From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Wed Jul 23 2003 - 14:40:17 EDT
John W Burgeson wrote:
>
> George wrote, in part: "Perhaps I've misread you. Let's see. I think
> there are basically 3 ways one
> can argue that Paul's statements in Rom.1:26-27 do not condemn as sinful
> all homosexual
> activity.
> A) Paul was just wrong & there's nothing at all wrong with such
> activity. I
> don't hear anyone on the list saying this.
> B) Paul's statements refer to manifestly wicked people & not to decent
> ones.
> C) Paul is speaking here about various types of promiscuous
> homosexuality & not
> committed, loving, 1-1 homosexual relationships between adults, in part
> because he (&
> people in his culture in general ) were not aware that some people, apart
> from any
> choice they made, had homosexual orientations.
>
> You - & many others - have argued for C. But the way you spoke in your
> earlier
> post about your friends sounded a lot like B."
>
> In a later post you argued that Paul had in mind gentiles in general and
> not a particular group and that, of course, not every gentile was guilty
> of every one of the sins listed.
>
> I had always thought Paul had in mind one particular group of gentiles.
> >From the context, I don't know how to resolve this with certainty. I
> understand your argument that Paul was speaking of "gentiles in general."
>
> In any case, I have been arguing B, as well as for C, of course. The
> people I know are (mostly) Christians; a couple are Unitarians. And my
> argument is that they don't fit the description Paul gives. Not even
> close.
Though I think that Paul is speaking of gentiles in general here, let's pursue
possibility B, that he's referring to some manifestly bad subset of them. Consider one
member X of that subset who lies, cheats, steals and also engages in homosexual activity
with a single partner in a long-term relationship. According to this interpretation of
Romans we can & should consider all of these things as sinful. Now suppose this person
has a dramatic conversion experience and comes to talk to me (M). The following
converstion might ensue.
X "I'm sorry for my sins, believe in Jesus Christ as my savior and want to
start living as a Christian. What kind of changes should I make?"
M "To start with, you should stop lying, cheating and stealing."
X "What about my homosexual relationship? I was told before that that was
sinful too."
M "It was then, but it's OK now."
This seems kind of odd to me.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Wed Jul 23 2003 - 15:16:52 EDT