Posted on 02/05/2010 6:01:10 AM PST by NYer
.- The first openly homosexual Episcopal bishop, V. Gene Robinson, has claimed that the Bible does not address the ethics of “monogamous, lifelong” homosexual relationships. He suggested that the people of St. Paul’s times did not realize that some people were “affectionally oriented” to their own sex.
On Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., CNSNews.com spoke to Bishop Robinson about St. Paul’s condemnation in the Book of Romans of “unnatural” relations and “indecent acts” between members of the same sex. CNSNews.com asked if St. Paul was right to say homosexual acts were against nature.
The bishop said Scripture needed to be understood “in its own context.”
“We have to understand that the notion of a homosexual sexual orientation is a notion that’s only about 125 years old,” he added.
“That is to say, St. Paul was talking about people that he understood to be heterosexual engaging in same-sex acts," said Bishop Robinson.
The concept “heterosexual” also only dates to the nineteenth century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
"It never occurred to anyone in ancient times that a certain minority of us would be born being affectionally oriented to people of the same sex,” the bishop told CNSNews.com “So it did seem like against their nature to be doing so.”
He also claimed that St. Paul was condemning the practice of his times, in which older men sexually used younger boys.
“So the real question when you look at Scripture is, ‘What did it mean to the person who wrote it?’” said Bishop Robinson. “‘What did it mean for the audience to whom it was written?’ And only then can we ask, ‘Is it eternally binding?’ And in this case, I would say, the things that St. Paul was against, I’m against, too.”
He said the question today should be the rightfulness of “faithful, monogamous, lifelong-intentioned relationships between people of the same sex.’”
According to the Episcopal bishop, the Bible “simply does not address that.”
Robinson, who was married and has two daughters, divorced his wife and is now involved in a homosexual relationship. His ordination heightened conflict between the Episcopal Church and the global Anglican Communion of which it is a part.
Bishop Robinson delivered the invocation at the presidential inaugural’s opening ceremonies at the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 18, 2009.
The bishop’s interpretation of Scripture is shared by some homosexual activists but not adhered to by most Christians. Homosexual tendencies are described as “objectively disordered” by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, while homosexual acts are “contrary to the natural law” and can “under no circumstances” be approved.
Biblical scholar and Anglican Bishop of Durham N.T. Wright has also criticized some Episcopalians’ theology for treating chastity as “optional.”
“Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse,” he explained in the London Times.
“This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people.”
This understanding is “the uniform teaching of the whole Bible, of Jesus himself, and of the entire Christian tradition,” he wrote.
“So the real question when you look at Scripture is, ‘What did it mean to the person who wrote it?’” said Bishop Robinson.
"the person who wrote it" is God. But apparently the Bishop thinks the Bible is just a collection of the words of fallable men who only wrote what they thought, without input from God, and therefore the commands therein are flawed and should be ignored.
Thanks to Vicki Gene Robinson for reminding us that:
The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is honored among men. Psalm 12:8
Romans 1.32
32 They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
Hate is un-Christian, so I will simply say that I despise this man and pray that his perversity will stop destroying my Church.
Nor does the Bible speak to the proper maintenance of aircraft.
Both parties here are fools, as are the people who will spend thousands for an image of Mary in a corn flake, or piece of toast.
We are encouraged not to fly.
Matthew 28:20
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, low, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Don't burn me at the stake for heresy, it is just a joke.
One word response to his worthless "ancient times" argument:
Antinous.
He has to say that, doesn’t he?
What a coward he is; If he wants to be of the world, instead of in it, leave.
He’s obstinate to the point of denying scripture to make himself his own small g god.
Lord have mercy.
Gene Robinson’s Bible must be very thin.
“Robinson, who was married and has two daughters, divorced his wife and is now involved in a homosexual relationship.”
The bible addresses his current situation in a very clear and direct fasion. Despite his uncertainty about homosexuality, he should feel convicted about adultery.
Not true:
Deuteronomy 12:31 (New International Version) 31 You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.
There are plenty more verses.
Isn’t there a Bible verse that says something like leave your father’s house and cleave to your husband?
Thank you. I wonder if Rev Vickie has read that.
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