St. Paul on Same Sex Marriage.

[Guitar's Cry]

The great irony, or paradox, is that Paul himself claims that in Christ's resurrected Church, there will be no binary gender, no male or female, such that one might wonder why a movement to be inclusive toward same-sex relationships, and non-binary identification, would be in the cross-hairs of Paul's buggy-whip rather than something he would applaud? Why does Paul demonize something that appears to be an evolutionary advance toward the state of perfection he himself dangles in front of Christians as the goal?




John

My guess is Paul, like so many others that demonize homosexuality, finds sexuality ichy and uncomfortable and is unwilling to embrace the world his God created as it is.

 

[Father Heathen]

Do you think God has a gender?

His true form is a disembodied phallus.

 

[1213]

So all the other 600+ laws in Leviticus, Exodus, etc. are valid and must be obeyed, even if they are against the civil laws of the USA?
...

Please give one example of law in the Bible that is not good in your opinion. Only one is enough for this and it would be best if you give that what is in your opinion the worst.

 

[John D. Brey]

Are there any claims in the New Testament you would believe?​

The direct words commonly attributed to our spoken Jesus Christ. himself.

. . . Regardless of who attributed them to him? . . . Uh, let me see here: Blessed are the Russians for they shall inherit Ukraine.



John

 

[Wildswanderer]

It's literally an artificial human construct. No more natural than clothing. Useful, certainly, at the very least because it merges wealth and assets before the law. But if you're relying on marriage to be your commitment then it's no wonder so many fail. If you can't be dedicated to your partner without marriage then you never were.

It's easier to break a promise you never made. People change partners like they change clothes because they're looking for someone to make them happy... That person doesn't exist. We choose to be happy with a person not because of some feelings but because we are committed.

 

[John D. Brey]

Humans were created with gender and to procreate. Angels do not procreate.

Assuming one ignores the antinomies between the two creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis.

In Genesis 2, the human was created without gender. The creation of gender (Genesis 2:21) uses some Hebrew words that are disturbing. Why did God not create dual gender in the first place? Why do it through surgery leaving the largest scar (penile-raphe) on the human body as proof that something shady took place in Genesis 2:21?

The only scar on my body larger than the penile-raphe is the scar left when the foreskin was removed so that where that scar crosses (literally) the penile-raphe I now sport a fancy Latin cross etched into my body in blood. Imagine if that's the crux of brit milah?

On angels not procreating there is, of course, Genesis chapter six.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

But God isn't perfect, it makes mistakes.

I wouldn't bet my eternal existence on it.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Even Jesus tells us that those raised to spirit life in the heavens are like the angels, they neither are married or are given in marriage:

"For in the resurrection neither do men marry nor are women given in marriage, but they are as angels in heaven."-Matthew 22:30

In Genesis 6, the angels didn't marry, they just took whatever women the wanted. That sounds more like heaven to me.



John

 

[F1fan]

Please give one example of law in the Bible that is not good in your opinion. Only one is enough for this and it would be best if you give that what is in your opinion the worst.

Answer my question first, then I will answer yours.

 

[John D. Brey]

I wouldn't take Paul's "resurrected church" as being literal so much as symbolic.

. . . Let's hold a seance and ask him?



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I'm advocating for a humanist morality and tolerance. That means I won't tolerant immoral beliefs and actions. I will tolerate personal freedoms that harm no one else.

Some might think it's both intolerant and an attack on personal freedoms for you, personally, to think of yourself as the arbiter of right morality; to think of yourself as the Lawgiver.



John

 

[Father Heathen]

Please give one example of law in the Bible that is not good in your opinion. Only one is enough for this and it would be best if you give that what is in your opinion the worst.

Forcing a rape victim to marry their attacker is obviously abhorrent.

 

[F1fan]

I wouldn't bet my eternal existence on it.



John

Aren't you fortunate to not have been one of those children born with faulty genetics that caused cancer and your premature death?

It's easy to believe you are a winner when you win the lottery of life.

 

[Eyes to See]

In Genesis 6, the angels didn't marry, they just took whatever women the wanted. That sounds more like heaven to me.



John

"The sons of the true God began to notice that the daughters of men were beautiful. So they began taking as wives all whom they chose."-Genesis 6:2.

Yes they did marry. And they did so not as angels but as materialized humans:

"And the angels who did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place, he has reserved with eternal bonds in dense darkness for the judgment of the great day."-Jude 6.

 

[John D. Brey]

Sorry, I don’t think that is true, because Jesus said:

"Don't think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn't come to destroy, but to fulfill. For most assuredly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke shall in any way pass away from the law, until all things are accomplished. Whoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and teach others to do so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Mat. 5:17-19

The law is against the homosexual act and Jesus confirms the law.

I stand corrected. Jesus said very little explicitly about homosexuality. But it was definitely in the cross-hairs of other things he said.




John

 

[Father Heathen]

Some might think it's both intolerant and an attack on personal freedoms for you, personally, to think of yourself as the arbiter of right morality; to think of yourself as the Lawgiver.



John

True morality is guided by reason and compassion, not by arbitrary superstition.

 

[John D. Brey]

Gay sex doesn't spread disease any more than heterosexual sex . . .

I don't mean to be vulgar, but some might consider a falsehood like you state above vulgarity: does the male anus have a natural lubricating faculty it employs when the owner is sexually aroused? Is that why gay bars usually have suede leather bar-stools so when dudes are wearing their arse-less chaps they aren't falling off hurting themselves and suing the establishment?



John

 

[F1fan]

Some might think it's both intolerant and an attack on personal freedoms for you, personally, to think of yourself as the arbiter of right morality; to think of yourself as the Lawgiver.

Then it is a good thing I don't see myself as God. Or even a believer in a God as if that belief gives me the gift of absolute knowledge.

But I am a citizen in a democracy that does support humanist laws that protect the marginalized and expand freedoms, like rights for women, gays, minorities, etc. The prohibition on these freedoms tends to come from those who believe in a strict God yet can't explain the direct impact of harm these freedoms can cause them. Irony that you suggest it's me that is the arbiter of right morality.

 

[John D. Brey]

So all the other 600+ laws in Leviticus, Exodus, etc. are valid and must be obeyed, even if they are against the civil laws of the USA?

Most of the laws clarify where they're specific versus universal.




John

 

[John D. Brey]

"The sons of the true God began to notice that the daughters of men were beautiful. So they began taking as wives all whom they chose."-Genesis 6:2.

Yes they did marry. And they did so not as angels but as materialized humans:

"And the angels who did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place, he has reserved with eternal bonds in dense darkness for the judgment of the great day."-Jude 6.

Your exegesis of Genesis 6:2 confirms the reality that interpretation itself is the lingua franca of the scripture. No matter if you read Genesis 6:2 in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Swahili, or Pig Latin, interpretation is required to read meaning into (eisegesis) and out of (exegesis) the text.

They took wives of "all" whom they chose. Sound positively Solomonesque.

Where do you get, from the text, that they became "materialized humans"? Perhaps angels are after all humans immaterialized? Wittgenstein, in his usually philosophical frame of mind, and when trying to answer a question like that asked: If I should doubt that I have two hands, why should I trust my eyes? What should I used to test the veracity of my eyes? My hands? -----What stands fast? Why, and how?



John