Tackling Tradition 84: The 1946 Argument, the Bible, & Homosexuality

The 1946 argument is just a distraction.       It amounts to looking at one or 2 trees in the forest & not the forest itself.       The argument centers on the meaning of 2 words in 1 Corinthians 6.     Those 2 words are derived from Leviticus 18, where the subject matter is most certainly homosexual behavior done in the service of one or more pagan pseudodeities, so the issue isn’t whether or not the words refer to homosexuality.   The issue is what sort of homosexual behavior are in view.  There’s a history to the translation of “maltakoi”    & “arsenakoitai,” in 1 Corinthians 6 & 1 Timothy 1.    Ask yourself what readers of the Geneva Bible thought the term “buggerers” meant or what “abusers of mankind” meant in the days of King James.      In other words, focusing on these 2 words translated as “homosexuals” in the ESV doesn’t really do anything to confute the tradition bound view e...
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Pop Quiz! Romans 1:18 - 32

 Specifically what theory am I deploying?

Which words did I “‘make up?”

Answer these questions: According to Romans 1:18 - 32 …

1. What is the purpose of the created order?

To testify to God’s design for human sexuality so we can do sexual ethics? OR Is its purpose to testify to God’s existence, attributes, & authority as the basis for all ethics.

2. How did the nations wind up with idols with sexual characteristics? By looking to God’s image & authority or by looking to their own & others?

3. Does God indict humanity for suppressing His image & authority & supplanting it with their own & others or for failing to look at the human image & understanding & believing that the human image is heteronormative?

4. Apropos 3, since the text indicts humanity for suppressing His image & authority & supplanting it with their own & others, how can “natural” mean “heteronormative” if God has no sexual characteristics? How can God indict some people for refusing to understand & believe in heteronormativity by way of rejecting God’s created design expressed via human anatomy, physiology, &/or psychology while indicting us all for reasoning from the human image to worship & sexual ethics?

The answer is: Heteronormativity isn’t the subject of 1:26 - 27, because if so, you have to divorce worship ethics (theology about God’s image) from sexual ethics (theology about the human image) in a text that binds them together. God’s image — not ours — is the source of worship & sexual ethics, & since He has no sexual characteristics, “natural” has nothing to do with heteronormativity. If so, then God has sexual attributes.

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