tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321402.post6585876329464519196..comments2023-09-18T01:46:27.105-07:00Comments on Speaking Natalie: A Christian Argument for HomosexualityUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321402.post-72263207336026415782012-06-27T18:36:44.596-07:002012-06-27T18:36:44.596-07:00Miriam,
I read the teshuvah re: homosexual Jews, ...Miriam,<br /><br />I read the teshuvah re: homosexual Jews, and I found it quite interesting. I won't comment on how persuasive I found it, because I don't have the contextual breadth or depth to really evaluate its arguments, and without that contextual grounding any opinion seems persuasive. Certainly it all seems to hang together internally, though one would hope that's the case!<br /><br />Perhaps of more interest to you was how fascinating I found it to consider the general approach. As you may or may not know, part of the Protestant Reformation was an unofficial adoption of a "civic law" sort of approach to Biblical interpretation. I don't know that anybody ever codified this, and it certainly wasn't the main point of the Reformation, but nevertheless it became a distinctive feature of the Protestant community that the work of prior theologians and commentators is given essentially no authority (this in distinction to the Catholic approach, which I think would feel more Jewish to you - though I am hardly an expert on Catholic theological culture). Indeed, this is one of the things about our culture that Protestants tend to be most proud of.<br /><br />This is the first time I've come face to face with an actual theological document from a more "common law" tradition, and I must say that to my Protestant eyes it seems very ... well, <i>sensible</i>. The conclusions the rabbis reach seem within the ambit of Biblical authority, but it seems clear to me that the authority they accord to prior authorities was highly useful in structuring their decision. That is inherently attractive to me.<br /><br />It's also interesting to me to see how this issue looks when "Biblical" doesn't include Romans (and, to a lesser extent, 1 Corinthians and Timothy). Even without the rabbis' use of the human dignity principle, I think you could reach their essential conclusion on a Protestant-style literalist reading of Leviticus. For the Christian reader, I think Paul adds additional complications.Nataliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12662787003156000207noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321402.post-78270790550814388832012-06-27T17:36:37.353-07:002012-06-27T17:36:37.353-07:00Lady Miriam,
I don't mean to rest any part of...Lady Miriam,<br /><br />I don't mean to rest any part of my argument on Titus 1:15. It's just that I think that if you read the Pauline corpus you come away with a definite feeling that Paul's attitude towards ethics is permitted until proven immoral (one of the reasons I find it significant that he sees nothing inherently immoral in eating food sacrificed to idols is that even the Jerusalem Council felt like that should be a universal), and it's hard to find a sound byte for that attitude. Romans 14 directly discusses this topic at some length but doesn't make a great sound byte. "I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself" (Romans 14:14) is about the best I can come up with.<br /><br />I don't mean to say that Paul is permissive about <i>everything</i>; clearly he's not. He discusses extramarital fornication with the Corinthians at enough length that I think we can fairly conclude that he felt that went beyond God's ethics. On the other hand, I <i>do</i> think that the man who wrote Romans 14 would support, say, plural marriage if he were in a society that had enshrined plural marriage in law.<br /><br />Incidentally, for the non-lawyers among my hypothetical readership, it may seem strange to base my Christian opinion of something as supposedly fundamental as marriage on the purely temporal laws that obtain at this time. I think, though, that this is what all Christians do. Consider the simpler case of murder. The Bible never says what God means by <i>murder</i>. God never says not to <i>kill</i> people, by which we may infer that <i>some</i> forms of homicide are acceptable, but he never specifies a definition for the word he does use. Suppose a man rapes my wife to death. Following this event, I conceive of a plan to kill this man, and two months after the event I carry it out. Have I transgressed God's command not to murder? The only answer I can defend is, "It depends on the criminal code that has jurisdiction over you." In some places at some times that would not be murder; in my place and time it would be. I see no basis for concluding that God cares for one criminal code over another.<br /><br />Similarly, God never actually defines marriage. All we have to go on is the injunction that a man shall leave his parents and become one flesh with his wife - an injunction which is considerably broader than it appears at first blush, since apparently "his wife" doesn't mean "his <i>only</i> wife." In a way similar to murder, I am forced to conclude that when God refers to "marriage," he intends us to fill in our own family code except where such code contravenes one of the few places where God is explicit about what marriage means.Nataliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12662787003156000207noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321402.post-78987328314735862902012-06-18T03:15:22.794-07:002012-06-18T03:15:22.794-07:00Your reasoning is a draft of fresh water, and I...Your reasoning is a draft of fresh water, and I've been thirsty. Thank you for writing this and sharing it.<br /><br />I have two things to say. The first is that Paul's words in Titus 1:15 sound flimsy to me, which is a shame, because if I understand your post correctly, you rest parts of the rest of your argument on it. I don't know Paul the way you do, and I might be treating him with more cynicism than he deserves, but it seems to me that those words of his are an attempt to rationalize, with bold theology, a political move. Paul was spending himself building and shaping a movement, defining it and giving it its own feet, pulling it further away from Mama Judaism, just as Jewish leaders of the time were going through their own separation issues, redefining 'Jewish' to make sure that definition didn't include any follower of Christ. I reckon Paul wanted his movement to succeed, so he was interested in encouraging anyone who might join. He'd want any non-Jewish potential converts to feel welcomed, not driven away by all the restrictions that so consumed the Jews, so I imagine he would in that moment have used whatever good-looking rationale was at hand to argue the point he needed to make.<br /><br />Imagine if, instead of the context being Jewish Christians blabbing about all their circumcision and kashrut and niddah laws and scaring off potential converts, the context had been an account of newly converted Christians participating in some fertility rites involving all sorts of extramarital fornication. Can we imagine Paul defending *that* behavior by saying all things are pure when a pure person does them? I can't...because it seems one thing Paul does care about enough to put his foot down, even to the point of scaring off potential converts, is fornication.<br /><br />That doesn't mean I don't think there's an argument to be made like the one you make. I'm just not convinced that you can use Paul's statement in Titus 1:15 as one of the props to that argument. I regret that I don't know the NT well enough to suggest a replacement passage.<br /><br />The second thing I want to share with you was published six years ago, so you might have seen it already, but here it is anyway.<br /><br />http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20052010/dorff_nevins_reisner_dignity.pdf<br /><br />It's a teshuva that was written for (and adopted by) Conservative Judaism. A teshuva is kind of like the opinion that a judge writes after hearing a case. This piece explains why, from that point forward, Conservative Judaism will hold a new stance regarding same sex marriage: prior to that, the movement had been kind of hazy about it, but in this responsum, it's made explicit that Conservative Judaism does not prohibit same sex marriage, though it still holds that anal sex between men is not consistent with Torah law and a Torah-observant Jew needs to refrain from it. The authors base their reasoning on Torah, later commentaries from the sages, and common knowledge, and while they draw from a different body of texts than you do, I think you'll appreciate their approach.<br /><br />A few weeks ago, the same three rabbis who wrote the first piece released another one, which has also been approved by the Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative Judaism's governing body). This piece discusses the issue a bit more and offers ceremonies that same-sex couples can use for weddings and (god forbid) divorces.<br /><br />http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/2011-2020/same-sex-marriage-and-divorce-appendix.pdf<br /><br />I'd love to hear your thoughts on these if you're inclined to read through them.Miriamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09859129184545228138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321402.post-64841439591772075932012-06-11T14:31:28.910-07:002012-06-11T14:31:28.910-07:00Exactly what I was wondering. Thank you. :)Exactly what I was wondering. Thank you. :)Malgaynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05570725084262442155noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321402.post-67151942475965599232012-06-11T13:35:05.605-07:002012-06-11T13:35:05.605-07:00Certainly the Jerusalem Council decided that even ...Certainly the Jerusalem Council decided that even Gentiles should abstain from "sexual immorality" (Acts 15:22-29, particularly v29, for those who are curious). The question then becomes what is meant by "sexual immorality" - or, in this case specifically, whether homosexual sex is included in the term. We will of course forgo the temptation to assume that homosexual sex is included in "sexual immorality" on the basis of being immoral.<br /><br />The term in question, which most modern translations render "sexual immorality," is <i>porneia</i>. You get +1 Biblical scholarz if you guess that word is related to <i>porne</i>, [common] prostitute. You can see the definition given in the premier English-language Greek lexicon <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=porneias&la=greek#Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=pornei/a-contents" rel="nofollow">here</a>, but if your instinct was to translate it as "whoring around," you're essentially on the money. "Fornication" is probably a more accurate translation than "sexual immorality," which you can see is the LSJ's preferred translation based on its survey of all existing ancient Greek texts.<br /><br />In Paul's culture as in ours, one could always condemn sexual activity one deemed improper as <i>porneia</i>, but the core meaning is sex with somebody other than one's spouse. I think that one can fairly classify <i>unmarried</i> homosexual sex as <i>porneia</i>, but in order to include <i>married</i> homosexual sex you need something stronger (or you need to demonstrate that homosexual marriage is a form of marriage that the Bible precludes, which would get you to essentially the same place).<br /><br />It's impossible to prove that Luke (or, if you prefer, the author of Acts) didn't include all homosexual sex in <i>porneia</i>. However, I think there exist reasonable grounds to believe that <i>Paul</i> didn't. Romans 1:29 includes <i>porneia</i> in its list of attributes of decayed society, after already discussing homosexual sex at some length (yes, I'm aware that there is some doubt whether <i>porneia</i> appears in the original text), and 1 Corinthians 6:9 includes <i>pornoi</i> (people who engage in <i>porneia</i>) in the same list that includes <i>arsenokoitai</i> - and while we may not know exactly what that word means, I think it is fair to assume that it <i>at least</i> covers men [perhaps all people] who engage in unchaste homosexual sex. It seems strange to me that Paul would use homosexual-specific words if he felt that <i>porneia</i> already covered homosexual sex.<br /><br />Now, that's not to say that Paul and the Council necessarily thought of <i>porneia</i> the same way. And you can never prove that a word <i>doesn't</i> include a concept. But I think we have good reason in <i>porneia</i>'s word stem and Paul's writings to consider it more likely than not that <i>porneia</i> doesn't include homosexual sex, except insofar as such sex is extra-marital.<br /><br />That may not sound very strong, and I don't mean to make a strong assertion because I don't think a strong assertion can be defended in this case. But it very well may be strong enough. If we intend to conclude that the Bible views homosexual sex as immoral on the grounds that it is <i>porneia</i>, we ought to ask ourselves how comfortable we are condemning an entire class of activity (something Christians should always be loathe to do) on the grounds that we cannot prove that it isn't <i>porneia</i>. That does not strike me as sound hermeneutics, regardless of one's conclusions about homosexual sex in light of Scripture as a whole.Nataliehttp://dmeroit.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321402.post-47393148455351805752012-06-11T10:55:38.717-07:002012-06-11T10:55:38.717-07:00There is one question that this post leaves me wit...There is one question that this post leaves me with.<br /><br />I am not the biblical scholar you are, of course, so I cannot quote the particular passage I'm referring to. But if I remember it right, there is a description in the book of Acts about the council convened by the earliest religious leaders to determine what parts of Jewish law, if any, newly-converted Gentiles should be subject to. They determine a number of things (Gentiles should not be expected to keep kosher, etc.), but they also determine that a few aspects of Jewish law SHOULD apply to converted Gentiles, and one of those aspects was the condemnation of "sexual immorality."<br /><br />Can you talk for a bit about how (if at all) you feel that applies to your argument that the condemnation of homosexual sex in Jewish Law does not apply to modern Christians?Malgaynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05570725084262442155noreply@blogger.com