Truth About Homosexuality and the Bible Parts 13 Born Again
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| Robin Scroggs is a professor of Professor of Biblical Theology at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is the author of numerous books of biblical scholarship, including Jews, Greeks, and Christians (1976) and New Attestation and Homosexuality (1983). | |||
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i. The Bible does not oppose homosexuality considering it does not speak of truthful or innate homosexuality but rather of homosexual acts by people who are not homosexuals. A person may be born, so the statement runs, with a homosexual orientation--or at least is directed toward same-sex activity fulfillment from his or her earliest days. Past those who brainstorm with this judgment such a person may be called an invert. He or she may or may not engage in homosexual acts. In contrast, a pervert is said to be a person who engages in acts contrary to his or her orientation. Thus a heterosexual person who engages in homosexual activity is a pervert, just as a homosexual person would exist who engages in heterosexual acts. While there does non appear to be agreement amid psychologists or sociologists equally to crusade, there is wide agreement amidst some of them that "the genuine homosexual status, or inversion . . . is something for which the subject can in no way be held responsible.... "
The distinction between inversion and perversion is then practical to the relevant biblical texts. "Strictly speaking, the Bible and Christian tradition know goose egg of homosexuality both are concerned solely with the committee of homosexual acts.... " Or a similar statement past Seward Hiltner: "At to the lowest degree in its reference to homosexuality, therefore, the Bible does not speak at all to the principal way in which homosexuality must be understood today." If this is so, and so the Bible is clearly irrelevant for the contemporary discussion and cannot be used to contend for or against the acceptance or ordination of homosexuals.
2. The Bible does non oppose homosexuality because the texts do not deal with homosexuality in general . Here the key phrase is "in general." Homosexuality may be frowned upon, but the real reason for the biblical injunction lies elsewhere. Again the reader must wait until later chapters to see the detailed exegetical investigations. Hither only the conclusions can be listed. Deut. 23:17-18 inveighs against female and male cult prostitutes. But information technology is at least a strong selection that the male prostitute serviced females rather than male". Thus the KJV [King James Version] translation ''sodomite'' has no contemporary scholarly footing and must exist judged a mistranslation. Even if such a male did service other males, information technology is prostitution per se which is prohibited, non homosexuality in general.
Lev. 18:22 and twenty:13 clearly legislates against male person homosexuality. But why? Is the objection purely sexual, or is it otherwise? One possible answer is that the basic objection is to the wasting of male semen. Every bit the UCC study guide says: "The condemnation of male homosexual acts must be seen in the context of the procreative ethic which information technology served." Thus the police force may be primarily directed not confronting same-sex relationships in and of themselves merely rather against the result of male person homosexuality. Since today "wasting of semen" may not be considered a sin at all, the gimmicky relevance of the law is nullified.
Similarly these laws tin be seen as directed primarily confronting foreign religious practices. If so, so the separation of State of israel from "the nations" and not primarily some horror of homosexuality in itself is the purpose of the prohibitions. Tom Homer defends this view and concludes: "What we practise know virtually these Levitical writers in respect to their disfavor to homosexuality is that this aversion was cultic in origin.... "The UCC written report guide raises this same possibility, although it prefers not to answer its own question. "The question is whether the lawmaking forbade homosexual acts because they were wrong per se, considering they violated the procreative ethic, or because they were involved with idolatry?"
Even more popular has been the effort to deny that the sin of Sodom described in Genesis 19 was sexual in nature. The evil as ascribed to the cities in later Jewish and Christian traditions is not homosexuality. Rather, when the sin is identified, it is lack of hospitality. The citizens do not want to "know" the angels in a sexual sense; their aim is to place just who these strangers are and perhaps to eject them from their city. As D. S. Bailey summarizes this view: "The association of homosexual practices with the Sodom story is a late and extrinsic feature which, for some reason, has been read into the original account." He is followed by John McNeill: "The sin remains primarily 1 of inhospitality." Thus Genesis 19 does not assault homosexuality. The story in Judges 19 is susceptible to the same argument.
In I Cor. 6:9 and I Tim. 1:ten the words unremarkably thought to point to homosexuals are extremely ambiguous. One give-and-take, malakos, literally means "soft" and is no technical term for a homosexual. The second, arsenokoitai, manifestly has sexual connotations. Since, notwithstanding, the New Attestation occurrences are the earliest appearances of the word, it is not like shooting fish in a barrel to be certain what it ways. John Boswell in his recent study denies that it refers to a homosexual person in general but rather specifically to the male prostitute, who could serve heterosexual or homosexual clients. At whatever rate, the sin is prostitution, not homosexuality in itself. If this is so, neither passage condemns homosexuality in general.
It might seem that merely a series of exact pyrotechnics could eliminate the seemingly obvious reference to homosexuality in Romans one. This has, all the same, occasionally been attempted. George Edwards in a paper prepared for the UPC Job Forcefulness argues forcefully that the statements in i:26-27 must exist seen in light of the larger purpose of Paul in the starting time ii chapters. In Romans 1, Paul describes the fall from true obedience to God and sets out certain sinful consequences of this defection. Merely and then, Paul immediately attacks someone, simply called "the man" with the post-obit words. "Therefore yous have no excuse, O homo, whoever you are, when you estimate some other; for in passing judgment upon him you condemn yourself, because you, the gauge, are doing the very same things" (Rom. 2:ane). From the context Edwards argues that this "man" is the prideful Jewish boaster (cf. 2:17) who thinks himself ameliorate than the pagan. The intent of Paul in these chapters is to show the Jew that he is on the same level equally the Gentile; both are in need of grace.
Edwards summarizes: "Paul has not introduced the material in one:18-32 to moralize upon the repulsive graphic symbol of the unenlightened and certainly not to provide a preview of Christian imperatives which formally begin at Romans 12. Paul takes up in this department the birthday familiar outlook of the Jewish alazon [boaster] and then that this alazon is set up up for the total deflation that follows in Romans two. Consequently Rom. 1:xviii-32 is not paranetic [ethical] material at all." Since the purpose is not ethical exhortations, Edwards believes information technology illegitimate to use the passage to establish Christian objections to homosexuality. "It is insisted that attacks on homophilic behavior based on Rom. one:26f are hermeneutically unsound."
Boswell comes to the aforementioned determination. Listing his claims in ii propositions mayhap can communicate nearly clearly his position. (1) "The bespeak of the passage is not to stigmatize sexual beliefs of any sort but to condemn the Gentiles for their general infidelity." (2) "What is even more important, the persons Paul condemns are patently not homosexual: what he derogates are homosexual acts committed by apparently heterosexual persons." Paul is stigmatizing persons who take gone beyond their ain personal nature to commit homosexual acts. Just this means they must be by nature heterosexual. Thus Paul does not address the situation of persons who are "by nature" homosexually oriented. This argument depends heavily, of course, on the distinction between inversion and perversion described above.
By these means various scholars have attempted to deny the relevance of some or all of the biblical passages which have been presumed to oppose homosexuality. This is not to say that the scholars I have mentioned would deny the relevance of all of the passages. My purpose, however, is to testify that the scholarly machinery is bachelor for one who would want to eliminate the Bible completely from the current discussion. Peradventure the person who comes closest to using them all is Boswell, as tin be seen from two of his claims: "In sum, there is simply one identify in the writings which somewhen become the Christian Bible where homosexual relations per se are clearly prohibited--Leviticus--and the context in which the prohibition occurred rendered information technology inapplicable to the Christian community, at least every bit moral law." "The New Attestation takes no demonstrable position on homosexuality."
Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/bible/doesnotoppose.html
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