Bible and Mission

Introduction The idea that marriage can be defined in terms of a ‘loving, committed relationship’ instead of as the union of a male and a female is part of a larger, philosophical disagreement.  This essay makes this point with respect to the different philosophical approaches of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.  The agreement of Jewish and Christian philosophy is closest to the Stoics: a theology of creation compares favourably to the Stoic notion of living according to nature (natural law, not one’s personal inclinations).  The attempt by some to redefine marriage so that it can include homosexual relationships is consistent with philosophical alternatives in Paul's day—which Paul did not accept.  It is a shift away from the doctrine of creation and from concrete theologizing in general that is fundamental to Christian theology. Plato’s Universals and Particulars For Plato, particulars represented—in whatever inadequate form—the ideal or universal...

Introduction The argument that Paul and other early Christians would not have known about loving, committed, long-term homosexual relationships, unions, or even marriages is false.  A myth has developed in contemporary ‘scholarship’ about what antiquity understood on these matters, perpetuated by scholars who refuse to do the heavy lifting work of actual research in the primary sources rather than just quote one another.  It is as though the argument has been hermetically sealed by those pushing the revisionist agenda of same-sex unions: actual research would be highly inconvenient were it to reveal the myth. The mistaken scholarship seems to have begun in the 1980s with Robin Scroggs, who argued that … pederasty was the only model [for homosexuality] in existence in the world of [Paul’s] time.” And “at the risk of seeming endlessly repetitive, I close with the observation that Paul thinks of pederasty, and perhaps the more degraded forms of it, when he is attac...

Introduction The subject of sexual orientation in antiquity is discussed here as a topic of a 'mission to the West' because recent, revisionist interpretations of the Church's consistent teaching on homosexuality through the millenia undermine the Gospel that a culture going through its own revisions and becoming increasingly post-Christian needs to hear: God transforms sinful human beings through the good news of Jesus Christ.  Even sinful orientations, entrenched as they are (Aristotle called them, among other things, 'states of character'), can be transformed.  Here, the subject is that Paul would have known about the idea of sexual orientation since his culture did.  Thus, he does not oppose homosexuality in ignorance of orientation--as though we know more today and can therefore ignore Paul's teaching. John Shelby Spong believed, along with any number of other persons discussing Christianity and homosexuality, that the ancient world knew nothing of sexual o...