“I don’t want to misunderstand you. Can you really not see how Biblical principles inform Christian ethics (let’s say sexual ethics, medical ethics, business ethics, any kind of ethics) if the particular issues are not to be found in the Biblical text?”
Sure, but if the Bible is really the source, you should be able to point to where these principles are derived from Scripture, or it is your opinion only that you are asserting.
(I’ve asked you to do this from the beginning, but I still am waiting)
If you cannot point to the source of your claim, you are asserting your feelings and or opinions and have become your own pope, making decrees that condemn those who disagree.
This is how Rome went off the rails. Luther asked to be shown where the Scriptures contradicted what he wrote and said if this was done, he’d be the first to recant and throw his many books on the fire. Rome wanted to assert truth with no basis in Scripture, so they refused.
And how are your feelings and opinions any different than the cults, who believe based on vague feelings about the Scriptures? They could and do easily make the same basis of claim you have made on this thread.
Without truth anchored in the Scriptures, there is no truth. If you cannot show where these specific “ethics” are derived, you are making them up to support a view not found in Scripture.
So far, you’ve taken hundreds of words - or thousands - and haven’t done this. There is a lesson there.
Best
The only explicit blessings God gives related to sex, are for the kind that has all the begats.
It is an exceptionless norm in the Bible that childbearing = blessing. Nowhere are people blessed for blocking blessings.
In the one, sole, singular Biblical episode of intercourse where the guy alters it so that reproduction would not occur, the text says God hated what he did and struck him dead.
Regarding all the kinds of jiggery-pokery which cannot result in reproduction (Leviticus etc.) God calls all this intentionally sterile sex abominable.
Normal human marriage is identified as sacred (Ephesians etc.) At the very least --- talking moral minimalism here --- that should convey that you don't purposely suppress either one of the twofold blessed purposes for which the marriage act is blessed (procreation and pleasure bonding).
Let me point out that the specific objectionable acts don't have to be itemized on the page, if normal people through the centuries "get it".
For example, there are only a handful of verses that condemn homosexual conduct. None of them explicitly condemn specific homosexual acts, that is, oral or anal intercourse (and the many variations we'd be better off not knowing about.) But Gays today are claiming that God does not forbid anal intercourse, because the text doesn't mention it. God doesn't paint a picture of it and slap it with a big red circle-and-slash.
If you google Gay Christian commentary on Bible texts --- here, I'll do it for you: Gay Christian Bible texts (LINK) you get 8 million+ results. The 9 out of 10 top ones in the list are scholarly or semi-scholarly commentaries which claim that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality.
Mostly because it does not use the actual word "homosexual" or the actual words "anal sex."
But Christians for 1900 years understood the Bible to be against active homosexual sex relations, just as all Christians for 1900 years understood related texts to weigh in against contraception.
Read some of this. At least the first sentences of the top Google results. You really need to.
Because then you'll see that pro-gay and pro-contraceptive Christians are relying on exactly the same form of argument: that if the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words don't actually say "plugs 'n' rubbers 'n' the hormonal patch or putting your semen in baggies or up the butt or down the hatch," it's not really talking about US.
And contraceptors likewise shrug off 400 years' worth of Protestant teaching highlighting the Biblical case against birth control, from Luther through 1930! (LINKS)
Because, as the Gay Christians say, that Biblical stuff is too obscure: it couldn't apply to us!.
Yes it does.
Check out Alan Carlson's book on Protestants and Birth Control (Amazon link)<.a<>> Used paperpack for about $11. --- or look the author up elsewhere on the internet.
God bless you.