there were supporting evidence elsewhere in the Bible, that this might support that. Just that these OT passages don’t carry much weight on their own.
10. This doesn’t mean we have to ignore or set aside every rule in the OT. There are many good rules and many horrible rules (at least to modern sensibilities) in the OT. No one here is wanting to get a good virgin off the enemy’s dead hands and make her our wife, as is commanded in the OT. But we all agree that “Love our neighbors as ourselves” – found in Leviticus 19 – is a solid rule for everyone and all time.
11. So again: How do we know which are which? The same way Neil and Dan and ER and Billy Graham, etc, all know. By study. By prayer. By contemplation. By reasoning.
Or, is the question: How do we know beyond all doubt which OT laws still apply and which don’t? The answer to that is simple – we don’t. We’re fallible human beings. We lack omniscience. We have to muddle through this life the best we can and sometimes, we will be wrong, daggum it! That’s reality.
We all ought to study, pray, seek God’s will, stick close to the most obvious teachings, listen to our forebears – but don’t be limited by their teachings, because they lacked omniscience, as well! and “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” And, having done that, we trust God’s grace.
Most of us feel uncomfortable with vague answers like that. We want to know that we know that we know we’re right. But that’s not reality. It’s not biblical reality. It’s not actual reality.
I’ll end there for now. I hope you still love me, y’all.
Dan, how about reading them in context? It really isn’t hard to see which are the moral laws. Do you seriously think the shrimp thing was a moral law? Do you seriously think the gay sex, bestiality and child sacrifice guidelines were ceremonial laws? If so, then further dialogue with you on the Bible will be impossible.
How about noting that the death penalty punishment was for the Israelites, but the law didn’t go away? Your “death penalty for homosexuals” argument plays on people’s emotions but is wrong. There is no reason to think that we have to use that punishment, but there is also no reason to think that the behavior isn’t a sin. God considered it to be one of the 15 or so sins worthy of death, so I’d say He takes it pretty seriously.
You also make the same (wrong) assumption as E.R. re. Romans 1 (and all the teachings on marriage and family.) These reiterate the O.T. teaches on sexuality.
I looked at your Roman post and the link. Too much to digest quickly. It all seems, however, to assume that Romans stands as a singular piece of writing. What we don’t have, and it’s something we don’t have with any of the epistles, is the letters TO Paul, from those churches, as well as other letters Paul wrote, so to take Romans as self-contextualized (is that a word? you know what I mean), is shaky by definition. We don’t know if Roman believers had written to Paul asking specific questions, and he replied to them within the context OF their questions, which means he wouldn’t have felt obliged to include every stinking detail in his answer. I confess that I never heard of the temple prostitution ideas until a few months ago, if that long. Rather than accepting it fully, as is, I accept it as another example of darkness on the glass we’re all trying to look through. Oh, and the “15 reasons” writer dismissed the other guy’s epiphany out of hand. Bad form. Luther’s part of the Reformation started with an epiphany, as do many leaps forward in faith and discernment.
Neil said: I don’t follow your darkness comment. Is that from 1 Corinthians 13:12? (“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”)
Luther’s epiphany had reasoning behind it.
As for the Leviticus post, the exact example you gave, “etc., etc., love your neighbor as youself” is repeated verbatim elsewhere in both the OT and the NT, and so the question of whether that admonition in Leviticus is relevant now is moot. The question of whether the holiness code is relevant to me, right now, is easy: No. I am not a Levitical priest living in that time. To see it otherwise, I would have to — horrors! — read things into it. I will concede, however, that the gist of the sexual purity code, “Men, keep it in your britches,” is generally sound advice.
Funny, some of use see Romans 1 as repeating Lev. 18:22 and them some. Try reading Lev. 18 in context, noting how it starts and ends. Was God punishing the Canaanites for not following Jewish ceremonial laws?
After reading the last few comments by ER, I have a whole new appreciation for the term “cultural hermeneutics”.
WOZ, you’ll have to define that for me.
Neil: Yes, that was the darkness I was referring to. On Romans 1 and Leviticus 18: I don’t.
And this made me laugh out loud: “Luther’s epiphany had reasoning behind it.” No, it didn’t, not unless you have a different dictionary: “a sudden, intuitive realization through an ordinary circumstance.” You seem to loo-oo-ove reason! I can dig it. But faith in God is not rational. To insist it is is to denigrate it, to lower it to a human standard. I mean, we can figure out ANYTHING. But God. IMHO.
Thanks, E.R. Please note that is says, “Now I know in part . . .” It isn’t as dark as you think. We can know what we need to know, and we’ll learn more later.
I disagree on the reason thing. God said in Isaiah, “Come, let us reason together.” Check out the book of Acts. It wasn’t a cheap-grace-fest. The church spread on the reasoning and facts of the resurrection.
But hey, be sure to tell my po-mo buddy that you think I love reason!
I didn’t word the Luther part well – I should have said that his epiphany was followed by reasoning and theses and such.
WOZ, if this is what you mean, then I plead guilty:
“Cultural hermeneutics therefore refers to the analysis and interpretation of how culture conditions people’s understanding of reality at a particular time and location.”
I study 19th-century Indian (American Indian) newspapers, opinions expressed in them, be they editorial or letters. I use cultural hermeneutics all the time in explaining what they meant then in a way that makes it make sense to us now. It’s more than changes in words. It’s changes in ideas, which are representative of the understanding of reality, without which reality hardly exists. But I’d never heard the term.
I’m a no vote on the great old question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Sound being part of the very definition of “hearing” — which allows for the fact that the falling tree does cause vibrations which, when received by ears, results in “sound.”
Oh, Neil, I totally agree that we can know what we need to knowl I can believe that because I do believe that the Bible is sufficient unto salvation! I just think lots of people think they know more than they … know. HELP. I’m strarting to sound like Rumsfeld.
OK, OK, for sheer comic reliefv, even though it might be seen as mean, here’s an interpretation of Leviticus 18:22 that I just stumbled across at religiousdtolerance,.org (really good, fair to all sides, site):
National Gay Pentecostal Alliance (NGPA) interpretation: The NGPA has analyzed the verse in great detail to produce a word-for-word translation of the original Hebrew. 4 In English, with minimal punctuation added, they rendered it as: “And with a male thou shalt not lie down in beds of a woman; it is an abomination. That is, “rather than forbidding male homosexuality, it simply restricts where it may occur.” This may seem a strange prohibition to us today, but was quite consistent with other laws in Leviticus which involve improper mixing of things that should be kept separate. e.g. ancient Hebrews were not allowed to mix two crops in the same field, or make cloth out of two different raw materials, or plow a field with an ox and a donkey yoked together. A woman’s bed was her own. Only her husband was permitted there, and then only under certain circumstances. Any other use of her bed would be a defilement.
ER here: Just the idea that there is a National Gay Pentecostal anything dang near made me blow Pepsi through my nose. Wow.
Neil said:
Dan, how about reading them in context? It really isn’t hard to see which are the moral laws.
I’m saying that you’re making an extrabiblical assumption that the law can be broken down into categories. That is not within the Bible. You can’t glean Three Categories of the Law by reading the Bible. Did the Jews view the Law as in categories, or was it just The Law? (I don’t know the answer to that, I’m just asking).
If we’re going to say that it’s okay to impose extrabiblical redefining on to what the Bible says, that’ll make further defense of gay marriage even easier…
So, just a question for ER and Dan. Do you guys believe the Word of God to be the infallible word of God or not? Because your arguments speak prettly loudly that you do not. If you don’t, then quit trying to argue as if you do and admit you don’t. Your arguments all have to dismiss Scripture and the infallibility of God and focus instead on weak, logically fallible arguments.
Dan, I am, quite frankly, disgusted with you. How a person who tries to excuse Scripture so much could be deacon in a church blows my mind. Call me unChristian, rude, and ignorant for saying that, but it’s the way I see it.
Washed: The Bible is neither infallible, complete or inerrant. Is that clear enough? I don’t know how you could think I would think so based on what I’ve written on this post. I resent your accusation that I argue as if I do. (I don’t really resent it; I’m just puzzled by it.)
Is it authoritiative? Yes. It is the only early documentation we have — more or less, since other writings are very obscure and literally incomplete, and other non-Western non-Protestant churches includes other books besides “the 66.”
Is it all debatable: YES! Verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book. But in my opinion it’s just sheer … I can’t think of a word … WRONG to argue that one must take “it” or leave “it” because it’s not a dadgum IT. It’s A THEM. Many pieces of writing, to many audiences, for many reasons — and not a single one of them to US, for US, right NOW. To think so is no better than voodoo.
Oh, and don’t freak out, Washed, but I my own self serve on a church committee. If I wasn’t going to be moving next year, I’d seek a deaconship to help lead the congregation in the worship of God, not the Bible, and to further emphasize following Jesus over worshiping the Christ, because each is important, they most definitely are not the same thing.
Oh, and re: “Your arguments all have to dismiss Scripture and the infallibility of God and focus instead on weak, logically fallible arguments.”
Do not.
Washed, to be fair to myself, and to your understanding of me, here is what I DO believe about the Bible. It’s from the United Church of Christ home page — and no, I don’t believe this because the UCC says it; I joined a local UCC church because I believe it, among other things the UCC is about. Every word is important in the following, and the order of the words is very important:
“The United Church of Christ embraces a theological heritage that affirms the Bible as the authoritative witness to the Word of God, the creeds of the ecumenical councils, and the confessions of the Reformation. The UCC has roots in the “covenantal” tradition—meaning there is no centralized authority or hierarchy that can impose any doctrine or form of worship on its members. Christ alone is Head of the church. We seek a balance between freedom of conscience and accountability to the apostolic faith. The UCC therefore receives the historic creeds and confessions of our ancestors as testimonies, but not tests of the faith.”
ER here: These are the most important words above, to me: “affirms the Bible as the authoritative witness to the Word of God …”
The Bible is the authoritative witness TO the Word of God, which is godly. The Bible itself, being the product of human thought — no matter how inspired, it is still human, fallible human thought!! — is not the Word of God.
Clear? Clearer anyway?
Will,
Go back and read my comment again. When I suggested that we all vote on the sins, I was being sarcastic. I agree that homosexuality is a sin and it is not we who decides what is sin and what is not. It is God and He has already spoken in His Word.
My point is simply that there are those who interpret His Word differently. It isn’t my job to correct them. I can point the to the scriptures and then the Holy Spirit can correct them or not.
At one time, Christians did not think slavery was a sin. They were wrong, but they were still Christians. Today (some) Christians think homosexuality is a sin. I agree with them, but I won’t call Dan (and others) non-Christian because I disagree with him.
washed said:
So, just a question for ER and Dan. Do you guys believe the Word of God to be the infallible word of God or not?
What ER said, sorta. But it sorta depends upon what you mean by “infallible.” One dictionary definition is Trustworthy. In that case, yes, I think the Bible – properly understood – is trustworthy.
But a second definition is “not fallible; exempt from liability to error, as persons, their judgment, or pronouncements:”
Well, we know right away that the Bible is not exempt from liability to error. You’re suggesting I’ve got an error in my understanding right now.
I’ll point out that I’m no different than you on this point.
“Infallible”? “Inerrant”? What’s that mean? Where did God tell us we were to take the Bible to mean that?
Oh, God hasn’t told us we need to take the Bible as “infallible”? Well, I’m a bit reluctant to take it as “infallible” to make you happy if God hasn’t asked me to.
But, as I said, you don’t likely take it to be “infallible,” either. Is every word in the 66 books of the Bible incapable of being misunderstood? If someone reads about God ordering genocide against some nations and decides, “That means I’ve got to start killing God’s/Israel’s enemies” have they received that word from an “infallible” Bible?
Or did they get it wrong?
I suspect that you agree with me that – even though they took a teaching directly from the literal Bible – they got the wrong meaning.
If every word in the 66 books of the Bible were literally and factually true – and neither of us think it is – it still could be taken the wrong way.
So, my problems with your disgust with me are twofold:
1. You’re asking me to accept something that the Bible hasn’t told me to accept.
2. “Infallible” and “inerrant” are religious words that have negligible meaning as it relates to the Bible. Is God’s Word True? Absolutely. Is the Bible a revelation of God’s Word? Yes. Is it, therefore, trustworthy? Yes – properly understood.
Am I capable of getting it wrong? Absolutely. Is Washed capable of getting it wrong? Yep, ‘fraid so.
Now, if we want to talk “inerrant,” that is a different story.
Without error.
Well now, the same point holds true on this: God has never told us that we must believe the Bible to be “inerrant.” That is one of those human traditions that some people have added on – another hoop to jump through in order to be saved.
But let me ask you this: I’m sure you’ve read Aesop’s fables. You remember the story about the grasshopper and the ant? How the ant worked hard storing food, while the grasshopper played? The moral of the story was not to shirk our work and play all the time (or something like that).
Is that story “inerrant” – without error? No, I’d guess not, depending on what you mean by that. It inerrantly conveys a truth. Did that little ant and grasshopper literally have those conversations? Well, no! Grasshoppers don’t talk to ants – they hate each other!
The word “inerrant” doesn’t really even apply to that story. It’s a story designed to tell a truth.
Similarly, the Bible need not be taken word for word literally and no one does take it thusly. We all recognize that there are parables, hyperbole, different story-telling conventions, etc.
What if it were the case that, back in the day, the writers didn’t write history the way we write history? What if their writing conventions didn’t hold fast to perfect historicity (sp?) but were more concerned with general truths? Would that make the writers liars and the stories wrong? I don’t think so. I just don’t think we’d be asked to take the historical part of the story to mean 10 years every time they said 10 years.
No where in the bible does God tell us that we MUST accept the Creation story as literally having to do with six 24-hour days. The point of the story is that God is the creator. That is perfectly and inerrantly True. BUT, we all know that the earth and the whole universe didn’t come into being in six literal days (most of us know that, anyway). It would violate the laws of Creation to suggest that to be the case.
But the good news is that we aren’t asked to take the facts of that story as “inerrant.” We’re asked to believe the Truths of the story.
Washed, show me in the Bible where we’re to take each word of the 66 books of the Bible as “inerrant” and I’ll consider joining with you. And you know why? Because I love the Bible and its teachings and I wouldn’t want to go against its teachings of Truth.
But if it’s not there, don’t ask me to go against the Bible’s teachings to accept a man-made tradition. And don’t be too disgusted with me for disagreeing with you.
I agree with God and I’d hope that we could be brothers in that regard.
I don’t think you can equate sin and law.
I also don’t think God told us about sin to spoil our fun or provide some kind of test. Sin is sin because it is ultimately not in our best interest.
As to homosexuality, I suggest go back a couple of Neil’s articles. The book “Ask Me Anything” makes some pretty good points about why homosexuality is a sin.
“ER here: Just the idea that there is a National Gay Pentecostal anything dang near made me blow Pepsi through my nose. Wow.”
ER, thanks for the double laugh – the fact that such an organization exists and the fact that they could torture that verse so badly. Dan must be proud.
Re. inerrant / infallible, etc. – maybe I’ll post on that sometime. I usually try to point out to people that the original writings turned out exactly the way God wanted them to. He is not disappointed in the least with them.
Is there a precise view of scripture one must hold to be saved? No.
But some people use that as a blank check to support ridiculous things like gay marriage. They make several truth claims that most can agree with then take a left turn and draw an absurd conclusion. When people do this on a regular basis in such a transparent way it does make me question their motives.
My oh my, does this thread ever stop?
E.R. In catching up – which is impossible now – I notice this little tickler from you: “The Bible is neither infallible, complete or inerrant.”
Aside from be a redundant statement, I know I’ve read over and over (and over) here on this site that the Bible is the Word of God. How could the Word of God have errors? Why would God not be complete? Is He playing games? Are we just pawns on some elaborate chessboard?
But in looking at this thread, I see your statment must be true! Such disagreement on basic issues in such a small group of people. Imagine the different interpretations and disagreements when millions more get into the conversation. No wonder religion is so screwed up.
No wonder religion is so screwed up.>
I don’t mean this in a bad way, but just wonder if you think other things are in similar condition. I am not young and I think things have definitely deteriorated down through the years and I would have to lay the blame on man, not God. When I was school age the troubles in schools were more of the mischievous nature not the violent type. Our doors were always unlocked. Respect for all people regardless of age, race or any category, was taught and expected. Church was important and the Bible was believed.
Neil, now THIS is a cheap shot: “Dan must be proud.”
Neil said: Perhaps. I just find Dan to be quite the Biblical gymnast.
Also, re: “I usually try to point out to people that the original writings turned out exactly the way God wanted them to.” I think I would agree with that, but it has nothing to do with infallibility, completeness or inerrancy. But, it being a matter of faith, not provable fact, I’d love to see your evidence for it.
So if the Bible turned out just the way God wanted it to – a point on which we appear to agree – you think He would “want” it to have errors and to be incomplete?
Mark, you err in equating “God,” “the Word of God” and the Bible. Those are three different things. And you’re right, religion, for the most part, is a sham and a shame.
I think Mark (an atheist) often sees Biblical issues more clearly than many Christians do. When people try to twist the Word to match their worldview – as pro-gay theologians do – one of the consequences is that outsiders see right through it and get more cynical.
“Cultural hermeneutics therefore refers to the analysis and interpretation of how culture conditions people’s understanding of reality at a particular time and location.”
Sorry ER, really close but no cigar. In the context of what we’re discussing it refers to how people let whatever is currently in vogue in the culture influence how they interpret the Bible. Let me give you an example.
A few comments above you (someone) brought up that nonsense about temple prostitution again. Interestingly, up until 30 or 40 years ago, you’d be hard pressed to find any legimate exegesis of Romans that discusses temple prostitution. (Please spare me any example of some esoteric monk from 1253 in some rat infested tower in a castle in Germany that had some devine revelation.) Also about 30 or 40 years ago the LGBT folks got a new advertising thing going that explained why their lifestyle really wasn’t the preverted, polluted thing most people thought it was. It was actually just a normal alternative. Keep repeating this garbage over & over & bingo – success. Almost.
Problem 1- what to do about those nasty Bible verses that clearly teach that this lifestyle is a sinful preversion. Solution – to the rescue come some liberal theologians dying to get their names in the paper (or academic journals, or somewhere) that suddenly discover that after almost 2,000 years we had been interpreting these verses incorrectly. (Side note-interesting that within the same time frame the Jesus Seminar came into being.) Since there was temple prostitution going on when Paul was writing Romans (the extent of which is debatable in view of research done by many scholars) that naturally must be what he was referring to (context notwithstanding).
Problem 2 – What to do with all those pesky legimate Bible scholars & theologians, not to mention just plain folks that think the Bible means what it says & aren’t buying into this nonsense. Solution – the Bible also talks about how God & Jesus are pure love, right? Therefore if you don’t accept our new interpretation you must be an unloving homophobic bigot. Throw in the word intolerant & presto. Who wants to be called an intolerant, unloving, homophobic bigot, especially with the aids epidemic picking up steam. The new interpretation must be correct.
The LGBT folks & the theological liberals took advantage of another thing. They knew full well that most folks really don’t know how to study or exegete the Bible. They rely on others to do it for them through sermons, Sunday school classes, study Bibles etc.
The rest is history. A cultural reinterpretion of the Bible.
I took a lot of short cuts in the above explanation, but anyone can research the above senario for themselves to see if the facts fit. I used temple prostitution as the example since it was brought up. You can pretty much use the same line of reasoning with any of the pro homosexual arguments.
Neil – sorry about the length of the post.
OK, WOZ.
Neil, in the same way he “wants” to let babies die when bombs fall on their villages. He doesn’t. Humans meddle with Creation and fouled it up. Humans wrote the writings we now collectively call the Bible. What God “wants” and what he gets are two different hings, in all things that involve fallible HUMANS.
Neil said: I addressed the myth that humans ALWAYS make mistakes in Men wrote the Bible, so it must have mistakes?.
Yes, humans mess things up – but not always. I think you are confusing God’s sovereign will with his moral will. His sovereign will always happens. If it was his sovereign will to transmit his Word to us in a reliable way then that happened.
Ah, then Mark IS closer to the truth than most fundamentalism. Most atheism can be nipped in a foxhole, as they say. Not so fundamentalism, which is the very product, IMHO, of fear, and so I imagine would be reinforced in a foxhole.
Neil said: Please spare us the prejudiced, bigoted fundie digs. I expect that from Geoffrey, not you.
My point was that the words of the Bible are accessible to all. You don’t have to be a believer to read words in context. An honest atheist will acknowledge that the Bible claims over and over that Jesus is the only way. He just won’t believe the statements themselves to be true. The people with the critical thinking problem are those that claim to be Christian and yet deny the clear teachings.
Speaking of fear, ER. Your friend came here and accused us of being fearful and I notice on his site that he will never come here again, even to read. What is he afraid of?
ER said,
“Not so fundamentalism, which is the very product, IMHO, of fear, and so I imagine would be reinforced in a foxhole.”
I wonder if we have the same definition of fundamentalism. I consider fundamentalism to be believing that the Bible is inspired by God and without error. I don’t see what fear has to do with it. One could argue that religion in general is based on fear, due to the comfort factor of eternity, but I don’t see how varying views on biblical authority factors fear into the equation.
In my opinion, when you attribute differences in opinion to negative attributes in humans (i.e. fundamentalists believe that way because of fear, liberals feel the way they do because they feel guilty ) it makes it harder to understand each other. Of course, I am leaving open the possibility that I just misunderstood you.
Mark said,
“Such disagreement on basic issues in such a small group of people. Imagine the different interpretations and disagreements when millions more get into the conversation. No wonder religion is so screwed up.”
I actually see this as a good thing. I’m one who believes in the authority of the Bible, but not the authority of individual humans who interpret the Bible. Some religions vest power in an individual who interprets doctrines for the people, and that person has a lot of power. I believe that it is up to each individual to interpret the Bible. Sure, you get differences, but you don’t have power. But power and conflict come about when people try to assert their beliefs by force.
I was under the impression yesterday that things were wrapping up. Guess not.
Dan, you have a frankly bizarre definition of infallible.
But a second definition is “not fallible; exempt from liability to error, as persons, their judgment, or pronouncements:”
Well, we know right away that the Bible is not exempt from liability to error. You’re suggesting I’ve got an error in my understanding right now.
I’ll point out that I’m no different than you on this point.
Dan, if Neil questions your understanding of the Bible, he’s questioning YOUR infallibility, not the Bible’s infallibility. Infallibility means that something or someone — some source of information — is incapable of producing an error; it has nothing to do with whether someone or something else is capable of wrongly interpreting an error from that source. The trustworthiness of proof by mathematical induction does not hinge on whether a drunken fratboy can understand it. The accuracy of a anatomical diagram does not depend on the fact that some inattentive high school students invariably sketch an inaccurate diagram from it. And it’s only poor drivers who blame a perfectly good and accurate map for their getting lost.
You’re introducing a concept of infallibility that makes no sense and isn’t applied to other circumstances. Worse, the logic of your argument undermines the principle of the perfection of God Himself. Since none of us are perfect, we are all liable to misinterpret, and since you strangely want to use the flaws of the audience to judge the infallibility of the speaker, inevitably your argument leads us to conclude that God is imperfect because we misinterpret Him.
To what end are you doing this? It seems to me that your purposes it to discard from consideration passages of Scripture that you don’t like. This reiterates my point earlier that issues like homosexuality are really inseparable from the crucial question of the authority of Scripture.
To move on for a moment to the question of Old Testament laws, let me begin by saying that I think many who oppose the normalization of homosexuality are actually not appealing to the strongest Scriptural argument for their case. Yes, Leviticus forbids homosexual acts, but — more fundamentally — Genesis asserts, and Jesus Christ Himself affirms — that we were created male and female for marriage. I need no other argument.
That said, I think OT law is a perfectly reasonable ground on which to discuss the issue of homosexuality. For one thing, you can argue all you want about classifications being extra-biblical and arbitrary, but the Mosaic law simply does not treat commands about food and commands about sex the same way.
1) They generally use different words. Leviticus 18:22, which forbids homosexual acts as an “abomination,” uses the Hebrew word towebah. Lev. 11:10, which condemns as an abomination seafood without scales uses a different word, sheqets.
2) They impose different penalties. According to Lev 20:13, sodomy was a capital offense, but eating seafood only made you unclean for a short time.
3) One wasn’t mentioned on the tablets. The sexual sin of adultery was explicitly forbidden in the Decalogue, but nothing of the law that Moses brought down from Sinai mentions anything about food.
4) There are different commands about food that predate the covenant with Israel. After the Deluge, in Genesis 9:3, God permitted man to eat what we wanted with the exception of meat with blood in it. This implies that kosher regulations were part of Israel’s unique covenant, and there is no evidence that God had different commands at different times when it came to sexual ethics. As I noted earlier, the institution of marriage predates the Fall.
But let’s move from the Old Testament to the New. We Christians feel pretty confident in eating pork and shellfish: why is that? Is it because of church tradition, even though some of the more hardline Protestants, who tried to build their churches on the Bible alone, didn’t require kosher cooking? No, because the New Testament itself gives us good reasons to see those dietary regulations as unique to the old covenent.
1) Jesus Christ Himself said that food doesn’t defile, in Matthew 15.
2) The same doctrine is clear in Peter’s vision in Acts 10.
3) And in the concluding chapter of Hebrews, the writer teaches, “it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food, which have not benefited those who observe them.” (13:9)
Okay, so the New Testament loosened the dietary restrictions of the Old. Is there any indication that it did the same with the commands about sexuality? Absolutely not.
1) Jesus asserted that lust is as immoral as adultery, in Matthew 5.
2) In the Council of Jerusalem, documented in Acts 15, James proclaims that Gentile converts will not be over-burdened with Jewish law, with a few exceptions: “we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood.” (15:20) He mentions the law from Genesis 9, but not kosher regulations, and “fornication” is still considered quite serious.
3) While the writer of Hebrews was telling his audience not to worry about dietary regulations, he did write, “Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers.” (13:4)
The same New Testament that loosened the dietary regulations affirmed the commandments about sexual purity. As I just demonstrated, it often did this in the very same book: Matthew saw no conflict in recording Christ’s words about lust and about food, and the writer of Hebrews had no problem telling people not to worry about food while commanding them to keep the marriage bed undefiled.
I could expound on extra-biblical arguments about why I reject the comparison of sodomy and bacon: sexuality directly concerns our relationships with other people much more than does our food, and I always thought it was an insult for a lover to be treated like a piece of meat.
But I digress, and I’ve written enough for now.
Dan, your definition of infallibility is bizarre. Scripture is clear about its own authority; Jesus Himself is clear about its authority to the smallest penstroke. If we cannot trust that the Gospels accurately recorded what Jesus affirmed about Scripture, then we cannot trust anything the Gospels record, including the verses you love to quote on the subject of pacifism. Or if the Gospels are accurate but we cannot trust that Jesus was right about what He said so emphatically and repeatedly about Scripture, then we cannot trust anything He said.
Given all that, the Bible is quite clear that human sexuality was created for heterosexual marriage. The tension between being a Bible-loving Christian and trying to deny this clear teaching is ultimately unsustainable. Something’s gotta give.
Amen, bubba.
“Scripture is clear about its own authority.” This is a fallacy on its face (a nod to Neil). The appeal to … authority!
Mom2, you’ll have to ask my friend.
Chance: Inspired by God? Yes. Without error? How could it be, since God used humans to produce it, and no human, save one, was without sin, or error? As for the fear factor: I may very well be wrong about any, or all, of my interpretations of Scripture. The Bible, I do believe contains errors — of fact, and I dare say, of interpretation of what Jesus seems to have been all about, ’cause it really wasn’t an organization. Take ANY so-called fundament tenet of traditional Christianity away, and I will persist in my faith, which is borne of God, not me, in the first place. How about you? Unless I misreasd you, if any part of the Bible is in doubt, it all must be doubted, which must be pretty scary. Take away the virgin birth. Oh no! Jesus’s divinity crumbles! Take away Jesus walking on water? There goes the supernatural! There goes Jesus’s “godness” again! Not me. I stand in awe at God, and kneel in humility before the Cross. I do not profess to know anything but Christ and Him crucified. And it doesn’t come only fromn the pages of the Bible. How dry a faith that must be. I’ve got some mystic in me!
And Neil, forgive me if I don’t trot off to read your voluminous writings on eveyr subject. No offense. I think you’re showing off. I think you should meet these threads where they go. Not all of your writing is persuasive, and simply throwing up links is less so.
Sorry, E.R., I had you confused with someone who was actually considering whether his dogma was true. You bring up a truth claim that the Bible must have errors because men were involved. I could have cut and pasted a response or provide a link. Are you saying you’d read my response that specifically answered your question if I pasted it, but that one extra click just wasn’t worth it? You ignored my response and brought up the claim again. That is your prerogative, but don’t try to convince me you aren’t being dogmatic in your assertions.
I’m not sure how providing an answer to a question is showing off, but you are entitled to your opinion.
Here’s part of the link in case anyone’s mouse is broken:
A common objection to the assertion that God inspired the writings of the Bible is that men wrote it, so it must have mistakes. Sadly, I have often heard this from committed Christians.
The argument usually goes like this:
Premise 1: Men wrote the Bible.
Premise 2: Men make mistakes.
Conclusion: God didn’t write the Bible.
But note that premise 1 is just another way of stating the conclusion. If you are trying to determine who wrote the Bible, your first premise can’t be that men were the sole authors. So this “argument” doesn’t prove that God didn’t write the Bible, it assumes it.
Here is another syllogism you may have heard:
Premise 1: Men wrote the Bible.
Premise 2: Men make mistakes.
Conclusion: The Bible has mistakes.
This one has a major problem as well. It assumes that just because people sometimes make mistakes that they will always make mistakes. But lots of things get done without mistakes – perfect scores on tests, 300 games in bowling, diseases cured, etc. If God was the author then an error-free Bible would be expected.
How about this logic:
1. I have a belief system.
2. Many things in the Bible don’t agree with my belief system.
3. Therefore the Bible must be in error.
:>)
Thank you, Neil. I was going to post the exact same message! ER – If you don’t believe the bible was a product of God, then why pay it so much attention?
Chance – So you believe all the disagreement is “a good thing. [You're] one who believes in the authority of the Bible, but not the authority of individual humans who interpret the Bible. Some religions vest power in an individual who interprets doctrines for the people, and that person has a lot of power. [You] believe that it is up to each individual to interpret the Bible. Sure, you get differences, but you don’t have power. But power and conflict come about when people try to assert their beliefs by force.”
Your words… So you believe then, that religion and governments should be seperate, obviosly. You must believe also that religion and our laws be separate. As do I. Why then is there such a problem with Civil Unions for homosexuals? It’s a legal issue – not a religous one.
Neil said: Thanks, Mark, I always appreciate your perspective.
Chance is welcome to respond, but I just wanted to note a couple things. I have a piece on “same sex marriage” that I’ll probably post in October where we can delve into this further. I can only handle so many posts on this topic – it takes so much energy to sort through all the comments!
Virtually all the arguments I use against Civil Unions and SSM aren’t religious – though of course I see no reason why our religious views shouldn’t inform our political views. The main reasons are that gov’t doesn’t have a need to regulate those relationships, the things gays claim they want can be achieved through other methods (i.e., changes to estate tax laws and hospital visitation policies), there are serious logical consequences that follow from legal recognition of these relationships (silencing of the church, the things taught in schools, setting precedents for polygamy, etc.).
Right on, WOZ!
Neil said,
My point was that the words of the Bible are accessible to all. You don’t have to be a believer to read words in context. An honest atheist will acknowledge that the Bible claims over and over that Jesus is the only way. He just won’t believe the statements themselves to be true. The people with the critical thinking problem are those that claim to be Christian and yet deny the clear teachings.
Very well stated Neil.
It is amazing how men can read novels, technical writings, historical writings, etc. and understand the necessity of contextualization. They only seem to have a problem when their reading material is the bible and it exposes (defines) their actions or beliefs as sinful. The truth is stated in the bible, they suppress the truth in their unrighteousness. The problem is not lack of ability to understand context, but rather the problem is to be found in the will. The carnal mind is at emnity against God and is not subject to His law, neither indeed can it be. (Rom. 8:7). The spring of immorality is not intellectual capacity, but rather the sinful will, which distorts the judgement and carries the whole man in a wave of unrighteous living.
Will, are you preaching? Please stop.
Dan,
Way back in your post at 9:22 a.m. yesterday you asked “4 “So how would we know what rules of the OT would still inform us? Aren’t they all applicable ? No.” I can help here. Sometimes I think I’m the only Christian who has ever read this, since this passage never seems to get mentioned in this debate. In Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem the Church is debating whether Gentile converts basically have to become Jews before they can become Christians, by being required to follow the whole law. The result was this: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements; You are to abstain from food sacrified to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality”. Acts15: 28-29a Notice two things about this. This message came from the Holy Spirit and they did not define sexual immorality, because they didn’t have to. The people they were writing to were already familiar with the sexual prohibitions laid out in the law. So all the sexual prohibitions of the law[including the one against homosexual acts] are still binding on Christians, but those banning say, shrimp eating are not. [and that's a good thing because I love shrimp:-)
That's why I get steamed when I hear the arguement raised that if we consider homosexual acts as sin, we have consider x [pick your favorite OT law you don't follow] as sin. I want to scream no we don’t. Because God through the Holy Spirit said we didn’t.
ER, I’m not making an appeal to authority: I’m not saying that Scripture is authoritative simply because it says it is. I’m merely rejecting the notion that Scripture is unclear on its own authority.
I note that you apparently affirm that Jesus is perfect: “no human, save one, was without sin, or error.” Well, between His explicit affirmation of Scripture to the smallest penstroke and the many times HE appealed to Scripture without the slightest apparent qualification, I think the Gospels are clear about His opinion of Scripture. If Jesus was without error, should we not trust the Gospels on this point? If we cannot trust the Gospels on this point, how can we know anything about what Jesus said or did?
Neil is right: “Men make mistakes” isn’t proof that every work of man contains mistakes. In addition to scoring a perfect 300 in bowling, I believe men have been able to craft error-free mathematical proofs. And, look, if we as Christians affirm the Incarnation, I don’t see what’s so implausible about Scriptural inerrancy. “God became a perfect man” strikes me as far more miraculous than “God inspired imperfect men to craft perfect written records of His message to man.”
Inerrancy strikes me as a reasonable doctrine, and I affirm inerrancy. But here’s the thing: I don’t believe that denying inerrancy changes anything about how we should interpret Scripture.
Let’s say that a man is selling replicas of the Mona Lisa. How would we know that his replicas are accurate? By comparing them to the real thing.
ER, you wrote that Mark was making a mistake “in equating ‘God,’ ‘the Word of God’ and the Bible.” There’s a lot of theology wrapped up in that sentence, but let’s just suppose that this: that the Bible could be an imperfect replica of the message that God wants to communicate to man.
If I wanted to see whether my Mona Lisa replica was imperfect, I could simply go to the Louvre and compare it to the original, but where could we go to compare the Bible against the original message that God intended? The Bible is the closest thing we have to God’s message. We should always seek to interpret our translations better, to translate our manuscripts better, and to find manuscripts that were closer in date and in the chain of transcription to the original “autograph” manuscripts. But that’s about all we can do.
The assertion that Jesus is God Incarnate and the Word of God isn’t all that helpful, because Jesus ascended to the Father nearly 2,000 years ago, and our best record (by far) of His earthly words and deeds is the Bible. We should certainly read the Bible in light of who Jesus is and what He said and did, but the Bible is by far our single best source for knowing who Jesus is and what He said and did.
I believe that the Bible is inerrant, but even if it’s isn’t, it is — again — the closest thing we’ve got to God’s message to us. If it’s not a perfect copy of His message, it’s the nearest replica, and there is nothing by which we can say with any confidence that this verse is a flaw or that verse is a flaw. To go that route is to impose your own ideas of what God’s message ought to be, and because it is impossible to distort God’s message without also distorting one’s conception of God, it’s hard to see how cherry-picking the Bible doesn’t result in a form of idolatry.
We must accept in faith that the Bible is what it is, either (as I believe) God’s perfect message to man or (at worst) the closest thing to His perfect message. Having no other standard by which to judge and edit the Bible, we must submit to it.
Ivan, you’re not the only one to have noticed the Council of Jerusalem. See August 23rd, 2007 at 9:48 am.
Dan, if I may say one more thing for the moment:
Despite our deep disagreements, I do sincerely appreciate your honesty in denying the Bible’s infallibility, but I had noticed that you earlier didn’t make clear your beliefs on the Bible’s authority. (See my post, August 21st, 2007 at 2:56 pm.)
I mention this because of two things you wrote earlier.
1) You wrote about your love of the Bible and how seriously you take studying the Bible.
“On this particular action (which you consider a sin), we just disagree with you. We love the Bible. We seek to understand it by God’s grace and heed The Word. And in so doing, we come to a different conclusion than some here do on that particular ‘sin.’ Just as you disagree with us on that issue and likely on other sins.”
“You can say that homosexuality as sin is Not debatable if you believe the Bible, but that doesn’t make it necessarily true. I believe the Bible. I take its truths literally. I have been a Christian for over 30 years and been reading the Bible for over 40 years. I’m a deacon, Sunday School teacher and all around servant of Christ, in my better moments. I was taught to take the Bible seriously and I do.”
2) In that first quote above, and here, you write that our disagreement on homosexuality is a mere difference of opinion, resulting from drawing different conclusions:
“I’m saying I don’t see why the opposition to gay marriage would be anything but another sin which we might have differences of opinions on – and why those opposed would dedicate so much energy and money to the opposition. Cigarette smoking and alcohol are issues of some debate amongst Christians – are they sinful? Not? But I don’t see most churches today spending nearly the amount of time and energy in opposing/debating these issues. And rightly so. They are debatable points about individual sins.”
Between these statements, Dan, I believe you give the impression that we’re all approaching the Bible the same way and just happen to draw different conclusions.
I won’t presume you’re doing this deliberately, but I do think you should make quite clear your denial of Biblical inerrancy and infallibility.
That you don’t believe the Bible is inerrant is at least as important as the fact that you love the Bible. That you don’t believe the Bible is infallible is at least as important as the fact that you’ve studied it for decades.
You and I do approach the Bible differently: I believe that my beliefs should be made to conform with what the Bible says, and you believe that the parts of the Bible can be ignored if they do not conform with what you believe. Because I believe the Bible clearly, unambigously, and emphatically teaches that we were made male and female for heterosexual marriage, the difference in our approaches matter greatly.
You should be as up front about your rejection of the doctrine of inerrancy as you are about your love of the Bible. To do otherwise, deliberately or not, is to give the false impression that you approach the Bible the same way as those with whom you disagree.
Mark, great questions…
“Your words… So you believe then, that religion and governments should be seperate, obviosly. You must believe also that religion and our laws be separate. As do I. Why then is there such a problem with Civil Unions for homosexuals? It’s a legal issue – not a religous one.”
I don’t want to go into this too much. I think it is an issue for some because it is not only an issue of 2 people choosing to have a relationship, but having the rest of the state choosing to recognize the relationship. I think the latter part is what people have a problem with.
That being said, I sometimes wonder if marriage should not be an issue of the state in the first place, but of the church (of course, I don’t know what atheists would do, maybe you have ideas), that way we don’t have to worry about those things. At the same time, I think gov’t should be involved to some extent, because I think a guy should be penalized for walking out on his family.
Wow, so much to respond to…
Neil said:
Perhaps. I just find Dan to be quite the Biblical gymnast.
No problem. The feeling’s mutual.
Bubba tried to be dismissive by saying:
Dan, you have a frankly bizarre definition of infallible.
Both definitions I offered came from dictionary.com. Take it up with them.
What I’ve had to say consistently is that “inerrant” and “infallible” are less useful words when it comes to describing the Bible. They are the wrong words to use.
Consider the passage where God commands Israel, when they’ve wiped out an enemy, to spare the virgins and take them home and make them be their wives (after shaving their heads and paring their fingernails – perhaps to keep them from scratching them during the forced wivery and to help break their spirit? – Deut 21:10-14).
What does “inerrant” or “infallible” mean in this context? That God literally commanded them to kidnap the young women/girls of the people they’ve just slaughtered and force them to be their wives? That would appear to be an “everlasting rule” – should we be honoring that law today? Would that be interpreting that passage “without error”?
I honestly want to know, as Neil noted, I dig biblical gymnastics (although I prefer watching it than partaking in it…)
“I dig biblical gymnastics (although I prefer watching it than partaking in it…”
– Dan
huh? Man if this is watching I’d hate to see the size of these threads if you’d actually particpated.
bubba said:
“I won’t presume you’re doing this deliberately, but I do think you should make quite clear your denial of Biblical inerrancy and infallibility.”
Perhaps my previous comment should suffice, but to directly respond to this: It’s not so much that I deny that the Bible is “inerrant” or “infallible,” but rather I deny those are proper terms to use in relation to the Bible. The Bible doesn’t use those terms, nor suggest the same idea in other terms, why would I? (a question I raised earlier which I believe went unaddressed)
The Bible is a revelation of God’s Word. It demands we take it seriously if we are a believer in God. I think taking the Bible seriously requires that we reject the use of the word “inerrant” to describe the Bible. Not even so much because the bible is error prone, but because it is a book of Truths. God’s Truths found therein are without error and perfect.
But the Bible itself and the Truths therein are a conglomeration of many various writing styles and techniques and languages and people and peoples. “Inerrant” is not the applicable word. That’s like saying, “So, I watched the Superbowl the other day. It was Inerrant.” The word doesn’t make sense in that context.
Dan, I certainly wasn’t trying to be dismissive: in fact, I went into great detail to explain what I thought was bizarre about your definition of “infallible.”
Let me make myself as clear as I can. My problem is not with the online definition of “infallible”:
1. absolutely trustworthy or sure: ‘an infallible rule.’
2. unfailing in effectiveness or operation; certain: ‘an infallible remedy.’
My problem is with the direction you take that definition:
Well, we know right away that the Bible is not exempt from liability to error. You’re suggesting I’ve got an error in my understanding right now.
If Neil questions your understanding, he’s questioning YOUR infallibility, not the Bible’s. Infallibility on the part of the Bible (or any written text) is a quality of the text’s transmission of information, not the reader’s reception of information.
That you try to tie a text’s infallibility to whether a reader receives the information perfectly, that IS bizarre, as I don’t think many people would try this in any other circumstance: if a student fails to follow a math teacher’s proof, it’s not always the teacher’s fault; and if a driver gets lost, he can’t always blame the map.
Even now, about Deuteronomy 21, you ask about “interpreting that passage ‘without error’.” But the principle of Biblical infallibility doesn’t deal with one reader’s interpreting that passage; it deals with the author’s writing that passage. In asking whether we interpret without error, what you’re asking about isn’t the infallibility of the Bible, but rather the infallibility of its readers, a principle that NO ONE here has affirmed or likely would affirm.
Neil thinks you’ve misinterpreted the Bible, and you think he’s misinterpreted the Bible, so apparently neither of you affirm the reader’s infallibility, but these facts neither support nor disprove the Bible’s infallibility.
I cannot make this any more clear.
Whoa. I like that, Dan. It is incredibly hard to say what you mean when every word is loaded. But that was pretty a good job.
Of course the Bible is loaded with Truth — and truths. But those are not the same as facts as we understand the term. For me to say the Bible has errors — and I do simply state it, as in pointing at the obvious, as if I were to say, “Look at theat lovely sunset”; I am making no more of a “truth claim” or even argument, Neil — is not to say it’s not reliable as a general guide for how to live the Christian life as understood by the earliest Christians, who, as men, were fallible. The errors of science and cosmology are self-evident; the contradictions are clear. I need make no argument or “truth claim.” Which may vcery well be a fallacy. (I’m waiting, Neil). Which is fine, since we are not talking about about matters of facts, or of logic, but of faith and mysticism.
The THIRD definition is the one I quoted:
not fallible; exempt from liability to error, as persons, their judgment, or pronouncements
Which I took to mean exempt from the liability to error in interpretation by people. Perhaps I read that definition incorrectly. If so, I apologize from the bottom of my heart. But that is a minor point.
The points remain:
1. the Bible – nor God – demand that we take the Bible as “infallible” or “inerrant,” shall I add to God’s Word as to what is necessary to believe to make you happy?
2. I don’t think these are even appropriate words to use about biblical stories.
3. I’m concerned about taking the Bible seriously – about taking the Truths of the Bible seriously. I’m much less concerned about taking it literally.
” “Inerrant” is not the applicable word”.
Interesting. For hundreds of years & for thousands of scholars, theologians, reformers & just plain Bible believing folks, inerrant as well as infallible were exactly the words. Why is it the only ones to ever take exception to this are those with beliefs that don’t agree with what the Bible clearly says.
Also:
“Consider the passage where God commands Israel, when they’ve wiped out an enemy, to spare the virgins and take them home and make them be their wives (after shaving their heads and paring their fingernails – perhaps to keep them from scratching them during the forced wivery and to help break their spirit? – Deut 21:10-14).
What does “inerrant” or “infallible” mean in this context?”
Since you’re kicking this dead horse again, the short answer is probably not much since it’s pretty clearly a historical passage relating how God told Israel to deal with captives in certain situations. Best guess would be since the Bible is inerrant & infallible – God actually said it.
And since God “said it” – pronounced it a law – we ought to obey it?
You’re saying God commanded kidnapping and rape?
BECAUSE I love God’s Word, I reject that claim as in opposition to God’s Word. I don’t think claiming that God orders kidnapping and rape (forced marriage, if you prefer) is offensive to the character of God.
Why is it the only ones to ever take exception to this are those with beliefs that don’t agree with what the Bible clearly says.
THE BIBLE CLEARLY NEVER SAYS we must think the Bible is inerrant. Why is it the only ones who insist that we add to God’s Word are the ones who claim the Bible is inerrant and sufficient…?
Dan, on infallibility:
The Bible doesn’t use those terms, nor suggest the same idea in other terms, why would I? (a question I raised earlier which I believe went unaddressed)
I did address this question, though not explicitly, and I did so right after saying your definition of “infallibility” is bizarre:
“Scripture is clear about its own authority; Jesus Himself is clear about its authority to the smallest penstroke.”
I’m going to hope that I don’t need to cite the relevant passage, and I wroter further to ER that, between His explicit affirmation of Scripture to the smallest penstroke and the many times HE appealed to Scripture without the slightest apparent qualification, I think the Gospels are clear about His opinion of Scripture.
You write, about the Bible, “God’s Truths found therein are without error and perfect.” Great: by what method do you sift out the perfect truths (sorry, Truths) from the noise? I argued earlier that there isn’t a method by which we could reliably ascertain God’s Truths in the Bible from everything else: we must humbly submit to it all as His revealed message.
Obviously, different genres require different forms of submission: we must accept that descriptive history actually happened, and we must accept that normative ethical teachings must be obeyed. The one thing we cannot do is dismiss or ignore any of it as being extraneous to what God to communicate.
ER, briefly, you bring up a topic that I wanted to address earlier.
Earlier you wrote, “faith in God is not rational. To insist it is is to denigrate it, to lower it to a human standard. I mean, we can figure out ANYTHING. But God. IMHO.”
I agree that faith requires more than rationality, but not less. I’ll agree that we can’t use reason to figure out God, but God doesn’t contradict reason.
You now write, “we are not talking about about matters of facts, or of logic, but of faith and mysticism.”
Sorry, I disagree strongly. First, we are discussing facts: either Jesus was raised from the dead or He wasn’t. Either God inspired the Bible’s writers or He didn’t. Either they wrote down His message infallibly, or they didn’t.
And God is not illogical. If He is not rational or logical, then rationality and logic cannot be reliably applied to anything He created, including the universe in which we live, and including ourselves.
And, for the record, I believe the claim that the Bible has “obvious” errors is ridiculous enough, but the refusal to offer a defense of that claim is appalling. One should put up or shut up.
I’m going out for drinks. Anyone need anything?
LOL. Yes, some Advil and some Dramamine.
It doesn’t matter what definition you used, Dan. The direction you took that definition was just weird.
You took the word to mean, “exempt from the liability to error in interpretation by people.” Again that is infallibility on the part of the reader, not the text. I’m willing to accept that your mistake was an honest one, but it’s not a minor one: there’s a HU-U-UGE difference between suggesting that a text’s infallibility depends on the reader and affirming that it doesn’t. The former is like saying that, no matter how faithful it is to the actual geography, a driver getting lost is proof that the map had an error.
You’re right that the word “inerrant” isn’t in the Bible, but neither is “triune” nor “omnipotent”, but just as the Bible makes clear that the latter applies to God, it’s equally clear that the former applies to itself.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” – Matt 5:17-18
I wonder what you make of this passage, Dan, so confident are you that Deut 21:10-14 is wrong, that God didn’t actually command those things as part of the old covenant: not one stroke of a letter will pass away, but that hardly stops you from dismissing whole passages.
I’ll ask again, by what method do you determine that Deut 21:10-14 is a lie that God didn’t actually command? And how then do you know that Deut 6:5 is legit?
And I must say, it’s really funny to see you ask this:
Why is it the only ones who insist that we add to God’s Word are the ones who claim the Bible is inerrant and sufficient…?
This, from the guy who, when asked about why we were created male and female, chose to speculate about extra-biblical reasons that would invalidate Genesis 2 and Matthew 19. That’s rich.
“And since God “said it” – pronounced it a law – we ought to obey it?”
God commanded certain acts at certain times. Again, historical passage. Not sure how you made the leap to a pronouncement of law that is applicable to all times.
“You’re saying God commanded kidnapping and rape?”
Don’t think I ever said that. In all the posts where you bring this passage up you’re the only one that ever uses those words. Couldn’t find them in most Bible translations either. And since both the Hebrew & Greek have specific words for those actions, I’m pretty confident that if that’s what God intended to say, that’s what would have been written.
“THE BIBLE CLEARLY NEVER SAYS we must think the Bible is inerrant. Why is it the only ones who insist that we add to God’s Word are the ones who claim the Bible is inerrant and sufficient…?”
Don’t even know where to start with this one. “CLEARLY NEVER SAYS” – having a problem with “clearly never”. Anyway, grammer aside, the Bible never uses the word “TRINITY’ either. But there are enough clear teachings from which we can infer the existence of the Trinity. I think Bubba already did a great post about how Scripture was viewed by Jesus that applies here.
As for who’s adding to God’s Word, I would simply ask folks to back & reread out posts to see who does more of that.
The word is “grammar.”
Ya know, this is so huge and rambling and all over the place, that I think I’ll reluctantly take my leave of this conversation for here and now. I think it would be worthwhile to continue the talk but this has sort of sprawled so far that it’s hard to make much sense of it all, for this poor simple-minded Kentucky boy anyway.
Maybe I’ll make a post soon on how we read the Bible – literal, inerrant, infallible, seriously or not – as I’ll agree that differences in how we read God’s beloved Word is at the root of much of our differences.
Peace.
Agreed. BTW, my spelling cost me my last three jobs.
Blessings to all
And yes, please, by all means, look back at what’s been written and see who’s advocating extrabiblical theology. The answer may surprise you…
Dan, before you leave, I would appreciate it if you could explain why you can disregard Deuteronomy 21:10-14 in light of Matthew 5:17-18. When Jesus upholds OT Scripture to the smallest penstroke, I don’t see the justification for disregarding whole passages.
Rambling as this discussion has become, I think this one question in particular is too important to leave unanswered.
Because, quite frankly, I don’t think Jesus meant that we should interpret that “inerrantly.” He said, as you noted:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished
I read that within the context of the whole Bible and think we can take this one of (at least) two ways.
1. The whole of the Law is to be obeyed. Including killing disrespectful children, etc, etc, etc.
In order to believe this, then we have to ignore passages such as when Jesus says, “Forget the OT law about what you can and can’t eat. Eat what you will. There’s nothing abominable about shrimp.” Which means that we’re not believing the whole Bible if we believe that Jesus is here saying that the Law is to be obeyed.
Another way to take it:
2. That when Jesus talks about fulfilling the law, he is meaning to say that he’s coming to give us a better, more complete understanding of the Law, of the OT, of God’s Will for us.
In order to do this, we have to accept that some of the OT has it less than right, and that is why Jesus is fulfilling – making it more clear and whole – for us.
Either way, we have to ignore part of the Bible. Do we cling to the OT (because Jesus said that NONE of it is to be ignored and woe to those who would) or do we acknowledge that Jesus is helping reveal God in a more clear manner? The way I see it, we have to choose one or the other and, from a practical standpoint, NO ONE is advocating we obey “the least of the laws” – no one is advocating kidnapping and forced marriage, or genocide, or killing disrespectful children or obeying the Jubilee code. We freely acknowledge that NOT ALL of the law is applicable to us.
The thing is, bubba, you advocate that we disregard Deuteronomy 21:10 (I hope). You don’t believe we ought to do a lot that was commanded as part of the law. From where I stand, it’s disengenuous to imply that those of us who disagree with taking the whole of the Law “inerrantly” are rejecting the Law but that you’re embracing it. Clearly, you’re not.
Last one, I promise;
I would simply ask folks to back & reread out posts to see who does more of that.
If anyone has more time on their hands than I do, I think it would be very interesting to go back to this large post and do a count. See who has advocated extrabiblical positions (you must believe in 6 day creation, you must accept the Triune God, you must believe that the bible is “inerrant,” etc, etc) and in what numbers.
I could be wrong, but I don’t believe I’ve advocated any extrabiblical thinking or positions. Just extra-traditional.
Dan, when you speculate that the Bible’s clear teaching that we were created male and female for marriage doesn’t preclude redefining marriage to include homosexual couples, you are quite clearly advocating an extrabiblical position. And when you suggest that Deuteronomy 21:10-14 isn’t divine in origin, you advocate extrabiblical thinking.
I agree that Matthew 5:17-18 has to be reconciled with Matthew 15:10-20, though your paraphrase (“Ignore the OT”) is quite poor. I agree that Christians, under the new covenant, are not expected to obey every aspect of the old covenant: the New Testament clearly teaches this, and even in human interactions we don’t expect a man to adhere to the terms of a contract in which he is not a party.
I think the difference between is this: I believe in progressive revelation, and you apparently believe in CORRECTIVE revelation. I believe the New Testament fulfills the Old, and you apparently believe the it fixes the Old.
To give you an example, I don’t agree with you that we have to “ignore” the Old Testament passages on kosher food. Instead we should see it for it what it is: a precursor of the what was to come; the external cleanliness that comes through kosher food and animal sacrifices was a “shadow” (cf Heb 10:1) of the internal, spiritual cleanliness made possible through the Holy Spirit and Christ’s blood.
It is right to say that the old covenant was less than complete, but not “less than right.”
To put it another way, we both believe that Christians are not compelled to obey Deuteronomy 21:10-14, but for entirely different reasons. For me it has to do with the target for the command: I believe it was directed only to those under the old covenant and not to me since I am under the new covenant. For you it apparently has to do with the source of the command; you apparently deny its divine origin.
You’re saying God commanded kidnapping and rape?
BECAUSE I love God’s Word, I reject that claim as in opposition to God’s Word. I don’t think claiming that God orders kidnapping and rape (forced marriage, if you prefer) is [sic] offensive to the character of God.
I don’t obey the command because I know it wasn’t sent to me; but you apparently believe it wasn’t sent by God.
A lot of what I see from you concerning this particular verse is a mere argument from outrage. Do you honestly think that theologians before you never noticed this passage? Or that they saw it and sadistically celebrated a command to kidnap and rape? Do you find implausible the commentaries that suggest the command was merciful compared to the contempary status quo? Are you not even aware of these commentaries?
It seems to me that you’re not interested in investigating whether this particular passage can be reconciled with the rest of Scripture. You seem intent on drawing the worst possible interpretation (Kidnapping! Rape!) in order to justify discarding other passages you find inconvenient.
You aren’t just saying that this passage is a shadow of the new covenant: you’re trying to demonize this passage. You’re not just saying that this is a good command from God that was applied to someone else, you’re trying to say that it’s an evil command that never came from God in the first place.
It’s hard to think of a way to take a piece of the Law and the Prophets and abolish it more completely than to accuse it of being evil.
Putting up:
Cosmology in the Bible: God is up there, the devil is down there, and we are on earth in the middle. Baloney.
There two different Creastion stories in the first few chapters of Genesis. They are not the same.
He that is not with me is against me (Matthew) means one thing. He that is not against us is for us (Luke) means another thing.
“And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” (2 Kings 2:11). “No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, … the Son of Man.” (John 3:13)
This is too easy.
PEACE. Jesus saves! Not me. Not you. Not the Bible. And for dang sure, not ANY of our understanding of it.
It’s not too easy, ER, it’s too simplistic, though I am glad that you decided to defend your assertion after all.
There’s nothing that you mention that hasn’t been tackled again and again and again throughout the centuries by serious Jewish and Christian theologians. You honestly think they never noticed the two creation accounts in Genesis? Or do you think the way they reconciled the two accounts is so stupid or dishonest that you need not even acknowledge the existence of their arguments? I believe Genesis was written by one human hand belonging to Moses, but let’s say that it was compiled by a committee: even then, do you think they just overlooked the fact that there are two creation accounts side-by-side?
You write, “He that is not with me is against me (Matthew) means one thing. He that is not against us is for us (Luke) means another thing.”
I’ll see you and raise: both verses are found in Luke, pretty close together.
John answered, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.” But Jesus said to him, “Do not stop him; for whoever is not against you is for you.” – Luke 9:49-50
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” – Luke 11:23
Do you think that the author who prefaced his Gospel account with a declaration about its thorough research would miss that he wrote seemingly contradictory statements within a distance of what would become a mere 77 verses?
What breathtaking arrogance on your part. When reading the Bible, most Christians know that its authors were by no means perfect men, but we see and know that they were wise men and saints, far greater than us in wisdom and righteousness. But just as Dan sees them as wicked for commanding rape and genocide, you see them as moronic for missing what you think are obvious contradictions and errors.
You apparently think the Bible’s authors were imbeciles.
What amazes me more is that you still affirm that Jesus saves, even though the most authoritative source for that claim is the Bible. You’re calling your guides blind but still think they’re guiding you to salvation.
Well, if the Bible’s authors were so retarded as to miss these supposedly obvious errors, what does that make you for trusting to what they wrote the eternal condition of your soul?
Dan,
By your logic and interpretation of Leviticus we should embrace people involved in necrophelia, bestiality, and incest. Do you really want to go down this road?
Craig
“You apparently think the Bible’s authors were imbeciles.”
No. They were humans, and all that that implies.
Do you realize that until the invention of the printing press, questions of the Bible’s origins and “inerrancy” never got outside the churches? Do you know that most believers never saw the Scriptures? Do you know that the prevailing ciew was that the decision of a man decided the salvation, under God and Grace, of his entire household, including servants and children and wive? Do you understand that the “Sinner’s Prayer” is an AMERICAN cultural convention?
Get off me. I will not let you cram God and God’s grace into a box — even one crreated by the church.
ER, I think that we need to remember that grace is not cheap. It was very costly, for the Father to give His Son to die for our sins. Ephesians 4:17-32 has instructions for us. We need to show some gratitude and if we are ungrateful children, what do natural parents do to help their children learn?
ER, I must tell you that I don’t think that errors of the magnitude you claim can be the result merely of being human. If the mistakes are as obvious as you claim, to the degree that you will not even acknowledge the literal centuries of apologetic work that argue that the Bible’s seeming inconsistencies can be reconciled — much less that you would actually rebut their arguments — then they are the mistakes of imbeciles. It would be like saying that a figure on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel inexplicably has a third arm, or that Duncan died in Act 2 in MacBeth and was inexplicably alive in Act 3, and none of the other characters noticed. What you’re arguing is that the author of Genesis wrote two creation accounts, one after the other, that the two accounts are wholly and obviously irreconcilable, and that the author didn’t notice: that does not fall under the category of typical human error.
I don’t see the relevance of any of the questions you ask.
I don’t see how I am limiting God by believing He’s capable of inspiring His chosen messengers to write books that are coherent and inerrant. I’m not the one who thinks that, because God used humans to produce His message to man, He could not possibly have prevented those humans from making mistakes, that He was absolutely powerless to overcome their fallibility with His Spirit. I’m not the one who thinks that, because it’s not obvious how two passages in God’s message are reconciled, those passages cannot be reconciled.
And I’m not sure it’s worth continuing to discuss these issues with you when you don’t seem willing to defend the claims you make, to explain the relevance of the questions you raise, or to justify your posturing about defending God from those Christians who have the temerity to believe that He really is omnipotent.
Well, if you think that one author wrote Genesis, then, why, you’re right, brother. There’s not much to talk about. And if you actually believe, still, that think Moses wrote the Pentateuch! Which includes the account of his death alone except for God’s presence! Then, well. I concede a unassailable wall when it comes to understanding the origins of the earliest books of the OT. Which says nothing, however, about, well, anything else.
G’night, brother, and Peace.
Enjoyed the opinions and the opening piece immensely. The messages and thoughts of various authors are insightful and provoking.
I have a running dialogue with a lesbian who has absolutely no concept of individual rights verses majority rights. The label “left wing nut job” must have been conceived with this lady in mind. Needless to say she demands laws be passed for her choice of lifestyle and prison as punishment for all who oppose the gay and lesbian community.
The scary part is, with our senators and congressmen playing lose with the rights of the majority while pandering to the minority, she may get her wish. When laws are passed giving rights to one group of people, another group of people have to give up their rights. The man who owns property may no longer decide who may or may not live in his house or work for his company. The government decides all that for him.
I was one of those working for laws to give the smallest minority special rights. It seemed logical at the time. But then I was looking at it from the smallest minorities point of view and that other guy who owned the company really didn’t matter. The closer I got to the probability of any laws being passed for those like me, the more it bothered me. Laws being designed to give those like me special rights were wrapped up in the same language for gays, lesbians and bisexuals. I had made a pact with the homosexual crowd to get special laws passed.
I believe with all my heart homosexual conduct is a sin but it isn’t my place to judge. I’ll leave the judgment up to God. He’s a big boy and I think He can handle that part without my help.
But then the funny part of this whole mess is I’m TS. What does God think about me? If anyone brings up good old Deuteronomy then get ready to get slapped back down. You are taking it out of context. I can quote passages out of the bible where there isn’t a single thing anyone is wearing that isn’t against scripture. All out of context of course.
Don’t exclude someone from your church because they have sinned. God knows the church would be empty. Invite the great diversity into your church and teach them about Jesus. It’s not our place to judge. All we are supposed to do is spread the Word. Leave it at that. If God wants them He will take it from there.
Jesus chased the money changers from the temple. Don’t accept the mind games the gay and lesbian crowd are playing. They have a lot of play books and lots of practice to hone those mind games to a fine art. If you don’t speak up you are silently agreeing with them, homosexuality is okay. Write your congressmen and senators and oppose any bills giving special rights to gays, lesbians, and those like me, transsexuals. If you don’t, you are giving your silent approval. Silence isn’t golden, it’s a catastrophe.
God made Adam and Eve. Then He made me and has been wondering ever since what went wrong in that last batch of brew? That makes two of us.
always,
Barb
ER, I hope you have a good night, too.
More than that, I worry for you and people like you. You are so fully confident that the Bible is replete with obvious errors that you don’t even acknowledge centuries of apologetic arguments to the contrary, much less grapple with those arguments: it’s hard for me to see how a person who denies even the possibility of inerrant inspiration can long cling to the miraculous claim of the Incarnation.
And you so thoroughly trust modern intellectual fashion regarding the authorship of Genesis: it’s hard for me to see how one who so easily disregards the traditional idea that Moses wrote Genesis can still continue to affirm the Resurrection in the face of the trendy tendency to dismiss the miraculous as mythological.
I hope what remaining trust you have in the core tenets of our faith leads to an increasing humility in the face of thousands of years of Biblical studies, before the works of prophets and Apostles whose wisdom and righteousness shine far brighter than yours, and in the presence of a Heavenly Father who is more than powerful enough to inspire men to communicate an infallible copy of His message to us.
Believing that your position is precarious, I hope your denial of the secondary doctrines of Christianity is a passing phase rather than a prelude to far worse.
mom2 said, “I think that we need to remember that grace is not cheap. It was very costly, for the Father to give His Son to die for our sins.” Wait just a minute. How costly could it have been? The Father and the Son are the same being – God. At least I’m pretty sure I’ve read that here a few times. Seems like the death on the cross was mere symbolics than anything else. Ok, “mere” is probably not the right word. It would, in fact, be miraculous to allow yourself to die and then return to life. But, if Jesus was/is God, then he really didn’t die, he just pretended to die. You can’t kill God, can you? So we’re back to symbolism.
Just random thoughts…
You can’t kill God, but God can — and has — chosen to die for our sins.
“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.” – John 15:17-18, emphasis mine
If Christ didn’t have the power to lay down His own life and not just merely pretend to lay down His life, He is a liar.
The Incarnation of God is a tough thing to grasp — infinite, eternal, almighty God becoming a man — and yet the Bible is clear about Christ’s humanity. The same Apostle who wrote in John 1 that, in the beginning, the Word was God, also wrote in II John 1 that denying that Christ truly came in the flesh is the mark of an antichrist.
If God’s revelation to man is clear about His Incarnation in Christ, it is equally clear about Christ’s death. In Philippians 2, Paul connects the two by saying that Christ “emptied Himself” of His divine rights in two ways, first by becoming human and then by obeying the Father even by dying.
It comes to this: the Bible affirms, and I believe reason confirms, that death is the only just punishment for willful rebellion from God.
Christ died as our substitute. Only by being fully man, was He an appropriate substitute for us; only by being fully divine, was He a perfect, sinless substitute for us. Since death is the only just punishment for sin, the death of Christ, fully man and fully God, is the only possibly means of salvation that satisfies justice.
If Christ did not die and yet we are still saved from our sin, God is not just.
Or if Christ did not die and we are not saved, then we have no reason to be grateful to God.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is literally God. He became literally human to die a literal death and be literally raised from the death. As Christians we can claim no other gospel: this is not only the only gospel God gave us, it is the only gospel that truly qualifies as “good news” from a perfectly just yet perfectly loving God.
Bubba
Such illogical statements. I know this is what each and every one of you believes, but to me it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
If he was “fully” a man when he died then he could not possiblly have revived himself. Death is permanent. It would take some form of consciousness to revive yourself.
“He became literally human to die a literal death and be literally raised…” Sorry – impossible on those terms. This is a big problem I have with many of you. You lead very productive lives. You are very smart, logical people. Yet on this point you surrender all logic to the four winds. I can’t throw logic out the window so easily.
Mark, the Bible is clear about the “what” of the Gospel, that Christ was fully man and fully God, that He truly died and was truly raised. It is also clear about the “why” of the Gospel, that this was the only way for God to save us while justifying us, that is, to satisfy His perfect love and His perfect justice.
It is not however clear about the “how” of the Gospel. At one end of the story we have the virgin birth: we know that Mary conceived while being a virgin, but we don’t know how. If the fetus was originally a zygote, was the zygote originally an egg? If it was an egg, was it a perfectly mundane egg of Mary’s? When it was presumably miraculously fertilized, were the necessary second set of 23 chromosomes created ex nihilo or out of existing biological material? We don’t know — and we don’t need to know to respond in faith, or God would have made a point to go into details — but we can speculate within reason.
(None of us Christians should let this speculation about the virgin conception offend our sensibilities. Some people, like Muslims, revile the very notion of God becoming a man; we don’t. Some others believe that God would only appear human or arrive as a mature adult with all his faculties; we affirm that He experienced all the temptations and frailties of being truly human, including childhood, and including infancy. Some would expect that God would be born in a palace; we know He chose to be born in a barn. In the thirty years of life on earth, God Incarnate urinated when He woke up in the morning, and He had literally thousands of bowel movements. His being a zygote and a fetus should not offend us; as a demonstration of the depth of His love, it should awe us.)
So, just as I can’t say how the virgin conception occurred, I can’t say for certain how it is that Jesus raised Himself from the dead, but I can say that it occurred, and I can speculate on the mechanism to show that the claim does not offend reason.
Being fully man, Jesus Christ truly died. But I believe that, being fully God, He retained the power to raise the dead, and living a sinless life wholly obedient to the Father, the Son earned the keys to death and Hell (see Rev 1:18). When Jesus died physically, His soul still lived, which is why I deny that it was necessarily the case that He wasn’t conscious that Saturday following Good Friday.
(Let us not forget what Christ said in Matthew 22:31-32, which we are told astounded the audience: “And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.” The clear implication is that the Patriarchs who had long ago physically died and who have not yet been physically raised can rightfully be called alive, right now.)
The lack of consciousness attending physical death is an assumption that you make, one that you cannot possibly prove, one that isn’t supported in Scripture, one that is clearly rejected by Scripture, such as in Luke 16:19-31.
It is true that the claims of Christianity cannot be proven by logic, but they are still consistent with logic: they are mysteries, not contradictions.
What Christianity is offending is not logic, but your assumptions. Of course you’re drawing conclusions that clash with Christianity: respectfully, I believe you’re starting with the wrong assumptions.
Bubba, hey, look up. I’m not down where you were talking. (Sorry, you seemdd to be talking down to me a little, and I didn’t like it.)
I think it takes more hubris to cling to tradition that flies in the face of new testimony and evidence than it takes to admit I don’t have the answers. But, I accept your heart-felt hopes for me in the spirit in which (I think) they were intended.
But, I’m sorry, but rhe Buble most certainly is NOT clear about Christ’s godness-manness. Nor about the Resurrection — as in, what does that mean, exactly?
I believe in the Risen Christ because I believe I encounter Him every day — and because a few times in my life His presense has been almost palpable. But if by “Resurrection,” you mean his body was resuscitated, and came back together of a piece, from the blood soaked into the ground under the Cross, to the flesh imbedded in the wood of the Cross, to the blood and fluid left on the soldier’s sword that pierced his side, to the skin sloughed off all over Palestine over 30-33 years of living, well, I think those are all things to thing about — and it givesd plenty of room for Christians of good faith to “doubt” the Resurrection, depending on what one means by it. I’m of the glorified body school myself, which doesn’t require bodily resuscitation, but accepts it as likely. Do NOT misunderatand me. I believe in the Resurrection, but like every other element of our common faith, I don’t pretend to understand it.
ER, I tried very hard not to talk down to you, even if response to comments like this: “Get off me. I will not let you cram God and God’s grace into a box — even one crreated by the church.”
Disagree though we do, I’ll continue to try to approach you as respectfully as I can. I think I can do better, and I will try to do so.
Respectfully, I think the Bible is clear about the physical, bodily, biological Resurrection of Jesus. To say that the belief is optional is to beg the question, what happened to His body if it wasn’t raised? The tomb was empty, so was the body obliterated, or did the angels move it so the Jewish leaders couldn’t find it and present it as counter evidence to the Apostle’s claim of “He’s alive”? And if the Resurrection wasn’t bodily, why obliterate or hide the body at all, as doing so would give the wrong impression that the Resurrection was bodily?
(For that matter, what in the world happened to Lazarus? Is it optional to believe his resurrection was physical, too?)
I think the Bible is clear that the Resurrection was bodily. In the introduction to I John, the Apostle writes about “what we have looked at and touched with our hands” and connects that to eternal life, suggesting that eternal life involves physical life. More emphatically, the Apostles examined the risen Christ’s wounds and ate with Him.
I don’t think that the Resurrection required gathering “the skin sloughed off all over Palestine over 30-33 years of living.” After all, Jesus didn’t need that dead skin to live as He entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; why in the world would that detritus be needed for Him to live again on Easter Sunday?
I also don’t think even the blood lost at Golgotha needed to be recovered. I’ve donated over a dozen pints of blood over the years, and the human body holds only 8-10 pints; how is that possible? How am I even alive? A living body makes new blood from bone marrow, so it’s altogether possible that a miraculously resurrected body also miraculously produced all the new blood it needed in a very short time.
Regardless, the Bible is clear about the bodily Resurrection of Christ, as it is likewise clear about both the deity of Christ and the humanity of Christ.
It’s not enough that you think that God couldn’t prevent His written message to man from being distorted by extraordinarily obvious errors? You also think that God couldn’t or didn’t inspire the Bible’s writers to be clear on such fundamental truths as who Jesus is? It’s truly a wonder then that you still believe that Jesus lives and Jesus saves.
Mark/ER:
Suggest you folks get you hands on a copy of “The Testimony of the Evangelists” by Prof. Simon Greenleaf of Harvard Law School. He also wrote the treatise on evidence that is still in use in law schools today.
He was a skeptic that was challenged by his students to review the Godpels the same manner that you would apply to evidences used in a court of law. His basic conclusion was that no unbiased, reasonable person could reach any conclusion other than the Gospel accounts of Jesus life were true. He bacame a flaming Christian.
Please read this because he takes you through the entire reasoning process of how he reached his conclusions using the rules of logic & evidence used in courts.
Bubba,
You have some very good and excellent arguments here. Keep up the good work. It’s encouraging to see your responses. You might consider a blog of your own.
Blessings
WOZ,
Dittos to you too! Both of you are fighting the good fight.
Blessings
I don’t think they’ll read it. Afterall, it was written by man and is erroneous.
Bubba and WOZ you do a great job!
Why, I didn’t know this was a fight, good one or no. But I likewise encourage y’all all to keep it up. This kind of thing is called “working out” salvation.
And Bubba, I’m sorry. I wa a little touchy. My bad.
Kristine: zing!
Man! So CLOSE to 200 comments!
ER, I was hoping your comment was 199. I was going to be like Ernie when he was eating Bert’s cookie. Started out to eat a bite, then had to keep nibbling to make it round. I was going to round out the comment number to 200.
Ha! OK, but we gotta stop at 200. It will make Monk happy.
LOLLOL! The ERs love Monk. I think it appropriate that our kind host have the honor of No. 200!
ER, you are too kind. Monk would be proud.
(Just kidding about stopping at 200 – if someone really has something to say, then feel free.)
Ah, a nice round 200! Monk is happy.
Do’h!
LOL!
Neil said: Ha! There goes my happy weekend.
That reminds me of the episode where the guy did his 100th sit-up, so Monk was happy. Then the guy does one more and Monk is distraught.
P.S. Kudos for working Monk and the Simpsons into one quote. If you can work in Psych (the third of three shows I watch) it would be a trifecta.
ER, I still think I have probably been more focused on addressing your position than explaining mine, so touchiness on your part isn’t altogether unexpected, but thanks.
Starting at the beginning, I believe that ideas are real and objective things: certainly not physical things, but real nonetheless. The idea of pi — the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter — is a real thing, and some approximations are closer than others. I believe that God’s message to man is just like any other set of ideas in its being real and objective.
Some approximations to pi are better than others: 3 is good, 22/7 is better, 3.14159 is even better still. And we know when one approximation is better than another by using methods to compute pi and comparing the approximation to our results.
Some approximations to God’s message are also surely better than others, but, unlike the value of pi, there is no way on our own to know for certain whether one approximation is better than other. We can continue searching for manuscripts that were closer to the original autograph manuscripts of the Bible, seek to understand its contemporary language and culture, and seek to create better translations, but there’s no way we can determine on our own whether the Bible contains errors as you believe or evil commands as Dan believes.
I think the Bible clearly teaches that it is not so contaminated, and I believe the Bible on this point, and therefore I affirm its inerrancy. But what I wrote earlier is that, since there’s no way to know whether the Bible is contaminated and furthermore there’s no way to sort the wheat from the chaff, the spiritually safe thing is to assume that it’s all part of God’s good and true message to man.
Of course, I do not affirm the inerrancy of the reader. People make mistakes in interpretation all the time: the first-century Jewish leaders did, first in presuming that Scripture’s Messiah and its “suffering servant” were two different people, and second in missing the prophecy of the Incarnation in which the promised child would be called the almighty God and everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6). I personally believe the Bible is clear on the Incarnation and the Trinity, not because my own ability to interpret is perfect — I have adjusted my beliefs as my understanding of Scripture has changed — but because I’ve seen very good arguments that the Bible teaches these things and have seen no persuasive contrary arguments that start with an affirmation of Scripture’s inerrancy and authority. The problem with believing in the reader’s inerrancy is that it risks making the reader inflexible and unteachable: he is likely to ignore the clear meaning of inconvenient passages.
The thing is, that same risk is inherent in another approach. If affirming the reader’s inerrancy is risky, so is denying the Bible’s inerrancy, for the same reason that the reader is likely to dismiss incovenient passages — to dismiss them as erroneous rather than presume that he knows the Bible really teaches.
You mention a very interesting passage in your list of supposed errors:
“And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” (2 Kings 2:11). “No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, … the Son of Man.” (John 3:13)
Personally, I think the two passages can be reconciled by noting that context is sometimes implicit and not always explicit. If I say, “nobody’s gone to the store,” I may mean nobody in the house has gone today. The point of John 3 is that no one else alive on Earth has ever revealed the deepest truths about God because no one has come from God the way Jesus had. I’m not sure what you would discard as erroneous: Elijah appeared in the Transfiguration, which John witnessed, so 2 Kings 2 is probably not incorrect, and earlier you implied that Jesus never sinned or made a mistake.
But all that said, the interesting thing is the context of the verse you cite from John 3. There, Jesus was telling Nicodemus things that you, ER, would likely reject as being biologically inaccurate: a man has to be born twice to see God’s kingdom, and is that really any easier to swallow than Genesis having two seemingly incompatible creation accounts back to back? Nicodemus expressed the doubt of an intelligent skeptic, and in His response, Jesus asked this:
“If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”
Now, I believe it actually is possible for a person to believe someone else about spiritual truths and not about physical truths: a primitive who thinks the earth is flat may know and practice the Golden Rule far better than some astrophysicists. But when the person claims to be from God, and if his verifiable claims are thought to be wrong, I believe it must be a very fragile thing, one’s trust in his claims that can’t be verified. And if his verifiable claims really are wrong, just what makes a person think the man came from an omniscient and almighty God?
I believe the Bible is God’s written word, and the Bible certainly isn’t Jesus, God’s Incarnate Word. The latter should be worshiped as divine in being, the former should merely be respected as divine in origin.
But the question Jesus asked about Himself applies to the Bible: if you can’t believe it about the earthly claims, how can you trust its spiritual claims? If you can’t trust its spiritual claims, believing that Jesus saves and that He was raised becomes all the harder, because the Bible is by far the single best witness we have to the salvation provided by the Resurrection of Christ.
The content of John 3 provides a really strong counterpoint to your skepticism of John 3 and the rest of Scripture.
Well, some of the Bible’s earthly claims are false on their face: its cosmology, specifically.
God is not “up there” any more than God is right here, the Evil One is not “down there” any more than the Evil One is right here; and we are no more in “the middle” than we are anywhere. None of which has a thing to do with the spiritual Truths asserted in the Bible.
Rather than seeing the Bible as “God’s revelation to man,” I think a better way to see it is man’s — Jews’ and the earliest Christian believers’ — exlanations of their encounters with the Divine, which we call “God.” As such, it is inspired, and, because it is closer in time to the events and thinking described, it is closer to “accurate,” in the sense that it represents the early believers’ own apologetics, but not inerrant — because as inspired as they might have been, they were still human!
Moses himself was limited by his own sin. David? A real mess. Peter? A mess. Paul wore his sin, and his personal struggles, on his sleeve. Etc., etc.
Sigh. You trust God, apparently, because of your belief that the Bible is wholly accurate and infallible and inacurrate in all things. I trust God despite the fact that is just as clearly to me NOT wholly accurate and infallible and inerrant in all things.
BTW, do you mean John 3 or III John?
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I mean John 3, ER: the passage you cite is where Jesus tells Nicodemus about being born again.
ER, I well understand that the Bible’s writers were guilty of very serious sins. One reason I think the Bible is so trustworthy is its refusal to whitewash reality. Had Jesus’ apostles fabricated the accounts of His life, they would have probably put themselves in a much better light. And even though God is good, as Father and Son and Holy Spirit, God that spoke to Job remains enigmatic, as does the Christ.
But from their sinfulness it doesn’t follow that God couldn’t inspire them to write inerrantly, and I understand you deny inerrancy, but I still can’t grasp the method by which you pick out what’s true from what’s not.
About the Bible’s supposed cosmology, I think C.S. Lewis wrote an excellent response, in his book Miracles, on the subject of metaphor.
…very often when we are talking about something which is not perceptible by the five senses, we use words which in one of their meanings refer to things or actions that are. When a man says that he grasps an argument he is using a verb (grasp) which literally means to take something in the hand but he is certainly not thinking that his mind has hands or that an argument can be seized. To avoid the word grasp he may change the form of the expression and say, “I see your point,” but he does not mean that a pointed object has appeared in his visual field. He may have a third shot and say, “I follow you,” but he does not mean that he is walking behind you along a road. Everyone is familiar with this linguistic phenomenon and the grammarians call it metaphor. But it is a serious mistake to think that metaphor is an optional thing which poets and authors may put into their work as a decoration and plain speakers can do without. The truth is that if we are going to talk at all about things which are not perceived by the senses, we are forced to use language metaphorically. Books on psychology or economics or politics are as continuously metaphorical as books of poetry or devotion. There is no other way of talking, as every philologist is aware.
Maybe the human writer of the passages to which you refer thought that God lives in the sky. Heck, maybe Isaiah didn’t realize that the suffering servant is the Messiah. Neither eliminates the possibility that God intended the supposed cosmological mistake to be ultimately understood as metaphor, or that God inspired the prophecies about the suffering servant and the Messiah knowing that the two are the same.
But Lewis’ point is that talking about spiritual things — that talking about ANYTHING not perceived by the senses — requires metaphor. There’s no way God could reveal theological truth to us mere humans without metaphor, though the supposed cosmological claims aren’t proof that the claims were (as I believe) metaphorical.
I can’t in any way prove that what you think is a mistake if taken literally was never meant to be taken literally. But because any spiritual truth must be communicated through metaphor, it’s reasonable to conclude that the passages in question were meant to be taken metaphorically. Because there’s a reasonable alternative interpretation, what you present is no proof of the Bible making clearly false claims.
You are of course welcome to prove C.S. Lewis an idiot by presenting a counter-example where a non-physical idea is explained without metaphor. Perhaps you could explain how God exists outside or beyond time, without using physical prepositions like “outside” and “beyond.”
Re, “Perhaps you could explain how God exists outside or beyond time, without using physical prepositions like “outside” and “beyond.” ”
God created that which we call time.
And, duh. Of course you meant John 3. It was late.
“Well, some of the Bible’s earthly claims are false on their face: its cosmology, specifically.”
Hey, I thought only fundies were supposed to be Biblical literalists. The weatherman refers to a “sunrise” just like the Bible does, and we know that neither means it literally.
Well, for what it’s worth, I’m rethinking the differences between “inerrant,” “infallible” and an adherence to a literal reading of the Bible. I have fallen into the habit of bunching them together, when they are different.
I think I can say this:
The Bible is sufficient unto salvation, as in everything one needs to know to come to salvation is in there. Christians of good consience, however, have always differed as to what those things are. But the Bible is complete in that regard, and, inerrant in its gist.
The Bible is infallible as the main source of people’s memories and explanations of the various revelations that God has given the Jewish prophets and some early Christians, which taken together give a glimpse, but only a glimpse, of God’s Godness and how we as believers, generally, can commune with God through Christ. The revelations themselves, being of God, are godly, i.e., right as rain, dead-on, “infallible.” That’s not to say that the writers’ memories were perfect or their interpretations, while inspired, are totally without error.
I do take the Bible seriously as THE source of documents for our Jewish religious heritage and the source of some — very important — thinking among early church leaders and believers. I rely on it because it is what it is, more or less (accounting for the different books that different expressions of the faith have in their different Bibles.).
But I do not take it all literally. I think the whole thing falls apart when anyone tries to take it all literally. Because even something as fundamental as “Jesus rose from the dead” is so totally open to interpretation it’s impossible to be literal, as in EXACT, about it what that means
For example, I think Paul’s description can be read either way, 1. bodily resuscitation/resurrection, or that the body dies like a seed, which, like a seed, leads to a NEW body, a different kind of body, not a resuscitated body.
The philosophical question of whether an actual seed disappears or becomes part of the plant it produces is an open one. The gist, though, is this: The life embodied by the seed continues, embodied in the tree.
I think the same kinds of questions are open about the Resurrection. And while I think, obviously, that it’s worth thinking about and talking about, I do not think it’s important enough to cause division among believers who disagree on the particulars.
The testimony of the first Christians is enough for me to believe that they encountered the Risen Christ. The devil — as the father of dissension and confusion — is in the details, IMHO.
From 1 Corinthians 15:
35But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
42So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
BTW, Neil, to be really good, bloggery, IMHO, should be at least minimally reciprocal. Stop by sometime. Quite a few Lefties, and what you probably consider heretics, do hang around my place. But most of them don’t bite. Much.
“But I do not take it all literally.”
I think we’d both agree that “literally” is a loaded word. I doubt you meant it this way, but I think that theological liberals like to use the literalist argument to dismiss orthodox views, but they equivocate when doing so. I would be the first to say that we don’t take everything literally. But in my experience those lobbing the literalist claim are usually the ones picking and choosing what was God-breathed and what wasn’t.
Re. being reciprocal: Fair enough, E.R. Actually, I have read your blog. You have a good sense of humor. I just went there yesterday and caught up. I almost commented on one piece a few days ago but didn’t want to get into it with Mr.-I-just-want-to-have-dialogue-except-when-people-call-me-on-my-passive-aggressiveness-and-explode-my-prejudices-against-fundies. I have plenty of time for people who can actually have differences of opinion and carry on a dialogue. But my mid-year resolution was to stop wasting time with people who have no interest in that.
I’m not worried about getting bitten. I just don’t want to polarize false teachers further (not you, as you have a good give-and-take, but others).
Well, sometimes I call it the ER Roadhouse because from time to time I stir it up, and people always find a way to get into it!
ER, I like it to be reciprocal, too (or whatever that big word is)… but if I read every blog of every person that has ever commented on mine…
*faints*
*grins upon recovery* I smell advertising… hey, I’ve done it too. Nothing to be ashamed of.
Okay, I’ll stop. I’m being mean.
Ha. Well, I am shameless! It’s the American way!
Great googly-moogly! (Should that be hyphenated?) This was an incredible discussion! Bubba, you da man!
I saw this topic and started reading a few comments earlier today. Upon arriving home, I started again. That was about 9PM. It’s now 1AM! By virtue of that grand expenditure of time, I now claim my right to spout.
For the Elijah bit: wouldn’t it be safe to say that “Elijah went up in a whirlwind…” was more like “taken up”? In other words, not by his own power, whereas “ascending” in reference to Christ was an action of Christ, or by his power? I don’t know that we can say that Elijah had power at all for such feats, but that to say that no one ascends implies a conscious decision on the part of the ascender(?). Just a thought. Never researched that supposed disparity.
As to the topic itself, I believe that as regards homosexual behavior, there is nothing but extra-biblical attachments when trying to support it no longer being sinful, or that between loving, monogomous couples it is not sinful. The Levitical admonition is plain and any conditions would have to have been included. As to whether the Levitical Laws have any bearing on Christian behavior, my first post on my blog (marshallart.blogspot.com—sorry, Neil) contained an extensive pasting of an argument over the homosexual issue that contained what I feel is a very clear and logical explanation for why homosexual behavior is still prohibited, and eating shellfish isn’t.
I also have to say that it’s a bit tiring to hear offerings of things such as the anecdotes surrounding the God-mandated annihilation of towns, and suggesting that from those stories anyone could righteously claim they are mandates for everyone afterwards. They were specific orders for a specific people for actions against specific towns. They in no way compare to a commandment, as in the Ten Commandments or Levitical Law.
I also have a problem with the notion that because there may be differences of opinion on a topic, that all parties must agree to respect every opinion. Respect the person offering the opinion, sure. But if the opinion is crap, it seems that to correct it is the Christian thing to do. Yeah, I may be wrong, but as stated, proof is in order. And I don’t really care how much one “prays” on a subject, if one can’t find within Scripture clear precedent, then to preach otherwise, such as saying that homosexual behavior is OK, or such unions are not sinful, is heresy. Harsh, but no worse than what Christ has said to certain Pharisees and money changers. And really, there’s no “nice” way to say “you’re wrong”. Folks don’t like to hear it. It offends. So why beat about the bush?
In any case, I’m so late to this game perhaps only Neil will read this when it shows up in his mailbox, but I had to comment. Plus, I think that rounds it to 215. Monk will be happy.
The word of God does not change. People who think it does are just bending the words of The Bible to fit their own needs. I agree, homosexuality is an abomination. Yes, they should be loved. If you truely love them you would tell them the truth of God’s word. Homosexuality is a sin. You will go to hell if you lead a homosexual lifestyle. As will liars murderers gluttons drunkards etc. They need to be told the truth.
Consider this. Two women cannot reproduce. Two men cannot reproduce. If God was affirming of homosexuality then men could have children with other men. Women could have children with other women. He is straight forward on this.
I think gay people can go straight. You see just the opposite in prison. Straight males and females turning to homosexuality to forfill a need? So why cant a gay person change? I think people who want to leave the homosexual lifestyle should not be looked down upon. They are putting God first in their lives. Is there anything wrong with that? Psychiatrists say wanting to change is wrong. You should not try to change. So what do they say to a transgender person? They want to change because they are not happy with who they are. The medical profession does not look down upon transgender people. So why then would they say to change is wrong it is not truely you? Think about.
You realise that homosexual behaviour is found throughout the animal, right?
Neil said: Please, not the “animals do it” argument. Your dog may try to do it with female dogs, male dogs, your leg, your coffee table, etc. I’m hoping people who appeal to animal behavior don’t take it to those extremes.
Also, sometimes the behavior in animals can be brought about by stressful situations (e.g., overcrowding), which supports the view that external causes have an influence.
Sexuality is not black and white as you seem to be saying. Sexual desire is strong, and the denial of it can cause psychological issues. That some gay men have “gone straight” doesn’t mean their basic desires have changed. They’re possibly denying those desires.
Because your sexual orientation is not a conscious choice.
Neil said: That is pure unscientific dogma. See http://narth.com/ and others. I’ve read of people changing to and from their orientation, and heard of countless examples of people who were abused and / or had dysfunctional relationships that led to it.
I think it is more that the suppression of desires can lead to problems. If those desires are to hurt or kill people, then the problems caused can be worth it. If there is no harm however, why suppress?
Neil said: You begged the question. There can be great harm – physically, spiritually and emotionally.
Transgender people are not happy with the sex they were born with. It’s would be analogous to predominantly gay people begin forced to have heterosexual relations, or predominantly straight people forced to have homosexual relations.
You see why your call to simply “change” could be hard or damaging?
Neil said: If you really want to help transgender people you’d support counseling for them, not mutilation.
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