Re: the Bible, translation and gays

rtdavide@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 responds to shegeek72 on homo***uality.

Unfortunately shegeek72 uses religioustolerance.org as a source for
Biblical exegesis. I agree with a few of their positions, but I've
seen no evidence in any of their web pages of serious attempts at
exegesis.

Their discussion of ****ea is typical. While promising a discussion of
the Greek word, they actually discuss primarily uses of "fornication"
in English.

Their discussion of Rom 1:26-27 is not credible. It's hard to see how
any reasonable person can read that without concluding the Paul
disapproves of all homo***uality. It might be true that he speaks of
people who were originally hetero***ual and turned to homo***uality.
However he is speaking of the pagan world as a whole, so he is
probably not speaking of individuals who changed during their lives,
but of the long-term effects of mankind falling from original
sinlessness into idolatry. And since he considers homo***uality to be
such an obvious evil that it is a punishment for idolatry, it's
really, really hard to believe that he would think it's perfectly OK
as long as you start out homo***ual.

I think the only credible arguments about Paul's passages are

* Paul's letters are primarily useful because of the light he casts
on Jesus' teachings and how they were carried out in the Church.
His own teachings are not inerrant. There are signs in his letters
that Paul himself makes this distinction.

or

* Modern homo***uality is simply a different thing than what he had
seen.

I suspect that almost everyone who defends homo***uality in the modern
Church in fact accepts the first of these, and possibly also the
second. I probably do too. I think it's disingenuous to do the kind of
pseudo-exegesis that the Toronto Consultants do, appearing to accept
the authority of the texts and then changing their meaning. Before
getting into long arguments on the meaning of ****eia, I suggest a
preliminary question: If you concluded that Paul actually opposed all
forms of homo***uality, would it change anything for you? If, as I
suspect, the answer is no, why are we going through this?

I am particularly disappointed at the Toronto Consultants because
their idea of religious tolerance is to reject conservative religion,
not to find a way to practice mutual respect. My idea of a religious
tolerance site would be one that ****trays the full range of
theological positions accurately and sympathetically, and then
advocates ways for conservative and liberal Christians to respect and
work with each other. Their position in quite clear: inerrancy and
conservative Christianity is wrong, so the way we got tolerance is for
conservatives to become liberal.
(http://www.religioustolerance.org/inerrant.htm)
I happen to agree,
that inerrancy is wrong, but that's a theological position, not a
basis for religious tolerance. (Note however they go beyond simply
rejecting inerrancy. They reject, either directly or by implication,
most of the key ideas of Christianity.) We need a better approach to
tolerance than "you're wrong; can't you adopt my position?"