Saturday, July 15, 2006

homosexual hermeneutic

During the last semester of my undergrad career I went to JBC and met a man by the name of Dr. John Rumple. As of yesterday he has resigned from JBC and has a blog opened to discuss the homosexual hermeneutic. Go to this web site- www.outofcontext.us please let me know your thoughts on the homosexual hermeneutic.

living from the back of the line,

ben.

161 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I’m really upset that today’s pc culture makes me look like an arrogant bigot anytime I suggest sexual immorality is a sin, but it’s the truth so I will try my hardest to speak it in love. I don’t know where everyone else stands, so if I offend anyone please forgive me and if my conservative background has blinded me please prove me wrong. The biblical texts concerning this issues seem very clear to me.

I totally agree that the church, and we as individuals, need to be much more compassionate towards unsaved homosexuals, and saved people who do not practice, but struggle with homosexual temptation. But I don’t think that is what this guy is going for. It seems he is an unrepentant homosexual and is trying hard to justify it. If this is the case the church should not condone his behavior any more then they would an unrepentant single pastor who’s sleeping around town. If he thinks he can somehow prove that homosexual behavior is not sinful, I think he’s wasting his time. If that is the case, this has nothing to do with hermeneutics, and everything to do with false teaching (although it seems he is accusing me of the same). Someone needs to gently lead him back to the truth, not for the sake of being right, but for the sake of his soul. Correct me if I’m taking Paul’s teaching out of context, but people who embrace a sin to the point of making it a lifestyle show that they will not inherit the Kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9) There is a huge difference between someone struggling with sin, and someone running to embrace it.

If he was trying to get people to treat homosexuals with the same love and respect they would any others sinner, then I would be right behind him 100%, it would help us to lovingly bring them the good news that Jesus truly can give them freedom. I get the impression though that he is saying homosexuals don’t need to be freed from this particular sin, and that’s not cool.

The guy really didn’t make any clear argument yet, so I may understand him better when his website is all up and running. He says he’s writing some huge article supporting his views but right now it’s not finished and most of the links on his site seemed to be inactive and there was no content on a lot of the pages.

July 15, 2006 at 7:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i found this lecture on Mr. Moore's web site. It gave me a better understanding of what this guy may use to defend his position. Mark does a great job of illustrating the hermeneutic and makes some great points at the end of his Lecture.


Lecture on Homosexual hermeneutics

July 17, 2006 at 12:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am a student at Johnson Bible College... John Rumple was my favorite professor the past school year. I held him in high regard because of his conservative views on baptism and reverence for God. He has an undergraduate in Preaching and Bible, a Masters in New Testament, a Masters of Divinity, and is about to receive a Doctorate in New Testament I believe. He is a very well educated man. He came from the non-instrumental Church of Christ and a much more conservative background then myself. This was a man I trusted and in fact has inspired me to teach theology. When I herd about him being gay I was so angry. I listened to Mark Moore’s class on homosexuality and better understood the arguments for homosexuality, so I would like to thank him for his excellent teachings. I guess I don’t really know what to say because I am still speechless about this news. I know he is wrong for his lifestyle and that he has been misguided in his studies. I agree with Shane and that he is trying to justify it and, even if he is right he was still living in sin by living with another man who Mr. Rumple said was his “partner”. I have never had a mentor exposed like this before and has caught me off guard. I just pray that he will realize his misinterpretation and strive for a celibate life if he cannot find attraction in women.

July 17, 2006 at 9:23 PM  
Blogger Mark Moore said...

Let me weigh in on this with three comments. (1) Shane, thank you for linking my audio lecture above on Homosexual Hermeneutic. The printed material can also be downloaded in PDF format (it is part of a rather lengthy notebook): http://markmoore.org/resources/issuesnb.pdf
(2) There is a significant betrayal here beyond a homosexual life-style. That is, he was living a secret life against the community he was a part of. Obviously, we must be concerned with sexual purity. But in many ways, deceit of the body of Christ is worse because it destroys our ability to function as the body in confession, restitution, conversation, and healing.
(3) Mr. Rumple taught many of you in many significant ways. Please don't disregard that. His love for you, attention to you, teaching of you will continue to bear fruit. May it not be that my sins discount the good I have tried to do.
(4) Mr. Rumple is hurting more than any of the rest of us who grieve over this event. When I am in pain, I don't always conduct myself in as clear-headed ways as I would like. I urge grace in understanding Mr. Rumple. I can't speak for him obviously, but I suspect that in hind-sight he would do many things differently. Wouldn't we all when we have the luxury of thinking dispationately about an issue after the fact.
(5) I am saddened by his website that has a tone of anger (perhaps even retaliation). Again, I would probably be just as angry given his circumstances. But he is shaming an institution and individuals who are noble and God-honoring. This kind of public criticism will likely give many unbelievers reason to speak ill of the bride of Christ and that saddens me.

July 18, 2006 at 8:20 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Mark-
I think you bring up a good point in regard to character. He has become the kind of man that can live in deceit, slowly this has become easier for him, until now he can live in sin and be comfortable with it. Jonathan, I don't know how you're feeling, but it has to be tough. How close were you? I know how I highly I respect some of my proffs, in many ways I think they can do no wrong, but this is a healthy reminder that none of us are beyond the boundries of a community no matter how many degrees we get or even policies we may disagree with. God help us we need community, a community of character I'm learning more and more. The faithfulness of my friends, even in their sin, has made me more repentant, more honest and more faithful. I love my friends, and pray that God will challenge me with their faithfulness.

July 18, 2006 at 9:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mr. Moore,
I'm a confused and concerned student at JBC and I just wanted to say thanks for your comments here and for the lecture on homosexual hermeneutics. It's helping me make sense of some of this. God Bless.

July 18, 2006 at 11:03 PM  
Blogger Justin Warner said...

Mr. Moore,
I graduated from JBC in 2005, and only had Mr. Rumple for one class, but I have to say that he is extremely knowledgeable in the scripture, and what I learned has been valuable in my life. Like you said, "May it not be that my sins discount the good I have tried to do", I feel that there is too much hostility toward Mr. Rumple in the younger students who have looked up to Rumple as one of the Freshmen Professors. My question for you is in James 3:1, "Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." How should we view this passage in a situation like this. I know the passage is about taming the tongue, and what the tongue can produce/destroy. Anyway, thanks for your time, and I hope that JBC has you come back for some more awesome seminars from you soon.

July 19, 2006 at 8:23 PM  
Blogger Mark Moore said...

Justin, James 3:1 is for me and Mr. Rumple not for you (unless or until you are a teacher). You are not the one that does the severe judging, God is. This will help you rest better. One of your other students said to me in a personal email that he was trying to figure this all out. Well, good luck! Figuring out deceptions, sexuality, judgment? Sometimes the best we can do is honestly experience life in both its pain and pleasures. To arbitrate, judge, control, or categorize is thoroughly beyond me. Nevertheless, your point is well-taken, if I presume to be a teacher, I must take the responsibility of greater moral, intellectual, and spiritual paths or be prepared to answer to God.

July 20, 2006 at 9:06 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Focus on the Family is dealing with this issue right now also. Here is a link to a brief news article about the latest Focus on the Family controversy: Click here.

My brother JD asked me what my opinion on this matter was. Here are some of the thoughts I came up with:

It would not surprise me if Focus on the Family is guilty of twisting data for their purposes. While I know that Focus on the Family does much good, I have also witnessed firsthand some of the evil it has done, and I do not agree at all with Dobson's political methodology. I think it is unchristian. I tend also to think that Focus on the Family is focusing on the wrong thing, both in this situation and in general.

I do think Dobson should meet with Soulforce [a pro-gay and lesbian family group] privately. Refusing to do so and demanding instead a public debate seems a bit like a stratagem to me. By refusing to speak with them privately Dobson is able to avoid getting to know his enemy personally, and, what's more, he is empowered to twist words to his advantage in an environment where he has the majority vote. He does believe, after all, that he is the President of the Moral Majority.

Or maybe he's just too exhausted for a private meeting. That could be the case. I wonder, though, when the last time was that Dobson had dinner with a homosexual, or a homosexual couple.

As far as the sin of homosexuality goes, I think homosexuality is for the most part a different animal today than it was in the ancient Mediterranean world when Paul wrote Romans chapter 1. Moreover, Romans chapter 1 leads directly into Romans chapter 2. Christians tend to forget that fact. We like to read how bad Paul says homosexuals are. We don't like it pointed out to us that Paul's talk about homosexuality was a rhetorical ploy to get Christians to see how wicked they themselves are. Paul's point was that we tend to read Scripture over against others when we should be reading it over against ourselves.

For that reason, I try to choose to reserve judgment about to what extent or in what way homosexuality is a sin. I know there are plenty of homosexuals out there who profess to be Christians and actually do a pretty good job of it, better than a lot of the heterosexual Christians I know. Of course that itself does not make homosexuality any less a sin if it is in fact a sin. But it brings me pause.

...

July 21, 2006 at 4:32 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Thank you, Jason, for joining us here. You bring up a good point about population. The numbers alone should force conservative Christians, at least, to reevaluate their tactics. I do think it begs the question, though, for a lot of people here at least, to say that a person should be judged by their character and not by their sexual orientation. While I might agree with you that a homosexual orientation is more of a biological than an ethical issue, not everyone here would share that assumption. Many, as you know, believe the Bible tells us that homosexual orientation is precisely a character issue. I do not think it is so cut and dry as that, but there needs to be dialogue on both sides. Neither side will serve itself well by simply begging the question and making a bald statement of fact out of what is obviously a factvalue (that's right, factvalue) claim.

Regarding what I said earlier, I just want to qualify what I said a little. While I have my suspicions about Dobson, I have no reason to doubt that he is entirely sincere. In fact I'm sure he's convinced what he does is what God requires of him. While I again stress that I do not think his political methodology is Christian, I want to tone that down a little by making it clear that I'm aware of the great good he has done in the lives of so many. It is not up to me to weigh whether he has done more harm than good. So while I emphatically reject much of his agenda, I do not wish to deny the sincerity of his heart or the good fruit of his incredibly hard and consistent labor.

...

July 21, 2006 at 8:25 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Regarding homosexuality as a biological question I have several questions. First, is homosexuality evident in cultures that are not affluent? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that in third world countries homosexuality simply doesn't exist. Is there a correlation? If homosexuality is not a question of character why does it seem so connected to character when it is talked about in both the OT and New? In Leviticus homosexuality is the only sin specifically connected to the Hebrew word for "abomination." Also, the material in Romans 1 (no, I don't think of it as "factvalue," but historically it has been interpreted by the Church regard homosexuality as a sin). Third question, if homosexuality is a question of biology, which I don't think it is, what would that change? The ethic of Jesus is that of the cross. Our desires are crucified and reshaped after God. I know that there is more to say and learn, but these are some initial issues I have.

July 22, 2006 at 7:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Though I have no proof, I would agree that in some cases, not all, certain people are born with natural homosexual desires, but I might be wrong. Regardless, I don’t think that can in anyway justify acting on those desires. We live in a fallen world, every person has natural desires that it would be wrong to give in to. If God says something is wrong, who are we to question him? Lusting is wrong, and it is something I have struggled with since I was a young child. When I see an attractive women, my biology tell me that I should desire her and there is nothing wrong with that, my character, on the other hand, will be shown by what I choose to do with that desire. Will I entertain it with mental fantasy, will I follow the desire and pursue her physically, or will I deny my sinful self and remain loyal to Christ and to my loving wife? I can’t control what tempts me, but there is always a way out of giving in to those temptations. The real danger comes when I make a pattern out of giving into those temptations and I slowly become their slave. From there the only way I can live with myself is to rationalize it in my head and harden my heart until my conscience is so seared that I no longer feel the prick of the Holy Spirit’s conviction, that or repent.

I certainly have a lot of compassion for my brothers and sisters who desire a same sex partner, and I certainly don’t expect them to magically flip a switch and become attracted to the opposite sex, but maybe chastity is not such a small price to pay in the long run. This is what I know to be true; sex is made for marriage, and marriage happens when a man leaves his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two become one flesh. If we compromise this truth, what part of God’s Word will be next, and when will we stop. I see a slippery slope. I know some will disagree with me and I respect their right to there own opinion, but I can not accept it as truth.

July 22, 2006 at 9:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Also, isn’t it amazing that God designed man and woman in such a way as they can intimately express their love for each other sexually, mutually, with dignity and respect, face to face? As far I know we are the only creatures on the planet that can peer into each others eyes during the act of sex.

July 22, 2006 at 9:42 PM  
Blogger bsiemon82 said...

I want to say thank you for all the responses for the blog i had post. Obviously, this is a key issue within the church today and one that needs some dialogue and should not just be ignored. When I was introduced to church at a younger age I would have never thought we would be discussing this issue. Thank you for your thoughts!

love wins.

living from the back of the line,
ben.

July 23, 2006 at 6:14 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Thank you, Tyler, Shane, and Jason for your good comments.

Jason, no one here wants or means to deny that you love Jesus. That's something we all share here. I would be interested to hear from you personally just what your love for Jesus amounts to, how it has changed you, and why and in what way it makes a difference in your life.

I appreciate your countering Shane's comments about the "naturalness" of heterosexual sex. I hope it is not too graphic for some, but I think it is important that we be careful the kind of assertions we (and here I mean we conservatives) make. More often than not our prior attitude toward homosexual orientation/activity is going to determine for us what gets to count as "evidence from nature." None of these kinds of arguments will ever be anything like conclusive in either direction. "Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" is not an intercommunitarian argument. Although it is significant as an argument to those on the more traditional side, it clearly has no logical force on the other side. Jason brings up a good point about the male g-spot being located in the anus. That could be used as evidence in an argument that at least homosexual sex is not unnatural. It may not be persuasive to those already convinced of the contrary, but that it gets to count as evidence from any perspective is an indication of the kind of dialogue we're having here. Let's take this as a call to transcend the typical pro- and anti-gay slogans and move on to real, descriptive dialogue.

The challenge on both sides is to locate and evaulate the hermeneutical commitments and general moral assumptions that drive our telling the story of "naturalness" one way rather than another. In other words, we're dealing with two in many ways similar but in significant ways different rational frameworks here. For both sides (if there are only two sides) the Bible is authoritative. The question is not the authority of the Bible but rather what we mean when we say that the Bible functions authoritatively in the lives of Christians. (This is not to say that the biblical passages on homosexuality are hermeneutically unambiguous. I am eagerly awaiting the writing of John Rumple's exegetical essays over the next several months.)

However, I still think both Shane and Jason are begging the question. While I am not in principle disputing with either of them yet, I am still waiting for a descriptive account of how each person's reading of the biblical narratives amounts to their confidence in their position on sexual orientation. Shane has given intracommunitarian arguments, i.e., argument that confirm the position of those who already hold it. Jason has given us a rather non-descript claim that homosexual orientation is already decided by the time of birth.

What we have to realize is that, as of yet, no intercommunitarian descriptions have been put forward.

As far as Tyler's arguments go, I have this to say. Tyler has argued that the Bible clearly says homosexuality is a sin, and that Christians are called to crucify their sinful desires. While I agree with the latter part, my judgment on the former is suspended (as far as this discussion goes) until any argument either way is put forward. The question here is not what homosexuals should do with their sinful desires, but whether homosexual desire is itself inherently sinful. Obviously, good homosexual exegetes have different (i.e., unconventional) readings of key passages of Scripture to offer us. The question here actually is whether homosexuality is a morally deficient or a morally neutral state. (I see no one arguing that it is morally preferable.) If it is morally neutral, then there is no in principle reason to crucify homosexual desires. To crucify homosexual desires in this case would be morally the equivalent of crucifying heterosexual desires (i.e., for the sake of chastity and thus the kingdom). If homosexual orientation is morally deficient, Tyler's point may stand, though that is also a debate (see Verhey in Remembering Jesus).

The disastrous assumption on the part of some here is that determining the deficiency or the neutrality of homosexuality is just a matter of observing which side has the more "facts." The question is not what the facts are but what the facts are. In other words, the quetions is what gets to count as evidence one way or the other, and how we answer that question depends upon a host of assumptions that lie beneath the surface of what we would ordinarily call "argument."

Having said that, I want to recognize very loudly and clearly that we are not dealing with mere ideas here, but with (according to some estimates) 3-5% of the population of the world and how we label those very real, very earnest people. I am not willing to label unchristian millions of professing Christians just because I think the facts are on my side. I think the question of whether or not someone is a Christian lies much more closely to questions about how one treats others in terms of justice, peace, mercy and servanthood. If a homosexual person did exemplify these virtues in the name of a crucified Christ, that would be significant to me. Of course if it could be shown that homosexuals in general tended to be materialistic, self-serving, power-politicking, liberationists, that may be significant for determining the moral value of homosexuality as a practice from a Christian perspective (but I think such a claim would be ridiculous). And of course, on that line of reasining, 95% of the American churches would be damned first.

I do think Tyler's question about the affluent societies tending to have more homosexuals is an interesting investigation. Although I do not think the answer to this question is going to give us conclusive evidence for either position, it should weigh in the balance. Jason claims that the 3-5% population runs through just about every nation. That remains to be seen. I don't know where he's getting his numbers. Andy Rodriguez pointed out to me that in the country he was in in Africa, homosexuality wasn't even an issue, i.e., there weren't any to speak of. He said this in response to my suggestion that the poorer countries often are governed under a general conservative religious ethos. Andy pointed out the this particular African country had no official religion.

That is not evidence that homosexuality doesn't exist in poorer countries. As Jason put it, "homosexuality" is a term we use. It may take different forms and different names in different environments. But then again, it may just be absent.

Given that heterosexuality is usually the norm in any society, what are the conditions under which homosexuality would be given room to surface? Are the conditions necessary for such surfacing primarily economic ones, religious, intellectual, or otherwise? I think these are the more precise questions that need asked under this line of reasoning, but at the same time framing the questions this way already indicates the kind of trouble we're going to run into later once we want to start making general claims about the conditions necessary for the surfacing and survival of homosexuals or homosexual communities. There actually need not be any one set of conditions necessary. And a general tendency in one direction only takes on the character of "evidence" within the context of an argument that already has first principles and a suspected or desired conclusion.

Jason, I hope this doesn't sound like we're arguing theoretically about whether or not you have the right to exist. My place here is as a mediator and I'm doing my best to cater to the kind of questions that are required from the standpoint of my more conservative friends.

...

July 24, 2006 at 2:28 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

It is very interesting the dialouge going on here. I just want to raise one more issue that for me has always stood out. Shane mentioned how God naturally created Man and Woman to have face to face contact. He failed to mention one more astounding design of God which is obvious- procreation. Simply put a homosexual person cannot procreate, g-spot or no. Now, Jason and his partner have adopted, I assume, a baby, and I'm sure they are going to love that baby and bring it up the best they can or any of us can. But, forgive me for an ultra-conservative position here, but the issue of procreation does a lot for the natural vs. unnatural argument, at least in my mind. This said, I have had some homosexual friends. Any Christian who has habitually fornicated or committed adultery is the same. The Bible calls for all to be sexually pure. My point here is that many Christians (heterosexual too) are tarnishing that command on many levels.

July 24, 2006 at 2:56 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

You do bring up a good point, Greg. But I wonder if you would want to go so far as to say that the purpose of heterosexual marriage is to procreate. If this is what you're saying, on what grounds are you saying it? An easy argument to make against that notion would be that procreation was necessary for the filling up of the earth, but that marriage was instituted by virtue of man's need for companionship, which is a divine characteristic.

There has been a lot of theology of marriage done that talks about marriage as a form of asceticism, learning to deny self by loving the other, and that the purpose of marriage is the cultivation of the virtues necessary for sustaining Christian community. Although procreation is a part of marriage, and a necessary part of any good theology of marriage for a Christian people in general, I see no reason why we should say that it is necessary for every good marriage. (I think that would be asburd.) Adoption, then, certainly is more than just an option, but a theological obligation. An argument could be made that adoption is actually the more Christian form of child rearing, since, among other reasons, it is more closely analogous to discipling converts. The children of the church are not generated biologically.

I see potential room there for a theology that would include homosexual couples certainly not deficient in their capacity to raise children. Such parenting might actually be necessary since adoption among Christians is so irregular.

Again, your point that procreation is possible only in heterosexual relationships is an argument for the naturalness of heterosexuality from your tradition's perspective. From another tradition's perspective, that might not be immediately apparent.

Moreover, I think the question of whether homosexuality is natural is at least in one sense a little ridiculous, since there are obviously millions of people for whom homosexuality is quite natural. The question isn't whether it is natural or not, but from where we derive what gets to count as "natural" in the first place. Often times arguments from the "natural order" tend to underwrite the status quo mentality of a given society. Paul's very traditional point (in my understanding) was not that homosexuality was unnatural, per se, but that a general pagan rejection of the creation narrative resulted in certain kinds of cultic behavior which included homosexual sex as part of temple worship. The homosexuality to which Paul referred was connected to the rejection of the Jewish creation myth (not fictional myth) and the worship of false gods.

Jason, do you reject the creation myth and worship false gods?

Unless Jason's answer is different than I expect it to be, the homosexuality we're dealing with seems to be a different sort of animal than the kind Paul was referring to in his argument from "the nature of things."

That doesn't mean the discussion is over. That just means the discussion is a little more complicated than we think.

...

July 24, 2006 at 4:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree this is a very sticky issue. I really thank all those apposing my view for their patience and courtesy. I’m sure I am challenging your convictions just as much as you are challenging mine. I am glad we can discuss this out of a desire to do God’s will and not a desire to prove the other wrong.

Aside from all the biblical texts that, at least to me, appear to obviously call homosexuality a sin, I also have another honest concern. My question is why has the church for the last 2000 years, and God’s people for thousand of years prior to the birth of the church never approved of homosexuality. The only time it is ever mentioned in scripture is to point it out as sin. Isn’t this the first time this has seriously been an issue. It seems across all times and cultures the Church has stood against any kind of sex that takes place out side the guidelines of a heterosexual marriage?

Jason you said “a person's sexual orientation is formed and stable by the time that person exits the womb. Their awareness may take a decade or too to actualize.”

I don’t necessarily disagree with that, what I am saying is that no one is born with a healthy sexual appetite. My flesh is perverted and it would be a terrible thing if I gave into all my natural desires sexual or otherwise. It’s not about what feels natural or what society thinks; it’s about what does God think. I really don’t want to appose your lifestyle, if God is ok with it I am too, but I need to know Biblically where I can find confidence that homosexuality is permissible before I can stand against thousands of years of church history and deny what my conscience and God’s Word has convinced me to be true. I think everyone can understand the fear of not wanting to be duped, or played the fool, especially when doing so could me you were outside of God’s will. Thanks everyone for the comments.

July 24, 2006 at 4:31 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Thank you, Shane. Appealing to church history and church authority is the best argument from the conservative side put forward so far. But we need to be careful. The church historically also perpetuated patriarchy, racism, anti-Semitism, in many places slavery, and not to mention nationalism and power politics. While church authority is the first and the best place to look for guidance, that too is a complicated move.

...

July 24, 2006 at 5:07 PM  
Blogger Andy Rodriguez said...

What an intringuing converstation. Thanks to all who have shared their thoughts and arguments. I am always reminded reading this how much I have to learn.

Thom mentioned the conversation that we had today. It is true that the countries I have been to in Africa had no concept of homosexuality. It was a foriegn idea to them. That was also the case working with the Indians in Ecuador as well with the poor in the Yucatan. But I must also say that I did befriend an Arab homosexual last year while working in Israel. This was in a very muslim culture where homosexuality is considered very taboo. This fellow did hoave the oppurtunity to travel both to America and Englad for some time. I am a bit leery of stats of percentage of homosexuals among different nations. Whether they come from an ultra-conservative tradition or homosexual there is an agenda behind the stats. There is something to prove.

Regardless, I dont think the statistic question is the the right question to ask. I am fine with accepting the 3-5% of every population. Sounds fair to me. I think the more important question is: Is living the homosexual lifestyle sinful? Or, is homosexuality consistent with God's design for the union of marriage? This is why I, like Thom, am looking forward to the exegesis of the "homosexual texts" by Mr. Rumple. Just as I am not comfortable with "the bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" menatlity, I am equally not satisfied with "homosexuality today is different than homosexuality then so the texts dont really matter." I know that no one has said this, but it is a popular homosexual tactic.

More than just focusing in on the "homosexual verses" I would also like to hear more on "marriage verses." There seems to be a consistent theme through the biblical narrative on God's design or creation of the institution of marriage. An unbiased reading of Gen-Rev seems to portray God's perfect design/creation of marriage to be male and female. Maybe a good discipline for all of us to do would be to an inductive study on marriage, union, hhomosexuality, sex, etc. and see what the texts say before we start saying what they mean (I know how muc of an ozarkian suggestion that is, but gosh, i still think the Bible has some things to say to us today. Call me crazy).

I also thinks Shane brings up a great point about the church's interpretation of homosexuality as a sin. Someone who considers homosexuality as an acceptable practice would have to be comfortable going against what the church has consistantly dissapproved of.

May I issue a warning to the bloggers here, and this could simply the the evangelist coming out in me. We all have a lot to learn, and all of us could be wrong. Jason, I dont for a second question your commitment to follow Jesus. Nor do I for Thom, Shane, Ben and the rest. But i confess that for the first time in my life I am personally befriending a homosexual who is not a christian. May God forgive me. I dont care if Jason or Thom or Mr. Rumple pointed him to Jesus, but I desperatly want him to surrender his life to Christ. He is not the only one. As we debate and learn and argue let us not forget that we can work together as fellow disciples learning to become better disciples to bring lost people to Him.

July 24, 2006 at 6:55 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Thank you, Andy. Your challenge is the right one.

Jason, where-a-bouts in Oz are you? I grew up on the Gold Coast.

...

July 24, 2006 at 7:15 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Friends,
I have posted some exegetical work I have done for a paper regarding homosexuality in the book of Leviticus. This is an attempt to convince Thom and others that the Bible in the community of believers since at least Moses through all of church history has understood homosexuality as wrong. Historically, lexically and grammatically this makes good exegetical sense.

Thom, you said, "The question here actually is whether homosexuality is a morally deficient or a morally neutral state." How could this be determined aside from the bible? especially when the question of what counts as "evidence" is such a significant issue. The complexities exist for a number of reasons especially when one considers that our Lord had no sexual practice. But, the bible does speak to this issue, how it is to be understood is the question.

Also, I would like to draw attention again to Andy's observation that while in Malawi, Africa homosexuality simply isn't an issue. The stories of the people there have made "homosexuality" an unintelligible term. Until very recently (1960’s) this has also been the case in the Church even in cultures (i.e. the first-century world) where homosexuality was considered an acceptable practice.

EXEGESIS:
Homosexuality is explicitly prohibited in Leviticus (18.22; 20.13). The difficulty is found not in understanding these passages as clear prohibitions of homosexuality, but their application in the new covenant under Christ. One cannot simply argue, “Leviticus says it is wrong!” This point is seen explicitly in light of other laws which clearly have been done away with (Lev 18.19; 19.19; 19.27). At the same time, dismissing these laws because they are in the Old Testament is also mistaken. So then, how should these prohibitions be applied to a Christian, living under the grace of Christ and not the law of Moses (Col 2.6-23)? How even more in the contemporary world that believes the only thing to be intolerant of is intolerance.

These prohibitions against homosexuality occur in the portion of Leviticus commonly referred to as the Holiness Code (Lev 17-26). The previous 16 chapters have been devoted to the cultic worship practices of Israel focusing especially on atonement and Israel’s relationship to God. In chapters 17-26 the author shifts focus to holiness (19.2; 20.7, 8, 26; 21.6,8, 15, 23; 22.9, 16, 32) and Israel’s relationships within the community. The key exhortation to the Holiness Code is “You shall be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy” (Lev 19.2). The context of the whole section indicates a call to holiness based on the character of God. This holiness runs counter to the nations which previously occupied the land Israel will inherit (18.1-5, 24-30; 20.22-24). Therefore, it must be kept in mind that regardless of what is culturally “appropriate” the exhortation is a call to holiness as defined by God.

With that context in mind, the text themselves clearly indicate that these laws are normative for Christians regardless of whether or not one considers this view to be “based on antiquated views of impurity.” Robert A.J. Gagnon in his book "The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics" highlights six salient points that indicate why these texts are normative for the contemporary Christian. (1) Lev 18.22 occurs in the context of forbidden sexual relations outlawing incest (18.6-8), adultery (18.20), child sacrifice (18.21), and bestiality (18.23) all of which continue to apply. The only sexual prohibition that is not considered universal like the others is intercourse with a woman in her menstrual uncleanness (18.19). (2) The word “abomination” תּוֹעֵבָה (tô‘ēbâ) indicates the ungodliness of the homosexual act. In the summary of chapter 18, vv 24-30, all of the prohibitions are described as “abominations” תּוֹעֵבֹתהַ (hatô‘ēbot). However, 18.22 is the only single act that is described in this way from the preceding list (18.6-23). In addition, Leviticus 20 describes the penalties for many of the unlawful acts of 18-19 and only homosexuality is described as an “abomination.” (3) The penalty for homosexuality is death (20.13). The only other offenses that are specifically penalized with death in Lev 20 are child sacrifice (20.2), cursing one’s parents (20.9), adultery (20.10), some forms of incest (20.11-12), marriage to a wife and her mother (20.14), and bestiality (20.15-16). All of which have remained normative for Christians. (4) Lev 18.22 and 20.13 are absolute and unqualified. (5) As already mentioned, the entire context of the Holiness Code stresses the distinctive holiness of God’s people. (6) The prohibition has been carried over into the new covenant (Rom 1.27, 32). The textual evidence, literary context, and theological continuity between testaments all indicate that homosexuality is prohibited for one claims to worship Yahweh.

Jason, how can a text like this be understood to support homosexuality?

July 24, 2006 at 7:19 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Thank you, Tyler. Your exegesis brings out the point (your strongest point) that homosexuality is listed among sexual sins that continue to be forbidden in the Church.

I am anticipating John Rumple's essay on the holiness code text. Certainly he will have to address the point you've raised here.

You did say, however, that you are writing in "an attempt to convince Thom and others that the Bible in the community of believers since at least Moses through all of church history has understood homosexuality as wrong." I'm not sure that anyone here needs convincing of that fact. No one (especially not I) has questioned that historically homosexuality has been condemned in Israel and the church.

Yet the concept of sexual orientation would have been foreign to Israel and the church. The question, then, is to what extent the Bible speaks to homosexuality today IF it is true that homosexuality is a biological and not inherently a moral disposition.

Moreover, your citing Romans 1 as evidence that the prohibition against homosexuality is carried over into the NT I think is a misstep, not because I personally disagree with you (my judgment is suspended currently), but because it could be argued (with some integrity I think) that because Paul's condemnation of the pagan idolaters is a rhetorical move to expose the guilt of "judgmental" Christians, Paul is not NECESSARILY sanctioning everything said in the traditional argument against gentile immorality. The point is, it's precisely a traditional argument. That's what Paul used to get in on the good side of his audience before showing all his cards. Just like all of my argument here for the homosexual hermeneutic could be a rhetorical ploy meant to spring a trap later, Paul may not necessarily be concerned with the traditional diatribe against gentile immorality either way. His concern clearly is the judgmental, exclusivistic attitude of Christians.

Finally, you asked Jason how a text like Leviticus 18 could be "understood to support homosexuality"? Not to be picky but I don't think anyone would claim that it "supports" homosexuality, as though someone is arguing that what Lev. 18 actually means that homosexuality is a-okay with Jehovah.

I think what you mean to ask is how homosexuality can be reconciled, from a Christian standpoint, with Lev. 18.

And your throwaway jab at the "tolerance" ethos is a good hit but I don't see its relevance here. I haven't heard anyone on the homosexual side (in this debate, John Rumple, or anyone else) bring up the word tolerance. Nor would I think John Rumple would side with those who say that the only thing we cannot tolerate is intolerance.

Apart from those caveats, I appreciate your exegesis and candid remarks. I love and respect you.

Shane, if you would like to shoot me an email (tmstark@gmail.com) I would like to say a personal word to you. If you're worried about my having your email address you can make up a new one and discard it later.

...

July 24, 2006 at 9:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Thom,
i emailed you my address, just letting you know incase it goes into your junk mail or something.

July 25, 2006 at 9:23 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Got it and replied. Thanks, Shane.

...

July 25, 2006 at 10:01 AM  
Blogger Mark Moore said...

As this conversation continues, it might be helpful to have somewhat of a historical background for homosexuality in the Roman World against which Paul makes his comments in the New Testament. Caution: the quotes below are explicit. If salacious material offends you, please pass on this comment.

Petronius (c. 27-66) (advisor to Nero on entertainment), Satyricon 75.11, “When I was fourteen, I became my master’s ‘favorite.’ I mean, what’s wrong with doing what your master wants? Of course, I was doing it for my mistress, too. You catch my meaning? I don’t publicize it because I don’t like to boast.”

Seneca the Younger (c. 3 BCE – 65 CE), Letters 47, “Yet another slave, the one who pours the wine, is decked out in feminine clothing and fights a losing battle against age. He is a boy approaching manhood, but he must present a boyish appearance. Thus, although he has the bodily build of a soldier, he remains beardless because his hairs are rubbed away or pulled out by the roots. He is awake all night, dividing his time between his master’s drunkenness and sexual desires. In the bedroom, he is a man; at the dinner table, he is a boy.”

Tacitus (c. 56-117 CE), Annals 14.42 “One of his own slaves killed Pedanius Secundus, the city prefect. The slave committed the murder either (1) because Pedanius Secundus refused him his freedom after agreeing to the ‘purchase price,’ or (2) because the slave was in love with some young man and could not tolerate his master as his rival.”

Tacitus (c. 56-117 CE), On Tiberius, the Caesar of Jesus’ day, 6.1 Tiberias’ Pederasty: “In the fashion of a despot he debauched the children of free-born citizens. It was not merely beauty and a handsome person which he felt as an incentive to his lust, but the modesty of childhood in some, and noble ancestry in others. Hitherto unknown terms were then for the first time invented, derived from the abominations of the place and the endless phases of sensuality.”

Catullus (c. 84 BCE – 54 BCE) Poems 93, 57 on Julius Caesar’s sexual appetite with his homosexual partner Mamurra: “They suit one another well, these two lewd lechers, Mamurra and Caesar with his unnatural lusts. And no wonder! They have both been stained with an equal number of blotches which cannot be washed away [i.e. venereal disease], one picking them up in the city, the other at Formiae [Mamurra’s hometown, south of Rome], equally diseased, equally debauched, like twins, both learned scholars in affairs of the bed, both renowned for their adulterous appetites, friendly rivals also of young girls. Yes, they suit one another well, those two lewd lechers.” Because of such behavior Caesar was mocked as “a man for all women and a woman for all men.”

Suetonius (75 CE – 160 CE), The Twelve Caesars, on Tiberius the Caesar of Jesus’ day: (3.44) “Some aspects of his criminal obscenity are almost too vile to discuss, much less believe. Imagine training little boys, whom he called his ‘minnows’, to chase him while he went swimming and get between his legs to lick and nibble him. Or letting babies not yet weaned from their mother’s breast suck at his breast or groin—such a filthy old man he had become.”

Suetonius (75 CE – 160 CE), The Twelve Caesars, on Nero the Caesar of Paul’s day: (6.28 & 29) “Not satisfied with seducing free-born boys and married women, Nero raped the Vestal Virgin Rubria. He nearly contrived to marry the freedwoman Acte, by persuading some friends of consular rank to swear falsely that she came of royal stock. Having tried to turn the boy Sporus into a girl by castration, he went through a wedding ceremony with him –dowry, bridal veil and all – took him to his palace with a great crowd in attendance, and treated him as a wife. A rather amusing joke is still going the rounds: the world would have been a happier place had Nero’s father Domitius married that sort of wife. He dressed Sporus in the fine clothes normally worn by an Empress and took him in his own litter not only to every Greek assize and fair, but actually through the Streets of the Sigillaria at Rome, kissing him amorously now and then. . . . Nero practiced every kind of obscenity, and after defiling almost every part of his body finally invented a novel game: he was released from a cage dressed in the skins of wild animals, and attacked the private parts of men and women to stood bound to stakes. After working up sufficient excitement by this means, he was dispatched – shall we say? – by his freedman Doryphorus. Doryphorus now married him – just as he himself had married Sporus – and on the wedding night he imitated the screams and moans of a girl being deflowered.”

July 25, 2006 at 10:38 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

"Yeah but those aren’t really descriptions of homosexuals, they are descriptions of the lewdest of lewd lifestyles which just happen to at [the] time include homosexuality."

Yes. I was being sarcastic. My point was that this does not describe homosexuality as we understand it today. Mark's point was that these texts might help us understand homosexuality as it was understood in Paul's day.

"Is something wrong because it has consequences, or is it wrong because God says it’s wrong?"

I'm not sure I like either option. Good and evil isn't the product of an arbitrary decision made by God, any more than it's the product of our own determination of what seems to be expedient. Yet sometimes an act is wrong simply because it has negative consequences (Romans 14.15).

"If we are throwing out Lev. 18:22 (Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.) then why are we hanging on to the rest of that chapter?"

No one here has argued that we should throw out Lev. 18:22. The question is not whether or not we should listen to the Old Testament but what the Old Testament is saying in context and what kind of people we need to be in order to read it rightly. I'm not sure who you are, but Tyler already called our attention to the point that in Lev. 18 homosexuality is listed among other sexual vices the likes of which we clearly do not allow in our churches. It is not, as it were, in the same class of OT laws as, "Do not eat anything with curly tails." I responded that Tyler brought up a good point and that I am eager to hear from John Rumple on this matter in his forthcoming essay on Lev. 18.

All in all, let's all try to be a little more patient, and seek to understand one another rather than to defeat one another in argument. I'm convinced that everyone here is to the best of his or her ability honestly seeking to do the Lord's will. I choose to give both sides the benefit of the doubt in that regard.

Peace.

...

July 25, 2006 at 10:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

While i cant say that i disagree with the sentament expressed, I would like to comment on the nature of the historical quotes. All of the above sources quoted are hardly neutual. Modern historians generally agree that these authors are propogandists, with axes to grind. Catullus was a political prevoceture like no other. And Suetonius, in particular, had his own strict political agenda. For this you can see JM Roberts among others (there is one author in particular who spells this out, but his name escapes me, he wrote a book named after Suetonius' called "Twelve Caesers")

Secondly, that Ttacitus claim, also does not seem particularly relavent, unless we think that stories like Othello should advise us against heterosexual love. People do crazy stuff for love.

The one exception to the above is Petronius's Satyricon, which like Plato's Symposium before it focuses on debauchery and bachinallia. But this is a comedy, a raucous one for sure, but still a comedy. And homosexuals are staples in comedy to this day. Is that really differnt then La Cage aux Folles, and Will and Grace. Additionally is the depravity expressed in the heterosexual porn industry an indictment of heterosexual love? The answer might be "yes," i dont know but we should ask, and be careful about appllying quotes from history.

ahh, in one final note, i would liek to point out that to attempt to quanify the percentige of homosexual people in any given population, much less all populations of all time strikes me as exceptionally daft.

July 26, 2006 at 12:02 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Once again, let's pay attention to Mark's puprose for bringing our attention to these quotes. As Mark said, "It might be helpful to have somewhat of a historical background for homosexuality in the Roman World against which Paul makes his comments in the New Testament."

Could it be that these quotes highlight for us all the more that what Paul was describing in Romans 1 is not what Jason is describing for us here?

Finally, let's try to avoid using adjectives like "daft" in our descriptions of one another's arguments. Matt, I recommend sticking with the socratic method of your third paragraph.

Peace.

...

July 26, 2006 at 2:18 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Jason,

Thanks for writing. In answer to your question, No. I am not Jackina's husband. That's Tony Stark and I am a bit too young for his job. I actually have no relation to Jackina apart from student-teacher.

...

July 27, 2006 at 10:26 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ok I retract the use of "daft" and to be clear, I was not calling anyone "daft" but the project itself.
thom stark, Mark's intention is duely noted, thanks for pointing that out. Yet, i still wonder if we should consider lible as "historical background". Likewise fiction, does tell us something about the historical background even if it does not depict actual events, but in a differnt way. It is for this very reason that I am willing to entertain the notion that the contemporary pornography indistry offers a kind of indictment against heterosexual love. The problem with lible is that it is fiction trying to pass its self off as historical documentation. I say this just because the use of the "historical" quotes struck me as just the kind of misapplication of genre that makes bible scholars chringe when the same is done to scripture. Thats my only point.

Jason Mccheyne, lets start with things i grant. I grant your claim that are millions of same sex attracted people to one degree or another. I also grant that it is not, as you say, "a case of millionsof people waking up one day and decding to defy god and sleep with the same gender." Ok, so that is where we agree, now on to where we don't. Lets consider for a moment the concept of a "proven statistic." A statistic is definitionally a figure of numerical data often expressed (as in this case) as a ratio or percent. Again, definitionally, statistics are data established from a sampleing of data, which if done correctly can then be extrapolated to discribe the larger group from whence your sample is derived. Lets think of an example. Lets say John that you and i decide to take a random sample of Major League Baseball Stadiums (i apologize for such an Americanized example). WEll lets say that we wrote down the names of all thirty staduims on note cards and drew out five randomly. So, John, you and i hop in the car and visit these five stadiums, and at each stadium we go to the concessions stand and order a hot dog and a Foster's Beer (thats for you). Ok, now lets say that at all five stadiums we get the hot dog, but only one stadium carries the Fosters. From that sample we can form the statistic that 5 out of 5 (100%) of major league baseball staduims serve hot dogs, and 1 of 5 (20%) of mlb stadiums serve Fosters beer.
So here we have two statistics, they are certainly reasonable generalizations from the facts at hand. But, as anyone can see, there is plenty of room for reasonabe generalizations to be wrong. Knowing this, lets say that we decide to check out our statistical predictions, or in other words to "prove" our statistics true or false. How would we do this? Clearly we would have to visit all thirty major league baseball stadium and order a hot dog and a Fosters beer. Ok lets say that we undertake this task. It would take a while, and require a lot of beer drinking and hot dog eating, but we could certainly do it. Well ok we do, and we keep good records and when we get finished we find out that, low and behold, we were right about the Fosters Beer 6 out of 30 (our predicted 20%) of mlb stadiums serve Foster's beer, so we have "proved" our statistics correct! But things are differnt with the hot dogs. Wouldn't you know it, the stadium in Toronto, canada did not even serve hot dogs. So in this case 29 out of 30 (roughly 97%) of all mlb stadiums serve hot dogs. Now, in this case too, we have succeded in "proving" our statistic, it is just that we "proved" it false.

Application, what can we learn from this? In our example it was easy enough to "prove" our statistic, since that only required visiting 30 ball parks. My criticism of your stat was that such a thing could, for all intents and purposes, never be proven. Yet that is exactly what you claimed, that those numbers were in fact proven. So not only is what you claimed, John, untrue (consider the fact that we can't even say exactly how many people there are in the world) what you said was also untrue in principal. Such a statement simply can not be made, at least at this point in our technolgical history. So rather then make vast generalizations as you have done, you should instead be making strong qualifications to your numbers, like limiting them to a given sample or area or time span etc.
Furthermore, lets consider some of numerious variables. In our example above we could encounter lots of them. What if in the middle of our project of "proving" the statistics some stadiums go out of busness and other new ones are built? Wouldn't this drasticly effect our results? What if the Toronto stadium served a special healty Tofu-dog as an alternitive? Would we be able to count this? Doesn't such a possiblity necessitate that we come up with clear necessary and sufficent conditions for what is and is not a hot dog? Would't this also impact our results. And these things are simply things that will influence our data collections and classification, there may be many others that will have even greater impact on our interpertation of that data. For example what if we go to a place where hot dogs are illegal, so people are afraid to tell us that they have them. All of this just serves to say that what you have claimed is way to broad and strong.

If you intend to hold to your numbers then you owe some kind of qualification, because they are not and can not be proven.

July 27, 2006 at 11:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry for numerous spelling mistakes my sp checker is currently malfunctioning.

July 27, 2006 at 11:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oversight: i should have stated in the application section that the problem with John's claims out his stats is that to "prove" them would require speaking to every person in the world. This problem is implied in what i said, but I should have said it explicitly.

July 27, 2006 at 11:56 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Matt,

John's name is actually Jason. Point on statistics noted. I tend to agree.

Point on historical background noted. I don't think Mark thought he was painting a neutral picture of first century homosexuality.

Matt, where are you educated?

...

July 27, 2006 at 12:25 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

I do not like it at all when Christians are hostile towards homosexuals. We are called to love all of God’s creations and not discriminate for any reason. That is just like not removing the plank in your own eye. In my estimation the Bible is against all sexual sin, lust included. In Hispanic ministry, I don’t deal with homosexuality. The sexual sin I deal with is mostly cohabitation or “shacking up.” I would link this right in the same category as any other sexual sin- fornication, adultery, lust, etc. We have created a totem pole of sin, and that should not be—sin is sin. Some are not worse in God’s eyes than others. Heterosexual sin is the same, only with different ramifications. The church has not been kind in many situations. But I hope that is changing slowly for the better.

I’m very glad that our friend Jason has been so open and candid with this group, and long to learn from his experiences (especially the research on gay parenting).

That said, I, like Agrippa with Paul (only different subject), don’t think I can be persuaded so quickly to think that homosexuality is inborn. I believe there are factors, even in early age (Familial issues, molestation in some cases) that can contribute to a gender identity confusion of sorts, but not a genetic make-up. I’d be anxious to hear your opinions on this, I can’t support with any numbers.

I brought up the naturalness of procreation. Jason’s baby was born through a surrogate, so is biological to one parent. What about before the technology for surrogate mothers? What about the need for a mother to birth? We cannot compare this to a barren wife, or sterile husband for these are exceptions to the natural way of things.

Thom asked me before if I’d go so far as to say the Bible’s view of sex is strictly for procreation. No way! Song of Solomon is an explicit depiction of God’s intention for sex- between a man and woman. “The Gift of Sex” by Clifford and Joyce Penner has a good chapter on the Biblical view of sex.

I believe that we cannot come down hard on one sin, and ease up on others. Sure from the same verses, we see gossips and adulterers, and there aren’t any gossip activists or people trying to justify adultery. But neither should Christians be homophobia activists. We should love all people as God does.

“Love Wins Out” is the title of a Pastor to Pastor production done by Focus on the Family. Despite what has been said of Dobson, and the controversy Thom brought up, this is with H. B. London Jr. and other guests: Joe Dallas from Genesis Counseling, Alan Chambers from Exodus International, and others who can come out of this what they called “lifestyle.” I’m still in the middle of listening to this, but wanted to share these thoughts, and here’s a clip that you’ll find interesting:

3 min. clip

July 27, 2006 at 4:04 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

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Thank you, Greg. Great post.

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July 27, 2006 at 4:49 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Greg, you brought up some good points. One thing in particular is the focus that homosexuality has received. There are a handful of biblical texts that speak to sexual orientation (regardless of how they are interpreted), and yet many of us in the Church have made this our "flagship" issue. Why is that? What is it that has made homosexuality such a talked about issue especially in the last 10 years.
I read a great article on homosexuality by Richard B. Hays, from his book "Moral Vision of the NT." He has one chapter on homosexuality and I would highly recommend it. One point that he brought up that Greg pointed out is how peripheral this issue is. However other core issues that the Church has largely ignored remain ignored. I think a prime example would be the lack of conversation considering particularly the post above this, particularly when the majority of the bloggers here are living in a country that is in a war. A war, I might add, that is largely supported by the evangelical church. I don’t want to draw attention away from this significant issue, but perhaps if we talk a moment and think through some of Jesus’ larger concerns we can gain a more faithful perspective on this issue.

July 27, 2006 at 8:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is a shocking post. Should the fundamentalist evangelical church not address the issue of adultery over and above the issue of homosexuality, which is only included in lists that pertain to a variety of sins describing the nature of sin in general. Even at that point they could quite possibly be reffering to a more pedophilic form of homosexuality than one including two consenting and monogamous adults.

It seems as though it is easy to garner affirmation of your position by only referring to sins that the vast majority of our churches accept as taboo. Notice this as it pertains to a just war mentality versus an open declaration of passivism and protest to the wars started without just cause. I know this goes without saying but I have homosexual friends that are more sacrificial and caring than a vast majority of "conservative evangelicals" that I am acquainted with in ministry.

Lastly the most important statement I want to make is the obvious one and that is that those of you who have been close to Dr. Rumple are so quick to assume you know the right position due to the dogma you hold. This is decided not by accepting his decision as one that is well studied, i.e. the high level of scholarship he holds, and that it is hard enough to live up to the presuppostions and dogma within the independent christian church/ churches of christ without declaring that having a drink is not a sin let alone that you can be involved in a same sex relationship and still be a believer, a minister with integrity and character. It should go without saying that justifying a position is as far from an objective truth as sitting in a classroom makes you a learner. Life is a complicated and complex maze to which each of you will find yourself lost and scared to death on some occasions and the important thing in these times is to hold on to your love for God and make a decision you feel is right. Dr, not Mr., Rumple has done just that. May this brother in the faith be accepted with the same love that Christ accepts the sinless and pious in the midst of their theological arrogance. Selah

July 27, 2006 at 11:19 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Straight to the point as always, JD. I love you dearly.

Anonymous, however overly strong my brother's words may have been, they are, I'm afraid, on target.

You have missed our hearts, you have hidden yours (i.e., "anonymous"), and you seem to be more interested in condemning others than listening to them, the very sin of which you wrongly accuse my pious brothers.

Back to you, JD. While I agree that in one sense the gay community has gone to great pains to make this something like a "race" issue, there are many homosexuals that also go to great pains to stress that being gay is not a "lifestyle" that makes them any different than "the rest of us" apart from the fact of sexual orientation. They wish to stress that they are not really different from heterosexuals at all, except of course in terms of sexual orientation. So while there is the rhetoric of the "gay community," I think the desire of many homosexuals is not to be seen as different at all.

However, my attempt at a response to Tyler's question is that we are discussing this more than we do other sins for a couple of reasons: 1) Dr. Rumple's coming out is a very recent event and one that is rarely so public in our movement; 2) (and this one is in the same spirit as JD's response) adulterers do not often create websites arguing that adultery is not a sin. Some sins require more conversation than others simply because they require more conversation than others.

...

July 28, 2006 at 4:53 AM  
Blogger Erica Stark said...

Thom, dear, were you up all night again blogging? I just wanted to let you know that I finally got online and am following this dialogue. I want everyone to know that my self-appointed job in this discussion is to pray. This is a big and important conversation, let's make God and His Glory the purpose of it.

July 28, 2006 at 9:57 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

You're incredible, babe. See you this evening.

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July 28, 2006 at 10:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Let me just say thanks to everyone for writing on here. I'm writing a paper on the homosexual hermeneutic this summer and this information is helping more than you could imagine.

Tyler, Thom...I love and miss you guys. Thanks you for your insight and truthfulness.

Jason, thanks for taking the time fo explain your situation and life. I'll shoot you an email in the next few days with some questions for my paper if that's alright (they don't fit this conversation).

-Tony

July 28, 2006 at 3:49 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Jason,

What convinced you that you were this way?

Cheers, Peace, Selah

July 28, 2006 at 8:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

... not a scholar nor an expert on any subject concerning God and His ways, I leave this...I wonder what would happen if honest, sincere people desiring God's view on the subject (from both sides of the issue)were to gather together in prayer to seek Him. Not in small numbers but in large numbers. It seems to me it would be a good place to start.

July 29, 2006 at 10:46 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Childish,

I agree that a massive prayer meeting would be beneficial to the mutual understanding of the two sides on this matter. I am putting you in charge of organizing this event. I would just suggest that in the fliers you make sure to specify, "No clubs, bats, brass knuckles, knives, shivs, or other weaponry."

...

July 29, 2006 at 5:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Whatever may need to be said is beyond understanding here. It is evident in the fact that when the gentleman named Jason mentioned the findings he has and how his orientation was not a matter of decision, the bridge to any resolution was blown. You see it is not about some set of reasons that many have made decisions in their walk with Christ, at least not by any set of defensible standards beyond the subjective realm. Rather it is through an ardous and painful task of living in close proximity to the holy that we reach a state of spiritual growth that alows for those without our same convictions to be seen in a more accepting and embracing light. If we were to simply state a case my whole argument would be dismissed out of hand and so I choose not to bring an argument, a passage of scripture or a set of historical references with which to prove my point. Instead I show you each other and my anonymous and by nature inadequate target as a means to accomplish the ends of the greatest hope in this world. If I seem ambigous or equivocal please note it is not by accident but as a point in order that you may taste a wider embrace that ackowledges all of the complexity and still seeks love and finds it in the person of Jesus.

Another blog brought to you by anonymous and his/her/its hommies

July 29, 2006 at 6:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One last thing, you should probably read the information of the opposing position and not use "straw men" that you can tear apart using the "approved" commentaries/persons responses on the issue. Also removing the stigma of right/wrong, acceptable/unacceptable, clergy/layperson, scholar/undergraduate student, no wait keep that last one. Get my point. In bias, we all lose... espescially a sophomore (wise fool)

July 29, 2006 at 6:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Big Fish... Small Pond

I shall swim elsewhere and bother you no more.

July 30, 2006 at 12:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One last thing. In accordance with the ministry and this discussion what sort of parallels can be drawn...

The news rocked the cycling world, already under a cloud following a massive doping investigation in Spain which forced several of the world's leading cyclists off the Tour.

"I know Floyd Landis, he's a good guy, he comes from a good family. If all this is proven, it will be a part of the tragedy that crosses this sport: Even good people are obliged to deceive," LeMond told Le Journal du Dimanche.

"It is cycling as a professional sport that represents the problem. It can transform someone into a liar."

Who are you all behind this mask of theology? Did you think only the one who blogs anonymously is the problem... who is the clown on your stage telling you the theatre is on fire... are you laughing?

July 30, 2006 at 12:39 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

For the sake of staying on track, I ask that no one respond to the above anonymous posts. I would just say to anonymous that if there is any value in his or her rebuke, we here will do our best to figure out what it is and appropriate it. Certainly seeing the other as other and not as a cheap and less successful version of ourselves is a skill in seeing we can all strive to acquire.

...

July 30, 2006 at 1:40 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Anonymous,
I'm glad we have had your infinitely wise perspective to guide us. What would we do without you to show us mere bloggers the true way, the “ardous and painful task of living in close proximity to the holy [sic.]”? I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but I do hope that we are trying in earnest dialogue.

To everyone who cares about listening,
I know that I have been forced to rethink the questions I have about homosexuality as normative behavior for Christians. Hopefully this discussion will continue helping us to hear each other filling our words with honesty and truthfulness while putting ourselves in a disposition of discernment and love. I think a discussion of the NT passages which refer to “homosexuality” is quite in order. Romans 1.18-23 is an often cited text and, as the whole book of Romans, often misunderstood. Jason, how do you understand passages like Leviticus 18, Romans 1; 1 Cor 6.9-12? I’m not trying to be patronizing, so don’t hear that. I really do want to know how these passages can be understood. Also, how does your faith in Jesus affect your life as a homosexual? How does it change they way you raise your son? Do you ever struggle with finding your identity in you sexuality more than in your Lord? Do you ever struggle with thinking your sexuality is a sin (regardless of whether or not you or I think it is or isn’t)? Again, I’m not asking to patronize, but to learn.

JD
You bring up an interesting point regarding homosexuals perceiving themselves as a “race.” I need to think more about this, though it seems that this argument would work against homosexuals like Jason. I have heard homosexuals compared to Gentiles in Acts 10, in that Gentiles were allowed into the kingdom because they should manifestation of the Holy Spirit. The problem with this argument is that everyone is a sinner and still shows manifestations of the Spirit. It is not as if Cornelius miraculously stopped sinning after Peter’s visit. He’s uncleanness as a Gentile went away, but this did not mean he was still a “Gentile” he was now part of the kingdom. Also, one of the (only) 4 concessions given at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 (abstain from food sacrificed to idols, blood, meat from strangled animals and sexual immorality [Acts 15.29]). From 1 Corinthians 6.9-12 it seems that homosexuality would be regarded as homosexuality, continued to be emphasized as sin even in the context of the conflicting issue of food sacrificed to animals. There is more to be said here, and more lexical work to be done from both sections of scripture, but I think historically and exegetically an appeal to Acts 10 seems out of place. Regarding homosexuals viewing themselves a “race” I think this would be unhelpful for the formation of Christian character for one to view their identity primarily through their sexual orientation.

July 30, 2006 at 4:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

As an OCC grad and as a Christian who is desperately trying to understand who God wants his people to be in an ever-changing world, I understand the desire for "Anonymous" to post anonymously.

While it's probably not intentional, OCC can be a difficult place for people that fit into a different mold than the OCC norm and people who are asking different questions or are coming up with different answers. While on one hand the OCC environment makes itself out to be open to all ideas and a place for discussion, on the other hand, everyone knows that the ideas one chooses to discuss and make public have very real implications for their ministry and family.

While it's a nice idea to be willing to put your name next to anything you say, maybe that's just not realistic in the given forum - people who work in very conservative churches discussing controversial issues (which they may or may not have come to a conclusion on) on the internet. If you're a pastor at a small church in rural Ohio who is struggling with whether homosexuality is right or wrong for Christians...would you be willing to post your name? Wouldn't it still be helpful (for everyone) to be able to discuss the issues? Shouldn't we as fellow Christians assume that someone taking the time to read and post a reply has something of value to offer even if he/she comes across as being defensive? Shouldn't we ask ourselves where this defensiveness is coming from and if we have done anything to contribute to that? Perhaps this doesn't directly belong on the homosexuality thread, but somehow it seems to relate. Hopefully these statements are helpful in some way.

July 31, 2006 at 10:52 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Yes, while I understand the points you've made, we (here at John 3:30) tend to frown on anonymity because (1) ideas do not come from a vacuum and knowing who is speaking helps us to understand not just why what is being said is being said but also what in fact is being said; (2) because anonymity can be a way to avoid responsibility for one's claims; and, most importantly, (3) because we wish to develop real community wherever we are (offline or on) and anonymity is antithetical to the vulnerability such community requires. While we do not forbid anonymity, anonymous bloggers' comments will not be taken as seriously for just those reasons. While the simple step of putting a name next to a post, i.e., Jane, is not much different from total anonymity, it does (1) avoid the confusion that comes from having multiple anonymous bloggers and (2) indicate some measure of willingness to move toward real community and thus real dialogue.

Peace.

...

July 31, 2006 at 3:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jane, I could not have agreed more with your statement. That is exactly why I do not put my name next to my "anonymous posts. It has always been a challenge to hold an opposite view than the norm at OCC and as a graduate also and one in ministry, I do appreciatte you putting that on the page. There are many ways to deal with these questions but requiring a name for "responsibility" purposes is like requiring jews to wear yellow stars for the benefit of society... sound familiar, or shall we say red hats as in the Merchant of Venice in order that they may have "their community" and us ours. So I now choose to state a name for the sake of community and to relieve confusion, it is... "Screwtape Proposes a Toast". This is to put those that disagree at ease and those that do agree at a humorous position of rest.
I hope this will allow you all to still answer/respond to the issues brought forth by my posts and not dismiss them to get "back on track" with the same issue. I propose people speak freely, and I would just say to Thom that I can bear responsibility but I answer not to you, here I stand I can do no other. Also I do hope that anyone that uses a pseudonym, such as Victor Eremita, Judge William, Hilarius Bookbinder, and Johannes Climacus, may still be taken seriously. You should probably know the above names.
Screwtape Proposes A Toast

July 31, 2006 at 7:16 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Thank you, Screwtape. Now we at least know that anonymous isn't more than one person.

I think your comparing one of my three points to Nazism is a real hoot. I think you failed to read the one point in the context of the other two. But I'm glad you're here anyway.

...

July 31, 2006 at 7:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"the norm at OCC..."

Pertaining to a view of homosexuality?

If so, what is "the norm at OCC" and why is it put in a negative light here?

I'm interested to know.

-tilpastudios@yahoo.com

July 31, 2006 at 8:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thom – thanks for the 3-point answer…kept waiting for the poem…ha. I didn’t intend to post another message, but I think there’s another side to each of your points that you’re missing. (1) While it may be helpful in understanding a statement to know the person, this could also be something that stands in the way of understanding. If someone has already been pigeon holed as being this way or that way, it may be very hard for anyone to hear him/her with fresh ears. Maybe we are more likely to weigh a statement’s truth-value if we don’t assume it’s valid or invalid simply based on the person’s identity. (2) Maybe anonymity can be a way to avoid responsibility, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be a way for someone to say something that otherwise they would not be able to. How many great people in history have used pen names for this very reason? (thanks, Screwtape for the Kierkegaard references) (3) Vulnerability doesn’t come from a vacuum either. If you’re going to allow anonymous posters, then allow them without making them feel like blogger scum. Maybe vulnerability and community will grow when respect is given and good intentions are assumed.

Tony - I'm not sure if that question was directed at me, but here's my take on it...

"The norm" is many things, and I'm sure they've changed slightly even since I was there. I would argue that there are behavioral norms (how people talk, dress, not being gay, etc.) and belief norms (baptism, evangelism, armenianism, inerrancy, etc.) Although I wasn't sure if my comment related to homosexuality at first, now I see that it does very directly. In my experience, OCC had a core group of people who all pretty much behaved the same and believed the same. But there are also people on the fringes, for whatever reason, who often are subtly made to feel inferior or simply ignored. As soon as someone steps outside of what is “acceptable” there are negative consequences, and therefore, there is a great amount of pressure to be just like everyone else. (Dr. Rumple is a great example of this at JBC) You may have no idea what I'm talking about, because it's hard to see unless you're there yourself. I think OCC has a million great things about it, but I think they have a real opportunity to embrace diversity in thought…something that has never been on the forefront.

As far as putting “the norm” in a negative light – that was not my intention. In itself, it is not a negative thing, but when there is no allowance for different ideas, people end up being isolated and/or shut out of community…something that is, in my opinion, at odds with Jesus.

August 1, 2006 at 9:29 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Jane-
You can make these blanket statements about what YOU think about OCC with absolutely no responsibility to them. Your jabs at Thom being the "norm" or whatever you’re trying to say, three points and all, are absolutely ridiculous, either you know nothing about OCC or you know nothing about Thom. I’m sorry for you. This is a place where people truly want to have a dialogue, but you keep taking this issue of homosexuality and making it about your anonymity. You keep making this about your hate for Ozark and its intolerance, or whatever. It sounds to me like you have some serious acceptance issues especially during your time at Ozark, if in fact you ever went to Ozark. I'm sorry for that. Ozark is not a perfect place, but before you go around bashing the community at Ozark you should take a look at what you’re saying. In order to criticize the communities for not being open-minded and honest you hide behind an anonymous name. You encourage people in ministry to hide their names, because it would be a bad thing if a Church found out that their leader was in dialogue concerning a pertinent issue in the Church. I too lead a Church, a group of people that make me face them every Sunday and be truthful. They won’t have niceties, they want the truth, what is more they need the truth, so do Churches in Ohio, and everywhere else. The problem is that people in leadership don’t want truth they want jobs and niceties to remain intact. I cannot ask myself if I or anyone else here had done anything to contribute to your defensiveness or understand it because I have no idea who you are.

Of course there are “norms” at Ozark. There are “norms” everywhere, but this does not mean that Ozark does not allow for diversity. I have very different beliefs from many of my fellow students and from my professors, but I have never been made an outcast or theological villain. Regarding your pigeonholing accusations, from where I’m standing the only ones being pigeonholed are us. We tell you who we are and instead of responding to what we say you just keeping typing to read your own words. Before you go and accuse JBC of making Rumple “feel inferior or simply ignored” you need to take a step back. (1) Rumple deceived JBC not the other way around. Rumple is the one who lived in deception for years, JBC never went behind closed doors to attack Rumple. (2) Rumple knew JBC’s understanding of homosexuality as a sin. (3) JBC is a villain for remaining consistent with her tradition. JBC is not a perfect place, it maybe wrong, but Rumple was certainly not Christlike in his actions. Aside from that JBC is not necessarily wrong. No one has yet to put forth a good argument, biblically or hermeneutically, as to how homosexuality should be considered an appropriate normative behavior for Christians.

Everyone-
This leads me to Jason’s statements. Jason, first, let me thank you for your honesty and dialogue. Your commitment to Jesus is evident. Hear my responses as my attempt to be faithful to Jesus.
You said in response to Lev 18; Romans 1; 1 Cor 6.9-12,
“I don’t believe these passages are used in the correct context most of the time. They seem to be used as selective examples as to what a Christian Is, yet texts alongside these verses are often disregarded completely. I also hold the view that women are equal spiritually to men and so are people of different race. (Wasn't that long ago this wasn't the case and I believe that homosexual people are the next area to be freed from discrimination in the church.) I worry that the church selectively picks what it thinks are boundaries/sins that define who we are as believers when I understand that the transforming power of Christ/Holy Spirit is what defines us. Along with the fruit we bear and the renewed mind that we have as a result.”
-What is the correct context for these passages? How have I missed Leviticus 18? How should these passages be understood? It is not appropriate to simply say, “I don’t believe” when for centuries the church has and the bible has been understood to say that homosexuality is in fact a sin. I don’t know how we are using these texts as select examples of what a Christian is. I cite these scriptures because they speak directly to the issue at hand, not because I want to point fingers. That is why I am in this dialogue to learn how to understand these texts.

August 1, 2006 at 11:33 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

IF these texts do not speak to homosexuality explain how that is so.

August 1, 2006 at 11:37 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tyler - I was not "bashing Ozark". I am thankful for Ozark, but it's a sad thing if we can't talk about areas where Ozark and the Christian Church as a whole might have room for growth. I'm afraid that you misunderstood the point of what and why I wrote. My intention was not to start a battle. I'll leave you guys in peace with your dialouge.

August 1, 2006 at 1:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jason, I want to chime in with Tyler and ask again,

"If these texts do not speak to homosexuality explain how that is so."

That's probably my most pertinent question for you. By no means do I want to minimize your response to your hermeneutics on these passages, but I can't think of any other resource that you could use to give validity for your lifestyle.

Another thing that I was wondering was how homosexuality affects your evangelism. The world has not fully embraced Christ (after 2,000 years), nor have they embraced homosexuality. It seems strange to me that a person whom you are discipling could turn a deaf ear to your choice of be married to another man while at the same time accepting God's truth.

I may not be very clear right now, please let me know

-Tony

August 1, 2006 at 5:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dear Jane,

You comment with such eloquence and insight that it seems as though I must have met you in a previous life... but we will wait to begin that dialogue in another blog, for I am quite certain it has no place in this one. Now with no further delay I do want to mention that this position that is held by Jane is the one that appears to answer many questions that OCC is asking itself; How can we reach those who are disenfranchised from the church and what does true community look like. It is best that we not make THE TRUTH something it is not, such as peer pressure from a list of dogmas or communities of dogmatic people. It seems that the greatest of all is still love and to not allow diversity in the midst of community seems to say that you can only be a certain type of christian or no christian at all. This may really put those of us who are too accepting into a category of the unsaved. Perhaps we should train missionaries to reach specifically the Mainline Protestant Churches that believe such things (this is a course that can be taught at OCC or maybe a degree program!!!)
I also want to say that I also love OCC nad am blessed with the chance to study under the professors and with students of all persuasions. It has helped me grow and to think for myself even though many of my professors may disagree with my positions on some issues. By the way the inference to Screwtape Proposes A Toast is that C.S. Lewis states, "Nowhere do we tempt so successfully as on the very steps of the altar."

August 1, 2006 at 6:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Also Tyler, I want you to hear this lovingly, but you may want to read the previous comments by Jane, for I am quite certain that the position was not comprehended due to your responses.

August 1, 2006 at 6:35 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

While I respect some of Tyler's points, I do agree that he could have read Jane a little more carefully. I am sorry, Jane, for any hostility you've felt here. Please offer us your forgiveness.

...

August 1, 2006 at 8:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I watched V for Vendetta tonight. It seems to have a lot to do with the recent discussion in this blog. Also from Thom's comment it seems as though he thinks there was a point being made by Tyler and I did not see one, rather only frustration and misunderstanding. Now, I suppose you will rush out and watch this movie so before you do let me please note that the minister of misinformation is who you say he is and may or may not be a mirrored image. Just a little tolerance for the pacifists and tolerants such as I. But I must warn you that "the voice of London" may sound awfully familiar and will hopefully keep you awake as it had done to me so many evenings. Selah and Shalom

August 1, 2006 at 9:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

“When questioning is banned, we are in the presence of idolatry.”

—Clark Williamson and Ronald Allen

August 1, 2006 at 11:27 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

You're preaching to the choir, Screwtape. This whole blog thread is made up of just the kind of questioning you claim OCC (or the Wachowski Bros. "voice of London") forbids. I'm offering you a chance to stop preaching against intolerance and start joining us in the open dialogue we've been having about and with homosexuals. Again, I am offering you a chance. Your barely intelligible, pseudo-prophetic potshots at this blog's alleged totalitarian bigotry do not have much of a future here. I sincerely hope you take my offer of the right hand of fellowship and join is in constructive dialogue.

Until then,
Thom

...

August 2, 2006 at 12:46 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the gesture, but unfortunately, Tyler's response only supported my point that anyone asking questions about Ozark / the Christian Church is often labeled as someone reacting out of their "hate for Ozark" or someone who only "types to read their own words." If I was doing that, I promise you, I could find much more fulfilling ways to spend my time.

FYI - I wouldn't consider myself someone with "serious acceptance issues", but someone who has dozens of friends who have invested their time at Ozark and left feeling disconnected and unsure of their purpose in ministry. I'm really sorry for distracting attention from the conversation on the homosexual hermaneutic, because I think that's an incredibly important topic right now. I really hoped to bring attention to not only the gay people who have been given no place in the church, but other individuals as well. My only hope is that those still at Ozark will watch for people who are on the outskirts of community, and for those of us serving other churches, that we would do the same.

August 2, 2006 at 11:59 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks Thom for your attempt to bridge the gap and insult me in the process, it has specifically accomplished what it intended and once again another person finds no within the OCC community and as Jane says, perhaps the Christian Church. As I mentioned previously it is this type of bigotry towards those that differ in their opinions or rub you too closely that limits your community from doing little more than producing fundamentalist lemmings without an idea of conscience or a context outside of the independent christian church culture. Guys I am done with this blog and will not bother you all again. Congrats and I hope you are succesfull at convincing yourselves of your preconcieved ideas.

Until Then,

Screwtape Proposes A Toast

August 2, 2006 at 3:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jane, Screwtape:
L'Chaim!

August 3, 2006 at 1:52 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Jason-
Don't think this discussion has been abandoned. I don't know what else to say until you respond to some of the questions I've asked. Do you have any questions that you would like me to think about?

August 12, 2006 at 9:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To: Dr. oops Mr. Thom Stark,
President of Thom’s Theological Studies and Bait Shop,
Joplin, MO
From: Mr. Tyler Stewart,
Pastor and New Testament Extraordinaire (of Thom’s TS and BS),
Joplin, MO.
Ref: On Temporary Assignment to Iraq and Afghanistan to explore possibilities of establishing an extension campus of Thom’s Theological Studies and Bait Shop.

Dear Thom,
Enclosed is the last of my interim feasibility studies about setting up Thom’s Theological Studies and Bait Shop in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
On a personal note, I thought this would be the biggest challenge of my life. I never dreamed of the day I'd have to admit I was almost wrong about something – the Iraqi people. They are absolutely amazing.
I tell you Thom, we can learn something from them. They got their women learned right. They're subservient to males and, get this, none are allowed leadership positions.
I know it's hard to imagine, much less see, but they're really more advanced then we initially thought.
These women already understand their role as God the Father intended them – cleaning, cooking and raising children. I have yet to see any of them running round screaming about wanting to be a Mullah.
Women here know how to dress modestly, wearing a burka, a loose-fitting garment covering them from their head to their ankles, with only a slit opening for their eyes.
When I get back to Thom’s Theological Studies and Bait Shop, I'm going to present to the Board of Regents a recommendation to adopt a similar dress code immediately. It only took me a few months to get rid of all of the godless, liberal women in the faculty – so this shouldn't take long.
Religious law is already the law of the land. They have "Law Enforcers" and I'm not talking "to protect and to serve." These people will open a serious can of whoop ass if you even think about bad-mouthin' religion.
Heck, Christian church conservatives look like liberals compared to the Muslim fundamentalists here.
For this reason, I'm not recommending a Theological Studies and Bait Shop be built here. Man, they're more Thomish than the Thomisites!
Thom, it saddens me to know I'll soon be leaving these people I've grown so fond of. It's probably the last place on the planet where they don't tolerate "Hellywood" movies, rap music, girls wearing skimpy tank tops, or people who vote Democrat, let alone all the gays in America. In short, forget everything you read in the Commie, anti-God, tabloid-puking press. This is God's country!
See you soon. Squeeze that cute wife of yours for me.
Tyler Stewart (God’s guy and Thom’s friend BFF)

August 13, 2006 at 11:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Probably the most inappropriate post I've seen to date. Is that what you were going for?

To add to Tyler's response, Jason, I'd love to hear from you about your interpretation of that list of texts I emailed to you. Your conversation would help this thread out a ton!

August 13, 2006 at 11:40 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

I think every theological library should have a bait shop! That's a really good idea. The Lawsons might actually read something!

....

August 14, 2006 at 4:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Needing a retreat from sermon preparation I decided to meander over to the infamous Mark Moore Blog. Upon doing so I came upon this lengthy homosexual discussion. Which, for the most part, discounting the latter entries, has been a thoroughly enjoyable conversation. Midway through, to my great shock and delight, I came upon a name I have not heard in quite some time. Jason McCheyne! How are you, my friend? For the rest of the blog community, Jason and I were good friends during my early years as a student at OCC. What a great time we had learning and playing Australian Rules Football! Truly a great game! Not only that but I still remember the numerous meaningful conversations we shared. Anyway, I wish to respond to one statement.

"I love OCC even though it has rejected me."

Jason, is it possible for us (myself and fellow colleagues at OCC) to "reject" the theological and moral positions that have and are guiding you without "rejecting" you as a friend and fellow human being created in the image of God? I pray it is.

August 15, 2006 at 4:06 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Jason,

I am sorry for the way you were treated by some at OCC. There are both judgmental and compassionate people everywhere one goes. I hope that the better and the best part of OCC is being represented here. You are always welcome, and you are warmly invited.

...

August 16, 2006 at 3:30 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Bill,

I thank you for your wonderful post. Your openness and honesty are a breath of fresh air. With you I "beg for patience and understanding on both sides of the issue." I struggle with the fact that a lot of the people on the conservative side (which has historically been my own side) do not have the patience to listen to what is being said. On the other hand, many homosexuals seem unwilling to hear any argument that might lead to the conclusion that homosexuality is not genetic. I do not claim to have the answers. I only hope to find and to distribute grace.

...

August 17, 2006 at 12:09 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoBalchFalseWitness.pdf

Read pages 10-19.

August 19, 2006 at 3:43 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Bill,

Thanks for your response, but pp. 10-19 of the essay I linked to above have nothing to do with anything you've discussed in your response. Remember that above I linked to the essay and said "Read pages 10-19." You seem eager to push a pro-gay theology agenda. In the process you're pushing me, a closet conversative, out of the closet.

...

August 19, 2006 at 12:12 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Read also:

http://www.robgagnon.net/Reviews/homoWinkExchanges.pdf

http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/gagnon5.pdf

This is an exchange between Robert Gagnon and Walter Wink mostly hosted by the Christian Century.

...

August 19, 2006 at 12:26 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Thom I can't access these articles for some reason

August 20, 2006 at 7:55 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

I don't know what the trouble is. I'm having no problem. Do you have adobe reader installed? I'm using Firefox. Maybe something's wrong with your IE. I don't know.

If you still can't access them, you'll have to come over for dinner and I'll read them to you with Chet Baker playing in the background.

...

August 20, 2006 at 11:33 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Looks like an anonymous comment was deleted from this post. Thank you. It was uncalled for and certainly not true.

August 22, 2006 at 11:36 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

If bloggers wish to critique some one or some group using this blog as a platform, they are welcome to do so, not as strangers but as friends. Critiques from strangers (who refuse from the outset to be friends) will not be heard.

...

August 22, 2006 at 5:29 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

I don't care what any of you say, Mark Moore is not gay!... j/k

I loved reading through the comments to this article. I for one have been very disappointed in Christian leaders and scholars who have taken a liberal approach to the Bible concerning this issue. The Historical-Grammatical approach is the best way to read the Bible, and when you look at the Bible through those lenses, it is hard to believe that homosexuality is correct. I think that too many Christians tip-toe around this issue instead of standing up for God in a loving way...

Both of my parents are gay. They know where I stand, and we have somewhat of a good relationship. I have learned that it is possible to love the person and despise the sin...

The Bible is clear from Genesis to Revelation: Homosexuality is a sin. Practicing it is an offense to God. Struggling with it b/c of love for Jesus is honorable, b/c you understand that what you feel is not God's original intent.

Too many people are concerned about feelings today... if I acted on every feeling I had, then I would be in jail. Most feelings seem to come from our flesh, and not from God... so just because someone feels that it is alright to be gay does not mean that is from God...

Just some simple thoughts...

August 24, 2006 at 1:05 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Caleb,

I do agree with one thing you said:

"If I acted on every feeling I had, then I would be in jail." :)

I think the notion of orientation is pivotal for this discussion, not "what the Bible has to say," because "what the Bible has to say" may or may not be relevant to our situation.

Where does this notion of sexual orientation come from? When did it begin to be used in debates on homosexuality? I think Gagnon argues (though I haven't read it yet) that the notion of homosexual orientation actually did exist back in the first century. This could be some fudging the evidence to sidestep the argument that Paul is irrelevant because Paul didn't have a notion of sexual orientation in his mind. But let's talk about that, if anything.

If humans do have something that is rightly called a "sexual orientation," how did humans become aware of this property? Is there any biological evidence for it? If not, what other evidence is there for it? What do proponents of "sexual orientation" have to say in response to those who claim that these matters are culturally conditioned? If both what we call homosexuality and heterosexuality are culturally conditioned appetites, is there any way for us to impose an additional culturally-conditioned moral scheme (the Bible and the communities that consider the Bible to be authoritative are a cultural conditioner) onto a different yet no less culturally-conditioned sexual orientation scheme? How do proponents of cultural conditioning explain the anomalies, the homosexuals that come up out of entirely heterosexual environments?

I doubt there will be agreement between both sides of the debate on all (or any) of the answers to these questions. But this is where the discussion lies, and should lie. The homosexuals here continue to assume that a "biological homosexual orientation" is a coherent concept. If it is, we might just have to revise our traditional readings of certain Scriptures in light of valid human experience. If it isn't a coherent concept, where does that leave the arguments from the homosexual side? Rather vacuous, I should say.

...

August 24, 2006 at 1:29 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Thom,

I understand your point...and disagree :) As one that was raised in the gay community, taken to gay bars when I was 6, taken to gay parties, raised by two lesbians, and also as one who has a gay father, I will tell you that "what the Bible has to say is very relevant to this point." Culture did not teach me that homosexuality was wrong... it taught me the opposite! I marched in gay pride parades with my culture. Not culture--- the Bible taught me that homosexuality is a sin. As a matter of fact, it is a starting point for developing one's point on this issue.

In my experience, the notion of sexual orientation has always been there. It did not just appear one day. It may not have been as obvious in previous generations because the tolerance was low, but it has always been there. I would say since sin has existed, so has confusion with sexual orientation... you can see it in Genesis, and it was even something that God devoted quite a bit of time to in the Law. It is another way that man pridefully rebels against God (knowingly or unknowingly).

I believe there will never be evidence of a gay gene... and if there is such a thing, it is merely a consequence of sin's contamination of the world. Scripture must always take priority over culture... not the other way around. This is not to mean that we are culturally retarded... but the Word always comes first. I wholeheartedly disagree that if they do find "biological evidence" that we should revise our readings of Scripture. If there is a gene that makes people commit adultery, should we revise our interpretation? If there is a gene that makes people more prone to kill, steal, or to rape, should we change our interpretation? Absolutely not. There is such a thing in the OT as unintentional sin, and even when people did not know they were sinning, God still counted it as falling short. The same would be true here.

To comment more on feelings: as humans, our feelings are out of wack. We share some of God's attributes such as jealousy, wrath, love, and so on. He is the only one that uses those perfectly, and we use them (at best) average. As we go through life, as we sin and are sinned against in various ways, those attributes are damaged even more... and so are the feelings that we rely upon too much.

What do I think about culturally-conditioned moral schemes... I think that the best weapon against any kind of sin is to 1)Love God, and 2) Love people... we love people enough to treat them as humans. We love our kids enough to teach them the true things of Scripture. We love our church enough to be up front about sin, and exhort them to godly living.

Do I believe that homosexuals will go to hell? I think that homosexuals who practice and do not care what God thinks do not have a love for God in their heart. On the other hand, homosexuals that struggle with sin as Jacob struggled with God... those people are true warriors of faith. Will they slip? Sure... but they honor God by striving for Him.

When witnessing to anyone, I usually do not start with the Word (though my beliefs, morals, and philosophy are all taken from it). As JP Moreland and William Lane Craig teach, I start with the existence of God... absolute truth... the reliability of the Word... the extent of sin... the claims of Jesus... but it is the Spirit that does the work...

August 24, 2006 at 5:05 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Hey Caleb (Rabbi!),

Remember that time we got the trailor jack knifed in your mom's yard?

Good to hear from you. Thanks for your thoughts here. God bless you! No word now on the topic, just wanted to greet this brother on this forum. God bless you all!

August 24, 2006 at 5:26 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Caleb,

What, in the first place, makes you put any stock in what the Bible has to say about homosexuality or anything else for that matter?


Jason,

1) What research?
2) Culture is a little bit bigger than one's immediate family.
3) We're working on answering your question. That's what my last few posts have been all about. I've been attempting to steer the conversation in that direction. However, you still haven't given any reasons (or any good ones) why we should believe that there is such a thing as "sexual orientation" and why we should believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth. That your parents were straight is not a reason. "Extensive research" is not a reason either; it is an adjective and a noun.

This is an invitation to hear from you. I want you and Bill and whoever else wishes to represent the pro-gay side to put forward arguments that can be evaluated by reason. I understand that you believe that a person's sexual orientation is fixed from birth. There are a great many people who share that view with you. But to just state that it is the case is to beg the question upon which this whole discussion depends.


To those on both sides who wish to call the other side sinners:

This discussion is dedicated to evaluating arguments. We seem to be struggling to make those arguments, however. I hope both sides can overcome their difficulties with that -- stop begging questions and start answering them.

If not, it may be time to shut up.

...

August 25, 2006 at 3:28 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Bill,

I do not wish to shut up. I just think shutting up is better than saying a lot of nothing. My comments should be interpreted as an invitation for all to speak, but to speak carefully and well.

Comments on Dr. Gregg's short essay:

1) It assumes the 3% Gay and 1% Lesbian statistics. It says that these percentages have been consistent "throughout history" and "in all human societies." This is an incredible claim. Researchers have no access to any such time period as "throughout history," and the idea that these numbers are consistent in every society has been contested above. Many places in Africa have no coherent concept of what homosexuality is. I doubt the researchers travelled to the Amazon tribes. There is just no way to say that. Even if it were provable that 3% of all males on the planet and 1% of all females were homosexual, one cycle of births and deaths could change all that. The research would have to be continually repeated.

2) Gregg's argument is that there is no homosexual gene, per se, but there are genes that carry predetermined sexual orientations (I-like-boys, which is for girls, and I-like-girls, which is for boys). Homosexuality is produced by an inconsistent chemical yield, where the a chemical reaction assigns the right orinetation to the wrong gender, or vice versa.

Gregg writes, "Since both options are genetically available, a selection process is taking place. This process selects which part of the genetic code will be expressed and which will be suppressed. Included in this are the genetically carried codes for sexual attraction. At the appropriate stage of development, the sexual attraction program is selected irreversibly. It is as irreversible as the selection between a clitoris and penis. It is not clear exactly what stage this particular selection happens. It is only clear that it does happen."

How the last two sentences can be reconciled with one another, I am not certain. I am no doctor, but it seems to me that not knowing when the selection happens is tantamount to not knowing whether it happens at all. If it were clear that the selection does happen, it would be clear what "happening" in this case would amount to, i.e., it would be clear what the chemicals are that determine sexual attraction. If these chemicals are known, when they do their work should also be known, for the two are indistinguishable. That the time of the reaction is not known is just evidence that the fact of the reaction itself is not known. The man seems to be fudging.

3) Gregg clearly is pushing an agenda because later he makes the claim that this chemical argument makes it clear that homosexuality is not a moral issue.

4) The moral issue aside, if we suspend our disbelief for the moment and allow Greg his chemical "proof," Gregg himself says that the point in development where the sexual orientation gene is selected "is the point where an error is made for homosexuals. The inappropriate program is selected." Gregg, as I said, believes that this should not lead us to make moral judgments about homosexuality. The error is not a "moral error," but a chemical one.

So, if we grant this picture (which I am not ready to for reasons given above), we are granting that the natural order of things is male-female, female-male attraction, and that male-male and female-female attraction is a perversion (in an amoral sense) of the natural order of things. In other words, we are accepting the argument from design.

My question to Bill, or to Jason, is this: Do you accept these terms, or do you wish to point us to another essay by another PhD?

Recapping the argument from Bill so far: sexual orientation is fixed from birth because, for one, Bill had two straight parents and he still turned out gay.

Is that accurate?

The issue of sexual orientation is still up in the air. There is more to be discussed. Many questions I asked above have not yet been answered. I stand by my conviction that this discussion hinges on the question of sexual orientation. If it is provable that persons are sexually oriented to be attracted to one or another of the two genders, we need to take that fact with us to our reading of Scripture.

However, a distinction can be made between an account of sexual orientation that says that homosexuality is an (amoral) chemical error, and an account of sexual orientation that says homosexuality is not an error but one possibility out of two. So far we have looked at one argument for the former and no arguments for the latter. In my estimation, which of the two accounts we accept in the end (if we accept either) is going to affect how much our reading of Scripture should be altered. If homosexuality is a defect, that is not inconsistent with the traditional reading of the Scriptures (some abuse granted). If homosexuality is not a defect, we have new information that the writers of Scripture did not have, and we should adjust our reading of Scripture accordingly.

Before the "conservative" side pounces on that last statement of mine, let's here the arguments.

...

August 25, 2006 at 12:15 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Bill & Jason,

I want to appreciate some things about you. 1) I am glad you are "out of the closet." Many people do not come out and nothing can happen from their. 2) I want to congratulate you on your study of Jesus and His teachings. My parents would not consider to do that, and that is a hard thing to do when homophobia is so prevelent within the church. 3) You have a great attitude!.. very loving and caring. Don't ever lose that! 4) You seem very smart, and are a thinker... 5) There is no harm in hearing what you and Jason have to say. I am excited to continue this dialoge...

Everything in me wants to say that this lifestyle is alright, and that you have found more love than most people have in a lifetime. However, the Word will not allow me to do that... I mean, say that this is an acceptable lifestyle and that your sexual orientation is correct. However, that does not mean that we cannot appreciate one another. From being raised in the gay community, I have a lot of friends who are gay, and we are still good friends to this day. They know where I stand, and I know where they stand. I have no idea who JD is, I have never met him before... my words that were posted earlier do not come from a fear or hatred of homosexuals. I am one who believes that HOMOPHOBIA is also a SIN. This is something that many Christians do, and they have no idea that they are sinning... The Bible says to fear 2 things: God and nothing.

I feel that there is quite a bit that I do know about homosexuality... because of my upbringing, and I lived a great deal of my life believing that it was okay.

Before I forget, let me make something clear in reference to something Mr. Stark posted. Am I calling you a sinner? Yes. Am I a sinner? Yes. Are Thom Stark or Brad Pitt sinners? Yes. The Bible says that all have sinned, and fallen short of God's glory. All sin is equal, and there is no one that stands above another at the foot of the cross.

With that said, I pray that you will know that I am speaking in love, and not out of fear, hatred, or anger as some do.

Now, you asked about my interpretation of the Scripture. How did I come to believe that the historical-grammatical approach is the best method? (and yes, to all others reading, this does have a lot to do with what we are speaking of) B

Because the New Testament was written in Greek (even though I do believe Matthew and Revelation may have been written in Hebrew or Aramaic) most people tend to view it through Greek philosophy. This is not all together wrong because I believe that the Holy Spirit chose specific words like "logos" to describe Christ... looking at it through Greek Philosophy isnot the best place to start. As a matter of fact, I think that if you start there, you will have somewhat of a distorted view of the Bible. So, the question is, where do we start?

Well... Jesus was Jewish, the OT was written by God through the Jewish prophets to the Jews, the NT was written by Jews (except for Dr. Luke), Matthew was written first to the Jews, God chose Israel as His people... perhaps it would be wise to start looking that the Bible through Jewish eye-goggles? I think it would be.

In the NT days, you had Saducees who only believed in the first 5 books of the Bible, but the overwhelming population followed the Pharisees, who did use the historical-grammatical approach. They took things literal. What about Jesus? He believed in things such as Noah, Jonah and the Whale, Sodom and Gomorrah, Abel, and so on. What about Paul? He taught that Adam was a real person through whom all humanity suffered death as a consequence of sin.

How did the latter authors of the OT view the events that were earlier in the writings... they supported them 100%, and did not debate... despite few grammatical errors made by scribes, the Bible is in agreement with itself. The authors of the Bible, as well as Christ Himself, seem to use the historical-grammatical approach.

I spent some time studying at Fuller Theological Seminary before I moved to Talbot School of Theology... and there was a professor there named Dr. Ray Anderson... very intelligent man, and I counted it an honor to take a class from him. However, he made one comment that I disagree with (but pertains to our conversation). He taught, "That it is the human experience that interprets the Bible, not the other way around."

Can I say I agree with half of what he said? Does the Bible interpret culture? I think that it does not, but the teachings of the Bible should not change based on a result of culture. The way we apply the Bible through ministry can change, but the teachings do not change.

I will read that article that you posted... and wanted to respond to some of your questions... I look forward to hearing from you.

August 25, 2006 at 12:48 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Caleb,

You said: "Before I forget, let me make something clear in reference to something Mr. Stark posted. Am I calling you a sinner? Yes. Am I a sinner? Yes. Are Thom Stark or Brad Pitt sinners? Yes. The Bible says that all have sinned, and fallen short of God's glory. All sin is equal, and there is no one that stands above another at the foot of the cross."

1) The something I posted to which I assume you're referring read: "This discussion is dedicated to evaluating arguments. We seem to be struggling to make those arguments, however. I hope both sides can overcome their difficulties with that -- stop begging questions and start answering them."

2) This was more a response to my brother JD than it was a response to you. (I did respond to you directly and am still waiting for a response there.)

3) Your point above that "we are all sinners" misses the point. The point of contention is not whether or not we are all sinners. The point of contention here is whether or not practiced homosexuality is sinful behavior. That question you did beg, at least within the context of this conversation.

4) Last time we talked you told me Alexander Campbell couldn't be trusted because he was a postmillennialist. This fourth point has nothing to do with anything here. I just think it's funny.

5) My question to you stands: What, in the first place, makes you put any stock in what the Bible has to say about homosexuality or anything else for that matter?

...

August 25, 2006 at 1:39 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Thom,

I have no doubt you are a smart individual. I have no doubt that you are also very philosophical in your thinking... but brother, there is such a thing as too much philosophy sometimes :) I understand your desire to moderate this conversation and so on, but let me say this: I hope that you are playing devil's advocate with your statement. If not, bro... time to go back to the classroom and relearn some of the basics... I am very philosophical with many issues such as the soverignty of God, free-will, end times discussions, and so on... but there are just some ethical issues in our culture that Christians have no idea what to do with. For some this is one of those types of issues. Your last statement scares me if you indeed are going to go into ministry or Christian education...

August 25, 2006 at 5:49 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Thom,

Re: Alexander Campbell

That comment about Campbell was a joke. I have a dry sense of humor... it would be like me saying "Al Mohler couldn't be trusted because he is Baptist."

Wait, can we trust Mohler......?

August 25, 2006 at 5:52 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Bill,

Your thoughts are clearly communicatied. I appreciate your honesty and openess. Your devotion to Christ evident as is Jason's.

Bill brings up a text commonly left out of these conversations where we are busy to turn to Leviticus and Romans 1, etc. Genesis is easily overlooked, when it should be foundational. Without bringing up another question, but rather using it to uphold the sanctity of male-female marriage, why was it not good for man to be alone? And why did God make female as his suitable help mate? (I don't deny that your sincere love is expressed to your partner as your concience says it's ok. All I'm saying is that these questions or better this fact that God made female as an ideal companion just about settles the subject it for me.)

Your brother,

Greg

August 25, 2006 at 10:40 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

By the way and since you asked. I am busy in full-time minstry to a Hispanic church on the border in Texas. Here I don't see the issue of homosexuality very much or at all. What I do see often is males and females cohabitating (living together). It's like an epidemic. I view that and homosexuality and lust and adultery and any other kind of sin as the same. That is where I stand from an exegesis standpoint and personal opinion experience. I have had gay friends in the past, right now you are my friends. I hope and pray that we all repent of all known sin as soon as we are to recognize it.

Your friend and brother,

Greg

August 25, 2006 at 10:47 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Here's an interesting article for sure from the internet's own free encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Naturism

Christian Naturism accepts neither the historical/grammatical approach nor the homosexual hermenuetic. It creates its own interpretation to justify its belief. Anyone here want to sign for some Christian Naturism?

August 26, 2006 at 1:42 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Christian Naturist use the imago dei defense as well. They also have arguments to defend the God-made clothing issue, etc. But I don't think I'll be signing up for this one. LOL

August 26, 2006 at 1:48 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Bill,

Thanks for your response. The post on the curious group of Christian nudists was not to deter the conversation from the issue at hand but (you nailed it) to show how many can interpret things differently. (And I would not argue that nudity in private or in the marriage bed is wrong!) I aline myself with the vast majority of today's culture in thinking and interpreting major scriptures and the majority of good church history's positions. I am willing to admit that the Bible contains mystery (I don't have all the answers). I am even willing to admit that the minority can shed light on and correct certain errors in interpretation and practice in the church (i.e. Luther, Reformation). This is all I have right now as an answer. Got to go to the church. Happy Sunday, all.

August 27, 2006 at 7:59 AM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Bill,

No one wants to alienate unbelievers. Neither can one compromise their conscience for a changing culture's sake. I'll rephrase my last post as this: I align myself with the overwhelming/ unchanging position of church history from its conception until now on the issue of homosexuality from a hermenuetical standpoint.
You're right about slavery. Though we can interpret that more as a employer/ employee relationship. We always must determine whether something is a universal truth or a cultural lesson. I don't think that the comparison of slavery/ women's lib and homosexuality is a fair one. I can agree with you on this: that alienation with God is to be avoided at all costs, so we must reach all groups of people with God's love, and not do anything to alienate unbelievers. So, while i align myself to the most of the whole of (I hate to use the word) traditional biblical hermenuetics, I would not align myself with any methods or actions that alienate others. That is wrong. And I apologize for others who intentionally or unintentionally do so. We can agree to disagree and still get along. One things for sure, in the end we'll have all the answers.

August 28, 2006 at 3:57 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Two things in response to young Mr. Fish. One is a question, the other a matter of nuance::

1) What is it about the comparison between slavery/patriarchialism and homosexuality that you think is unfair?

2) I am not as sure you that "the end" is going to be about our getting all the answers we think we need.

...

August 28, 2006 at 5:30 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Bill,

You need to be careful about saying that culture interprets the Bible... that is a dangerous statement. The Bible may mean different things to different cultures, but there is one true interpretation of the Bible... one true interpretation of Jesus' resurrection, one true interpretation of the Red Sea crossing, one true interpretation of Dan. 9:27, and so on.

If culture does interpret what the Bible means, then where do you draw the line? Who are you to say that it is true to interpret the Resurrection as literal, but condemnation of sexual offenders (Rom. 1) as "just for that time"? There are obvious things such as head coverings that are just for that time (it was only mentioned once), but something like homosexuality that is mentioned again and again...?

I believe this is where the greatest fault of your argument lies. You rely too much on culture, and not on what the Bible plainly says...

Caleb

August 28, 2006 at 5:39 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

To answer your first question young Mr. Thom, I think Caleb sums it up. On the other, I've never said this is a salvation issue. I'm just saying that we can't know everything until "the end." Then it won't really matter, but we will become clear on all matters (not just this one). That'd make a nice blog post: What will heaven be?

By the way, Thom, congrats on your marriage (a little slice of heaven on earth)!

August 28, 2006 at 6:40 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Greg,

I'm not sure Caleb summed much of anything up. The idea that any given passage of Scripture has only "one interpretation" is not only an unscriptural idea (scripture uses its own texts in many different ways), it renders the meaning of the word "interpretation" unintelligible. Besides that, Caleb did not answer the question I asked you. He didn't even talk around the issue.

For the record, I don't disagree with you that slavery/patriarchialism and homosexuality are qualitatively two different kinds of issues. I just want you to state your reasons for thinking so.

...

August 28, 2006 at 6:56 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Thom,

The idea that passages in the Bible only have one meaning is by no means "unscriptural." It is a very plausable belief. Many scholars have taught this including Dr. Darrell Bock, Dr. Grant Osborne, Dr. Roy Zuck, Dr. Harold Hoehner, Dr. Thomas Schriener, and so on. Many seminaries teach this view such as Dallas Seminary, Southern Seminary, Talbot Seminary, Columbia Biblical Seminary, The Master's Seminary, and so on. Verses my have different applications or may hint at different typologies, but in my view there is only one interpretation for any given passage.

To call that unscriptural seems quite uncalled for...

Also, I was making an observation about the theme of the past few blogs... culture...

August 28, 2006 at 7:51 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Jason,

Many of my friends are gay, and my mom and dad are gay... I know many people in the lifestyle.

August 28, 2006 at 7:52 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

By the way, Bill and Greg, thanks for your congratulations on my marriage. I am happy to be her husband. She makes for a great wife. She sleeps like an angel and wakes like a demon. A little slice of heaven, indeed. And a little dash of hell. I do love variety!

(I'm only kidding, of course. She can do no wrong.)

As for all this heaven stuff, I think the question of what we will be like or what we will know once we get to heaven is ironically irrelevant, since I don't believe heaven is "place" we go when we die. I believe the scriptures teach consistently that after the eschaton we will live on a newly created earth which will no longer be divorced from (i.e. blind to) heaven.

Boles' view that we will not have gender in heaven is, I think, wrong on two accounts: 1) We won't be "going to heaven" in the first place. 2) When Jesus said we would be like the angels he didn't mean we wouldn't have genders, he meant we wouldn't have sex. God created man and woman, and it was good. His plans for us are restorative, not transformative. I think the whole gender thing is a big deal. It is part of who we are and a part of who we're supposed to be. The fact that God made man two different genders is significant no matter how you slice it. I don't think this means, necessarily, that homosexuality is morally against the natural order (that may be, but that is not my question). It does mean that variety is a good thing. He could have made us asexual reproducers or homosexual reproducers, but he made us this way instead.

These are peripheral matters. I am anxious to hear from Greg why the issues of slavery/patriarchialism and homosexuality are not comparable.

...

August 29, 2006 at 1:48 AM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Bill,

What you named in 1 Timothy (women dressing up) is indeed a cultural thing... as is a women wearing a head covering. They are not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible excpet to specific communities. However, it is error to say that homosexuality is the same. All Biblical writers that deal with the issue agree that it is a sin.

If you'd like to talk history, I would love to. I love New Testament history, and the culture of those times... I practically have a masters degree in New Testament History from Fuller Seminary.

In this day, the Romans did not see a problem with homosexuality. It was practically a given that a man in high position would have a young boy he would visit. However, in the Jewish eyes (remember that we must interpret the Bible first through Jewish lenses) it was a sin. Why? Because God named it as a sin in the Law... Lev., Dt., 1 Kings, etc....

Jesus never specifically denounced homosexuality, but neither did He denounce child molestation! He used the Greek word "porneo" which is an unbrella word for all kinds of sexual immorality...

Some liberal scholars believe that Romans 1 just deals with the homosexual acts committed by the Caesars. No where in Paul's writing does he even hint at that... He does not refer to a select rich group of Gentiles when he deals with homosexuality... he deals with the sins of the Gentiles in this area as a whole.

Paul brings it up again in 1 Cor. 6:9 and alludes to it in 1 Tim. 1:9-10. John alludes to it in the end of Revelation.

Why do I bring up all of these references? Because this topic that is brought up by OT authors and at least 2 NT authors (Paul brings it up as sin in at least 3 of his letters) is major. It does not constitute a cultural interpretation. It was not just mentioned once to a specific audience... thereby, it is hard to see it as a cultural thing.

P.S., and if we get into the realm of church history... every major father or reformer has taught that it was a sin: Augustine, Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Wesley, Spurgeon, etc.

August 29, 2006 at 12:34 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Caleb,

For a guy who grew up in "the lifestyle," you don't seem to be demonstrating much knowledge of the standard arguments of homosexual hermeneutics. That makes sense, since your parents very likely had no use for homosexual hermeneutics. At any rate, let's try to listen to what is being said.

You said, "[I]t is [an] error to say that homosexuality is the same [as the issue of women wearing head coverings]. All Biblical writers that deal with the issue [homosexuality] agree that it is a sin."

But the argument from homosexual hermeneutics is not that what the Bible condemns as sin is not sin. The argument is that the kind of homosexuality that the Bible condemns as sin is not the kind of homosexuality Christian homosexuals are attempting to vindicate—committed, loving, monogamous homosexual love.

You said, "In this day [the first century A.D.], the Romans did not see a problem with homosexuality. It was practically a given that a man in high position would have a young boy he would visit."

This is simply untrue. Many Greek and Roman moral philosophers and politicians believed that homosexuality is an unnatural act. While male-child sex slaves were common among the aristocracy, that does not mean it was socially acceptable behavior. Many considered it debase and immoral.

The pro-gay interpreters are not arguing that the Jews did not view homosexuality as a sin. They are arguing that what Jews were talking about when they condemned homosexuality is something different from the kind of homosexuality up for discussion here. The understanding is that ancient Jews had no real concept of the possibility of committed, loving, monogamous homosexual love. The homosexuality Jews condemned was typically associated with paedophilia, idolatry, or promiscuity. No homosexual in Paul's day claimed to be a good Jew or a good Christian. There is no record of any attempt to reconcile homosexuality with the Christian moral paradigm. The assumption is that this is the first time in history this conversation has taken place.

You said, "Jesus never specifically denounced homosexuality, but neither did He denounce child molestation! He used the Greek word "porneo" which is an umbrella word for all kinds of sexual immorality..."

The question up for debate is whether committed, loving, monogamous homosexuality should be put under the umbrella of pornea. Pornea certainly meant promiscuity, incest, adultery, temple prostitution, paedophilia, bestiality, and rape. We are debating whether or not committed, loving, monogamous homosexuality should come under pornea in the first place. It is a question that the New Testament does not specifically address. When we are addressing issues that the New Testament does not specifically address, it is important that we come to the conversation with patience, attentiveness, discernment, and a commitment to being willing to repent of our position if it is demonstrated to be the wrong position. However nice it is that we are willing to love homosexuals despite their sin of homosexuality, that is not a commitment to really hearing what homosexuals are saying. Starting the conversation by saying, "You're wrong but I love you anyway," is analogous to saying, "With all due respect, everything you have to say is a pack of lies; but let's be friends anyway so I don't have to come to terms with my parochialism."

Now, I am not saying that we will never reach the point where we say, "You're wrong but I love you anyway." I am only saying that this conclusion is appropriate at the end of a genuine, reciprocal dialogue, not at the beginning of one.

You said, "Some liberal scholars believe that Romans 1 just deals with the homosexual acts committed by the Caesars. No where in Paul's writing does he even hint at that... He does not refer to a select rich group of Gentiles when he deals with homosexuality... he deals with the sins of the Gentiles in this area as a whole."

First, I recommend you cease with the use of the term "liberal" and its counterpart "conservative." The labels do more harm than good, and they are quickly losing their descriptive power as what was liberalism fifty years ago is today's conservatism. Your scientific method of Bible study (historical-grammatical hermeneutics) was at one time called "liberalism."

Second, no one here has argued that Romans 1 is referring to homosexual acts committed by the Caesars.

Third, your conclusion that Paul "does not refer to a select rich group of Gentiles when he deals with homosexuality" but that "he deals with the sins of the Gentiles in this area as a whole" is pure conjecture. How do you know who Paul had in mind when he wrote Romans 1? Were Gentiles "as a whole" homosexually active? Was every individual that rejected the Creator God a homosexual? Anyone who argues that they know who Paul is referring to when he speaks of "men lying with men" and "women with women" is pushing their pro- or anti-homosexual agenda. We can do all sorts of historical background studies to see what kinds of homosexuality existed in the first century Mediterranean world, we can look at samples of ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish conceptions of homosexuality and the moral stances they took toward it, but all of that work will not make it any clearer who Paul has in mind when he talks of men lying with men, and in what context such "lying" takes place. Moreover, all of this focus on Romans 1 for "Paul's view" of homosexuality is a red herring, since the point of Romans 1 is found in Romans 2. The argument against Gentile immorality was not one of Paul's invention. Paul hijacked the standard Jewish argument against Gentile immorality only to subvert it and throw the Jews into the same boat with the Gentiles. We do not know whether Paul actually approved of the argument he employed in Romans 1, since 1) it was not his own argument and 2) he employed it only as a rhetorical move to make a rather different point.

You said, "Paul brings it up again in 1 Cor. 6:9 and alludes to it in 1 Tim. 1:9-10. John alludes to it in the end of Revelation."

You clearly have not read very much in the literature of homosexual hermeneutics. These are typically considered the weakest texts to point to since the Greek is so ambiguous.

You said, "Why do I bring up all of these references? Because this topic that is brought up by OT authors and at least 2 NT authors (Paul brings it up as sin in at least 3 of his letters) is major. It does not constitute a cultural interpretation. It was not just mentioned once to a specific audience... thereby, it is hard to see it as a cultural thing."

You have given us no exegetical work for us to evaluate. We do not know why you think Paul's references to homosexuality should include every possible form of homosexuality or just the kinds of homosexuality that homosexuals themselves condemn.

The universal/cultural distinction is a waste of time, and it can be a serious distraction. Do you believe that killing another human being is a universal or a cultural issue? The question doesn't really make sense. The question we mean to ask is, What do you mean by "killing"? In other words, Is there any circumstance in which killing another human being might be deemed legitimate? I assume that your answer to this is that there are such circumstances, however regrettable they might be. Then let us frame the homosexual question the same way. What do you mean by homosexuality? Do you mean pure machismo translated into violent sex? Do you mean male temple prostitutes lying with male idol worshippers? Do you mean a man sleeping with his uncle? Do you mean a man sleeping with a man who is not his spouse? Do you mean a heterosexual who decides to try homosexuality on for size? Do you mean promiscuous or premarital homosexual sex? Or do you mean committed, loving, monogamous homosexual marriage? This latter one seems not to have been a consideration in the minds of the authors of Scripture. Is there any circumstance in which homosexual sex might be deemed legitimate? What would be the conditions for its legitimacy? In what ways might those conditions be any different from the conditions for the legitimacy of heterosexual sex? These are just a few of the questions that need to be taken into consideration when approaching an ethical dilemma.

You said, "[A]nd if we get into the realm of church history... every major father or reformer has taught that it [homosexuality] was a sin: Augustine, Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Wesley, Spurgeon, etc.

Do you know what else Augustine, Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Wesley, and Spurgeon taught? They taught that one of the ways Christians can express their love for their enemies is by killing them regretfully. Well, that's a caricature. They taught (some taught, some just believed) that when whatever state/kingdom you're in determines that it is necessary, love for enemy may be suspended and replaced with justifiable homicide for enemy.

Appealing to the authority of the fathers and the reformers has its place, but usually that appeal involves an appeal to an argument put forward by such authorities and not to a belief that was also the belief of nearly every man, woman and child contemporaneous to the authorities.


That said, Bill,

While Paul strongly opposed those who tried to enforce the laws of Moses on Gentile Christians, he never abandoned his Jewish identity, nor did he ever say anything to a Gentile church that amounted to "Don't worry about the Jews, your salvation is between you and God." Paul's whole ministry was dedicated to the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles because that was the Jewish story arc. Paul warned Gentiles not to be so confident in their new status as God's people that they forget the fact that they owe their salvation to the Jews. Moreover, every attempt in Pauline scholarship to interpret Paul's theology through a Greek rather than a Jewish grid has failed. Every attempt in Pauline scholarship to show that Paul believed the Jewish religion as a whole was based on legalism has failed. Paul was and remained a Jew. Judaism was not based on legalism any more than Christianity was. For Paul, Judaism and Christianity were not two different things. But, for Paul, that does not mean that non-Jewish Christians should follow Moses. Yet without Moses there would be no Christianity, so you cannot have Christianity without Judaism. In short, Caleb is right about one thing: Everything Paul said should be interpreted through a Jewish grid.

...

August 30, 2006 at 2:45 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

I'm with you on your presentation of the proper interpretation of the Sodom story. I have long held that sodomy should be how we describe capitalism, not anal sex.

...

August 30, 2006 at 11:42 AM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Thom,

There were a few things that bothered me about your last post besides the fact that it was more like a rebuke than anything and may I say sir that I think YOU are competely off base. First, I was trying to engage in a conversation with Bill.

1. I do understand homosexual hermeneutics. I understand it more than you think my friend... growing up in the Episcopal church and having a gay priest... I do. I understand what homosexual Christians are trying to vindicate as a loving relationship... and when it boils down to it, Thom, homosexuality is homosexuality. Do I want to say that it is alright for my mom to live the way she is? YES! However, I cannot... because even though there are different forms of this sin, it is still sin... just like lovingly stealing a candy bar for a child who has never had one is still a sin.

2. As one that has read books on Roman culutre I still contend that many Romans did see it as a way of life, as did the Greeks. Some Roman philosophers saw it as disgusting, but not all... and many politicians of that day were complacent with it.

3. You said "You're wrong but I love you anyway," is analogous to saying, "With all due respect, everything you have to say is a pack of lies; but let's be friends anyway so I don't have to come to terms with my parochialism." I don't see how this is for the end of a dialogue and not the beginning of one.

4. I will still use the terms liberals and conservatives because there are people that have a liberal view of the Bible and so on.

5. In reference to Romans 1, you need to go back and study! Rom. 1 does indeed deal with Gentiles, and they were more prone to idol worship and homosexual acts than the Jews because of the strict laws that the Jews had to live with. I do know who Paul was talking about... do you know how? Because I don't have to view the Bible in a complex way! I don't have to read into everything... there are some things that I do, and some that I don't.

6. The strongest Biblical argument against homosexuality is Genesis 1-2: God created man and woman. However, I will not count the words of Paul as weak... people may read around them because they are so blunt... but they still stand true. I would like to hear from Bill about his arguments...

7. Homosexuality is homosexuality whether it is violent sex, loving, temple prostitutes, or so on...

8. My point about the church fathers was to show how they have complete agreement with the Biblical authors...

I think this is going to be my last post. I was trying to have a conversation with Bill and wanting to know his thoughts. I do not need someone to mediate my words, and I have come in the end of this conversation instead of the beginning. Please excuse me if I am playing catch up with some of my questions or so on. Also, I am sorry if my view of the Bible is not as philosophical or deep as some... I have come to comclusions about this matter quite a while ago Thom... you know why? I have asked myself all of those questions.

The point is, that if you are going to enter into a conversation with someone who already accepts the Bible as the Word, then you will ask some questions about Scriptures... I want to hear BILL's view of these Scriptures.

Bill, if you want to continue, my e-mail is: calebwilds1@yahoo.com

Later

August 30, 2006 at 12:52 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

I'm not sure I know what you mean by the term "philosophical." I don't recall ever requiring you to be more "philosophical" in your approach to the Bible.

I'm sorry to see you go, and I'm sorry you took my words as a personal insult. When you called me on the phone (a gesture I still appreciate) I told you I was glad you were a part of the conversation. I still am. I just ask, even if you have heard it all before, even if you have already come to a conclusion, for the purposes of this discussion that you be willing to suspend that judgment until all voices have been thoroughly heard.

One ought to save the conclusion for the end of the dialogue, after all arguments have been measured, because that's the definition of a conclusion.

Peace.

...

August 30, 2006 at 1:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I thought that this quote from the website of the one that started this discussion be placed on the blog. Ode to the one that comes before us bearing much truth and wisdom... so where do you measure up in the quote that follows? Tolerance of intolerance has its limits and for the God's sake let's be honest with ourselves, for our language certainly betrays us!

"The closed-minded need not apply

Zero. Most commentators have already made up their minds on the issue of homosexuality. This is understandable, and expected. “The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it.” Out of Context is really not for such people, since for them debate on this issue is—and we really do regret this is true—pointless. While we encourage those who have already decided where they stand on this issue to listen and remain open to the possibility that they might not be right, we are not hopeful that any Spirit-led change for them is likely. If you are dogmatic in your beliefs, if you have made up your mind before engaging our writing, or if you are closed to any new information or ideas on this issue, then this site will not have much for you. Even the most convincing, insightful, and clear writing and thinking on homosexuality, no matter who it comes from, won’t change your mind because it conflicts with your already-established viewpoint, and as such is easily dismissed.

There are people, however, who recognize that the received negative teaching on homosexuality from certain churches could, just possibly, not be taking into account all the relevant information available today. This site is for them, and we welcome them to engage with the writing here to develop their own opinions, rather than simply taking at face value what their churches are saying.

The central argument—it’s not about sex

One. The arguments which will be presented in this site hinge on one thing, and one thing only—and that thing is not that individual identity depends on acting on one’s sexual impulses. This is not where we’re coming from.

It is simply this: for biblical writers the idea of sexuality—now recognized as an actual phenomenon—had no meaning, because they simply were not aware of it. When we talk about homosexuality today, are we talking about the same thing that the ancients were writing about? When we talk about a heterosexual or homosexual orientation, are we mentioning something that, say, Paul is writing about, or does Paul have in mind something else which has been mistaken by later translators and interpreters as being about homosexuality as we understand it today? In terms used by biblical interpreters: applying the historical-critical method honestly, as we want to do here, is the main goal.

This is the central thesis of this site: not the ability to express oneself sexually. If you don’t think that sexuality exists (that is, you reckon that everyone is born straight, is really attracted to the opposite sex, and is just engaged in “homosexual behaviour” because they feel like it, or are just wanting to be different, or God has “given up” on them) then, again, you’re not going to be impressed by much on this website. We, like a number of theologians and exegetes, and almost every professional psychologist in America, believe that sexuality does exist, and that, moreover, it is a gift from God. Trying to understand what this means in the context of the worldview of the biblical authors is our goal, and as such, an openness to the possibility that sexuality might indeed exist is more or less necessary to get anything out of what we’re writing about. We’ll provide more than exegesis on this site; we believe that the opinions of professionals in psychology and other social sciences regarding human sexuality are relevant to this discussion, even if certain people choose to ignore or disparage such research.

The debate and who is engaged in it

Two. The debate on homosexuality has been going for a while, but mostly outside of the Stone-Campbell movement. How long it has been going on for is, quite honestly, irrelevant if people inside that movement (church-attenders, students, ministers, teachers, writers, opinion-shapers) are not engaged in that debate, and from where we are standing this was not happening till very recently, if at all. If it had been, recent events connected with writings on this site might have been less dramatic.

That said, there are plenty people writing about this, and we definitely encourage anybody interested in finding out more to seek out the literature, from both sides of the debate, which tackles it (a bibliography will be coming to this site in the near future): any discussion at all is better than no discussion. Sadly, it is the latter of these which has been our experience to date: many people in the Stone-Campbell movement have been challenged for the very first time by the ideas contained in this site. We are aware of two main reasons for this. The first is that most people we have engaged with in Stone-Campbell movement churches don’t want to talk about gay people, period: it’s an uncomfortable issue, they don’t know any gay people, and it’s pretty much a closed topic for them anyway. The second is that anybody who wants to seriously engage this with an open mind in most churches is, by and large, prevented from doing so—because dissent from the received wisdom is invariably met with, at best, coolness and distance, and, at worst, outcry and demonization. And who wants to be treated like that?

We don’t pretend that there will be startling new insights on this site not found elsewhere in published writings. But what this website will do is to bring the discussion squarely into the Stone-Campbell movement. That almost all of it can, if one takes the time to look, be found elsewhere is not quite as important as the fact that it will come from people who have experienced first-hand the struggles involved in being gay and wanting to serve God in Stone-Campbell movement churches. One more voice may, to some, not be important. But a voice which people are hearing adds to the discussion in a way that a voice not being heard cannot.

Where does theology come from?

Three. How do we read the Bible? As has been pointed out elsewhere, this issue divides down many different lines. But it’s not quite as simple as “modern day experience” versus “biblical experience.” Scripture is one of four main sources of theology: the others are tradition, reason, and, yes, human experience. For some it’s only Scripture—and nothing else—by which they derive theological truth, but such a viewpoint is definitely out of sync with mainstream thinking. Why else would we be given the capability to reason at all? Truth is not only “revealed”: it is also “discovered,” and discovered truth comes from reason and human experience.

We do not take human experience as our pre-eminent source of theology. But we do take it seriously. A central goal of exegesis is to decide what in Scripture is universal truth, and what has a temporal application, and this has occupied theologians since even before Paul. Human experience, reason, and the Holy Spirit told Paul that Jewish food laws, which were part of tradition and Scripture, were not central to the Christian faith. It is not our purpose here, however, to suggest that human experience and reason override Scripture and tradition on the issue of human sexuality. We maintain that in fact, Scripture, taken in its proper context, cannot be construed to suggest that homosexuality is against God’s purpose. Keep reading for further articles on this to be published in later months.

Callings don’t excuse anything: but this doesn’t need an excuse

Four. Ministers don’t get exemptions from following God’s purpose for their lives merely because they’re doing good elsewhere. This is obvious. And equally obvious is that a calling to serve God does not “entitle” anyone to ministry. But a calling to ministry, if it is genuine, must be followed if we are to trust in the Holy Spirit, and the response to that must be in equal measure to the strength of the call.

If we did not sincerely believe that Scripture has been taken out of its proper context on the issue of homosexuality then we would indeed be rationalizing the behaviour of ourselves and of every gay man and woman. But if there is truth to what we are saying, then no rationalization is required. Any statement which proposes that gay people have been made to be just as they are is therefore not rationalization, but reasoned argument. We would suggest that readers await the forthcoming articles on this before jumping to any conclusions on what we might write."

If you skipped to the end you are not worthy of commenting!

August 31, 2006 at 1:31 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A finishing remark from the honorable DOCTOR OF NEW TESTAMENT John Rumple

"The kind of thinking which we have addressed here is typical of many commentators and writers who really only want to defend what has become an entrenched, traditional doctrine about human sexuality. This, we believe, is entirely counter-productive to the goal of a reasoned debate between people of differing views. We understand that this is a “hot-button” topic for many. Opinions are strong on both sides, and we do not pretend that we don’t have a view which we wish to share. However: we intend to do this through providing solid exegesis, thorough deliberation, informed scholarship, and thoughtful prayer on these issues—without these any study of human sexuality will fall short. We hope our readers maintain an open mind and proceed in faith in engaging with us: the attitude of “Seldom Wrong, Never in Doubt” may offer a form of certainty reassuring to some, but, in our opinion, cannot lead to real learning or communication."

Originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, John Rumple has lived and studied in various cities throughout the US and Great Britain, while traveling to additional locations in Africa, Papua New Guinea, and Central America for mission work. He was ordained into Christian ministry at the age of twenty-one, and has continued to serve in local churches throughout his academic career.

John pursued biblical studies and homiletics at Johnson Bible College (Knoxville, Tennessee), receiving a bachelor’s degree in preaching and a master’s degree in New Testament. He was valedictorian of his class, and was both junior and senior class president. His studies continued at Emmanuel School of Religion, where he received a master of divinity degree, writing a thesis on Colossians 1:24.

His interest in translation theory and grammatical analysis of the Bible led him to continue his academic work at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics in Dallas, Texas, while serving with Pioneer Bible Translators. Following this, John was accepted into a PhD in New Testament Language, Literature, and Theology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, under the direction of Professor Larry Hurtado. He will this year complete his dissertation on the “cross saying” (Mark 8:34, and par.), which explores its preservation and function within earliest Christianity.

"John has made a break from the church tradition which originally ordained him, deciding instead to present information which he hopes will lead to the full inclusion of gay people into the Body of Christ. He found the love of his life five years ago, and has committed himself to loving and serving Christian Hoffland as his spouse."

from the website
http://www.outofcontext.us/

August 31, 2006 at 1:39 AM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

I agree we must reconcile the O.T. and N.T. I the NT we see some Christians struggle with Jewish traditions and the Gentile inclusion. You alluded to the clean foods. They worked through that. But we never see any mention of working through these ideas of yours. I think that if homosexuality (in any certain form) was acceptable in either the OT or NT, there would have more verses refering to it in a positive light or instruction on how to keep these relationships holy, etc. This is all the commenting I have time for right now. Blessings all!

August 31, 2006 at 3:47 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Also, the Lev. 18 & 20 "if a man lies with a man as with a woman" is certainly not a reference to ritual in my opinion. I have not researched other early church traditions contrary to the two you mentioned, but do I lie with my wife in a ritualistic way? I also don't know why there is no mention of lesbiansim until Rom. 1, but that does not change what is said. I defer from Thom's opinion of Rom. 1's rhetoric focus, but we can wait for that later.

August 31, 2006 at 3:54 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Above Caleb said something that I think is a mistake, but it's not one at all peculiar to Caleb. (I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm singling Caleb out here.) Nevertheless, he said, "Homosexuality is homosexuality whether it is violent [. . .], loving [. . .] or so on."

I think this is a mistake that we have all made, myself included, and pointing it out may help us to get further along in our dialogue than we've been able heretofore.

I want to quote John Howard Yoder, from an unpublished paper submitted to a seminar on homosexuality at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, Elkhart, probably March 18-20, 1982 (the entire essay, entitled "History and Hermeneutics," can be found online @ http://www.nd.edu/~theo/research/jhy_2/writings/home/ind-sex.htm).

------------------------------

1) I need to ask about language; what constitutes an argument? "Homosexuality" is a reification; i.e., by forming a word ending in "-ity" language assumes that we have created a thing. To show this just test the word "bipedality." This is the quality of having two feet. It includes birds and most humans, and a few robots, but that does not mean that the entities we would group under that heading have in common enough to enable us to reason logically about them all.

2) For the sake of conversation our use of language must be self-critical. We must ward off ideology, i.e., the bending of language to make a point we already know. One can be self-aware in correcting for one's own bias, asking especially "what would count as an argument on the other side?"

3) We should be concerned to defend the outsider, the underdog, the victim. This does not mean that the weaker party is always right (any more than the poor are always more virtuous). The positions of underdogs are often skewed by backlash, overcorrection, compensation, and by their usually arguing in terms borrowed from the oppressor.

4) Part of this corrective predisposition should be more awareness of the special situation of the unmarried, who are excluded from some kinds of socializing by standard heterosexual family models. It is not sure that such constraints against the single are not correlated with the origins of some homosexual inclinations.


These considerations do not tip the scales on the question of truth, yet being careful about them relates to the truth of the process. We can't learn if we don't restrain our lunge toward too easy certainty, at least by looking for evidence on the other side.

I should acknowledge as a special limit the fact that I have had little personal contact with openly homosexual individuals. I am not sure that the ones I have known are representative. Nor am I convinced that having had a redemptive religious experience, which is testified to by a minority of persons (on each side of the debate), ratifies the ideas with which people interpret themselves to themselves and others.

I have seen no reason to back away from the primary thesis of my exposition in 1978, so I must state it here first. There is no such entity as homosexuality. That "one meaning" is assumed by all the parties to the debate:
- by ordinary lay usage;
- in gay advocacy;
- when some counselors promise a "cure;"
- when some people read the Bible.


Language trips us up in general; that is the simplest level of the need for "hermeneutics." Check on definitions.

The technical term "reification" labels the fact that we lump together as "things" of the same kind phenomena which have only some characteristics in common. In my 1978 paper I laid out at length that:
- what strong men in prisons or military camps do to weaker men;
- what strangers do with each other in public restrooms or gay bars;
- what mature men like Plato did with beautiful boys;
- what two persons of the same sex and values want to do by living in one household voluntarily;
- what the men of Sodom in Genesis 19 wanted to do with Lot's angelic visitors; . . .
are not merely different forms of the same thing. They are quite different realities, in most morally significant respects.


Naive use of language trips us up in general. Even more is this the case when we deal with "scripture," which status gives the words special status.

------------------------------

In other words, Yoder is arguing that homosexuality is a word we have created that forces us to think about several very different kinds of activities as essentially the same kind of activity. He is calling us to be aware of the limitations our language puts on our capacity to conceptualize. He is reminding us that the naturalness of thinking that homosexuality is homosexuality whether it is violent, loving, promiscuous, etc., is a "naturalness" that is really derived from the controlling power of language and not derived from any essential property in the different activities themselves.

Imagine describing a sex act in which a man forces himself upon a woman (rape) as an act of heterosexuality. That strikes me as a bit odd. While it is technically true, I guess, it doesn't add anything descriptively relevant to the situation. We wouldn't ordinarily so describe a rape because it wouldn't serve any practical purpose for us. Yet lumping all acts of male-male sexual relations under the one heading of homosexuality is very practical for those who presume that all acts of male-male sexuality are equally detestable. It's a way to limit our conceptual possibilities. It forces us to put rape right next to consentual, affectionate sex, right next to promiscuous sex, right next to paedophilia. It's all the same: it's all homosexuality.

The word "homosexuality" is not one we learned from the Scriptures.

...

September 1, 2006 at 3:50 AM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Surely your example of an approved relationship is not David and Jonathan?

September 1, 2006 at 10:04 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

I've no doubt that the example of an approved homosexual relationship is David and Jonathan. I've heard the arguments for this before and they are generally a waste of time. I have a male friend who I have loved in a way that could be described as greater than love for women. Yet it is not homosexual love. We have held each other and wept. We were attached at the hip. We consider that we are soul mates. But none of this is properly described as sexual attraction. I never desired to touch him in a sexual way. The same is true of him. We were friends who were closer than brothers. That is all. And that is the case with David and Jonathan.

However, Bill's extensive discussion above is certainly the best we have seen so far in this whole dialogue. My question is, if male-male sexual intercourse is a ritual uncleannes derived from ritual acts of sex (its being situated next to the prohibition against sacrifice to Molech an argument in favor of this), what does its being situated next to acts of incest and bestiality indicate. They do seem to be in one category without a clear distinction between ritual or moral uncleanness. The distinction may be under the text in the context, but it is rather difficult for me to conceive of the ancient Israelites understanding and/or being aware of that distinction themselves. Hermeneutically, if the audience wouldn't have been equipped to make that distinction, the distinction probably isn't there.

At first I thought the absence of lesbianism in the Old Testament could be explained by the fact that the detestability of female-female relations would be assumed given the detestability of male-male relations. But Bill I think has a good point. Lesbianism isn't mentioned because, in context, what is being described is specific sexual acts between men in worship of false gods. It is possible that this explains the absence of lesbianism. And of course, in the time of Paul, female-female sexual acts were also being put to work in the worship of false gods. That could explain its inclusion there. But there is nothing conclusive here. There are just possibile explanations for something for which we will never have a certain explanation.

I would challenge, Bill, your use of a dictionary to define your words (detestable, defiled, abomination, etc.). Dictionaries can be helpful, but they can also mislead. How a dictionary defines a word today does not insure that is how a word was used four years ago, let alone four thousand years ago. Four thousand years ago, people didn't have dictionaries.

That being said, I am eager to hear your responses and your further arguments.

...

September 1, 2006 at 11:22 AM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Thom,

I have decided to enter the conversation again... mainly because I feel that I balance you out a bit :)

This post is to you, and not to Bill, though I invite all to read along.

You said, "Yet lumping all acts of male-male sexual relations under the one heading of homosexuality is very practical for those who presume that all acts of male-male sexuality are equally detestable."

Your post really concerned me. In the world, when Christians are struggling with homosexuality, they are not worried about "defining the terms." I mean, what are you really saying through the argument of this post? You are saying that loving homosexual relationships are not the same as violent homosexual rape or so on... fine, but it is still homosexuality. God views all sin as equal...all sin is detestable in the eyes of the Lord. True, there are different punishments and consequences for different sins, but all sin leads to the same end... death. All sin leads us further away from God.

I believe your argument does more to hurt homosexual Christians than it does to help them. Have you counseled many homosexual Christians and people struggling? I have... and I will tell you that the best thing to do is to help people understand that sin is sin is sin is sin... and my telling a person "well, what you are doing is not defined as actual homosexuality, but it is sin" does not help them at all. We are dancing and philosophizing around the subject. People need to understand that sin has offended God whether they feel that it has or has not.

Bill,

I will respond to your Levitical verses in due time...

No hard feelings,
Caleb

September 1, 2006 at 5:48 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Caleb,

Thanks for posting. This isn't about "hard feelings." There will never be any on my side.

Unfortunately, you keep missing the point I'm making. That's all right. After one last attempt, I'll just stop making it. Those who get it will keep on getting it. Those who don't won't.

It is evident that you are here to preach your position, not to have an actual conversation. While I respect your position and your heart for strugglers, this thread is dedicated to a discussion of homosexual hermeneutics. The point of this dialogue is not to announce our positions on the matter but to evaluate one another's arguments.

You keep saying that homosexuality (every form of it) is sin. Many here agree with you, but that is not the point of this dialogue. The point of the dialogue is to bring the conventional assumption that all male-male sexual relations is sinful into question. Those who believe it is sinful are suspending their judgment for the sake of hearing those who claim it isn't, and those who believe that loving, monogamous homosexuality can be God-honoring are (or should be) suspending their judgment on the matter for the sake of hearing those who claim the contrary.

If you can't understand that that's what we're trying to do here, perhaps another venue would be appropriate for you. But this is an invitation for you to join us in the kind of conversation we're attempting to facilitate. For the purposes of this conversation, neither side is right or wrong at the outset. If you don't have the patience for that sort of thing, that's respectable. I know you're a zealous, fiery sort. I admire that and thank God for that. But it isn't entirely appropriate here.

Peace.

...

September 1, 2006 at 8:35 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Bill,

I will respond to your Levitical stuff soon... perhaps you could post some of your repsonses to NT verses... I know you have some of that on your blog as well.

Thom,

hmmmmmmmmm.........

Caleb

September 1, 2006 at 11:43 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Re: David and Jonathan.

That sure is reading between the lines at a high level. I SUPPOSE we can do that with a lot of things and bring out our own conclusions (i.e. eisegesis).

However, David, a man after God's own heart, had his dose of sexual sin-- everyone can agree on that. Adultery, and polygamy.

God does not approve of multiple spouses though, treatment in the OT is silent, with the exception of good first examples (i.e. Adam, Abraham, etc.) In the NT we start to see God's definitions. (Similar to the whole lesbianism thing we were talking about.)

One thing all this does prove is that WE ARE ALL SINNERS.

September 2, 2006 at 7:55 AM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Bill,

Thanks for your thoughts. I don't think the conversation is sinful at all, and I am not one who condemns homosexuality... I preach what I believe the Bible says, and I do it in different ways (this setting is different, and I would be much more easy going behind the pulpit). If anything, I am one that does not believe that in this country in the social discrimination of anyone is good. I just wonder where we draw the line between reading "too much" into the Scripture and then where we should be honest and upfront with what it says. I will post my thoughts on Leviticus tonight...

Greg,

Hey man, sorry I did not say hi to you. I do well remember when you and the young Corey Scott left a huge dent in my mother's lawn... she remembers as well. How are you? I looked through your blog and saw all that you're doing and your pictures! Congrats.

Thom,

hmmmmmmmmm.....

Caleb

September 2, 2006 at 3:21 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Bill,

Thanks for your post. By the way, I do not believe baptism is for salvation :) I also believe in eternal security and I am premillennial in my view of the end times...and I believe in a pre-trib rapture... oh no! :) So I am pretty much a "black sheep" of the Christian Church/Churches of Christ.

Bill, I appreciate your feelings and so on... honestly, I am not use to dealing with Christians who have made up their mind that homosexuality is alright... I am use to dealing with people that are convicted that the way they are feeling is sin... I truly am very different with them than I am here... but I guess sometimes I have a blind and arrogant expectation for people that have studied the Bible hard to come out the same on some major issues (not all of the issues).

I just want you to know that. I am very interested to know how you interpret the Bible and how you have come to the fact that this is an acceptable lifestyle in God's eyes.

I will list the Levitical stuff tomorrow. Tonight we celebrated my wife's B-day, so I have not had time to do anything. I will tomorrow...

With tired feeling b/c I need sleep,
Caleb

September 3, 2006 at 1:04 AM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Bill,

Before I am out, I do have a question. How does the concept of "feeling" add to your argument? I mean, do you believe that the majority of our feelings are sinful? From birth, we think of only ourselves, and I believe that the average person will look out for No. 1 before anyone else...

We can have feelings to do some pretty crazy stuff at time. A husband can genuinely love another woman in an inappropriate way... but his feelings are filled with love. I can have a feeling that I want that new laptop, but is that the best decision for my family. I can feel that it would be a good thing to beat up someone that attacked my cousin... but does that validate my feeling? Does that make sense? Are our feelings a solid point to add to our argument one way or another..?

Caleb

September 3, 2006 at 1:24 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Caleb,

Good questions. Did your decision to marry your wife have anything to do with your feelings?

...

September 3, 2006 at 3:06 AM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Bill,

I read your comments on Leviticus, and I think that some of my comments are best saved for the NT portion of your argument as they will tie back into the OT. I do find it hard to believe that most of the verses you listed have to do with ritual behavior and so on... but, as I said, I will dive deeper into that soon...

By the way, the Crocodile Hunter died tonight. Yes, he is gone... was killed by a sting ray while diving...

Bil... I just wanted you to know that I love the movie "9 to 5." It was one of the funniest movies I have seen. Do you like some of my other favorites? Waiting for Guffman, Spinal Tap, Best in Show, Birdcage, The Lost Boys, and 80's movie?????????????

Waiting for the NT argument,
Caleb

September 4, 2006 at 1:46 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Mark,

Welcome. I have a friend who also used to struggle with homosexual desires, but is now quite happily married to a woman. He clearly is not a homosexual, and he, like you, attributes his former homosexual desires to childhood deficiency. He also believes that homosexuality is culturally formed.

However, I'm with Bill on this one. There are plenty of so-called homosexuals who had perfectly normal, even pleasant childhoods. It's a mistake to attribute something as broad as "homosexuality" to one source, or even to one range of sources. There are a lot of people who were sexually abused as children who did not turn out to be homosexual.

But don't quit struggling just yet. I appreciate your post, and you are most welcome here.

Bill,

What is your source for all of this exegesis you're doing? You seem to be pulling the majority of what you're writing here straight out of a book or something. I'm just curious which book or something. Part of good scholarship is citing your sources, so your readers can now where your ideas are coming from.

...

September 6, 2006 at 6:29 AM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Bill,

Thanks for the history lesson, however that's all it was in my opinion. Paul is tough to interpret sometimes, even Peter said so, but how could so many scholars and Christian misinterpret something like this? To say that they all got it wrong is kind of odd. If I supposed that Mary Magdalene is representing the sacred feminine/ goddess, and cited a bunch of possibilities why, I'd be Dan Brown, and besides getting a lot of flack for such wild interpretation and reading into things that which simply is not present, I'd make millions. The Spirit's inspiration in Paul's writing has to be such that the whole of history cannot misinterpret it without the insight of http://www.jeramyt.org/gay.html,
http://www.jeramyt.org/papers/paulcybl.html, http://members.aol.com/gunnyding/christ.htm, and
http://www.godmademegay.com/. What you provided is nice supplemental background material, but not solid, concrete, factual evidence for saying Paul was speaking of those cults only. He addresses false teachers elsewhere in clarity. I appreciate your friendship here, and looked forward to reading your post on Rom. 1, but came away unconvinced of any point you tried to make. I am tired, but thinking clearly. Other than an interesting read, in my humble (and objective) opinion, it's not enough. Peace.

September 6, 2006 at 10:32 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Greg,

Two questions (one of which contains several):

1) You said, "The Spirit's inspiration in Paul's writing has to be such that the whole of history cannot misinterpret it without the insight of [blah, blah, blah]." What does this mean? What is "history" that it is an agent of interpretation? What do you mean "inspiration"? What constitutes "misinterpretation"? What if www.jeramyt.org is right and the so-called "whole of history" is wrong?

2) What is an "objective opinion"?

One comment:

You're a weisenheimer. You state that Bill's "history lesson" (a derisory remark) is unconvincing, but you don't tell us why. You make an easy yet ambiguous comparison between Bill and Dan Brown, and go to bed. Now, I'm not saying you don't have good reasons for being unconvinced, but you owe them to Bill, and to all those whom you might wish to convince to be unconvinced by Bill. Understandably, you're too tired tonight to give it much time. I hope you can find some soon.

That's my "point of view from nowhere." Peace.

...

September 6, 2006 at 10:54 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Bill,

I am still here... just very busy. I will post some thoughts and comments on your NT references tonight... especially on the Greek words.

Caleb

September 7, 2006 at 9:50 AM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Bill,

I too want to comment about your second NT post, which I must admit was better constructed. I like Caleb am super busy right now. No time for play, less time for heavy exegesis outside of the normal work load. I wish I could devote more time and effort, but I'll have to see what I can do.

I appreciate your time here, and your testimony of your childhood upbringing. I too had heard that a high percentage of gays had childhood problems, etc. We cannot say that is true for all, for sure.

September 7, 2006 at 2:05 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Bill,

I never meant to come across derisive TOWARDS you or anyone.

Thom,

Upon evaluating all of my comments, I don't think you can conclude that I'm a "wisenheimer" or derisive. While I probably was too tired to post anything that night, my point was one of hyperbole-- The Dan Brown comparison, case in point. Just as you can read into my comments in earlier posts and come up with way off base conclusions we can do that scripture interpretation. Where some speculation is needed reading too much into things is called eisegesis.

All,
I've made it a point not to research outside material and just mull over these things in my own thinking, until this point. It is obvious that Bill is well quipped in his thinking on the issue, and can cite others that hold to his view. (Augustine cannot be a proponent, I suppose he is working out some acquired guilt from his days with prostitutes).

As stated, I have been too busy to do a lot of research. But today I did a quick search, and reaffirmed some conclusions I was making in my own thinking. Whereas I never would claim to hold the perfect/ inerrant interpretation on everything, (Who can but God?), I can be sure of my salvation, my sinfulness, and other things like that. Even though past interpretations are helpful, the Bible as God's revelation should trump history, culture, and social/ political issues, and certainly experience as a hermeneutical aid.

That said, on to the discussion at hand. Borrowing other's material is acceptable on this blog, and who has any original ideas anyway? If something is truly original, probably should be discarded. I'll cite just one source who in turn has cited in his books and studies many others, and has had the time to devote himself to defending the traditional/ orthodox/ whatever you want to label it view. He deals with all the issues we've touched on here and some we have not (Creation, Natural vs Unnatural, Slavery comparison, Law, Sodom and Gomorrah- angel flesh, Paul- temple prostitution even, Jesus, etc.). Robert A. J. Gagnon, Associate Professor of New Testament Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, has already been mentioned on this blog. (Thanks, Thom. I had to check back on previous posts to see that. You're a step ahead of me on this one.) I found his site to be very informative and scholarly. While one can never agree with everything another person thinks or presents, I found myself on track with his views as he refutes differing ideas. The articles I selected to read and/or skim over all the others were the following:
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoRogersResp2.pdf- deals with temple prostitution and 15 reasons I think, against that interpretation.
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoKrehbielResponse.pdf- slavery comparison
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoJourneyTogetherCritique.pdf- a longer piece with nuggets of insight, helpful table of contents.
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoNeilElliottResponse.pdf- response to an alternative view of Rom. 1 in relation to emperors of Rome.
I’m still exploring some more of this stuff. Many of you have probably already checked out some of this material as well as Joe Dallas’ material. (By the way, how can someone like Mr. Dallas be called close-minded with his experience?) These men want to be bold in their beliefs, but certainly not offensive in any way. The church faces a challenge at the present time, and in the future as history’s stance and the biblical stance on the issue are called into question.

Let’s not be naïve about how objectivity is at best attempted, but never fully attained. We all have presuppositions that we bring to the table of objectivity. And it will take more than a “30 days” episode or a host of blogs to have everybody come to a consensus. We won’t ever. But we can live with, as one of our catch phrases says, unity in what is essential, liberty in non-essentials, and in all things charity or love. Let’s struggle to understand what this means and entails, but always err on the side of love.

September 7, 2006 at 9:59 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Bill,

I'm still here. It's just the weekend, so busy, and my in-laws just flew into town. But I'm still here. I totally agree with you on this which you said: "It [the Word of God and His saving grace] is there for all people..."

Gagnon has a 3 hour lecture that encapsulates his message available at www.texascoalition.org/Tape1.mp3.

I still have 2 hours to go on that one. And if I expect Bill to listen to it, I need to at least read 'gunnyding.' So I'll be swamped as this is all extra curricular, and the in-laws are down visiting. I may be on the backburner a little.

September 10, 2006 at 11:19 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Brother Bill,

I don't know how you find the time to do all this posting. I totally agree with you on the seek and save the lost statements. Real quickly a question for you: Is it unfair to ask why a monagamous/ loving relationship with my mother (for incest example only) is taboo for everyone across the lines, and other core values of sexuality are not. Why is incest so far removed when Biblical treatment is equal or less?

September 12, 2006 at 2:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...

HISTORY AND HERMENEUTICS
By John Howard Yoder

[Unpublished, 1982. Contribution to a seminar on homosexuality at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, Elkhart, probably March 18-20, 1982.]

I agree with the planners of this event that in a study like this it is important to study the history of the issue, and hermeneutic questions, since they predispose how the conversation will proceed.

Yet I do not agree that matters of "presuppositions" can be done first, "done" and then left behind as taken care of. They stay with us through the debate.

I have been assigned to analyze some of the abiding unresolved issues, some from the distant past and some more recent. In so doing I shall intentionally not review the more fine-grained analysis I was asked to do in the course of the MMA study process in 1978-79. I intentionally do not attempt to preview and speak to the other presentations planned in the course of the rest of this conference. I have also renounced returning to biblical issues. I have accepted the assignment with some express misgivings about its place in the rest of the program.

One report of the shape of the question was the statement that "the denomination would not be so troubled by this matter, if only the theologians would speak." I.e., two assumptions are at work:

a) people would be glad to be told what to think.
b) something decisive could be said on purely theological grounds.

Such an idea is not consistent with a biblical or Anabaptist concept of the Church. It is wrong to think that the theologian, either by training or by office, can or should settle matters. "Theologian" is a mantle that covers a multiplicity of ministries, none of which is the queen of the church.

For now and for here, the first need is consistent fair play. "Semantics" does not mean "playing around with words," as some impatient pejorative usages of the term (not unknown in these conversations) suggest. Semantics is the ministry of liberating our conversation from conformity to the oppressive powers that destroy communication. Cf. James 3 on the dangers of the tongue.

There are some special stakes which I can identify, once my role is defined as advocacy in favor of valid dialogical process, not on either side of the "homosexuality" debate.

1) I need to ask about language; what constitutes an argument? "Homosexuality" is a reification; i.e., by forming a word ending in "-ity" language assumes that we have created a thing. To show this just test the word "bipedality." This is the quality of having two feet. It includes birds and most humans, and a few robots, but that does not mean that the entities we would group under that heading have in common enough to enable us to reason logically about them all.

2) For the sake of conversation our use of language must be self-critical. We must ward off ideology, i.e., the bending of language to make a point we already know. One can be self-aware in correcting for one's own bias, asking especially "what would count as an argument on the other side?"

3) We should be concerned to defend the outsider, the underdog, the victim. This does not mean that the weaker party is always right (any more than the poor are always more virtuous). The positions of underdogs are often skewed by backlash, overcorrection, compensation, and by their usually arguing in terms borrowed from the oppressor.

4) Part of this corrective predisposition should be more awareness of the special situation of the unmarried, who are excluded from some kinds of socializing by standard heterosexual family models. It is not sure that such constraints against the single are not correlated with the origins of some homosexual inclinations.

These considerations do not tip the scales on the question of truth, yet being careful about them relates to the truth of the process. We can't learn if we don't restrain our lunge toward too easy certainty, at least by looking for evidence on the other side.

I should acknowledge as a special limit the fact that I have had little personal contact with openly homosexual individuals. I am not sure that the ones I have known are representative. Nor am I convinced that having had a redemptive religious experience, which is testified to by a minority of persons (on each side of the debate), ratifies the ideas with which people interpret themselves to themselves and others.

I have seen no reason to back away from the primary thesis of my exposition in 1978, so I must state it here first. There is no such entity as homosexuality. That "one meaning" is assumed by all the parties to the debate:

- by ordinary lay usage;
- in gay advocacy;
- when some counselors promise a "cure;"
- when some people read the Bible.

Language trips us up in general; that is the simplest level of the need for "hermeneutics." Check on definitions.

The technical term "reification" labels the fact that we lump together as "things" of the same kind phenomena which have only some characteristics in common. In my 1978 paper I laid out at length that:

- what strong men in prisons or military camps do to weaker men;
- what strangers do with each other in public restrooms or gay bars;
- what mature men like Plato did with beautiful boys;
- what two persons of the same sex and values want to do by living in one household voluntarily;
- what the men of Sodom in Genesis 19 wanted to do with Lot's angelic visitors; . . .

are not merely different forms of the same thing. They are quite different realities, in most morally significant respects.

Naive use of language trips us up in general. Even more is this the case when we deal with "scripture," which status gives the words special status. My objection to the wrong assumption of univocality is clear in my 1978 argument.

I can only stay by this hermeneutic task if I set aside other tasks which are also important. I accept the naturalness of the resentment of those who want quick partisan answers. There may sometimes be quick partisan answers which are right, but if so, that will have to argue on the basis of other considerations than the kind of questions I have been asked to be careful about. I have not seen that any depth of intensity in pastoral communication that I have seen people testify (counselors or clients) to has made them more insightful about semantics. Intense conviction makes some people less patient with semantics.

The best way to work at the hermeneutic task would be to pick up for analysis a particular exchange, unpacking how people talk past each other, in a particular body of literature, or a real debate (like the ones planned for this week). But I can't do that now, since I have been placed at the beginning of the conference program. Therefore nothing of what I go on to say here can be based upon what I think someone will say in this meeting.

The word "history" in my title marks the recognition that all cultural practices take on their meaning from a context, usually one with a long past. Sexual ideas and practices have many dimensions, and these, too, are subject to change over time, and to variation from place to place.

That there are such variations does not prove what is right or wrong. It does however weaken any case people make for "consensus" or for what seems to be "natural." This history has not been well researched for very long, although it is now being given much attention. The recent very scholarly history by Boswell surfaces a large amount of information that is new to many of us, but more data does not necessarily dictate more clearly the lines of its interpretation as to what was right or wrong or why.

Here I only lift out a few elements which may cross-reference to our present discussion, especially at points where the cross-references are negative, i.e., where the surface meanings on some other time or place were different from what we assume.

In archaic and classical Greek culture, there is abundant positive documentation of love between males. It was assumed that the strong mature male would be bisexual, loving both beautiful women and beautiful boys, both involving the esthetic drama of pursuit and courtship. For a man to court a beautiful boy was purer than loving a woman. Yet a beautiful boy, when he grew up, should stop being used in that way, unless he became a prostitute, which was a special legal status, subject to taxation, and in this case he could not hold office.

There were arguments among philosophers then about the comparison of heterosexual and homosexual love. Most debates concluded that love between men is more pure than heterosexual love. Nowhere in all of this discussion do we find the notion that some persons are specifically "gay" by nature.

It seems that there was a correlation then, as there probably is now, between urbanization and sexual variety. Rural mores leave less room for varieties of behaviors, not only because there are fewer people but also because they watch each other more closely. It is, of course, mostly urban culture of which we have some record, yet most people in the ancient world did not live in cities.

History recounts waves of anti-homosexual legislation, correlated with clashes within and between cultures, provoking a general tightening-down. The first such wave is in Roman legislation during the 6th-7th centuries. Justinian recorded laws 533, 538, 544. The Visigoths taking over Spain c.a. 650 did the same, pressuring also the Jews.

Usually these measures were not driven or supported by clergy. Some of the victims of Justinian's laws were bishops. The Visigoths who did it in Spain were not yet Catholic. There is nothing about homosexual practice in the Frankish laws, developing around the same time and becoming more weighty later with the impact of Charlemagne.

There is one earlier exception to the pattern just reported from Boswell. There was a much earlier vision, particularly for clergy, where everything connected with the flesh is morally dubious. We find that in Chrysostom, Augustine, Lactantius all desire is morally dubious, and all excess desire is wrong. Heterosexual desire and pleasure were also dubious, essentially regrettable, but condoned for the sake of procreation. Homosexual expression did not have the excuse of procreation; perhaps also because one man has to play a feminine role, unworthy of a man.

The next cultural wave, in the other direction, brought a new openness in Western Europe. It was led by clergy, even especially religious, such as Alcuin, and Anselm of Bec and Canterbury. Aelred of Rievaulx was an abbott, a most passionate poet of love. The advocacy of love stood in tension with the warnings against "particular friendships" which dominated the monastery since Benedict. The list includes bishops Ralph of Tours and John of Orleans, 1098, and the soldier Richard of the Lion Heart.

This new wave of documentation may not mean that homosexual romance was more current; it may only have been expressed better, recorded better, advocated by more prominent people. For some of these men, the love was explicitly not physically consummated (as was also the case for the heterosexual courtly love of the time), although very passionate.

In the face of this wave of poetic passion, we observe clear pastoral moral warnings against love being vitiated by excess, intemperance, obsession, addiction, abuse, hedonism. Yet these dangers are no greater than they are for gluttony. They are not as bad as usury, and not as bad as heterosexual promiscuity, which produces offspring.

Peter Damian (1051) undertook his own strong campaign against homosexuality in his Book of Gomorra. Yet bishops and princes were reluctant to implement discipline.

The 13th century records another tightening of the rules. What was permitted in 1250 became subject to the death penalty by 1300. This coincided with greater consolidation of central governments, and with the campaigns against new heresies (Alibegenses, Waldenses) and old minorities (Jews). Some think that the Crusades heightened xenophobia. At first, homosexuality was not condemned distinctly, but only as a part of disciplines against all hedonism and sensuality. Anti-Islamic enthusiasm prolonged the anti-semitism and the xenophobia; Islamic sexuality was thought to be unbridled and bisexual. The negative view of matter ascribed to the Cathari could be correlated with a preference for nonprocreative love.

From then on the matter seemed settled; little more change was brought by Reformation or Enlightenment (the same is the case for the status of Jews and women). Christendom was a monolith of church and state, as well as an intellectual monolith. That included a solidified definition of "nature," a settled meaning of words like "Sodom," and a standard zoological wisdom.
In the light of this history, those who hold overt homosexual genital behavior to be wrong need to fill out the case they are making beyond the level on which it has usually been put, so that we could know in the midst of the conversation what would count as evidence for or against it. Many have been assuming that the rejection of such behavior has always been a part of the Christian moral teaching, or at least of conservative Christian moral teaching. It is evident from Boswell's data that such is not the case. There have been times when some elements of Christian social leadership cruelly repressed homosexuals (as there have been times when they did it with Jews, or Anabaptists) and other times when they were quite free. Any argument based on the assumption that it is defending the only tradition against an odd modern intrusion is therefore a mistake.

We turn next to the development of a notion of "nature" as it arose and settled down into a standard nest of hermeneutic problems. Already in Thomas Aquinas "nature" has four strands of meaning.

- our human "nature" is partly what makes us different from other creatures; reason, culture, learning.
- our "nature" is however also partly the organic substratum which we share with the animals. It includes the procreative function of sexuality. This argument serves to prove monogamy and to reject gluttony.
- a different animal substratum is the "flesh" or "drives" which we should restrain or even reject, rather than giving in to them. This too is "nature."
- but "nature" is also a set of limitations which make me me, even if less than ideal. A woman, for instance, has her own "nature," which in contrast with man is weak. Some are less musically gifted, or less athletic, than others. Some humans are racially inferior but they should not try to change that, but accept what God has given them to be.

In all of this there is nothing of the modern "gay" concept; i.e., that a same-sex preference is a constitutional (normative) given, which could be appealed to as expressing a divine creative intention (gift). If such ideas had been thought through, the first place it might have been applied would logically have been to affirm the dignity of women. Or of other races.

But most thought about "nature" went overwhelmingly in the other direction: human nature is the animal procreative potential; the same reasoning pattern which in Vatican doctrine still counts today against contraception. Or it is the "drives" of the "flesh" which moral values must struggle to control.

Neither the Bible itself nor the history of Christian thought delivers to us a firm concept of the "nature" of an individual, as at the same time a given (i.e., unequivocally there, defined) and gift (i.e., normative, revealing God's will for that person). It is still possible to hold that that idea is true, but it must be argued on other grounds than self-evidence, or than the history of the concept or of mores. If we somehow knew (on some other grounds) that such a definition is correct, then we would have to use it as a critical grid to screen the actual record of the history of ideas, to see why so many concerned writers did not discern that, and whether any of the times anyone came close to it the "gay nature" in question was not bisexual, or celibate, or cultic.. There seem to be no clear cases where the two themes on which most accent lies today obtain:

- that gayness is one's "nature," given by God and therefore normative to be lived out;
- that two persons of the same sex would enter a lifetime monogamous covenant whose meanings, except for the genital, would be parallel to those of bisexual marriage.

The argument "my nature is to be gay: since God made me gay that is what I should obey," cannot claim deep history, but how about its logic? The notion may run parallel to other appeals to nature, as when arguments for the just war appeal to the nature of the state against the teachings of Jesus, or when arguments against contraception appeal to physiology, or when a man who beats his wife says he can't help it. Is my "nature," as morally imperative, discernible as God's original intent? Or is it not fallen like the rest of creation? How does having a "nature" interlock with moral learning, from the Apostles' calling their readers to cultivate virtues, to modern theories of moral learning?

An additional set of questions lie there in the sources without our being clear about what to do with them. These questions are neither in the texts, nor in our own minds, but in the space between, which we might call "social hermeneutics." When we know that something is bad, what do we do about it? In Leviticus, people doing bad things were to be killed. Unruly children were to be stoned by their own parents. The moral/civil/cultic orders were all one; anything bad was to be "cut off," with a score of capital offenses listed in the Law.

Our culture has rejected most of that, and few in my audience would want to revert to the mix. Many sins are not criminalized by the state, and some things that the (respective) states punish are not sins. Most religious communities and most governments agree that most of the time the state should not enforce religious morality when offenses in that realm do not threaten the social order.

In most churches, most of the vices the NT lists are not formally sanctioned by exclusion or open shame. In our families, even those who claim that the Bible calls for spanking do not advocate the death penalty for unruly children or for married couples who have intercourse during the wife's period (Lev. 20:18), or for a priest drunk on duty (Lev 10:8ff).

We should face the fact that much of the touchiness and sense of threat about this subject is not about any damage done by atypical genital behavior in itself, but about power and social control. It is sometimes a phobic reaction, even though those who coined the term "homophobia" to describe it did violence to the rules of language.

Interlocking with the debatability of modern notions of "nature" there is a similar set of questions about the concept of "self." Our culture seems to promise that everyone can, and even to command that everyone should, find self-fulfillment. This commits us to assume that all normal people have (or can or should have) a heterosexual self, such that heterosexual marriage will be fulfilling. Or do we want an older, more complex notion of moral decency, not promising fulfillment to everyone, so that everyone could be happy, (and derive the definition of how to be happy from an inventory of who they are) but only asking that it be possible for everyone to live within the rules and stay alive, within the constraints, the restraints, and the sacrifices which the divine law lays on us all (many heterosexuals cannot be fulfilled either)? Those would lead to two different kinds of argument, but most of the recent debate posits self-fulfillment as both a possibility and a duty.

These two visions mix in an authentically confusing way, in discussions about whether homosexually inclined people can be "healed." If the argument against the moral legitimacy of homosexual practice is that previously homosexually inclined and active people can become happily heterosexual, that is a very ambitious promise to make, and it bases the argument not on the Bible or basic ethics but on debatable records from hard-to-document clinical experience in unrepresentative settings. Like all counseling and ethics based on self-fulfillment, it formulates its gospel in terms that are subject to empirical invalidation. If (e.g.) the claim that heterosexual activity is supported by counseling records, to the effect that three out of eight previously homosexually active persons can be transformed into happy heterosexuals, this makes the news even worse for the other five.

In a similar sense there is a semantic puzzle when some say that what they reject morally is not a homosexual "nature" or "inclination" as such, but only the corresponding "behavior." What does it mean to say that I have a "nature" which it is wrong to live out? For the heterosexuals the claim is that the "nature" legitimates the life.

We need further precision in what people think that a certain percentage of "cures" proves. If the case for the legitimacy of homosexual expression were based on the claim that one who is homosexual by nature can never change, then the proof that one or a few can change undercuts that generalization -- but only for a few, perhaps even hardening it for the others. If, on the other hand, the basic moral claim is not taken on the basis of experience, and especially not on the basis of the kinds of experiences which can be produced in the context of very intensive moral guidance and pastoral care, then the argument is far weaker. Then it means only that some individuals who try very hard to do what they believe to be the will of God, despite their weaknesses and disinclination and tastes and habits, will find their inner psychic life growing toward fitting their moral duties. That is an encouragement which it would be our charitable duty to support wherever it obtains, but is no longer a basis for a moral claim on the others. This is one of those points where those who appeal to "cures" are often not clear about what they are claiming.

...

September 14, 2006 at 3:49 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

I don't think the sin of Canaan was either incest or homosexuality. The traditional interpretation has always been that the sin of Canaan was that instead of covering his father's nakedness, he exposed his father's nakedness to others. In other words, he was mocking his father, and his two brothers were more respectful. It's a shame/honor thing, very significant in ancient cultures.

I do agree with you, Bill, that the purity codes of the Mosaic system were about politics and community formation. I'm not sure to what extent that excludes questions of moral absolutes, however. Bestiality, for instance, while certainly politically disastrous for incipient Israel, seems also to be a straightforward crime against nature.

Incest was not a ritual activity. But your argument that incest was proscribed because of its disruptive effect upon the family is a good one. However, that would not obtain if I were to marry my mother after my father had died. Yet such a marriage would still be illicit. So the question cannot be answered simply from a situational perspective. There is a moral ingredient beyond consequentialism here.

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September 14, 2006 at 6:18 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

Bill,

You basically know how I feel by now. No need for me to rant. I will say this as my last comment (as you said, due to business and many a blog and more non-blogging to attend to in so little time): 1)I don't think you're a nut. 2) I don't think you have a dumb sense of humor- I laughed when I read your hetero joke. 3) I think I'll remember this blog discussion experience for a long time. 4) I hope your family can begin to be more loving towards you. 5) I will pray for you, and hope that you will pray for me in return.

All,

That is all I have to say. This will be my last post on this thread. As we move on, we must all remember (here comes the cliche) to keep the main thing, the main thing. Keep the Lord first in everything! Blessings to all.

Greg

September 17, 2006 at 3:10 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Bill,

Thanks for your good post. I think I can assure you that the silence here is in no way analogous to your experience with your cousin. Most of us are busy with a heavy academic semester. Some of us don't have anything significant to contribute.

Peace.

...

September 17, 2006 at 4:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bill,

You have hit the nail on the head. It is with much satisfaction that I read this for the truth is well known. The early church existed with many differing theological voices and was happy to allow the dialogue until Constantine forced Athanasius' hand. Sadly the church today does not seek to do the same, even those claiming a restoration plea.
My comment from this point forward is to the owner of this blog, Mark Moore. What have you to say about all this? Do all your thoughts agree with the institution? Do you only say things that give more power to the Imperial structures then its members? Do you choose to change apart from the thoughts and implemented 'rules' of the institution? How will you address your gay alumni and those forced out of OCC by this doctrinal position? What protection and encouragemnt do you offer those unlike the traditional student at OCC? Can I find acceptance of my differences with you or those on campus? Is there only one interpretation?
In all things unity... No creed but Christ... but!

September 19, 2006 at 11:22 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Mark Moore is out of the country for a good while.

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September 20, 2006 at 10:45 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

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Bill,

Your pressing tone is unfortunate. Again, while I am sorry to hear about the way you have been treated by those close to you, neither I nor Greg nor anyone here wishes to ignore you because you have sex with a man. Many of us are too busy to give your (well, your sources') analysis of the text a thorough evaluation. Our busyness is unrelated to your sexual orientation. Note that all the people who have stopped talking on this thread have stopped talking on all the other threads as well. It is not because of the issue, but because of the time.

Moreover, there is little that can be done as far as relationship building here on a blog. Do you live anywhere near Joplin, MO? If so, my wife and I would like to invite you over for dinner sometime. If not, you are welcome to email me (see my profile) anytime.

As it is, there is much in the treatment of scripture you've presented that is good, and much that I think is weak. The trouble is, you've presented so much, I just don't think I have the time to wade through it all. I have studied homosexual hermeneutics in depth. Many here have as well. You assume that none of us or few of us have. That is not the case. That some of us are silent does not mean we have nothing to say. On the other hand, my silence is also in part motivated by my desire not to stifle your voice. I don't want to come down heavy handed and be picky about everything you've said, just because I can. So I am hesitant to respond in detail to the essays you've borrowed from other websites. If that is not to your liking, I don't know what to tell you. I've given you small samples of critiques, and even more samples of encouragement, all throughout this conversation. If my (and others') silence now is to be interpreted as a rejection of you personally, I think that is an unfair projection and perhaps nothing more than a tactic on your part to appear wronged by us.

Screwtape, you're not treating us with the same respect with which you rightly demand we treat others. Here are some questions for you: In what ways are you familiar with OCC? I don't think you're very familiar at all. Prove me wrong. You clearly do not know Mark Moore, yet your questions to him are biting and accusatory. I have invited you to join us in open, respectul and reciprocal dialogue. Your continued anonymity and continued accusatory tone are not respectful responses to my invitation.

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September 20, 2006 at 11:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not only is Mark Moore out of the country for a good while, Mr. Stark, but if you are paying close attention to his travel logs, you will notice he is also communicating with us from the future! So now I have but one question for Mr. Moore... what will we all be driving/flying? next month?

- Former and always attentive student, Travis Hurley
(yes, I've been following this entire conversation, and THIS is what I've chosen for my entry into the forray...)

September 20, 2006 at 7:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Answer the questions I posed to Mark genius. You are more accusatory and rigid in your attitude and because you represent the position of the institution you are suspect. Cross the line.
And by the way. I know Mark as well as you, and my familiarity with the campus was an in depth one, I didn't even leave campus to find myself before returning to take four years to finish... like you have.

September 20, 2006 at 9:56 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

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Screwtape,

1) Why would I answer questions that you directed to someone other than me?

2) Why should I feel obliged to answer questions posed by someone who is attempting to maintain leverage by concealing his identity?

3) I do not represent the position of the institution. With me, that is rarely the case. Moreover, you don't know what my position is because a) you've never heard me speak candidly about it, b) I have not presented a position yet in this thread, and c) I don't have a position on the matter.

4) You do not know Mark as well as I do. The kinds of questions you posed to him are evidence enough of the fact.

5) I did not leave campus "to find myself." I left campus to find other people and wound up losing myself. But that has nothing to do with this conversation.

6) That you know a few details about me is obvious. That you know very little about what and how I think is even more obvious.

7) I will be praying each night for the next 14 nights that you and I one day become friends.

8) You appear to be harboring some serious resentment toward OCC. You're not the only one. I have had my share of disappointments with the institution. I encourage you to seek ways of being open and honest about those issues with people who have had different experiences at OCC. I encourage you to do that in a way that is mutually constructive.

9) Any further destructive comments from you here on this blog will not be entertained. Be warned. But more importantly, be encouraged to be open and friendly here, even while laying out some reasoned and helpful critiques of what you think is the Ozark brand of Christianity.

10) If I could just look you in the eyes, I would tell you I love you, and you'd know I mean it. That this is unbelievable to you is a choice you're making; it does not reflect a reality other than the reality in which I love you. If I knew who you were, I could love you better; therefore,

11) If you're ever in Joplin, I invite you to eat dinner with me and my wife. You can contact me via email from my blogger profile page.

...

September 21, 2006 at 12:28 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Bill,

What a significant and gracious post! I will be taking my laptop to work with me today in an attempt to work toward giving you the response you deserve.

Peace.

...

September 22, 2006 at 9:19 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

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I just copied the posts to which I intend to respond over into an MSWord document, and it all adds up to 95 pages, so bear with me!

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September 22, 2006 at 9:36 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Bill,

I was being sincere too. It wasn't sarcasm. I thought your post was both significant and gracious. It was significant because of the call to dialogue you put forward to fundamentalist Christians. It was gracious because you were, I think, generous with me, even though I had demonstrated impatience with you (based on a misunderstanding).

I'm sorry for the confusion, but civility and respect is precisely what I was attempting to maintain between us.

Peace.

...

September 22, 2006 at 1:01 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Due to the massive amount of information to process here, I will be responding in a piecemeal fashion. My apologies in advance for that, but it will make it easier for me to get through all this:

I suppose your living in Jacksonville would make it difficult for us to have dinner together. Ces’t la vie. I have a friend in Jacksonville, named Richard Sechrist. He is the general manager at the new Wallace movie theater there. Say Hi to him for me if you ever go catch a movie.

First, I apologize, Bill, for being short with you when I suggested that one of your posts might have been a tactical maneuver. Of course, I did not say that I thought it was a tactical maneuver. What I said was this: “If my (and others’) silence now is to be interpreted as a rejection of you personally, I think that is an unfair projection and perhaps nothing more than a tactic on your part to appear wronged by us.” I misunderstood the intent of your critique. Your critique of the silence of conservative churches when faced with pro-gay theology is both one that I agree with and one I myself have made in the past. Now that you have restated what it is you were saying, I understand that my hypothetical “if/then” was not an appropriate description of the matter. Again, I’m sorry for that.

When I said that your “pressing tone I unfortunate” I meant that it is unfortunate for the thread here, and perhaps for you, if it is derived from a mischaracterization of my or other’s motives. I am upset at Caleb Kaltenbach for promising on several occasions to respond to your posts and then failing (to date) to make good on that promise. I don’t know why Greg has bowed out of the conversation, but I wouldn’t want to venture any guesses. It could be fear, or it could be that he feels he doesn’t have anything further to contribute. It could be a number of things. Whatever his reasons, I do not presume to know them. My point to you has been that the silence of some here is not necessarily the same sort of silence that is complicit with structures of oppression. It could be meditative, contemplative silence. It could be complicity with structures of oppression. It could be any number of things. In the case of some others (for example, Tyler Stewart), academic overload is a genuine excuse (apart from the fact that Tyler never made an explicit commitment to this thread or to anyone in it).

I understand why this issue is a priority to you, Bill. And your reasons for thinking that it should be a priority for all Christians right now are good ones. But other people have other priorities as well—priorities that are just as valid, as you yourself pointed out—and it is unfair to suggest that all silence stems from the same kind of obstinate fundamentalism of a James Dobson or a John Hagee. In the case of me and Greg, you expressly lumped us together with Dobson and Jerry Falwell. I find that incredibly misleading, and somewhat disingenuous, particularly since I myself articulated a scathing critique of Dobson’s homosexual “ministry” earlier in this dialogue.

You said, “You are attempting to divert the focus of my comments in a direction that is easier for you to address.” But the truth is, I am only attempting to describe the reality of the situation. Not everyone can give 45 minutes a day to this conversation. And not everyone can be as productive with 45 minutes as you can. Not everyone is going to be able to respond to you the way you hope they will and on the timetable you think is appropriate. Don’t read a harsh tone in this point. I am merely attempting to spell out why I think your critique (while a good one) is at the very least a premature one. You don’t know why we’re silent when we’re silent. You interpret our silence as evidence that what you’ve been saying is sufficiently convincing to force us either to change or stubbornly resist reason. That is not evident. I am simply encouraging more moderation in your appeals to further the dialogue here.

You said, “If I had not continued on with my last couple of posts, this thread would have ended after I responded to Greg’s question about how incest and homosexuality differ in moral and cultural terms. And this conversation would have ended in silence (without a conclusion).”

This is untrue. I responded to that post of yours. My delay in responding to your response to my response was motivated by my desire to deal with some misunderstanding in a respectful way. In a long conversation like this one, the prospect of having to say everything two or three times just to be understood once is daunting. But I’ll get to that later.

You said, “The issue is how the majority of Christians, especially the Christian leaders of our Churches and Bible Colleges, who hold to the traditional views on homosexuality, intend to deal with the homosexual hermeneutic, now that it has been presented for a clearer evaluation.”

There are many bible colleges where this kind of dialogue is taking place. There are some where it is forbidden from taking place. And there are some like Ozark where it is taking place, but not on an official level. Whether it will or it won’t remains to be seen. But the question of whether the homosexual hermeneutic has been presented for a clearer evaluation is a strange one. Presented by whom? Unfortunately, the presentation you’ve given here will not meet the academic standards necessary to get a hearing on an academic level. You’ve cited no sources other than your websites. Your posts are riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. That is not to insult you, but merely to say that if you wish to get the attention of “men at the top” you’re going to have to try a different venue and a different media. As it is, you’ve had no academic training, so you’re probably not the guy to do it. Fair enough. There are scholars all over the world who are proponents of the homosexual hermeneutic, and there are scholars (like Gagnon) who take the time to challenge their arguments with further scholarly arguments. I personally think, based on what I’ve read of Gagnon, that he has a puffed up sense of his own importance, but that is not a critique of his arguments. Neither did you provide a critique of his arguments when some of us brought Gagnon into the conversation. Rather, you said, “I’ve read many papers that condemn homosexuality. Mostly the views that are presented when reading these papers are as follows:” And you proceeded to present views that are not expressly Gagnon’s.

The point is, Bill, that perhaps the reason some leaders of conservative Bible colleges maintain the traditional view of homosexuality is not because they cower in fear of the truth but because they remain, after careful study, convinced that the traditional view is itself the truth of the matter. You continue to assume that the arguments you’ve borrowed from others is the last word on the matter. Rather than waiting for us to carefully present the work of someone like Gagnon, I suggest you carefully read him yourself. I do not presume that simply by reading him you will become convinced of the traditional view, but he may help you to see why some of the points on the pro-gay side could use some challenging.

You said, “You say you have ‘studied the homosexual hermeneutic in depth‘. I could see that you had a greater understanding of this subject than most who were posting comments, but I believe I showed you some things that you did not know. If you did already know the things that I presented, you hide that information very convincingly.”

I never said I hadn’t learned anything from you. But the little that I did learn from you would not have been enough to tip the scales of my judgment in a different direction.

You said, “You say you did not want to ‘stifle my voice.’ Why was my voice any different from Caleb’s, or Greg’s, or Jason’s? You did not have constraint in voicing your opinion when their views were illogical, or illogically presented. Remaining silent so as not to stifle my voice does not seem consistent with your blogging habits, as I have observed them to be. You did support me in many ways, and I appreciate that, but I felt that your support was founded in reason, and not in personal feelings toward me, or my cause.”

The reasons I was quicker to critique them than you or Jason are twofold: 1) You are the minority here. I try to be more sensitive to the voice of the minority. 2) They posted their own views while you, for the most part, were posting work done by others. For that reason, I did not feel your posts deserved as much of a response.

As you can see, my reasons for being silent about the weakness of your presentation are rather conflicting. They drive in different directions. But they have been my reasons.

You said, “You did not give me ‘small samples of critiques‘. What you did was to point out logical, reasonable questions to what was being presented.”

That is untrue. I did give you small samples of critiques. I critiqued your reliance on dictionary definitions. I critiqued your interpretation of the sin of Canaan. I critiqued your purely consequentialist treatment of Mosaic morality. I critiqued your propensity not to cite your sources. I critiqued the view that the homosexuality proscribed in the Mosaic covenant was purely a ritualistic homosexuality based on the fact that it was placed in tandem with incest and bestiality, giving the common sense impression that the three are categorically connected. (You did not respond.) Furthermore, although I thought the notion that lesbianism was absent from the OT codes because it was not practiced ritually by the pagans was a notion with some explanatory power, I made it clear that such an argument was not a conclusive one. I said that these “are just possible explanations for something for which we will never have a certain explanation.” In other words, the arguments you’re making are not sufficient to turn the tides in the other direction.

You explore the question of why it is so hard for some of us to give an honest opinion about the pro-gay hermeneutic. Of course, by “honest opinion” here you must mean “opinion in favor of the pro-gay hermeneutic” because Greg, Damien, Caleb, Tyler and others here all gave their honest opinion in spite of your or other’s arguments for the pro-gay hermeneutic.

You said, “The motivating factors that drive our attitudes and actions can be founded in good (non-selfish) intentions, or in evil (selfish) intentions.” You also said that you were motivated to facilitate unity in the Church. Clearly, then, that being a good (non-selfish) motivation, anyone unconvinced by your arguments must be motivated by evil (selfish) intentions, and is not interested in the unity of the Church. Rather, I think that your options good/evil, unselfish/selfish are way too simplistic. They do not represent reality. The fact is, you are motivated to argue in favor of the homosexual hermeneutic because you are gay. That does not deny that you are also seeking unity in the Church, according to your understanding of what both “unity” and “the church” is, but everyone’s motivation is a mixture of good and bad, unselfish and selfish, interests. No one is motivated by pure evil. No one is motivated by pure good. If I were to defend my wife against an attack, my motivation would still be a mixture. I would be afraid of living alone, for one. Defending her is very much like defending myself.

You said, “I stand back and look at my cousins, and my Mom, and you Thom, and Greg, and James Dobson, and Jerry Falwell, and others who have surely been presented with a clearer understanding of the Pro-gay homosexual hermeneutic. And I wonder, ‘Why is it so difficult for these people to see the clarity in scripture that only certain types of homosexuality is being condemned, just as certain types of heterosexuality is also condemned in scripture? Why can they not see that adult, loving, committed, mutually consenting homosexuality is not even addressed in scripture, much less to have it be condemned?’”

You have not proven this. You have argued it, but you have not proven it. Moreover, the biblical writers would not have made the distinction you’re suggesting we must make. I don’t believe it would have been an intelligible distinction to them. If it were, there would have been homosexuals in the Jewish and Christians communities who were accepted and productive members. Your arguments are clearly convincing to you, but that they are not convincing to others is not an indication that others are motivated by evil. Yet implicitly you are claiming that that must be the case.

You said, “Why can they not see that homosexuals do not choose these sexual feelings, this is what they have been given, and they try to make the most out of life, based on that? (These are not complicated concepts for reasoning people to grasp, if they take to time to examine them.)”

I have read no one here who denies this point.

You go on to suggest that those who disagree with your interpretation of the scriptures are idolaters. This kind of claim does not deserve a response. It is a gross misuse of Romans 1 and 2.

While you are certainly right that it would take a kind of courage for a president or a minister in a conservative milieu to openly announce the justification of the homosexual hermeneutic, that does not in itself make the homosexual hermeneutic good hermeneutics. The church is certainly in the wrong when they make it difficult for people with countercultural experiences to gain a hearing. The church is not always in the wrong when they do hear the voice of the counterculture and still pronounce against what that voice is saying. If, however, pro-gay theology is right, everyone in church leadership should have the moral courage to stand up for what is right. Many, perhaps even a majority, won’t. But if pro-gay theology is not right, and the tides of culture are nevertheless swinging in its direction, it would seem to take a kind of moral courage to stay put. Of course, there will be those in leadership who stay put because of hate, bigotry, fear, and a host of other reasons, but their bad reasons does not mean there are no good reasons to stay put.

When I critiqued your consequentialist presentation of the Mosaic code, I wasn’t saying that the law didn’t serve a political function. That’s what all law does. What I critiqued was the idea that all laws restricting activities are based on the consequences that would ensue if those activities are performed. States or nations that have abolished capital punishment do so because they believe in a moral ingredient beyond consequentialism.

My critique of your evaluation of the law against incest was met by you with this response:

“The example of the husband being dead is one example. And maybe if you were dealing with just the dead husband, there would be no other reason to oppose incest. But what about the Brothers and Sisters, Uncles and Aunts, Nephews and Nieces, etc...?

“‘Why should you get to marry Dear old Mom when I love her just as much as you do?’ ‘Why should you get Aunt Bessy? I love her too!’ ‘Lucy is my favorite niece, and I love her. I don’t want you to have her, so I’m going to marry her.’”

My response to this is: This is a ridiculous scenario.

You (or gunnyding) said, “Thus, many Biblical scholars believe that eunuchs serve as prototype for homosexuals in scripture.”

Who are these “many scholars”? What are their names? What are their books? What are their reasons for supposing that eunuchs serve as a prototype for homosexuals in scripture?

You said, “Thus, it is possible that many people who were gay would have been seen as eunuchs. We do not know this for fact, but we do know that many men were made to be eunuchs by men in order to guard their harems and Paul spoke about those who chose celibacy in an effort to more fully serve God.”

Emphasis mine. No further comment.

You said, “During Old Testament times, eunuchs were not allowed entry into the house of the Lord and were generally despised. Which is not too dissimilar from homosexuals today.”

Therefore eunuchs were homosexuals?

Referring to the eunuch in Acts, you said, “We don’t know if this eunuch was or was not homosexual. However, we do know that some of the eunuchs mentioned in scripture were undoubtedly those whose sexuality precluded a heterosexual relationship (“those born incapable of marriage”) and Philip a messenger of God would have known this.”

These arguments are not even arguments. They are loose associations meant to do the work of arguments when there is no argument to be made. It’s conspiracy theory. It’s no wonder much of what you’ve had to say has been met with silence!

You said, “The arguments regarding David and Jonathan, however, while not quite compelling, leave open the strong[?] possibility that they were involved in an homosexual marriage.”

So the arguments aren’t compelling, but they’re strong?

You said, “Starting from the crux of the argument at 1 Samuel 18:21, Saul tells David, that by marrying Saul's daughter Michal, David will be his son-in-law for the second time (Hebrew: "bstym ttctn by hynm"). The actual translation of this phrase is somewhat controversial, being literally translated "You will become my son-in-law through two." In this instance, the correct interpretation of this verse is crucial, because it radically shapes our view of David and Jonathan's relationship, since Scripture only indicates that David had any kind of relationship with two of Saul's children: Jonathan and Michal.”

The two in question are Merab and Michal, Saul’s two daughters. David refused marriage to Michal out of humility. There is nothing controversial about the translation of 18:21. The NIV correctly translates it, “Now you have a second opportunity to become my son-in-law.” This is a ridiculous argument. If we’re to take the argument seriously, it would indicate that Saul knew of David and Jonathan’s homosexual relationship and approved of it.

“While there is no similarity between the Hebrew phrases in 1 Samuel 18:1-2 above and in Genesis 2:24, there is a striking similarity in concepts between the son leaving the parents to join to a spouse, and the two becoming one: Genesis 2:24 (NIV) For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”

This is tenuous.

“When we put together chapter 18, from the beginning, with Jonathan's strong emotional affection towards David and their subsequent covenant, to the end, where we see Saul referring to David being his son-in-law a second time with his marriage to Michal, we see the very strong possibility that David and Jonathan were joined in a covenant that Saul recognized as a marriage. This line of reasoning, while persuasive to me, it is not conclusive.”

It certainly isn’t. And I don’t know how it’s persuasive either. I’ve made covenants of blood with many men, all of whom I have been fond of. I have loved them as myself. Justin Welters. Darren Wong. Frank House. We are blood brothers. Nothing, not even the love of a woman, could come between us. I’ve kissed them, held them, wept with them. This is not homosexual behavior. This is brotherhood. This is the common sense reading of the text.

“In this case, David compares his relationship with Jonathan to the relationship with a woman, strongly indicating a marriage/sexual relationship.”

It strongly indicates nothing of the sort! It strongly indicates that David and Jonathan loved each other as brothers. Moreover, David did not compare his relationship with Jonathan to a relationship with a woman. He contrasted his relationship with Jonathan to that of a woman. It was said that his love for him was greater than for that of a woman. Just as, with me and my friend Frank House, no woman could ever come between us, even though on one occasion a woman threatened to do so. That is the kind of love David and Jonathan had for each other.

“Further, the word used for love here (ahbh; used also in 1 Samuel 18:3 and 1 Samuel 20:17 referring for Jonathan's love for David) is the same word used in Genesis 29:20 for Jacob's love for Rachel, and is used repeatedly in Song of Songs. It is typically translated as love in the context of a marriage or sexual desire (Proverbs 5:19, etc.; see Strong's concordance #0160).”

Are you kidding me?! Let’s take a look at the English word love, for a second, and see its uses:

On second thought, let’s not. No need. Obviously it has too many uses to constitute one kind of love. As with any word in any language.

In regard to Romans and Leviticus, whether or not Paul and Moses are referring to specific acts of homosexuality that take place in a religious, ritual context is not an indication that all forms of homosexuality are not being condemned. One would think that Paul would have clarified his position had that been the case. While there is a difference between idolatrous ritual-sex and a monogamous homosexual relationship, that does not automatically make monogamous homosexual relationships morally acceptable. Pro-gay hermeneuts often use the term “consentual” to describe the kind of homosexuality they’re defending. But consentual sex can also be incestuous. A child can consent to having sex with an adult. Two down-on-their-luck bohemians can consent to killing one another in a ritual suicide. Consent doesn’t make it moral.

I could have a monogamous sexual relationship with my father or with my mother (if one or the other were dead). It’s virtue of being monogamous does not make it virtuous.

I really do not have the time or the energy to carry on this particular dialogue much further. That is not because I am selfishly motivated to maintain my good reputation in a conservative college. I have no such reputation to maintain. I do not have the time or the energy to continue this because your arguments are tendentious, and tenuous. These critiques have been further samples of the kinds of critiques I would make throughout the whole conversation if I were committed to such an elaborate adventure. As it is, I’ll just refer you to Gagnon and be done with it.

I have tried to help those on the traditional side to reason properly. I have tried to help those on the homosexual side to better articulate what it is they’re saying. Now that Bill has confirmed that he is done saying what it is he thinks needed to be said, I too am done.

Bill, this is not a rejection of you. You can email me anytime and I will dialogue with you about whatever it is that’s on your mind. I will eat with you (a sacramental event) if we ever have the chance. But I do not have the capacity to go through everything you’ve said, critiquing the hermeneutical assumptions you just don’t know are there.

When my bible college roommate came to me and told me he was gay, I gave everything I had to studying the homosexual hermeneutic. I was desperately looking for a way to accept my friend as a Christian and as a practicing homosexual simultaneously. I even adopted a pro-gay attitude and agenda for a time to see if I could wear it consistently and go on using the scriptures properly. This attempt failed miserably, because the arguments do not measure up to the facts.

I am not breaking fellowship with you. I am calling you to be honest in your thinking.

...

September 25, 2006 at 3:25 PM  
Blogger Gregory Fish said...

I know I said I'd bow out, I'm still reading since there's been more interaction. FYI- My wife's on bedrest right now, and my already busy priorities have shifted, and on top of all the normal work-load I'm playing Mr. Mom. So I apologize that I can't fully commit to this conversation. Don't read into anything other than busyness. Peace.

September 25, 2006 at 4:10 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

A correction. Above, I said, "David refused marriage to Michal out of humility." It should have read, "David refused marriage to Merab out of humility."

...

September 25, 2006 at 6:18 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Bill,

That you pulled a quote of mine from contrathomstark is very interesting. The fact is, I was not being defensive with you. I didn't take your comments as a personal attack, with the possible exception of the time that you ambiguously lumped my name in next to Falwell's and Dobson's. Even then, my response wasn't "defensive." I simply pointed out that such an association was misleading. That said, your comments consisted of accusations made against a group of people I know and you don't. On more than one occasion you implied that those who did not respond to you on your timetable and in the way you wanted were guilty of cowardice and perhaps even idolatry. If my pointing out the absurdity of such an accusation can be pejoratively called "defensiveness," so be it. But whether or not I was being defensive makes the accusations you made (both implicit and explicit) no less absurd.

Allow me again to point out that there are many areas of agreement between you and me. I myself brought into question some of the tactics of someone like James Dobson. Although I do not claim to know the man and his heart, I think many of his engagements are suspect at best. Yet not everyone who does not accept the homosexual hermeneutic can be lumped in with the likes of Dobson. Allow me to quote something professor Damien Spikereit said much earlier in this thread:

"Is it possible for us (myself and fellow colleagues at OCC) to 'reject' the theological and moral positions that have and are guiding you without 'rejecting' you as a friend and fellow human being created in the image of God? I pray it is."

It seems to me, Bill, that your more recent comments would lead you to give a negative answer to this very important question.

You said, "I dare say that not much that you claim as academic knowledge comes from your own sweat and tears."

I'm not sure what this means. Usually I read in an air-conditioned room, and too rarely do academic books bring me to tears (though it has been known to happen). But that is not to say that I don't toil in my field.

You said, "My logic and opinions are my own, I didn't borrow that."

There is no such thing as un-borrowed logic. Everybody learned to think from somebody or more accurately from some group, even if they aren't aware who it is from whom they learned to think.

You said, "I may not be the best speller in the world. And maybe I 'borrowed' the information that I presented from other sources, but that does not make the information that I am presenting any less relevent."

I never made the claim that misspellings and un-cited sources made the information irrelevant. I misspell a word here or there and fail to cite a source on occasion as well. What I said was that if you want to be heard on an academic level, you have some work to do. My blogging style is very different from my academic writing style. But you seemed to assume that your comments here should warrant serious consideration by the policy makers of educational institutions. The world may be changing a great deal, but the policy makers of educational institutions are not ready to be schooled by bloggers and webophiles.

My point was that where there is pro-gay scholarship, there is also what you call "traditional" scholarship. Some scholars are influential in some academic quarters; other scholars are influential in others. But nowhere are there clear-cut, black-and-white answers to the grandiose questions the homosexual phenomenon in the 21st century is raising. And on either side of the spectrum, intolerance is still intolerance. I have tried to help the majority here on john330 to be more tolerant of the minority. I did not speak up heatedly in the other direction until recently, when the minority began to accuse the majority of idolatry, cowardice, duplicity, and other rhetorically potent labels.

You said, "Now, doesn't that feel good?"

I don't know what it is you're referring to, but I don't feel very good at all about where this conversation has taken us recently.

Peace to you, Bill. In earnest.

...

September 25, 2006 at 11:49 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Bill,

Thanks for your response. I look forward to your next response wherein you will address more of my challenges. As it is, I must respond to a continued mischaracterization of me by you.

You said, "Now if we can get past the ‘borrowed information’ issue and the ‘spelling’ and ‘academic level presentation’ issue, is it possible to discuss the points raised by the two views that have been presented in this blog?"

You continue to use this line, despite the fact that I clarified in my last post that spelling and academia was not the issue here. I only brought up spelling and academia once you started to suggest that your arguments should be taken seriously by the leaders of educational institutions, as though what you'd "proved" here should be given a hearing by the policy-makers. I am not interested in spelling mistakes and un-cited sources. I don't care about that. My point was simply that leaders of conservative educational institutions do read up on the homosexual hermeneutic, on a scholarly level, and they read up on those scholars who challenge the homosexual hermeneutic as well. Let me ask you this question: How is it commensurate with your stated intention of seeking unity in the church to make a blanket statement labeling the Christian leaders who are not convinced by the homosexual hermeneutic an idolater and/or a coward? That is very sloppy, Bill. And you have yet to respond to it.

You said, "It is also common to find that all homosexuals, and their 'lifestyle' all lumped together, as if all homosexuals have the same agenda."

This brings out an aspect of your logic (an aspect of the logic of homosexual hermeneutics) that needs serious challenging. You assume that something as nebulous as an "agenda" is determinative for whether or not an act is properly described as moral. The rhetoric implies that by virtue of the fact that you do not share the idolaters agenda when you have sex with a man your sexual act is justified.

My objection has been that although Paul was likely describing ritual acts, that does not exclude him from thinking (as all good Jews did) that homosexuality in any form is an act against God's design. If Paul had made a concession saying, "(now here I am not speaking of loving, consentual, monogamous homosexuality)," then things would be different. But since he did not make the distinction, the distinction cannot properly be forced into the text itself. As a result of this, the scripture gives no clear indication of what we should pronounce in this conundrum. But knowing Jewish culture as we do, it is safe to say that if we could go back in time and force Paul to pronounce on the validity of the distinction, he would not have pronounced in favor of loving, consentual, monogamous homosexual activity. Of course, that is not a determinative argument, but that is the real nature of this discussion. Knowing that Paul was talking about idolaters doesn't make an answer to the question we have any clearer for us.

The homosexual hermeneutic as you’ve presented it, in other words, can be summed up in three points: 1) the bible doesn't explicitly condemn loving, consentual, monogamous homosexual activity, and 2) the bible praises loving, consentual, monogamous heterosexual activity, therefore, 3) loving, consentual, monogamous homosexual activity is praiseworthy.

Of course, there are a lot of things that the bible doesn’t explicitly condemn that are nevertheless condemnable. Moreover, there are a lot of things that the bible doesn’t technically condemn that the early Christians reading it just understood to be condemned at any rate—war, for instance. That some of the Church Fathers understood Romans 1 to be talking about female anal/oral sex does not mean they therefore approved of homosexuality. Moreover, that whole nonsense about Paul meaning anal/oral sex and not lesbianism in Romans 1 just doesn’t fit with the natural reading of the text: “Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.” Paul says that the natural relation was between man and woman and that the unnatural perversion was when men abandoned that naturalness for homosexual activity. He says that the male unnaturalness is “the same” as the female. The Church Fathers had a penchant for condemning oral sex. They did it often and in strange ways. But that does not have anything to do with the plain sense of the text, in its immediate context.

Bill, our debate is not about egoism. My ego is not at stake here. If I’m wrong about my judgment on the homosexual hermeneutic, I will be happy. Two posts ago you said I was being defensive. I said I wasn’t being defensive. Then you said that I said I wasn’t lashing out. I never said I wasn’t lashing out. I said I wasn’t being defensive. I was in fact lashing out, just as I have done at conservatives throughout this conversation for falsely representing or belittling the homosexuals. I have lashed out at you now because you falsely represented and belittled the conservatives by suggesting they were idolaters and cowards, devoid of any right use of reason. Are we clear?

You did not complain when I took a harsh tone with them for lesser crimes.

Just as I have not judged the person of Caleb, or Greg, or anyone else here, I have not judged your person. I have challenged motives and have challenged ideas. That is all.

...

September 26, 2006 at 11:34 AM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

Bill,

Thank you for your good, thoughtful response. Thank you for clarifying some areas where I was misunderstanding you. I apologize for those misunderstandings. I thank you also for your bringing us back full circle to civility. To respond to what you’ve written here:

You said: You seem to interpret these [my] words, “The issue is how the majority of Christians, especially the Christian leaders of our Churches and Bible Colleges, who hold to the traditional views on homosexuality, intend to deal with the homosexual hermeneutic, now that it has been presented for a clearer evaluation.” as if I am calling out the ‘top dogs’ to read this blog and make a decision based on my presentation of information. If that is what you believe, then you have misinterpreted my words.

In response: Yes. I did run off of an implication lying beneath what you said, but that was not entirely fair because you probably did not yourself see the implication. I thought it was intended. My point was that it is not entirely clear which evaluation constitutes the “clearer evaluation.” I assumed you must have meant yours (i.e., the websites that are your sources). I apologize for jumping to conclusions. It really did some temporary damage to our conversation.

You said: John Rumple is preparing a presentation that I am quite sure would be considered a suitable venue for scholarly minded persons to examine the pro-gay hermeneutic on an intellectual level.

In response: The problem is that Rumple (however right his cause may be) has burned bridges by the way he chose to go about this. If Rumple has something good to say, he’s going to have a harder time getting a hearing in the RM than he would have if he had been less inflammatory.

You said: I do encourage a full evaluation of this subject (and not just the writings of the trusted authors that instruct on pro-gay theology, and then discredit it, followed by an education on how to defend against it). An honest evaluation is what I am calling for, and the information is “now” available for this to take place.

In response: The best arguments of pro-gay theology are not new arguments. They have been around for at least 4 decades in the academic world. Whether Mark Moore’s lecture represents the extent of his knowledge of the homosexual hermeneutic, I don’t know. But I do know without a doubt that Mark Moore is not interested in being anybody’s judge, jury and executioner. He teaches his students the same kind of respect for those different than we. I know he does because he tried to teach me that respect. (The extent to which I am capable of respecting those different than I should not be taken as an indication of the poverty of Mark Moore’s teaching!)

Regarding your use of Romans 2, I realize you never made the accusation explicit. I tried to use the verb “suggest” to describe what you were doing. That aside, the suggestion was dangerous because it wasn’t clear who your target was. You had already put my name next to James Dobson’s. You are talking mostly to OCC students, so it wasn’t a stretch to think you were referring to Mark Moore, or to Greg Fish, or to the OCC policy makers. One of my points was that you do not know these people, with the exception of Greg Fish—about whom I think it is safe to say that he is not in danger of judging you more harshly than he does himself. Caleb Kaltenbach is a former OCC student, but he’s been at Fuller and he’s heading for Talbot! I think that’s enough reason disown him as an Ozarkian. (Joke.) The point is, who are you suggesting might be an idolater? How is it helpful for us in this conversation? I’m not even sure the critique applies to James Dobson (for whom I have very little respect indeed).

Anyway, the point of Romans 1&2 is not to determine who is the idolater and who isn’t. The point is that arrogant exclusivism is as damnable an offense as idolatry and all forms of godlessness. And the arrogant exclusivism Paul condemns is not so much that housed in individuals but that represented in a group. But it is not self-evident that a church or a so-called “Christian” institution that excludes an openly gay person from the communion is committing the sin of Romans 2. (It may be true that the openly gay person is not committing any of the sins of Romans 1, of Leviticus, etc., but evidence that an activity is not of a certain kind is not evidence that such activity is of a certain other kind. The homosexual hermeneutic consists of looking at the Bible and saying, “See! That’s not us,” and of making tenuous, anachronistic connections in order to look at the Bible and say, “See! That’s us.”) At any rate, there certainly are groups guilty of arrogant exclusivism. But we need to be careful in our evaluations of this matter, because “those opposed to the claims made by the homosexual hermeneutic” are not a group, as I’m sure you’re well aware.

You said: Your example of me being motivated to pursue to clarify the pro-gay homosexual hermeneutic because I am gay is probably right. But that line of reasoning would also cause me to wonder if maybe heterosexuals defend the traditional hermeneutic on homosexuality, and believe in the notion that God privileges a heterosexual view of creation, because they are heterosexual. ??? (It does beg the question.)

In response: There are a number of motivations that motivate people to oppose the homosexual hermeneutic. But I don’t think “being heterosexual” is the kind of motivation that “being homosexual” is. As a so-called heterosexual, no one is telling me I cannot have sex with my wife, therefore I have no stock in a defense of the legitimacy of heterosexuality. Whether or not homosexuality is morally legitimate is not a threat to my practicing heterosexuality. While there may be some groups consisting of, at the very least, heterosexuals, who feel that homosexuality is a threat to their own lifestyle, such groups are extremists. If, Bill, you want to launch a critique of those Christians who think that—in order to be good Christians—they need to pursue legislating their own morality on a national level to keep “God’s country pure,” or whatever, I will join you wholeheartedly. The trouble is, I know but one person at Ozark who thinks that way, and he is not taken seriously by anyone I know.

You said: If you don’t agree with me, that truly is fine. But for Christians to condemn homosexuals, especially Christian homosexuals, who really do love God and follow Christ, is a very serious matter to me (understandably!).

In response: It’s a serious matter to me too. Anytime I see a Christian or a group of Christians condemning people different than them, I get pissed and I get pissed vocally. I’m probably meaner than you are to such people. (I yelled at a 16 year old kid the other day for regurgitating his father’s conviction that there is a difference between Lutherans and Christians: “Christians do what the Bible says; Lutherans don’t. I was too mean, but ignorance like that is poisonous.) But not everyone who thinks homosexual activity is sinful is interested in condemning homosexuals, or even of making finalistic statements about matters too ambiguous in Scripture. The difference between you and me, Bill, is not that one of us thinks Scripture is clear about the sinfulness of homosexuality and one of us thinks it’s clear about homosexuality’s justifiability. The difference is that you think what the Scripture does not say tells us something clear, and I think that what the Scripture does not say tells us something fuzzy.

You said: If a Christian wishes to condemn the act of homosexuality, and then when asked WHY, the response is simply ’Read the story of Sodom, read Lev. 18:22 & Lev. 20:13, read Romans 1:26-27, 1 Cor. 6:9, 1 Tim. 1:10 or Jude 1:7’, ( with little further explanation ). Or if the response is ’Read Robert Gagnon and Joe Dallas.’ I’m sorry brother, but to pronounce judgment and condemn…., to require a ‘change to heterosexuality’ or ‘celibacy‘, this is going to require more than these responses, in the face of a justifiable understanding of scripture that opposes these simple responses.

In response: You’re right. Christians should not proof-text. I’ve never read Joe Dallas, and he sounds like a kook. I don’t like Gagnon but his arguments are much more extensive and careful than you seem to want to give him credit for. That doesn’t make him right. It makes him extensive and careful, two adjectives you seem to have dismissed when it comes to Gagnon. Very well. I am not interested in turning anyone into a Gagnonite. That would be weird, and the meetings would be nerdy.

You said: My comment referring to many of the writers that hold to traditionalistic views which ‘lump all homosexuals into one group’, is legitimate and accurate. When there is no distinction made, the author’s readers and supporter are lead to feel that all homosexuals have the same agenda. (Now whether this is done because the writers feels this way and they do not see a distinction, that is a slightly different matter.) But to do this strengthens the notion that all homosexuals have the same agenda, (which is considered to be anti-family and anti-Christian.)

In response: First, you’re dialoguing with people that recognize the differences between homosexual temple prostitutes and Christian homosexuals. The differences are patent. I think any moron who hasn’t recognized the difference just hasn’t been forced to concede the point yet. Or he’s a stubborn jerk not worthy of our time. Second, my point was not about who recognizes the distinction but about an aspect of the distinction itself. Your use of the distinction begs the question we “conservatives” are asking: namely, isn’t homosexuality in any form against God’s intent? You make the point about different agendas as though the rightness of one’s agenda is determinative for the rightness of the activity. It’s similar to saying that the end justifies the means. Do you see what I’m saying? There are some acts that are inherently wrong, and no matter what your agenda is you’re wrong to do it. There are other kinds of acts that are either wrong or right depending upon your motivation for doing so. Your talk about agenda begged the question. It assumed that homosexuality is in the latter category, when that is the very question we have been asking from the beginning.

I look forward to hearing more from you.

With love and in peace,
Thom

September 27, 2006 at 12:34 PM  
Blogger Caleb Kaltenbach said...

Thom,

I read your post that said "I am upset at Caleb Kaltenbach for not posting..." Perhaps it would be best to ask why I have not posted before you just say "I am upset."

My wife has actually had complications with her pregnancy, and is on strict bedrest for a few weeks. I dropped several of my seminary classes, and all of my spare time is devoted to her.

Please, in the future, maybe shoot an e-mail asking why someone is not responding... b/c with what is going on and trying to keep my baby and wife healthy, this is not the first thing on my mind to remember to do...

Caleb

October 3, 2006 at 5:08 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Caleb,

I am sorry to hear about your wife's situation. You're right. I should have asked you personally.

Needless to say, I am no longer upset. Of course, I haven't lost any sleep over it. So I guess I wasn't all that upset to begin with. It was just a poor choice of words on my part.

Peace.

...

October 4, 2006 at 3:14 PM  
Blogger Thom Stark said...

...

Thank you, Bill, for your presence here, and all the time you've put into your thoughtful posts. Many of us have been challenged by this dialogue. I have nothing further to add to this discussion. I am afraid I would only be repeating myself.

...

October 18, 2006 at 7:24 PM  
Blogger gunnyding said...

Hi; My site, members.aol.com/gunnyding/christ.htm has moved to gunnyding.com/christ because aol no longer hosts websites. I hope people will feel free to come by the new location. John

November 15, 2008 at 10:32 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

My After-Thoughts:
I have re-read this conversation only twice since it took place in 2006, but I have continued to think about it in a myriad of ways. Although I have tried to move on with each passing year into a new realm of study, this subject remains in my mind and I do continue to think about it very much. Over the past 3 years I have thought about the ideas of reasoning that some of the people who participated in this discussion have brought forward.
Some, [very few] of the arguments brought forward by the Traditional View were somewhat valid and it has caused me to give more thought to these ideas, (i.e. Thom’s reservations about blindly following scientific conclusions when the data is inconclusive). But, as far as the reading and understanding of the scriptures that refer to homosexuality; no one who claimed adherence to the Traditional View could give me a well thought out and reasoned explanation of the particular verses. It was obvious to me that even these ‘religious’ leaders [professors & ministers], and the students [from OCC & JBC] had a poor understanding of the Homosexual Hermeneutic, and they didn’t even realize it at first. They also appeared to refuse an understanding of the Pro-Gay Hermeneutic at the end of the discussion. I did make one attempt to go back and listen to Mark Moore’s Audio Lecture on the Homosexual Hermeneutic but, the lecture is no longer available. I think that perhaps Mark Moore was influenced enough by the above discussion to consider his Audio Lecture presentation inaccurate.
Thom claimed to have learned a few things from me, but he said that he had already studied the Homosexual Hermeneutic ‘in depth,’ and that ‘the little that he did learn from me wasn’t enough to change his mind.’ As I said (nearing the end of the discussion), I could tell that Thom did have a greater understanding of the Homosexual Hermeneutic than most of the people who were posting comments, and I did appreciate the fact that Thom was the only one who stayed engaged in the conversation until the end. Out of the dozen or more people who started out mading comments, Thom was the only one who hung in there with me and tried to maintain a symmetrical balance within this discussion. But just 1 out of 12… that is a very low percentage of people who are willing to talk their talk and walk their walk when it comes down to it; and this is, I believe, typical of where this world and our Churches are at this point in time, concerning this particular topic of the Homosexual Hermeneutic. [I realize that Greg stayed with the conversation up until near the end, but the few comments and questions that he posed were minimal in comparison to Thom’s efforts and questions.]
Recently, in the news, it was reported that the runner-up to the Miss America Pageant had answered a question concerning Gay Marriage, and according to some commentators, her answer may have cost her the Crown. The judge that had asked her the question was out-raged because she honestly answered the question and demonstrated a view that she was taught from her family and by her upbringing; that being that Marriage should be between a Man and a Woman. [The ‘gay’ judge who asked the question was out-raged because he thought her answer, (Miss America’s answer), should be one that would be inclusive of all Americans.] Even being a gay man myself, I didn’t share this judge’s out-rage. As I said in the above conversation: “It truly is O.K. with me if you disagree with me, but at the very least, questions have been put into your mind that should cause you to seek your truth, why do you believe what you believe.” If this is what this young woman truly believes, it is her prerogative to believe it, and she will have to stand before God and answer for her thoughts and actions, just like we all will. [I see no reason for out-rage because, this matter is between God and her, not anyone else and her; (as long as her thoughts and actions do not demonstrate a lack of love and concern for her neighbor.)]
One problem that I do have with people in general is; too many times, people blindly follow doctrines and teachings, and their ensuing belief system is not ‘what they believe,’ but rather ‘what they are told to believe.’ And even this is O.K. if those beliefs are unchallenged and they do appear to be reflective of God’s revealed truth. But with this issue of the Homosexual Hermeneutic, despite the logical, reasonable and well thought out challenges that the Pro-Gay View poses to the Traditional View, the response to these challenges are met with the typical responses that I have experienced and have mentioned in the above discussion – Silence! [I do tend to interpret this response as, ‘I can’t prove you wrong, but my honor, pride or fear will not allow me to accept what you are saying as truth, so I’m going to just ignore you.’]
Even Thom, at the end said, “I have nothing further to add to this discussion. I am afraid I would only be repeating myself.” I found this to be a disappointing concluding thought because, even thought he did have some critiques to my understanding of the Homosexual Hermeneutic, he never was able to provide the proof of supporting evidence for any of his ideas [critiques]. His critiques were merely attempts to discredit the Pro-Gay Homosexual Hermeneutic but, he was never able to articulate the positive evidence that I had stated would probably cause me to better receive the Traditional View. And also, as often as the ideas of Robert Gagnon were insinuated to be the ‘proof’ of evidence that I was I was looking for, no one would, (or could) express his ideas in writing within this conversation. The truth is…I have read Robert Gagnon and his ideas are exactly what I stated them to be; 1) Negative Evidence, (or attempts to discredit the view of Pro-Gay Theology, 2) A reliance on the word ‘Pornea’ with a quick reading of the scriptures that refer to homosexuality, 3) A discussion of how the acceptance of the homosexual’s evil lifestyle would negatively affect our society. I believe that it is for this reason that no one felt they could effectively present Robert Gagnon’s ideas with confidence.
Sure, Caleb’s wife had complications with her pregnancy and he had to focus more on her and the well being of his unborn child. Sure, Greg had his family in town and was ‘super busy right now.’ I did found it interesting that when things were easy and the tide of understanding was in favor of the Traditional View of the Homosexual Hermeneutic, many blogger who held to the Traditional View were right in there posting their supporting comments and thoughts. But, when things got a little more difficult for their Traditional Understanding and their ‘arguments,’ and their comments were exhibiting less and less common sense, their lives suddenly became busy and there was no time to respond to the challenges of their reasoning.
In the above discussion I mentioned that some of my own family members are ignoring me and my partner of 16 years, Billy. I don’t want it to be misunderstood, my reasoning for including these family members into this conversation. I love my family very much and I try to do all that I can to show them how much I do love them. I think about them and I pray for them very often. When I watch the movies that I have made about my family, and I see them in their place within The Family, it causes me to remember them and to pray God’s Blessings upon them. I think about my family more often and more fondly than they will ever know.
The inclusion of my family into this above conversation is simply to describe my own experiences, and the way in which I interpret these experiences. It is human nature (as I am learning), to avoid things that make you uncomfortable. Everyone is different and some people are more willing to face uncomfortable situations than others. I have actually encountered people in my family who are comfortable with me and the fact that I am Gay. My oldest sister surprised me a few months back (on the day of our Dad’s Funeral). She come right out and asked me if I was gay. I told her that I was and we talked about it for a little while. She finally told me, “I don’t care if you are gay, I love you anyway, and as far as I’m concerned, you can bring Billy up here anytime. I’d love to meet him.” As of this date, she is the only one who has brought the conversation to me, and I appreciate that about her, and I love her all the more for her bravery.
This discomfort that some people feel, even people in my own family, to face this issue that Christian Homosexuals are bringing before the Church is, in my opinion, an obstacle to Love itself, and therefore to Christ himself. We Christians are all a part the body of Christ, (the Church). Could you imagine the body as a whole, ignoring one part of the body just because it is different? Consider Paul’s words to the Corinthians in the 12th Chapter of 1st Corinthians:
“Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.
There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.
Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.
The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way.”
Paul goes on to reveal ‘Love’ to the Corinthians in 1st Corinthians 13. I could go on and on about this idea of Love, and about what I think it means to honestly love someone. But, if I were to sum it up, I would have to quote Jesus’ own words: Matthew 22:37-40 – “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
I do, often bring up these words of Jesus in the above discussion, but Jesus does say this, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” This idea, which encompasses the Law and the Prophets, is paramount to the idea of what I am trying to make understandable. This idea that loving your neighbor and treating that neighbor in a manner that you would like to be treated is like unto ‘loving the Lord your God with all your Heart and with all your Soul and with all your Mind.’
So how would a person, a neighbor, like to be treated? Let me give an example of how someone may not like to be treated:
Acknowledgment: Suppose that you find someone in this world that you truly Love (in every sense of the word, and according to the descriptions of Love found in 1st Corinthians 13), and you decide that you want to walk through this life with that person. Now suppose that your family, (a family who has accepted the Love and Union of every other member of your family) shows no acknowledgment of your relationship in which you find this same Love & Union. It is even discouraged that this Love and Union even be brought to light, (i.e. e-mails that request that you boycott companies that do show acknowledgment of the type of Love and Union that you have found).
You know, I recently spent the day with some family members. They all three know about Billy and they know how special he is to me. When I got home that evening Billy asked me, “Did they ask about me?” I honestly (and shamefully) had to reply, “No, I’m sorry, but they didn’t ask about you. I did mention you to them though…” I told him. Now these three individual are very Christian people and in any other situation, their Christianity may never even be questioned. But, here they had an opportunity to show God’s Love and Concern by the simple act of Acknowledgment, and they chose another path. The very existence of Billy was ignored and Christ’s Love was not displayed.
Sometimes Billy tells me, “Maybe I should just leave and go back to Kentucky so that you could be closer to your family.” Of course I tell him that I don’t want him to do that. I would never just let someone that I love just walk out of my life like that. Sometimes I feel embarrassed in front of Billy’s family. His family has shown us a tremendous amount of Love and Acceptance toward us. When I have, in the past, asked Billy to leave his home because I have my own family coming down for a visit, I do feel bad and embarrassed in front of him and his family. My family just does not accept us like his family does, and at times I feel more of the Love of Christ from his family than I do from my own family. It is even more disserting because his family does not have the strong religious ties that my family does and therefore, I would expect my family to more easily be able to demonstrate the Love of Christ. [Billy’s family has started to regularly attend Church within the past couple of years.]
I do take my part of the responsibility for this [embarrassing] situation because I have lived in fear of my family for the better part of 13 years, but I have now decided that I’m done with living in fear. There may be a price to pay for this new found courage that I find in Christ, but I know in my Heart that it is the right thing to do.
Now, if any healthy minded person would truthfully ask themselves the question: ‘Would I want to have such a profound part of my being ignored and seemingly chastised by my family?’ I would have to assume that no one would be content with that sort of treatment. It certainly is not a display of the Love of Christ. If you treat a neighbor in this way, (and in this case the neighbor would be me and Billy), then you are not treating your neighbor in a way that you would like to be treated, and therefore, (and according to Jesus), you would not be ‘Loving the Lord your God with all your Heart and with all your Soul and with all your Mind.’ [The idea of Loving God and Loving your Neighbor are interconnected.]
Many people, including some of my own family, may not be, (as Thom says) convinced by the Pro-Gay understanding of scripture. Even after the extensive explanation that I give concerning this the Pro-Gay View of scripture, and the weak and unsupported view that the Traditional understanding of scripture provides, there will undoubtedly be people who will choose to ‘blindly’ follow religious doctrine, and to ignore anything that is contrary to those learned, traditional teachings. As I have said, and I do believe; every person should be at liberty to believe as they see appropriate for their own life.
Nearing to the end of the above conversation, Thom said this, “You interpret our silence as evidence that what you’ve been saying is sufficiently convincing to force us either to change or stubbornly resist reason.” The truth is… he is right. I will gladly accept a traditional understanding of the Homosexual Hermeneutic if it is what you believe and you can explain to me why you believe it. Then I will fully support you in your decision to live by your interpretation of scripture and I will allow you to apply your understanding of the scriptures to your life in whatever way you feel will draw you into a closer relationship with God, through Christ. According to Luke 19:10, Jesus says that he came to seek and save the lost, and I believe that he does this by showing us how to have a closer relationship with God, our Creator.
I firmly believe in the freedom that we have in Christ. Paul speaks about this freedom in his writings; Galatians 2:4, Galatians 5:1, Colossians 2:6. Although I may speak to my Christian Brothers and Sisters concerning spiritual matters, I don’t feel that it is my place to force myself, or my beliefs onto anyone. But, in like manner, I will not allow myself to be ‘taken captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.’[Colossians 2:8]
It may appear that I am taking a harsh tone with some of my family, but I do love them very much, and I do understand that sometimes people to things while believing in their good intentions. I don’t doubt that their hearts are probably in a good place in regards to certain actions that they take, but those actions are not necessarily received as well intentioned. Unless I take the responsibility to say to my neighbor that I don’t perceive your actions as loving, then my neighbor will probably not understand my feelings. If I don’t take the responsibility of telling my neighbor how I feel, then I probably don’t deserve any better neighborly treatment because, I’ve taken no action to correct it myself.
I want to bring up another point as to why I feel my understanding of the Homosexual Hermeneutic is correct. (The funny thing is, my family and many other Christians would probably agree with me in this understanding of scripture as it applies to many other subjects, but when it comes to the Homosexual Hermeneutic, I suspect that there would be hesitation in make the connection.)
In Matthew 5, 6 and 7, Jesus teaches the Jewish people (and us) what we now refer to as the Sermon on the Mount. In this Sermon, he starts out by saying who is blessed (or happy), and what the result of that blessing, (or happiness) will be. Jesus goes on to tell God’s people that they should be the Light of the World and the Salt of the Earth.
Before he starts into his lessons, he tells them what gives him the authority to teach them. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen; will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For, I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The lessons with which Jesus instructs that people are taught in such a way; that it leaves the Jewish people in amazement. His authority allowed him to reveal things to them that they had never before considered. The theme of his lessons is ‘The attitude of the Heart.’ He teaches them how to relate to their fellowman, their neighbor and to God from within their own Heart. The following are examples of these, Christ’s teachings:
Murder: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you; leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth; you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
Adultery: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”
Divorce: “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulterous, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”
Oaths: “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”
An Eye for an Eye: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”
Judging others: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Christians should be able to look at these verses and understand in their Hearts what Christ is saying. But in understanding the Homosexual Hermeneutic, could Christians not have the same understanding of Jesus’ words and intentions. It is the intention of the Heart that God is looking at. Now, if we, who are homosexual and Christian, tell our Brothers and Sisters in Christ that our experience is real and that we are homosexual and we feel that this homosexuality must be God given because it is all we have ever known. If we honestly tell our Brothers and Sisters that we do not feel that we are living in a ‘fallen’ state, then this is the truthful word of fellow Christian who adheres to God’s Word and believes that the act of lying and being deceitful are sinful behaviors. If our Brothers and Sisters then deny our honesty, in essence what is being said is, ‘Your experience makes no difference to us and we believe that you are lying about the relationship that you claim to have with God and Christ. (I don’t think that this actual thought goes through the minds of our Christian ‘Brothers and Sister,’ but this is what the Christian Homosexuals probably hears in response to their plea for acceptance.)
I also think that the ‘experience’ aspect of this issue has a great deal to do with the response that we receive. If some of our Brothers and Sister don’t have this experience, and they don’t understand how we could have this experience, then the validity of the experience is denied. Could you imagine a Man, (or Men) telling Women, ‘The Pain that you claim to experience in child-birth is an experience that we don’t believe is real. We believe that you have been mislead or fallen into false doctrine that has caused you to believe that what you are actually experiencing is Pain.’ I know this is an absolutely ridiculous scenario, but when I am told that I have been misled or that I am following false doctrine, it feels like an attack on my very integrity. What I hear is, “You are not intelligent enough to interpret your own thoughts and feelings.”
I do understand that there are people who do fall victim to false teachings, but this particular issue is one that I have studied in depth, (as can be seen from the above discussion). If I were seeing a more logical explanation of the Homosexual Hermeneutic by those who hold to the Traditional View, then I may have reason to question my understanding of the Pro-Gay interpretation. But until a more logical and reasonable understanding of the Traditional Homosexual Hermeneutic is presented to me, I have to live my life in the most Christ-like and honest way that I can; from my Heart.
I’ll say this one last time, (in relating this back to Jesus’ ideas that he expressed in the Sermon on the Mount). If you should feel in your Heart that a Traditional understanding of scripture is correct, and that homosexuality, in whatever form, is sinful, then you should not be a homosexual. (As if you would have a choice in the matter anyway.) I will respect your decision and I will love you, regardless, in that decision. But, in like manner, if I understand in my Heart that homosexuality is not sinful in my particular state of being, and that I can live my life with one other person in a respectful, loving relationship, then I would appreciate your love and support in my decision.
Whether I am standing up for what I believe or not, mankind is moving in the direction that I am speaking of anyway, (with or without me). I also believe that this direction in which our world and society is moving, is in accordance with the Will of God and within his Grand Design for Human Kind.
Whether or not you realize it, Humans and Societies are evolving. This can be seen throughout the teachings of the Bible. God, through the Bible, gives us the history of mankind and from a spiritual perspective. This history demonstrates to us how we humans, throughout all of history, have continued to gain a better understanding of God and this has caused a change in our perception and thinking about God. Paul, in his writings to the Corinthians, gives us a glimpse into God’s plan for us. 1st Corinthians 13:11-12 – “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Human Kind is God’s child, and we are all his children. We Christians believe that we are the faithful children and heirs/co-heirs with Christ. If we follow God’s ways and his teachings, then we will grow up in the way that he intends for us. If this line of reasoning is correct and it is in accordance with Christian teachings, then mankind as a whole is continuing to grow and learn about God.
We as humans like to believe that we know it all and that there is nothing else for us to learn, but I think we have a great deal more to learn. I like what the Prophet Isaiah reveals to us in Isaiah 55:8-9 - “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” There is so much for mankind to still learn, but God has indeed brought us a long way upon the path of Knowledge and Understanding.
I think that my Grandfather Arnold [Papaw] understood this. From the time that my family started attending Goodwyn’s Chapel in about 1974 or 1975 until I left for the Army in 1986, I listened to my Papaw speak from the pulpit quite a bit. He ministered to Goodwyn’s Chapel during that 13-14 year time period and I was usually there to hear him, three times a week. I couldn’t tell very many specifics about his sermons because, I was a kid and you know how kids are in Church. But, I do recall hearing him talk about the ‘Dispensations of Time.’ He actually mentioned it quite frequently, but I never gave much credence to these references until more recently. In the past couple of years I have learned that this is actually an idea of thought that someone developed based on scripture and from putting history into perspective from a spiritual standpoint.
http://www.biblelife.org/dispensations.htm
“The Seven Dispensations of Time”
The Scriptures divide time (by which is meant the entire period from the creation of Adam to the ‘new heaven and a new earth’ of Rev. 21: 1) into seven unequal periods, usually called dispensations (Eph. 3:2), although these periods are also called ages (Eph. 2:7) and days, as in ‘day of the Lord.’

These periods are marked off in Scripture by some change in God’s method of dealing with mankind, or a portion of mankind, in respect of the two questions: of sin, and of man’s responsibility. Each of the dispensations may be regarded as a new test of the natural man, and each ends in judgment, marking his utter failure in every dispensation. Five of these dispensations, or periods of time, have been fulfilled; we are living in the sixth, probably toward its close, and have before us the seventh, and last: the millennium.
1. Man Innocent.
This dispensation extends from the creation of Adam in Genesis 2:7 to the expulsion from Eden. Adam created innocent and ignorant of good and evil, was placed in the Garden of Eden with his wife, Eve, and put under responsibility to abstain from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The dispensation of innocence resulted in the first failure of man, and in its far-reaching effects, the most disastrous. It closed in judgment: ‘So he drove out the man.’ [See Gen. 1:26, Gen. 2:16, 17, Gen. 3:6, and Gen. 3:22-24.]
Salvation Gospel in this Dispensation: Do not eat of the Tree of Knowledge.
2. Man under Conscience.
By the fall, Adam and Eve acquired and transmitted to the race the knowledge of good and evil. This gave conscience a basis for right moral judgment, and hence the race came under this measure of responsibility-to do good and eschew evil. The result of the dispensation of conscience, from Eden to the flood (while there was no institution of government and of law), was that ‘all flesh had corrupted his way on the earth,’ that ‘the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,’ and God closed the second testing of the natural man with judgment: the flood. [See Gen. 3:7, 22, Gen. 6:5, 11-12 and Gen. 7:11-12, 23.]
Salvation Gospel in this Dispensation: Do Good and do not do Evil.
3. Man in Authority over the Earth.
Out of the fearful judgment of the flood God saved eight persons, to whom, after the waters were assuaged, He gave the purified earth with ample power to govern it. This, Noah and his descendants were responsible to do. The dispensation of human government resulted, upon the plain of Shinar, in the impious attempt to become independent of God and closed in judgment: the confusion of tongues. [See Gen. 9: 1, 2, Gen. 11: 1-4 and Gen. 11:5-8.]
Salvation Gospel in this Dispensation: Believe God and build an Ark.
4. Man under Promise.
Out of the dispersed descendants of the builders of Babel, God called one man, Abram, with whom He enters into covenant. Some of the promises to Abram and his descendants were purely gracious and unconditional. These either have been or will yet be literally fulfilled. Other promises were conditional upon the faithfulness and obedience of the Israelites. Every one of these conditions was violated, and the dispensation of promise resulted in the failure of Israel and closed in the judgment of bondage in Egypt.
The book of Genesis, which opens with the sublime words, ‘In the beginning God created,’ closes with, ‘In a coffin in Egypt.’ [See Gen. 12:1-3, Gen. 13:14-17, Gen. 15:5, Gen. 26:3, Gen. 28:12-13 and Exod. 1:13-14.]
Salvation Gospel in this Dispensation: Believe God’s Promise.
5. Man under Law.
Again the grace of God came to the help of helpless man and redeemed the chosen people out of the hand of the oppressor. In the wilderness of Sinai He proposed to them the covenant of law. Instead of humbly pleading for a continued relation of grace, they presumptuously answered: ‘All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.’ The history of Israel in the wilderness and in the land is one long record of flagrant, persistent violation of the law, and at last, after multiplied warnings, God closed the testing of man by law in judgment: first Israel, and then Judah, was driven out of the land into a dispersion which still continues. A feeble remnant returned under Ezra and Nehemiah, of which, in due time, Christ came: ‘Born of a woman-made under the law.’ Both Jews and Gentiles conspired to crucify Him. [See Exod. 19:1-8, 2nd Kings 17:1-18, 2nd Kings 25:1 -11, Acts 2:22-23, Acts 7:51-52, Rom. 3:19-20, Rom. 10:5 and Gal. 3:10.]
Salvation Gospel in this Dispensation: Obey God and keep His Commandments.
6. Man under Grace.
The sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ introduced the dispensation of pure grace, which means undeserved favor, or God giving righteousness, instead of God requiring righteousness, as under law. Salvation, perfect and eternal, is now freely offered to Jew and Gentile upon the acknowledgment of sin, or repentance, with faith in Christ.

‘Jesus answered and said unto them, this is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent’ (John 6:29). ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life’ (John 6:47). ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.’ (John 5:24). ‘My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish’ (John 10:27-28). ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast’ (Eph. 2:8-9).

The predicted result of this testing of man under grace is judgment upon an unbelieving world and an apostate church. [See Luke 17:26-30, Luke 18:8, 2nd Thess. 2:7-12 and Rev. 3:15-16.]

The first event in the closing of this dispensation will be the descent of the Lord from heaven, when sleeping saints will be raised and, together with believers then living, caught up ‘to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord’ (1st Thess. 4:16-17). Then it follows the brief period called ‘the great tribulation.’ [See Jer. 30:5-7, Dan. 12:1, Zeph. 1:15-18 and Matt. 24:21-22.]
Some teachers number the Tribulation as one of the dispensations, while combining the dispensations of Promise & Law. However, we see the Tribulation as a special period during which human civilization crumbles under the weight of the combined features of its age’s long rejection of God. The Lord has limited this period to a short 7 years, to prevent man’s self-destruction.
After this the personal return of the Lord to the earth in power and great glory occurs, and the judgments which introduce the seventh, and last dispensation. [See Matt. 25:31-46 and Matt. 24:29- 30.]
Salvation Gospel in this Dispensation: Confess Jesus as Lord and Believe in the Resurrection.
7. Man under the Personal Reign of Christ.
After the purifying judgments which attend the personal return of Christ to the earth, He will reign over restored Israel and over the earth for one thousand years. This is the period commonly called the millennium. The seat of His power will be Jerusalem, and the saints, including the saved of the dispensation of grace, namely the church, will be associated with Him in His glory. [See Isa. 2:1-4, Isa. 11, Acts 15:14-17, Rev. 19:11-21 and Rev. 20:1-6.]

But when Satan is ‘loosed a little season,’ he finds the natural heart as prone to evil as ever, and easily gathers the nations to battle against the Lord and His saints, and this last dispensation closes, like all the others, in judgment. The great white throne is set, the wicked dead are raised and finally judged, and then come the ‘new heaven and a new earth.’ Eternity is begun. [See Rev. 20:3, 7-15; Rev. 21 and 22.]
Now, I’ve not studied this idea of the ‘Dispensations of Time’ but, I do believe that my Papaw did. He spent a lot of time in study and I don’t think that I would have heard him speak of it so often from the pulpit if it weren’t something that he didn’t believe in. I can see (just at a glance), that it does teach that there is a progression by mankind in understanding God. I can certainly agree with this idea and I believe that we will continue to learn about God and his higher ways for as long as the earth remains. Humans have now achieved the greatest level of learning that mankind has ever seen because we possess a great deal of the accumulated learning and experiences of mankind, but there is probably so much more that God desires to teach us, in terms of Faith, Hope and Love. I can only imagine what more he could teach us, but I do believe that this issue of homosexuality is on the forefront of what God wants mankind to learn at this point in our history.
In the above discussion, there were thoughts expressed about the comparison of the issue of homosexuality with slavery/patriarchialism. (It was stated that this comparison is unfair, although the reason for why the comparison is unfair was never revealed, it was just suggested that I read Robert Gagnon.) I do continue to believe that it is a fair comparison because, just as with those particular issues, mankind is learning to respect the rights of the individual. The idea of God’s Love is better revealed in each circumstance: Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation.
As I mentioned when I started these ‘After Thoughts,’ I have, over the last couple of years, continued to think about this issue in a myriad of ways. In all of my reasoning and balancing out of these ideas with how I understand the nature of God, I have never once come up with the conclusion that I am in error in placing my confidence in the most understandable interpretation of the particular scriptures that refer to homosexuality. And when I reconcile these particular verses to all of the other verses in scripture that instruct us in the true nature of God, I see them as being in absolute correlation.
Read the Book of Galatians and try to understand what Paul is telling these people. Paul takes a somewhat harsh tone with these Christians for abandoning Christ and his teachings. He even took a stance against Peter in front of a group of fellow Christians because Peter was trying to place the Gentiles under Jewish Law through Circumcision. Paul himself quotes Jesus’ words; “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” [Galatians 5:14]. I think that I can empathize with Paul and with his concern for the Galatians. In Galatians 4:16 he tell them – “Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?” I can understand Paul’s feelings here because I do believe that what I am saying is the truth. I believe this because I have taken time to study the word of God and consider what I have learned. I believe this because I have the experience in my life that helps me to understand this issue better than many Christians could understand it. Will I become the enemy of the Church and my Family by telling the Truth?
The most recent issue that this country is now facing concerning homosexuality is of Gay Marriage. When I watch this drama being played out on the News Programs, sometimes I just have to laugh. I see the opposition to Gay Marriage struggling to prevent this legislation passing. I think to myself, ‘Why are they so wound up about this issue anyway? It is not as if someone is trying to force these people, who are opposed to Gay Marriage, to marry someone of the same sex.’ In all reality, I don’t understand the opposition. What skin is it off of the backs of those in opposition? What pain is being inflicted on them that would cause them to so vehemently oppose the union of two people who love one another and want to spend their lives together? What possible reason could the opposition to Gay Marriage have to not allow American Citizens, (who pay the same taxes as everyone else), a right to have their relationships recognized by the State, and to have the same rights and privileges afforded to them, as is afforded to their ‘straight’ counterpart couples?
It is largely the Republican Party, backed by Christian Evangelicals, which stand in opposition to ‘Gay Marriage.’ Don’t get me wrong because I often side with Republicans, especially in matters the Fiscal Responsibility of Government and on the issue of the Sanctity of Life. But, is it not the Republican Party that most strongly desires to recognize the Rights of the Individual? It seems to me that on this issue of Gay Marriage, the Republican Party seems to do an ‘about face’ and they have decided that on this particular issue, the rights of the individual is inconsequential, and the Government should step in and dictate to Gay Americans that they do not have the right to marry whom they wish.
I am pleased to see that there are states that are beginning to recognize the union of same sex couples and I think that this momentum will continue. Maybe I will live long enough to have my relationship with Billy recognized by the State of Florida. I am pleased to know that the Spirit of God continues to strive with mankind to bring us along in the instruction of his ways. I am pleased to see that the Child of God, [Mankind] does continue to grow in the ways of his Father and Creator, [our God]. Amen.
Buddy Cottle
25 April, 2009

April 29, 2009 at 7:51 AM  
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April 9, 2010 at 4:09 AM  

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