This is not a matter of calling evil good, darkness light or bitter sweet. I am reminding contributors to this thread that the Anglican Tradition is not one that relies on Scripture alone in developing its theology. At the very least we proclaim Scripture, the Book of Common Prayer and the 39 Articles of Religion as formative in developing our theology. But we also allow for the influence of Tradition and Reason - experience and knowledge - in developing these ideas.
There are even matters in the 39 Articles of Religion that our experience today would have reservations about - eg. I am not prepared to write off the Church of Rome as declared in Article 19. I may have some reservations about aspects of life, practice and faith in the Catholic Church, but the same could be said of my view of these things in pentecostal churches or the Salvation Army. I would not dare to presume they are not part of the Visible Church of Christ. That is God’s business.
The Articles of Religion, as were the Creeds and indeed the Scriptures, were written in a particular historical and theological context. Many of the theological controversies that fashioned the particular wording of the Nicene Creed are no longer controversies today - God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God - these technical terms were addressing long past heresies.
In view of this we must always be open to new understandings of things - even the words of Scripture.
Sorry John. My mistake entirely. I wasn’t so much commenting in the most obscure way about what you think is the relation between Scripture, Reason and Tradition. If I have conveyed that impression, I am sincerly sorry.
I’m commenting on the topic in general.
‘’It’s everybody else out there in society that has the problem. We don’t have the problem...We are sure once people get to know us they’ll realise that we’re not going to pass on any disease to them, we’re not going to bite their head off and we’re not nasty terrible people’’
To preclude certain people from loving relationships on the basis of something they can’t change is not fair.
The evidence is that homosexual people can and do change. See here and here.
john clapton wrote:
In a way this view is based in the existence of new Knowledge (Reason) about human sexuality that was not available to the writers of the Bible.
“New Knowledge” that homosexuality is a ‘given’? What “new Knowledge”?
The American Psychological Association states here
There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors.
The paragraph finishes with a statement that, “most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation”. In the 1970s homosexual activisit Dennis Altman said, “being gay is a choice”. So what has changed? The politics of gay rights has changed.
It was one thing, in the secular world of the 1970s, to insist on one’s right to freedom of sexual choice when that choice did not appear to cause anyone to suffer any major consequences. But then HIV came along. Suddenly not only did the insisters have to risk suffering a well publicised consequence of their own behaviour but their behaviour threatened everyone else through the blood supply. Blaming some unknown, unchosen, biological factor gets you off the hook for acting on your choice. Furthermore, it gets you sympathy - as long as you don’t keep insisting that the Blood Bank is discriminating against you by refusing to accept you as a blood donor. Some might remember those protests outside the Blood Bank in the early 1980s.
I don’t doubt that everyone here would accept that knowledge should inform our understanding of Scripture but it can’t be the sort of post-modernist, clap-trap, ‘knowledge’ that may be ‘true’ for one person’s ‘reality’ but not for another’s. No. It has to be knowledge that is, to the best of our knowledge, really true. It has to correspond with the way things really are, not just with the way some of us would like things to be.
The reality is that there is good evidence that homosexual orientation is not a ‘given’. There is no ‘gay gene’. Homosexual orientation is not caused by anything that can be labelled as merely biological. By the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit people with homosexual inclinations can change, just as Christian people with all sorts of other, deep-seated, sinful inclinations can change.
That there are Christian people who have a homosexual orientation and who manifest the fruits of the Spirit should not surprise anyone. One of the jobs of the Holy Spirit is to sanctify sinners, such as we all are. That does not make the sin of homosexual sex acts, or any other sin, less sinful. It took years before I learned to curb my cutting tongue. Even now, nearly 30 years after I gave my life to our Lord Jesus Christ, I still feel the desire to let my tongue rip and say some really harsh things about other people. There is a pleasurable buzz in that even if I do it only in the privacy of my own mind. Still, I know it’s wrong and by indulging in it I’m missing the mark. So I don’t expect someone whose temptation to sin lies in their sexuality to get over that easily - particularly not if they’re young. I remember being young.
Those Christians who say that there are ‘new understandings’ and new ‘Knowledge’ about homosexuality have a responsibility to make sure that these are actually true before they start urging others to re-interpret Scripture on the basis of them. It’s all very well to like other sinners. It’s another thing entirely to say that their sin is not a sin just because the sinners are likeable. We’re supposed to walk by faith, not by sight, or, I presume, by feelings. When and if scientists provide good evidence, to greater than 95% probability, that homosexuals really have no choice in the matter of their sexual orientation then I will consider the possibility that Scripture needs to be re-interpreted. Until that happens I will not, no matter how sentimentally the case for accepting homosexual acts is presented.
P.S. I looked up Article 19.
The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.
As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.
How does that write off the Church of Rome (or of Jerusalem, etc., for that matter)? I can’t see that it says that the Anglican Church is the only visible Church of Christ.
Sorry for the late response, but I’ve been extremely busy with work and papers.
Mark: I think Paul wrote truthfully and in the S/spirit, but that does not equate to inerrancy. I don’t think there was any miraculous inspiration according to which God moved Paul’s hand as it wrote on the page.
Jason: I know that Paul sees great wisdom in the law and refers to it. But I can’t agree that the OT is determinative for ethics.
I understand Paul’s vision to have been a community motivated by love, which orders itself spontaneously; this is contrary to a community brought to compliance by law. Paul says that he is not under the law. He calls the law the “power of sin.” He says one ought not to be circumcised, because if one obeys the law at this point, one is subject to the whole law. Likewise it does not matter what one eats or drinks, because all foods are clean to one who thinks them clean. The law was our “disciplinarian” until Christ came, but now we are justified before God by faith (working through love) and not by obedience to rule. (And so on...)
There is an objective order, which the law foreshadows. But this new, higher order is only discoverable in the spirit. For a Christian, ethics is not about compliance with rule, but spiritual discernment, as I have argued. So we cannot dispose of the question of homosexuality by citing Levitical prohibitions or a few words here and there. We must discern for ourselves, and this involves listening.
BTW, why Paul introduced rules for Christian marriage in the community of free discernment is an interesting question. We know that he considered that those who did not have the gift of self-control should marry, seemingly as a compromise with the flesh. One might say that since these people depart from the spirit at this point, they are amenable to rule. This is a modification of his general position; but it does not make Paul a legalist.
I just don’t understand your criticism that I abstract “nature” from God.
Also, (to Dannii and Tim Allen) this idea of homosexuality as part of “fallen creation” is questionable. I thought that it was only the mind of man that fell, and not the whole creation. I might be wrong about this, but in the theology I’ve read, the creation is “good”. We are not like the Manichaens for whom it was “evil.” Anyway these questions are quite artificial, since most Christians acknowledge Genesis to be a myth. The fall is a metaphor.
Janice: With respect, your supposed evidence is drawn from fundamentalist websites, and splinter groups like NARTH. NARTH does not accept the professional consensus, dating from 1973, that homosexuality is not a psychological disorder. I am quite sure that mainstream scientific studies show that homosexuality emerges before rational choice as a result of a complex interaction of genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors. The new understandings and new knowledge are clear to see for anyone prepared to move beyond propaganda, and certainly to those prepared to listen to homosexual people themselves.
How to we work with the scriptures in this matter? Some say the Word is absolute, and that is fine. Some say that we can amend the apparent meaning of texts in the light of new knowledge - eg. the world is not flat.
I’m afraid to say that I have been involved in enough debates with homosexuals and their sympathisers to know that no agreement is ever possible.
The quote above from John including the actual wording demonstrates a very different mindset from traditional/orthodox/evangelical/confessional (however you want to put it) types that tend to be found on this website.
I guess its why a split is underway in the Anglican Communion and some people have organised Gafcon.
It may be, David, that our different interpretive paradigms may make it impossible to reach agreement in this matter, but I do not believe that these different paradigms are the cause or explanation of the threatened schism in the Anglican Communion.
Anglicans with these different paradigms have co-existed within the Communion for a long time without schism, despite having radically different views on significant matters - there is no threatened schism over the latest consecration of a bishop in the Diocese of Perth, the Rt Rev’d Kay Goldsworthy.
It is my prayer that just as evangelicals have been able to find a basis for co-existence with priests and bishops who happen to not be men, that one day they will be able to co-exist in a church that allows in some places for godly men and women, whose sexuality is at odds with what they regard as the godly-ordained norm, for gays and lesbians, to exercise ministries that will greatly enrich the church.
Schism, like marriage, should not be lightly entered into.
I was wondering if you might be able to give me the reference for the Dennis Altman quote, I would love to be able to read it in context as I found it very intriguing. I have never met a homosexual person who considered their homosexuality a choice – the reason that we need to have a gay pride festival is to help people overcome the horror that they usually initially feel when they realise that they are gay. When you realise that you are gay you usually realise a few other things simultaneously: that you will not be able to have a normal, nuclear family life that is accepted by other people as perfectly ordinary; that there are people in your family who will not be able to treat you the same way again. If you go to a church you are likely to have to choose between that family and the possibility of ever realizing yourself as a sexual being. I grew up with people in my church who, having been part of the Church family since Sunday school were faced with that agonising choice, if you can call it a “choice.”
The Spitzer study, digested by NARTH demonstrates that Christians who are bisexual and hate being bisexual can, with therapy, become more inclined toward the heterosexual end of the sexuality spectrum. The study was disowned by the APA straight away on the grounds that it was unscientific and had not been peer reviewed. NARTH’s view on conversion therapy is clear; most reputable organisations have a different opinion.
In December of 1998, the Board of Trustees issued a position
statement that the American Psychiatric Association opposes any
psychiatric treatment, such as “reparative” or conversion therapy, which is
based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental
disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should
change his/her sexual homosexual orientation (Appendix 1). In doing so,
the APA joined many other professional organizations that either oppose
or are critical of “reparative” therapies, including the American Academy
of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American
Psychological Association, The American Counseling Association, and
the National Association of Social Workers (1).
Follow the link if you would like to read the whole article.
“When and if scientists provide good evidence, to greater than 95% probability, that homosexuals really have no choice in the matter of their sexual orientation then I will consider the possibility that Scripture needs to be re-interpreted. Until that happens I will not, no matter how sentimentally the case for accepting homosexual acts is presented.”
I find it extremely surprising that you are willing to consider re-interpreting scripture based on science. You refer to sentimentality; I would say that even this is preferable to the strange scientific standard you set; but far preferable to this is for you to speak to Christian homosexuals and ask them about their choice, and then be led by your conscience and your good counsellor.
1 John 2:27 “But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit is the teacher of all things, and what he teaches is True.”
It is my prayer that just as evangelicals have been able to find a basis for co-existence with priests and bishops who happen to not be men, that one day they will be able to co-exist in a church that allows in some places for godly men and women, whose sexuality is at odds with what they regard as the godly-ordained norm, for gays and lesbians, to exercise ministries that will greatly enrich the church.
John, I have been given a problem in that I am heterosexual, and I am not married. I cannot, according to scripture have sex with a woman unless I am married to her. I find it difficult, but I soldier on with some hope for a future solution to that problem.
Are homosexuals under the same rule of scripture, to not have sex unless married? If they do have sex with someone of the same sex, and are part of the church, how should the church view and treat them? Should their sin be seen to be acceptable, or should they remain celebate?
I think most people know the honest answer to that question.
David, I think it’s a good thing that people are bringing their diverse views onto this website. It seems to me that you’re unwilling to engage in theological discussion, or bring your own experiences to the table. All I’ve seen from you is restatement of an entrenched political position. When all is said and done, what is your real difficulty with this issue?
Also, to Jason Hobba: sorry if I sounded patronising in my previous post, as you mentioned.
David, I think it’s a good thing that people are bringing their diverse views onto this website. It seems to me that you’re unwilling to engage in theological discussion, or bring your own experiences to the table. All I’ve seen from you is restatement of an entrenched political position. When all is said and done, what is your real difficulty with this issue?
Christopher also said:
Mark: I think Paul wrote truthfully and in the S/spirit, but that does not equate to inerrancy. I don’t think there was any miraculous inspiration according to which God moved Paul’s hand as it wrote on the page.
Jason: I know that Paul sees great wisdom in the law and refers to it. But I can’t agree that the OT is determinative for ethics.
The problem Christopher is one of foundational beliefs. You don’t believe that the writings of Paul are the inspired word of God. You also don’t believe that the God-inspired Old Testament has any determinative value for ethics.
Until we can resolve the issue of what the Bible is and what place it should have in our lives there will never be any agreement on the homosexual issue. I think that’s where David Palmer is coming from.
Sorry for the late response, but I’ve been extremely busy with work and papers ... Also, (to Dannii and Tim Allen) this idea of homosexuality as part of “fallen creation” is questionable. I thought that it was only the mind of man that fell, and not the whole creation. I might be wrong about this, but in the theology I’ve read, the creation is “good”. We are not like the Manichaens for whom it was “evil.” Anyway these questions are quite artificial, since most Christians acknowledge Genesis to be a myth. The fall is a metaphor.
Thanks for getting back to me on this question, Christopher. I can appreciate that it’s not always easy to find time to respond to issues quickly.
Once again, I’m not in the group you have assumed most Christians to be - at least I don’t regard Genesis to be a myth in quite the same way that I seem to detect you do, and I’m not sure to what level most Christians regard Genesis as myth. So I think that we cannot simply dismiss these questions as artificial, as I’ll try to explain.
Certainly the emphasis of the first two chapters of Genesis is that creation is good (Gen 1:31) prior to the rebellion of humankind against God’s rule over them. However, once Adam and Eve break their relationship with God, all sorts of physical or natural disharmonies are introduced, such as pain, death, and a fractured physical environment (Gen 3:16-19). Thus, although nature (our human physicality included, and therefore our brains as well, where much - if not all - of our mind is developed from) still bears the watermark of God’s goodness, there is a degree of contamination of the original good design, such that the fullness of the initial perfection of creation is no longer visible in the material world around us.
This is what I have heard termed as the “Naturalistic Fallacy”, which is to assume that what is seen in nature is intrinsically good, because God created it so. Leaving other moral frameworks aside, it allows for death, murder, infanticide and rape to be considered at worst morally neutral, as they all occur in nature. This is why the apostle Paul writes of the whole of creation (which he clearly indicates is more than just created human minds) longing to be free of corruption (Rom 8:19-23) - although this may be another issue that you feel the apostle Paul is wrong on due to recent developments in human thought?
I certainly don’t see nature as fundamentally evil (is this what the Manichaens believe?), as the NT writers envisage a new, physical creation as the result of the resurrection, suggesting that matter is not intrinsically evil. I do believe, however, that every part of the originally perfectly good creation of God has been sullied by humanity’s rebellion against God, such that nature is no longer a perfectly reliable guide to the will of God. I don’t believe we can look at naturally occurring phenomena and declare unambiguously, “God must approve of that because it’s occurred naturally.”
Mark: I think Paul wrote truthfully and in the S/spirit, but that does not equate to inerrancy. I don’t think there was any miraculous inspiration according to which God moved Paul’s hand as it wrote on the page.
Thank you for making this clear. Without inspiration of scripture I believe you’ve stepped outside of evangelicalism, and that there is little common ground to discuss these side issues like homosexuality.
Also, (to Dannii and Tim Allen) this idea of homosexuality as part of “fallen creation” is questionable. I thought that it was only the mind of man that fell, and not the whole creation. I might be wrong about this, but in the theology I’ve read, the creation is “good”. We are not like the Manichaens for whom it was “evil.” Anyway these questions are quite artificial, since most Christians acknowledge Genesis to be a myth. The fall is a metaphor.
This is what a lot of Romans is about. In chapter seven Paul explains that although his mind is filled with good intentions, his flesh drags him into sin. “For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. (7:19)” He even says that his fleshly body is waging war against his mind.
We can’t make those kind of moral judgements on the creation itself, but chapter eight shows that it’s not as good as it was when God originally made it.
About Genesis… well I think you’d find very very few here on sydang.net that consider Genesis a myth. There is a lot of debate about where on the spectrum between literal and figurative we should interpret the first few chapters, but I’m sure that most would say the fall was a real historical event. Even Gordon does!
I have never met a homosexual person who considered their homosexuality a choice
Perhaps you have not been alive for long enough. Between 1969 & 1970 I worked in an institution where a very large proportion of the staff were homosexuals. We worked together, ate together, partied together and took holidays together. In 1971, for several months, I shared a flat with a homosexual man who was a particularly good friend and who I met at that work-place.
These homosexuals presented their lifestyle as glamorous and highly desirable - much better than being straight. At least two straight people I knew among that crowd did choose to adopt the lifestyle. No one was agonising about not being accepted as ‘normal’. They were revelling in being different.
See this article written in 1992 by Dr Charles W. Socarides who was then Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.
In 1963, growing concern in the press and the medical profession prompted the New York Academy of Medicine to entrust its Committee on Public Health to study the subject of homosexuality. While the Commit-tee in its report (1964) concluded that “homosexuality is indeed an illness, the homosexual is an emotionally disturbed individual who has not acquired the normal capacity to develop satisfying heterosexual rela-tions,” it sounded an alarm: it warned that “some homosexuals have gone beyond the plane of defensiveness and now argue that deviancy is a ‘desirable, noble, preferable way of life.’” Spokesmen for homosexual groups argued that homosexuality was not an aberration; those so oriented were merely a different kind of people living an acceptable way of life, and, for one thing, they claimed it was the perfect answer to the problem of a population explosion (!).
I know that the APA and various similar organisations have been critical of reparative therapies but what you and a few other people have to come to terms with is the fact that the removal of homosexuality from the DSM was a political act, not a clinical decision based on adequate scientific data. Spitzer played a major role in this. Dr Socarides states:
In November 1973, I was asked by a Newsweek reporter if I would care to comment on the upcoming celebration/cocktail party to take place at the APA headquarters in Washington, D.C. in December com-memorating the “greatest of gay victories"-the “purging” of homosex-uality from the realm of psychiatry. Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, a psychiatrist at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Secretary of the APA Committee on Nomenclature and Statistics, had been made chairman of the Nomenclature Task Force on Homosexuali-ty, apparently setting it apart from the Nomenclature and Statistics Committee itself. Dr. Henry Brill, a respected and dignified psychiatrist embodying the best traditions of the state hospital system, had been removed from a position of authority in respect to the issue. Spitzer, who to my knowledge had never previously published a single article on homosexuality or the sexual deviations, had composed a position paper on the meaning and content of homosexuality. It was upon his rationale that the Nomenclature Committee (or the task force part of it) had proceeded. His new definition was sent to the Council on Research and Development. The head of the group, in a telephone call I made to him soon thereafter, stated: “After all, homosexuals must be protected and this might be the best way to do it.” I argued that we were all for protecting the homosexual against persecution, but this was a different matter.
(emphasis mine)
Once you have stated that it’s normal to be homosexual you pretty much become obliged to criticise people who say it’s a disorder that can be treated. They went further than that and said treatment could be dangerous. That NARTH and other organisations devoted to helping people to overcome their homosexual urges get criticised is only to be expected. They are going against the spirit of our time.
But since Spitzer published his study (in a peer-reviewed journal - Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 32, No. 5, October 2003, pp. 403-417) we are now in the position to know that there really are homosexuals who want to change because they see it as detrimental to their lives, that treatment really can work for homosexuals who want to change, for some it works completely (11% of the men and 37% of the women) and that there is no evidence that treatment harmed anyone. It seems to be safer than aspirin.
You wrote:
The Spitzer study, digested by NARTH demonstrates that Christians who are bisexual and hate being bisexual can, with therapy, become more inclined toward the heterosexual end of the sexuality spectrum.
This is what the review actually states.
Although examples of “complete” change in orientation were not common, the majority of participants did report change from a predominantly or exclusively homosexual orientation before therapy to a predominantly or exclusively heterosexual orientation in the past year as a result of reparative therapy.
I find it extremely surprising that you are willing to consider re-interpreting scripture based on science.
Once upon a time the institutional church held that the sun revolved around the earth. It did so on the authority of scholars who followed Aristotle and Ptolemy and because certain Bible verses seemed to be consistent with what the academics were saying. For instance, Psalm 93:1b, “Yea, the world is established; it shall never be moved”. But then Kepler came along (Copernicus and Galileo don’t count because neither of them had the appropriate evidence). So now we understand Psalm 93:1 to be saying something other than that the earth is stationary in space. I hope you now understand why I say I would be willing to consider the need for re-interpretation if good evidence indicates it may be necessary.
But I do not believe such evidence will ever be forthcoming because the Bible is the Word of God and its passages condemning homosexual acts are unequivocal. The Holy Spirit will never teach me something that is contrary to the Word. If you think the Spirit is telling you that homosexual acts are acceptable to God then I think you need to think again.
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1)
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