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Iconoclast

One may know (to some extent) what sin is for ONESELF. However, it is simply false to think that therefore one can know what sin is for another person.

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Just because you feel so strongly that it is a sin to engage in homosexual sex for yourself does not mean that it is a sin for someone who has faith that it is not a sin.

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That pitfall that threatens all of our era also seems to be present in the back of (or front of) Doc's mind as he says the following:

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Now Icon, I'm tracking with you. I love the challenges you pose, the clarity with which you pose them, the demeanor with which you pose them, and you're willingness to be an irritating source of cognitive dissonance. Honestly, thanks for hang'in in there.

But now a question: Surely YOU hold to some transcultural moral imperatives. For example, thou shalt love. I would think there are many others, all of which follow from the love command (e.g. murder, adultery). How does one determine what IS and IS NOT culturally relative? Would you say "whatever promotes love and/or produces loving consequences"? If so, are there consequences of any actions that we might not be able to see but which God sees and thus tells us to avoid by behaving in such and such ways?

Blessings

Greg

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Doc's on to something.


So, please -- if its OK with everyone -- LET ME IMPORT SOMETHING I POSTED ON ANOTHER THREAD. One quote from Chesterton's "Orthodoxy" on DETERMINISM and another on PRAGMATISM.


I WONDER WHETHER THERE ISN'T

A BIT OF EACH FLOATING

AROUND 'IN THE AIR'

NOW DAYS

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In passing from this subject I may note that there is a queer fallacy to the effect that materialistic fatalism is in some way favourable to mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments or punishments of any kind. This is startlingly the reverse of the truth. It is quite tenable that the doctrine of necessity makes no difference at all; that it leaves the flogger flogging and the kind friend exhorting as before. But obviously if it stops either of them it stops the kind exhortation. That the sins are inevitable does not prevent punishment; if it prevents anything it prevents persuasion. Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent with the cruel treatment of criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistent with is the generous treatment of criminals; with any appeal to their better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle. The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner, “Go and sin no more,” because the sinner cannot help it. But he can put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment. Considered as a figure, therefore, the materialist has the fantastic outline of the figure of the madman. Both take up a position at once unanswerable and intolerable.

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This bald summary of the thought-destroying forces of our time would not be complete without some reference to pragmatism; for though I have here used and should everywhere defend the pragmatist method as a preliminary guide to truth, there is an extreme application of it which involves the absence of all truth whatever. My meaning can be put shortly thus. I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one of those necessities precisely is
a belief in objective truth. The pragmatist tells a man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute. But precisely one of the things that he must think is the Absolute. This philosophy, indeed, is a kind of verbal paradox. Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist. Extreme pragmatism is just as inhuman as the determinism it so powerfully attacks. The determinist (who, to do him justice, does not pretend to be a human being) makes nonsense of the human sense of actual choice. The pragmatist, who professes to be specially human, makes nonsense of the human sense of actual fact.

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Edited by - PotOnWheel on 03/23/2003 3:18:52 PM

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Iconoclast

You are claiming here that there is a universal prohibition against homosexuality. Do you have some evidence for this or are you using your omniscience mechanism again?

Act 15:28-29

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell."

Hmmmm…didn’t say anything about homosexuality.

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Laika

Hmmmmm, doesn't say anything about bestiality or pedophilia either.
Or drug abuse or rape....... [same as it ever was same as it ever was]

Iconoclast

Good point. And yet Peter said that the Holy Spirit didn't want to lay any greater burdens on the gentiles. Moreover Peter said that they should refrain from food sacrificed to the gods and yet Paul said it was not a sin. Seems like total chaos when it comes to the law and what is sin - what do you make of all this?

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Doc

But what is the intrinsic and permanent value of the prohibition on homosexuality?

Iconoclast

Thus the intrinsic and permanent value of the prohibition is two fold:

1. I would say that the generally valid prohibition is that we should not deny how we are “wired” in our sexual orientation. I think this applies equally to heterosexuals denying their heterosexuality and homosexuals denying their homosexuality. Either way negative forces are unleashed that lead directly to unfaithfullness and betrayal of their partners.

2. The “public health” aspects of the prohibition are as valid today as is eating pork or washing our hands. We need to understand what the issues are and we need to employ modern mechanisms to remove the risk factors. This means education about STDs and multiple partners (no different than heterosexual public health concerns) as well as better societal structures and norms that promote monogamous relationships.

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PoW: The nature of SCRIPTURE is that is is revelatory. It builds. It unfolds. It does not discard. E.g., Already in the garden you hear of the crushing of the serpant's head. Some things are lain aside: e.g., the sacrifice of animals -- used as a bridge to lead us to fuller understanding. But that does not constitute an entire erasure and replacement.

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Laika

"And yet Peter said that the Holy Spirit didn't want to lay any greater burdens on the gentiles." other than what's in scripture.

Iconoclast

Please read Acts Chapter 15. The whole point is that the Pharisees were insisting that the gentiles had to follow the law of Moses (the scriptural law)

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19"It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. 21For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath."

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Iconoclast

If so, isn’t this why some commands can be understood to be cultural or conditioned on certain variables? Are you denying this?

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Laika

What I find sad about the whole "God wired me this way" argument is that it denies people the HOPE that Christ can change them. If homosexuals are "wired" that way, then so too are pedophiles, rapists,
beastialists, necophiliacs, liars, adulterers, abortionists, etc.

Iconoclast

Here we go – way out of context again. Now, if I likewise take your thought here out of context then I would have to comment on how your logic is completely flawed. Why? Because you are saying that if God “wired” us to do X then he must have “wired” us to do EVERYTHING and since he obviously didn’t “wire” us to do EVERYTHING he must not have wired us to do X.

This logic is easily refuted by saying that God obviously “wired” us to breathe air but did not “wire” us to use faulty logic.

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Laika said:

If it's culture that determines WHAT the church accepts, then why didn't the early church accept homosexuality since it was very acceptable to the Greeks and the Romans of Paul's day?

Semeia:

If it's not culture that determines WHAT the church accepts, then why don't we accept polygamy and the marriage of thirteen-year-olds since they were acceptable to the people of biblical times, including David and Solomon, and in fact God "blessed" David with many wives?

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