A day without a snicker is a wasted day, I say. Happy to help! And may God bless your studies and ministry! Here, have some cake:
Posted on 08/15/2012 7:38:20 PM PDT by darrellmaurina
I appreciate the responses to my previous posts on this issue and, after reading some of the questions, thought somewhat pressed to write this last one. OK, so we know what Christian marriage is. We preach that, teach it, and expect believers to embrace Scripture’s instructions regarding sexual conduct, although we are still sinners who must continually repent, trust in Christ, and receive his pardon. Got it. But what about the public argument?
As I said in the last one, we aren’t authorized to speak in God’s name where he hasn’t spoken, but we are commanded to do so wherever he has. This is where it gets dicier, though. I’d like to frame my response, first off, in terms of two extremes that we have to avoid:
1. Treating references to homosexuality in the Old Testament as either irrelevant or directly applicable to the current question.
You see this in public debates of the issue, where extremists on both sides talk over (and past) each other. One thing they often share in common is interest in quoting passages from the Old Testament on the question. Then the person on the left reminds us that the sanction mentioned is stoning. “Do you want to stone gays?”, one shouts. “No, but I believe what the Bible says about homosexuality.” “Well, right next to that verse it says that you should stone disobedient children—Oh, and not eat pork, and not touch a woman who is having her period.” Bottom line: the skills of biblical interpretation are about equally as bad on both sides of the table.
The statements in Leviticus are part of the Mosaic covenant. They pertain uniquely to the covenant that God made with Israel as a nation. The laws that governed every aspect of private and public life, cult and culture, were a unique episode in redemptive history. Their divine purpose cannot be rationalized in terms of sanitation, public health, or personal well-being. The whole focus was on God and his desire to separate Israel from the nations, preparing the way for the Messiah to come from her womb. Therefore, there is no more biblical warrant for stoning homosexuals today than there is for avoiding Scottish cuisine.
If there’s every reason to distinguish these two covenants, we have to be very careful nonetheless that we don’t make the opposite interpretive blunder of contrasting the Old and New Testaments on the question of homosexual practice itself. I’ve heard of late several times committed Christians acknowledging that the Old Testament forbids it, but the New Testament is silent. It’s “mean Moses” versus “nice Jesus”: a familiar but completely baseless contrast. Affirming that the the civil laws are now obsolete doesn’t mean that the rationale explicitly given for some of these laws should be disregarded, especially when God singles some acts out not simply as dependent on God’s will for that time and place, but as “abominations.” Homosexuality is included in that list, as it is also in the New Testament (1 Cor 6:9; 1 Tim 1:10—right up there with “murders, enslavers, liars, and perjurers”). The church does not have the power of the sword in the new covenant. Nevertheless, God’s statement on the matter is pretty clear: he hates homosexuality. It violates the natural order—reflecting the extent to which fallen humanity will go to suppress the truth—even that which can be known by reason—in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18-32).
Jesus brings forgiveness of sins, not a new—supposedly easer, happier, more fulfilling law. In fact, he upbraids the lax view of divorce tolerated in his day. Jesus does not ground marriage between a man and a woman in the Mosaic covenant—or in the new covenant, but returns to the order of created nature: “He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate’” (Mat 19:4-6).
It should be added that Paul’s point in Romans 1-3 is to sweep the whole world—Jew and Gentile—into a heap, condemned under the law, in order to announce that Christ is the Savior of all, Jew and Gentile, and justifies the ungodly who trust in him. We are all called to repent—lifelong repentance, in fact. In this, as in everything, we fall short; our imperfect repentance would be enough to condemn us if we weren’t clothed in Christ’s righteousness. However, to repent is to acknowledge that God is right and we are wrong—on the specifics of precisely where we want to assert our sovereignty.
2. Allowing same-sex marriage because since this isn’t a Christian nation, we should not seek to make the traditional Christian view public law.
Yes and no. The argument sounds like a “two-kingdoms” approach, but I think it’s actually more on the historic Anabaptist side.
First, it is certainly true that America is not a Christian nation and in any case Christians should not seek to promote distinctively Christian doctrines and practices through the properly coercive power of the state.
Second, however, I believe that we have to carefully distinguish general and special revelation, common and saving grace, the kingdoms of this age and the kingdom of God. Traditional Roman Catholics and Protestants are the vanguard of the pro-life movement, but in addition to witnessing to the depth of Christian conviction on the subject they also make arguments that can appeal to the conscience of non-Christians. The goal is certainly to legislate morality (just as the pro-abortion lobby attempts). However, it is the attempt to include the unborn in the category of those to whom the most basic right to life applies (namely, human beings). It is not a distinctively Christian view that the unborn are human beings (many pro-abortionists even agree, but rank the mother’s choice and happiness higher). Nor is it a distinctively Christian view that human beings shouldn’t be murdered—regardless of the parents’ economic or psychic well-being.
I think that the same can be said here as well. Marriage is not grounded in the gospel, but in creation. Special revelation corrects our twisted interpretations and gives us a better map, but general revelation gives sufficient evidence at least for minimal arguments from antiquity. Knowledgeable people will disagree about the strength of those arguments, since, for example, Greek elites often had teen-age boys entertain them on the side—with the approval or at least the awareness of their wives. Yes, others reply, but that was part of the downfall of the Greek civilization. In every case, it will be a debatable point—not to say that it isn’t worth arguing, but in the light especially of recent studies, it probably will not change a lot of minds.
Third, in my own wrestling with the political debate, love of neighbor looms large. Some on the right may offer arguments that reflect more the same demand for special rights as those on the left of the issue. The legal aspects of that are beyond my pay-grade—and they are important. Others may treat this issue as irrelevant: “Look, it doesn’t affect me. I just don’t want to live next door to some creepy home like that.” However, in terms of specifically Christian witness, love of neighbor (as God’s image-bearers) should be front-and-center. We have to care about our non-Christian neighbors (gay or straight) because God cares and calls us to contribute to the common good.
The challenge there is that two Christians who hold the same beliefs about marriage as Christians may appeal to neighbor-love to support or to oppose legalization of same-sex marriage.
On one hand, it may be said that if we can no longer say that “Judeo-Christian” ethics are part of our shared worldview as a republic, then the ban seems arbitrary. Why isn’t there a campaign being waged to ban providing legal benefits to unmarried heterosexual couples? Or to make divorce more difficult? It just seems more symbolic than anything else: it looks like our last-gasp effort to enforce our own private morality on the public. On the other hand, we might argue that every civilization at its height, regardless of religion, has not only privileged marriage of one man and one woman but has outlawed alternative arrangements. Same-sex marriage means adoption, which subjects other human beings to a parental relationship that they did not choose for themselves. Are we loving our LGBT neighbors—or their adopted children—or the wider society of neighbors by accommodating a move that will further destroy the fabric of society?
I take the second view, but I recognize the former as wrestling as much as I’m trying to with the neighbor-love question. Legal benefits (“partnerships”) at least allowed a distinction between a contractual relationship and the covenant of marriage. However, the only improvement that “marriage” brings is social approval—treating homosexaul and heterosexual unions as equal. Although a contractual relationship denies God’s will for human dignity, I could affirm domestic partnerships as a way of protecting people’s legal and economic security. However, the “marriage card” is the demand for something that simply cannot consist in a same-sex relationship. Human love is defined not by a feeling, shared history, or animal attraction, but by something objective, something that measures us—namely, God’s moral law. To affirm this while concluding that it’s good for Christians but not for the rest of us seems to me to conclude that this law is not natural and universal, rooted in creation, and/or that we only love our Christian neighbors.
At the end of the day, what tips the scales toward the second view is that I can’t see how neighbor-love can be severed from love of God, which is after all the most basic command of all. Even if they do not acknowledge “nature and nature’s God”—or anything above their own sovereign freedom to choose—reality nevertheless stands unmovable. Like the law of gravity, the law of marriage (of one man and one woman) remains to the end of time—not just for Christians, but for all people everywhere.
There is NOTHING, nor has there ever been anything, that prohibits two or more adults from forming a legal partnership and nothing to prevent the partners from placing any or all of their assets (including property) in the partnership.
This has been going on forever. I have interests in several business partnerships with my wife, relatives and business associates. If the only concern of the homosexuals is legal and financial the law has always protected their property rights.
We oppose same sex marriage because it is a dangerous attack on the culture we would leave to our children.
Do we leave them a legacy of communism or freedom?
Do we leave them with addiction or with clear minds?
Do we leave them with natural wholesomeness or with idolatrous, narcissistic, death-bringing orgasmia?
I agree, P-M. The word “affirm” is definitely a red flag. Those two sentences are so poorly written that he could say he intended to emphasize “simply cannot consist”, or he could say he meant “I could affirm”.
This is a terribly written essay, and they need to revoke his doctorate.
But as a pastor-in-training, I simply cannot understand how we could ‘affirm’ these relationships at all. They are, quite frankly, sinful. I suppose we could affirm the Lord using same-sex relationships for good purposes, but that would be along the lines of him using the pagan Babylonians and Persians for his own good purposes. We don't ‘affirm’ the sin, just what God does to bring good out of it.
Marriage in the Catholic or Orthodox Church is a sacrament because the spouses form Church Domestic and become vehicle of grace for each other and their children, leading each other to salvation in the Church.
In a Protestant setting I don’t know what is. Logically, Baptism and Marriage should be the only two Protestant sacraments since they do not absolutely require a priest, and indeed most Protestant baptisms are valid, and so are Protestant marriages unless a Catholic is involved.
Obviously I do not like being called a heretic, but I will resist the urge to attack Trent. I find this discussion interesting of how viewing marriage as something other than a sacrament may lead to devaluing it.
I'm not used to this line of argumentation. I'm listening, but I can't respond with intelligent comments to an argument that I don't think I fully appreciate.
I probably need to add that conservative Reformed churches have historically been very, very strict in their emphasis on marriage and family life, and have reacted with disgust and abhorrence toward the typical broad evangelical “easy believism” which leads to easy divorce and remarriage. Church discipline is not a minor issue in conservative Reformed circles. I know we can point to all kinds of abuses, but they are far less frequent in conservative Reformed circles than generic evangelical Protestantism where church discipline is rare or entirely unknown.
In reformed/prebyterian theology, the two sacraments are baptism and the Lord's Supper. Baptists don't have any sacraments. Marriage would be considered an ordinance. Thus while a presbyterian could have a lawful marriage not performed by an ordained man, only one lawfully ordained can administer the Lord's supper or baptize a child or adult.
most of the country opposes this agenda and no matter how many bogus polls or the media tries to spin it.
I was aiming at the rather general lack of forgiveness in many marriages; not aiming to put you in your place at all. I love debate; but often can't resist any opportunity for a witticism. No offense intended.
Post 37: Multiple amens!
Aha, I get now. ^^; Thanks for clarifying that.
For what it’s worth, you made me snicker now that I get the joke.
LOLs!!
A day without a snicker is a wasted day, I say. Happy to help! And may God bless your studies and ministry! Here, have some cake:
If it is not a sacrament, then marriage is ultimately in the human realm and subject to human prudential judgement, like the Tower of Babel. So whether you are "strict" or not, the result is still a sorry one for the society as a whole, because as a whole the least common denominator rules. Currently, that denominator is contraception and serial marriage, and rapidly shifting to include homosexual "marriage".
Very strange, but thank you for the explanation, even though I heard it before.
The strictness of certain groups who consider it merely a contract is admirable, but ultimately rests on the notion of marriage as an ordinance of human provenance.
Our society no longer considers marriage an inevitable and necessary building block of civil order. The notion of marriage as a contract as promulgated by the private-judgment crowd is grounded on the assumption that society will always take marriage for granted as a basic civic necessity. As with every other initiative of the private-judgment contingent, that was a bad mistake founded on unjustifiable assumptions.
Ultimately, all theologies that reject the sacramentality of marriage are rejecting the teaching of the Apostles - as recorded in Scripture and in the Tradition - and will run into the difficulties we are grappling with on this thread.
I swapped some emails on the subject with my pastor. He made the point that flagrant homosexuality is a sign God is already judging a people:
“So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him...
THEREFORE God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie...
FOR THIS REASON God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise...men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
As others have pointed out, you don’t need specific divine revelation to know certain body parts don’t belong in certain other body parts. The natural revelation given to ALL makes it obvious. There may be an obscure exception somewhere, but I don’t know of any society that endorsed homosexual ‘marriage’ during the last 5000 years.
When people ignore excruciatingly obvious natural truths, THEN God gives them up to dishonorable passions. It is not an unforgivable sin, but it is a sign men and society have rejected God already, and God is already preparing their judgment. God is bringing their rejection of Him to the surface so all can see how just his judgment will be.
“Because I have called and you refused to listen,
have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded,
because you have ignored all my counsel
and would have none of my reproof,
I also will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when terror strikes you...
...Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;
they will seek me diligently but will not find me.” - Prov 1
Marriage is most definitely a divine institution. At least we both know that. And I can understand your argument on why you believe it's a Sacrament too, so I know where you're coming from, and I can see why the Roman Catholics have defined it as such.
I think that at least we can find common ground in that marriage is a gift, a command, and an institution created by God himself, and that same-sex marriage makes a mockery of that institution. Whether we hold to the argument that marriage is a Sacrament or not, we know that marriage is still important enough that we must resist all mockeries and perversions of it.
I think that the issue that we’re having is on the definition of a Sacrament. From my time in the seminary, I’ve learned that a Sacrament is the vessel that God uses to pour his forgiveness out on his people. So Baptism and Communion definitely are, but marriage? That’s a little trickier, especially because marriage was instituted before sin entered the picture and before there was the need for forgiveness.
But Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed, and Orthodox should all agree that marriage is most definitely a divine institution.
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