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Showing posts from April, 2022

Platonists, Stoics, and Paul on Gender Fluidity, ‘Side B Christians,’ and ‘Conversion Therapy’

  In Greek and Roman antiquity, every form of sexual expression that is now on full display in society was present there as well.  Descriptions of celibacy, marriage between men and women, pre-marital sex, prostitution, adultery, divorce and remarriage, rape, pederasty, pedophilia, homosexuality of both men and women, men identifying and dressing as women, homosexual marriage, bestiality—and whatever else one might add—are all present in the literature.  Some of the arguments in regard to these practices developed as applications of philosophical schools of thought in this pre-Christian era.  This essay compares and contrasts Paul’s understanding with some aspects of Platonism and Stoicism and then expands this to contemporary discussion of gender fluidity, so-called ‘Side B Christians,’ and ‘conversion therapy.’ Platonism Platonic philosophy, for example, saw the particulars (this chair, this kind of justice, this love) as expressions of ideals or universals (‘Chairness,’ Justice, Lov

Letters on the Ban on Conversion Therapy

 I offer two letters addressed to the Rt Hon Boris Johnson, MP, and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  Both letters attend to the question under discussion about so-called 'conversion therapy' for persons who are internally disordered in their sexuality.   The letter in the left column is a copy from a post-orthodox, progressive author in the UK, along with a few other signatories of like mind.  It is copied from: https://anglican.ink/2022/04/05/rowan-williams-urges-boris-johnson-to-ban-conversion-therapy-for-transgendered-individuals/.  The letter in the right column is from this blog and expresses a Biblical understanding of conversion, using language from Paul's letters, 2 Peter, and the Book of Common Prayer.  It represents an orthodox, Evangelical understanding of conversion that has been held by the Church since apostolic times.   The letter on the left is not recognisably Christian and offers no Christian hope to sinners.  Only in a laboratory scrubbed clean of a