Homosexuality & Romans 1:18 - 32

The Churches continue to persist in willful ignorance & injustice regarding LGBTQ people.   In order to counter this, let’s interrogate the text of Romans 1:18 - 32 as if we are doing catechesis.   What is the purpose of the created order according to Romans 1:20?     To testify to the existence, INVISIBLE attributes of God, & to God’s authority.  Why is God’s wrath revealed from heaven?   Because people have (since the Fall) been deliberately suppressing the truth about God’s existence, INVISIBLE attributes, & authority by way of substituting the VISIBLE attributes of the created order, especially those of people & animals.  How did people in the ancient world wind up with idols that looked like people & animals?     They looked to the created order & used its VISIBLE attributes as the basis of their theology, philosophy, & ethics.   What sort of theology, philosophy, & ethics?    According...
Post a Comment

O Brother, Where Art Thou? Esau Revisited

Pay attention to Genesis 33 & the story of Jacob & Esau.    It’s the basis of the story of the Prodigal Son.  

Jacob, at a young age, obtains his birthright (via illicit means) & winds up in sorting sheep (slopping pigs) in a far away land (Uncle Laban’s house) returns home & is met by Esau (the Prodigal’s father.  Gifts are exchanged (the ring, turban, etc), $ all is well.    Sometime later Edom (the brother who stayed behind), ie Esau’s offspring, but not Esau himself, gets angry & the LORD cuts them down to size just like the father in the story cut his angry son down to size.   

How is it that we all understand the Prodigal Son’s father to be a godly man like Jethro but somehow Esau isn’t understood that way? 

It’s so simple, a child can understand it. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Favorite Fallacies & Homosexuality

Thesis - The tradition bound view on homosexuality commits a number of logical, epistemic, & exegetical fallacies.  1-  Is - Ought Fallacy  - Human anatomy is said to provide    a blueprint for sexual ethics.  We examined this in my previous article.  A moral “ought” is derived from a physical “is.”  The disputant makes an illicit leap from what is to what ought to be. A classic example is the way some homosexuals defend their sexual ethics by appealing to their biology/genetics.  2 -  Vicious Circularity   - Human anatomy & physiology are raised to the status due a non-arbitrary epistemic warrant.    A non-arbitrary epistemic warrant must be necessary, reasoned, & principled.  In truth, the body is unnecessary to deduce sexual ethics. By way of contrast, God’s nature is definitionally necessary, insofar as God is a necessary being, &, since God is infinite, eternal, & unchangeable in being, w...
Read more

Romans 1:18 - 32 & Leviticus 18

  Paul is following the basic outline of a suzerain covenant in general     & the outline of Lev. 18 in particular.   Shema & Decalogue (Rom. 1:18 - 20)   God’s Image testifies to His attributes & Law.    God created people. His temple bears His Image & runs according to his Law & Gospel.    This corresponds to Lev. 18 : 1 & 2. A - Rom.    1:18 - 19.  God’s wrath falls on those who suppress His image.   B - Rom 1:20  - For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made so that people are without excuse.  What is the teleological intent of the created order?    To serve as an epistemic warrant on par with God Himself? No!  It’s purpose is to serve as a pointer to God who is Himself the only sufficient epistemic warrant for all faith & practice....
Read more

On “A Christian Defense of Real Marriage”

The Christian Post article is here .  In the view of mainstream culture today, there is no such thing as a principled case for the Christian view of marriage that limits it to one man and one woman. Opposition to same-sex marriage, in this view, can only spring from bigotry, hate, or fear.    It can also spring from recognition that the defenders of traditional marriage do so on shaky biblical grounds, insofar as their defense of the traditional view of marriage proceeds from poor biblical hermeneutics & unsound reasoning principles.     For example, Robert Gagnon writes: By “against nature” Paul meant that the evidence from the material structures of creation—here the complementary embodied character of maleness and femaleness—gives clear evidence of God’s will for human sexual pairing. Some have argued that this could not have been what Paul intended by his nature argument, despite Paul’s clear statement in Rom 1:19-20 that such matters are “transpare...
Read more