TIME: God and Gays

I like the way SFIF keeps plowing ahead, based on logic, and just some really, really, basic tenets of the faith.

Not that it will change those who are politically motivated, but it may change true seekers who haven’t found the way yet.

Those are the ones who can come to some understanding of the faith.  In the end, who knows, it may lead to some sort of revival.

I am struck that on several fronts, our country is at a crossroads.  One must keep going.

Your last paragraph pretty much sums it up.
Why do they (the liberal Christians) need Jesus? From what I have read over the years, it seems they use him to justify their behaviour not for their salvation. Two words that I rarely heard when I was in Tec nor have read in communication from TEC - sin and salvation. One word that is used all the time - love. Yet, how can you truly love your neighbor and God, if you don’t believe what the Bible says about the Son?

Over 100 years ago, General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, said:

I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be:

1.    Religion without the Holy Spirit

2.    Christianity without Christ

3.    Forgiveness without repentance

4.    Salvation without regeneration

5.    Politics without God

6.    Heaven without Hell

Greg,
“And this is liberal Christianity’s central flaw: It proceeds from a rejection - sometimes outright, sometimes implied - of sin, as though it’s forgotten entirely about the Fall, or has rejected it outright.” I would be more inclined to say that liberal Christianity embraces false guilt.

Given that sexual orientation is innate and that we are all, in theological terms, children of God, to deny access to some sacraments based on sexuality is as wrong as denying access to some sacraments based on race or gender.

First of all, it is in no way proven that sexual orientation is innate.  Secondly and more importantly, we are not all “in theological terms, children of God.”  We are all creatures of God, we are all made in the image of God.  But we have to be saved, to be in Christ, to be children of God.  It’s not an automatic condition of being human.  Some are in fact the very opposite.  (Ephesians 2:3)

Why is it that only conditions such as alcoholism, kleptomania, uncontrollable anger (abuse of spouses and children) and a host of similar diseases are treated as abnormal (the result of sin and the Fall)—while the growing list of sexual manifestations are to be celebrated, even honored?

Is is because we humans “know” that some are bad while we “know” that others are good?  Isn’t this simply putting our “knowledge” above that of our God and Creator?

The answer seems to me so simple.  Trust God and God’s word if you want to know right from wrong—to know how far we have fallen or, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, to know “how great our sins and miseries are.”  Otherwise, as Greg wrote, “what need do we have of a Savior?”

“Jesus himself spoke out frequently against divorce in the strongest of terms. Yet we have — often gradually — chosen to read and interpret the Bible in light not of tradition but of reason and history.”

Food for thought, in light of the discussion?

Why on earth do liberal apologists INSIST on quoting that “2nd one is like unto it” commandment (love your neighbor as yourself) as though it was the First and Greatest commandment.

What happened to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.”?

Because if I cannot master the first, then I have NO HOPE of ever achieving the 2nd, now do I?

And how do we love God?  By OBEYING HIS LAWS!!!

Why is this so hard to get?

mrb

To the liberal once one is baptized, sin is no longer relevant…baptism=salvation.
Hence no need to abstain from sinful behavior, God is pure love and salvation obtained can never be salvation lost.

I recently read a book that changed my view about what is wrong with both liberal Christianity and liberal political movements (including progressives). I recently posted a précis of the author’s argument at another blog which does not enable linking to comments. A copy is copied as follows:

If Lloyd Billingsley was correct in his book The Absence of Tyranny: Recovering Freedom in Our Time (Multnomah Press, Portland, OR, 1986), and I strongly believe he was, and is, liberal (or progressive Christianity, as well as liberalism/progressivism are to be resisted with all appropriate force.

What we see of them today is a strengthened version of what Billingsley wrote of in the latter 1980s. Both categories are pervasively ideological, in original sense of that word. It’s first recorded use (in French as idéologie) was in five volumes by author Destutt de Tracy between 1801-1815, titled Les Éléments d’idéologie in which he expounded the revolutionary ethos. From p.68 of Billingsley:

<blockquote>(Ideology) “is intrinsically bound up with the idea of revolution and the ‘structural’ change of society… (It) was meant to be scientific, but ideology bears all the marks of a secular religion…” (It) is a dogma of structural or sysemic evil. It holds that free Western nations are not truly free, and that they alienate people, whether they know it or not. Therefore the present structures, not individuals, need to change in order for society to be redeemed. Ideology holds out a promise of social redemption, which is often weak on the practical side. Much stronger is ideological demonology; the ideologist has a theory why people oppose him.”

…

This characterization should sound familiar to anyone who regularly reads this site, and to anyone who has followed the actions of TEC or the liberal Catholic dissidents.

</blockquote>

This seems to me a near picture perfect explanation for the vast majority of arguments one hears given by liberals/progressives in both political and religious dialogues, which so often disregard logical distinctions, offer illogical non sequiturs as justfications, and ultimately resort to name calling to attempt to carry the day. Other explanations I’ve seen offered account for only some of the characteristics observed in their irrational outbursts. To me Billingsley’s analysis offers an explanation as to why lib/progs appear, as a class, incapable of being rational in their arguments, to wit, the very theory they hold is irrational, yet it is what governs their modes of thinking about virtually any issue.

Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer

Well, now we know that embedded blockquotes don’t render properly here, either. Sigh...

#2

Why do they (the liberal Christians) need Jesus? 

That reminds me of what Abp. William Temple wrote in the Introduction to his book Readings in St. John’s Gospel, where the late Abp. wrote:

“(Why anyone should have troubled to crucify the Christ of Liberal Protestantism has always been a mystery.) p. xxiv

Good job, Greg. A few things I’ll add:

He makes a passing reference (as most liberals do) about divorce as if to say, “Divorce is against the bible, but our secular culture thinks it is a good thing for society. Therefore…”

Divorce has been an absolute disaster for Western culture, American society, and the Western Church. I know that many of us know a loved one who was been through divorce, sometimes through no fault of their own. The result of this is that we don’t want to talk about it, and I’m not sure I can consciously recall a sermon preached on divorce in any of the Episcopal churches I’ve attended (though I always knew the rector’s views). Never-the-less, I think divorce is the ‘unseen hand’ in almost all of society’s ills, and it must be an act of willful blindness (not only on behalf of our secular culture who doesn’t want to acknowledge it, but the church as well) that we don’t see the connection between the passage of ‘no fault’ divorce laws and the beginning of the decline of Western/American society in the mid-1960s.

(1). Regular people (especially people from lower income and lower-middle class backgrounds) can’t afford to have ‘celebrity marriages.’ Charles Murray in his latest book discusses the matter in more detail. But bottom line, divorce has hurt the poor and middle classes much more than it has hurt the affluent…it has made them less mobile along economic lines, and it ensures that they will remain more immobile for generations to come, in the worst schools and with nothing to be passed down generationally in the form of wealth, etc. It has also taught a vast number of people that what you promise and what you commit to do isn’t really important. (More on that later) Also, divorce is largely been responsible for discouraging marriage (but not sex) altogether, and there is ample evidence of how having children out of wedlock keeps people below the poverty line. 

(2). While the Western Church isn’t solely to blame for our culture of divorce, too many of us didn’t put up much of a fight when our governments sanctioned divorce back in the mid-1960s. We should have been like Gandalf against the Balrog with our war cry “You shall not pass!” We should have taken it to every state capital and lobbied hard against it, held our own ‘tea parties,’ etc., regardless of what the culture thought or said about us…or relevance, etc. History would have shown us to be right! But with the exception of a few whimpers and a few stronger voices ‘in the wilderness’, we were AWOL. Even the great C.S. Lewis seemed not to understand the implications that divorce would have on our culture, but he at least cautioned about making Christian marriage like secular marriage. Of course, the ‘boy clubs’ (which is what a big part of the clergy were in the CoE and ECUSA during the 1960s) running the show didn’t listen to people like Lewis one bit, and they fell all over themselves (in different ways) to accommodate this self-proclaimed culture of ‘progress.’ The end result was basically this: we implied to others that the most important commitment that most normal people would ever make in their lives, to God, whom they were calling to bear witness to their vows, wasn’t really all that important. We might as well have just said: “God doesn’t care if you fail…fail to even try…to hold up to the promises you made to him!” 

Therefore, if divorce is the precedent we have to follow for same-sex blessings, I have to say THANKS but NO THANKS. What you’re selling, I’m not buying.

So, Jon Meacham is an Aristotelian and follower of Averroes like the liberals in the Episcopal Organization? 

Of Aristotle and Averroes: “Like Aristotle, He (Averroes) believed that reason, not revelation, represented the highest plane of wisdom ... .  Averroes extended Aristotle’s reason-over-revelation contention with the notion that philosophy - the science of reason - (and therefore wisdom) is only for the elite.  For Averroes, the vast majority of humanity was by nature unequipped to master the subtleties of higher thought, and thus incapable of enlightenment.  ...Finally, there were those few actually capable of reaching a higher plane.  For these special men only did reason provide greater insight than faith, and therefore only they should be permitted to study or teach philosophy.  (If Averroes, the consumate Aristotelian, was aware of how close in this construct he was drifting toward Plato’s REPUBLIC, he never let on.)  <u>The Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World</u> by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone, Broadway Books, New York, 2005, pages 47-48.  Emphases added.

You can do the substitutions of TEO or Jon Meacham with ease.

But, alas, Jon cannot maintain consistency, for having argued the “evolution” of faith and theology and modern science into the anvil and forge for theology, he shoots himself in the head with “Given that sexual orientation is innate” because the TEO approved those placed in the wrong bodies who surgically “gender-switched” for all levels of ministry.  Innate is in the mind/spirit of those elite few and not in the spirit/body of humanity?  Rank dualism or rank materialism is apparently another chosen heresy!

But Jon does a good job of illustrating EXACTLY what is the basis of the TEO FAITH for this 24 hour period.  Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof?

Pardon the double post, but I failed to mention that Averroes was doing this in the 1100’s and Jon is arguably at the tail end of the Enlightenment experiment.

There is one problem with the sin of divorce - you can have divorced forced on you, even if you keep your covenant vows with your wife or husband.  So be careful not to paint everyone with the same broad brush…

First of all, it is in no way proven that sexual orientation is innate

I believe they proved that the same day they proved man-made global warming, I mean global cooling, ah climate change.  Coincidentally, all people with active brain cells were missing that day.

All-Is-True:

“Divorce has been an absolute disaster for Western culture, American society, and the Western Church.
...

“Therefore, if divorce is the precedent we have to follow for same-sex blessings, I have to say THANKS but NO THANKS. What you’re selling, I’m not buying.”

or

“What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Mk 10:9

B. Hunter

I wasn’t trying to. I tried to qualify myself by saying that some people are divorced ‘through no fault of their own.’ My brother was recently divorced, and while I’m sure there were things he could have done better, in the end it was his wife who committed adultery and who wanted the divorce. I was more criticizing the notion of ‘no fault divorce’.

Clare

Amen!

The comments to the Douthat NYT article referenced above are predictable but telling.  Seems he hit a nerve in liberal Protestants and their cafeteria Catholic brethren. 

The most honest IMO was from a self-avowed atheist who traced his family’s religious “evolution” over several generations from RC to Congregationalist to Unitarian to agnostic/atheist.  As that individual said, liberal Christianity will die because liberals don’t need it.  They have evolved beyond their need for a savior God, and can base their values/ethics on moral utilitarianism or whatever other manmade construct suits them.

Meacham’s article and the ongoing TEO trainwreck-in-slow-motion are just further evidence that Pelagianism is alive and well.

“Seems he hit a nerve in liberal Protestants and their cafeteria Catholic brethren.”

Definitely.  Mainstream media criticism really hits them hard.

#12 quotes ++William Temple:

“Why anyone should have troubled to crucify the Christ of Liberal Protestantism has always been a mystery.”

Brilliant!

Jon Meacham writes:

“Jesus himself spoke out frequently against divorce in the strongest of terms. Yet we have — often gradually — chosen to read and interpret the Bible in light not of tradition but of reason and history.”

Except that we haven’t, or at least, not in the sense that Meacham means.

Meacham parrots the common liberal line that “the churches routinely permit divorce in defiance of Christ’s command, so we may as well defy any other command of Christ that is inconvenient, e.g. the prohibition on homosexuality”.  But Christ and his Apostles permitted Christians to divorce in certain circumstances, whereas they permitted no exceptions to the prohibition on practice of homosexuality.

There have certainly been cases where churches have wrongly and sinfully departed from apostolic teaching.  An example would be the approach to annulments in the Middle Ages, where powerful people were routinely permitted by the church to “annul” marriages which had lasted for decades and produced several children!  Such situations may have been euphemistically termed annulments, but in reality they were church-sanctioned divorces, which did not fall within the recognised biblical exceptions (adultery, abandonment).

But such errors do not excuse us from blatantly committing other errors today.  Rather, we have to obey the Lord in all things: homosexuality, divorce and every other issue.

[14] Aristotle is far too teleological for modern writers like Meachum.  Aristotle’s more of a great chain of being guy in which everything and everyone has their place.  And the ancient Greeks including Aristotle didn’t really think in terms of gender or care about sexuality as a construct like we do.  Yes, Aristotle focused more on reason than revelation but that’s true of almost every secular philosopher.  His ancient view of God unlike Meachum’s was very abstract and impersonal.  Basically, he and Averroes were geniuses who produced massive bodies of complex, foreign work that argue for much, much more than elitism.  Neither is Christian, but both played a key role in the development of medieval Christian scholasticism in particular the systematizing of Thomas Aquinas.  And Aristotle continues to exert great influence over Catholic virtue ethics.

Meachum, I don’t know his work, but if he’s a TEC liberal type, the secular strains of his thought are, in very broad brushstrokes, more Romantic, i.e. his view of reason is much more contingent, nuanced, individualistic, and counterbalanced by an arguably reactive sentimentalism.

The Enlightenment was cocky and simplistic, but it also sprung from the Reformation and produced the Founding Fathers.  It lost the collective Christian idealism of the Middle Ages, but it put the quietus on a lot of corruption and advanced individual rights.

Not to pull us off topic, but #9 salvation obtained can never be salvation lost. Really.

I am beginning to see more orthodox Christians begin to reinterpret the security of salvation in light of current cultural challenges. Only God knows when salvation is conferred (it took me years to get to the point, but I digress), but we are called to make discernment by the fruit (in light of Scripture) of those who claim to be Christian. If we want folks to be saved, insure discipleship is a central tenant in your church’s strategy to reclaim the cultural.

#24. Festivus,
Christ obtained salvation for us. We can reject it and we can lose it. I know from personal experience that had I died after rejecting Christ, that I would have gone to hell. Why would St. Paul make such an appeal to run the good race set before us and work out our salvation with fear and trembling?

Personal experience - a sure guide ... ;o)

#24 Fr. Dale - I believe the work of Christ is fully effectual and eternal for believers; once saved, always saved. Saved believers lives are marked by maturity and growth. In the context of #9, salvation is not conferred by a rite. Hence the continuance of sin shows faith was placed in the rite, not the relationship with Christ, and the person was never ‘saved’ to begin with.

Michael A,

“But Christ and his Apostles permitted Christians to divorce in certain circumstances…”

What’s your evidence for that?

eh hem….

7They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”a
Matthew 19

#28 - How about Matthew 19:9?

Jackie and Doug,

Except I don’t think the other two synoptics agree.  Is there an expert among us?

NO expert needed.  Read the texts and the Epistles.  Chronologically the Epistles give the teaching before or congruently with the Gospels.  Check out blueletterbible.org using marriage, divorce, et alia.

dwstroudmd+

I was thinking of something scholarly…

Clare,

You asked for evidence, and it was given to you.  Others have directed you to Matthew 19 (many thanks to them).  It is also worth looking at Paul’s teaching:

“To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.  And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. ...  But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.  [1 Corinthians 7:12-13, 15]

You write:

“Except I don’t think the other two synoptics agree.”

Why would that be the case?  Just because Jesus did not set out every point of doctrine exhaustively on every occasion, does not mean that we can ignore what he plainly said in Matthew 19:9. 

“Is there an expert among us? ...I was thinking of something scholarly…”

That can be helpful, but why turn to an “expert” when there is nothing that requires expert opinion to resolve.  After all, if you look hard enough you can find an expert or a “scholarly” writing to support every position on earth, including that divorce is permissible on demand, or that homosexuality is okay! 

Sooner or later we are forced back to looking at Scripture and every other authority “in its plain grammatical sense”.

Michael A.,

I guess I’m asking, why do you choose the one with the exception, instead of the two gospels that do not include the exception—“hardness of heart”?  (Not you personally, of course!)

I seem to remember from my limited coursework that there is a scholarly discussion of the format of Matthew—how he is answering a question about the dispute between the rabbinical schools, and the transposing of Mark’s verses so that they follow and thus are often read to state something they don’t.  By the time I find the reference, the discussion will be long over—hence my call for an expert in Biblical studies.

I guess I misunderstood the discussion here as reevaluating—iin the light of the current concern over homosexual “marriage”—whether or not it is OK to jump on that sled as it takes off down the slippery slope—you never know where it will end up!

It seems as if that question isn’t being asked, though (except by me—and All Is True?).

In the Matthew 19 pericope in question Jesus uncharacteristically sides with the School of Shammai rather than Hillel. The School of Hillel, who generally applied lenience in the application of Jewish law to day to day existence, ruled that a man can divorce his wife for burning his supper. Shammai, on the other hand, ruled with Jesus on this point. The reason for Jesus’ strictness is matters of divorce was to protect the woman in the marriage.

As for same-sex unions… the notion has never come up in Judaeo-Christian history because it’s simply impossible to validly bless what the Bible explicitly condemns, back up by the entire theology of the past 3000 years. There are no loopholes in it. Considering the consistency and uniformity of the prohibition against same-sex intimate relationships in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, I cannot understand why anyone would not have the intellectual integrity to just admit the truth of it, and I certainly can’t understand why anyone who vehemently and obstinately disagrees with it would bother being a Christian, or a Jew. Of course, it is also unequivocally condemned in Islam and Buddhism, so maybe Hinduism would be the only genuinely LGBT-friendly major religion.

Thanks, A Senior Priest—I see your point—my point is that there are intellectually valid grounds for accepting Jesus’ teaching in Mark and Luke, rather than in Matthew—from a layperson’s perspective, it makes more sense in the context of the gospels. Jesus didn’t say, “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder—unless the wife has committed adultery—then you can put it asunder.”

IOW—not all Biblical scholars agree that your interpretation of Matthew is the correct one.

Clare

Why would you set Scripture in opposition to itself?

carl

“I guess I’m asking, why do you choose the one with the exception, instead of the two gospels that do not include the exception…?”

Okay, but why assume that we need to choose at all?  That would imply that the statements in Matthew, Mark and Luke are inconsistent - surely we have to consider whether they are inconsistent, before we just assume it?

None of the gospels purport to tell us every single word that Jesus said on a particular occasion.  Usually where two gospel writers report the same incident, one of them will give more detail than the other.  In this case, Matthew gives several more details than Mark.  One of the details that appears in Matthew but doesn’t appear in Mark is the exception about divorce.

But Mark’s account is still true - Jesus did teach that men should not divorce.  In other words he refuted the teaching of the Pharisee Rabbi Hillel that men may divorce for any and every reason, not matter how trivial.  That is the key point.  But nor does it make Matthew’s account untrue when he gives us the additional detail that Jesus permitted an exception for adultery - the general principle remains true.

Your question about the dispute between rabbinical schools reinforces this point:  In a nutshell, Rabbi Hillel taught that Deuteronomy 24:1 permitted a man to divorce his wife even on trivial grounds (burning his food is the example given in Mishnah Gittin Chap IX), whereas Rabbi Shammai laid the emphasis on “found some indecency in her” in that verse and said it meant something very serious.  Many commentators guess that these rabbis who came to Jesus were from Beth Hillel, because they quote Deuteronomy 24:1 but leave out the “some indecency” bit! 

Superficially, Jesus’ reply resembles the Beth Shammai position, but its basis is radically different:  Rather than arguing about the wording of the verse, he goes back to Genesis and then points out that the application of the verse is different depending on the state of the heart of the person receiving it.  This is where his main reply: “He who divorces his wife commits adultery” undercuts both schools.  The reporting of the exception (or not) makes no difference to this important point.

“IOW—not all Biblical scholars agree that your interpretation of Matthew is the correct one.”

Clare, that is not accurate - you are not arguing about interpretation; rather, you are arguing that the plain words of Matthew should be ignored, because they don’t fit the position you have adopted. 

The above two posts are in response to Clare’s argument that we should simply ignore those parts of Scripture that teach that there are exceptions to the rule against divorce. 

One issue that came up was the rabbinical arguments about what Deuteronomy 24:1 really meant.  Here is an amusing extract from the debate between various rabbis, either at or shortly after the time of Christ:

“Argument between the Tannaim [Mishnaic rabbis]: ‘If she ate in the street, if she quaffed in the street, if she suckled in the street,  in every case Rabbi Meir says that she must leave her husband. Rabbi Akiva says she must do so as soon as gossips who spin in the moon begin to talk about her.  But Rabbi Johanan ben Nuri thereupon said to him: If you go so far, you will not leave our father Abraham a single daughter who can stay with her husband,  whereas the Torah says, ‘If he find in her some unseemly thing’,  and it further says, ‘At the mouth of two witnesses or at the mouth of three witnesses shall a thing be established’; and just as there the ‘thing’ must be clearly ascertained, so here it must be clearly ascertained.” [Tal. Bav., Tract Gittin, IX, Fol 89, Gemara]

Rabbi Johanan reflects the teaching of Beth Shammai:  A serious cause had to be shown, and it had to be proved by formal proceedings in court. 

Whereas Beth Hillel permitted the cause to be trivial, and the husband himself to write the Geth Pitturin (certificate of divorce).

MichaelA,

I beg your pardon, but I meant what I said—

—that not all Biblical scholars agree with the interpretation of Mt 19:9 given by you, A Senior Priest and others, certainly in light of Mark and Luke, as well as material in the text itself, including elsewhere in Matthew.

I thought Meacham’s statement (“Jesus himself spoke out frequently against divorce in the strongest of terms. Yet we have — often gradually — chosen to read and interpret the Bible in light not of tradition but of reason and history.”) had opened up a discussion of that fact and the implications related to the Meacham and Douthat pieces.  Obviously other interpretations are not open to discussion here.

Hi Clare,

That actually is false and you are misinformed. You are welcome to discuss your views here but you are going to be corrected when you are factually mistaken. If you can deal with being contradicted you are welcome….but apparently you can’t deal with that.

Some revisionist activist liberal heterodox scholars suggest that the exception clause in Matthew 19:9 was not original to Jesus. There is no basis for the suggestion that it does not go back to Jesus. There is not a shred of evidence for it. It arises from the a-priori assumption that the Gospels do not represent eye-witness accounts of Jesus’ words and life. To deal with that question, I recommend Cambridge historian Richard Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses” - if Cambridge is “scholarly” enough for you.

But no one - even the liberal heretics who regard it as an addition to the gospels - suggests that the clause has any other purpose than to provide an exception.

And logic itself shows this is not a conflict with Mark since Jesus in Mark does not say one must not divorice “under any circumstances”. Had he said that you would have a bonafide contradiction. As it stands you merely have more information in one teaching but still consistent information.

So interested that one so interested in “conversation” and an exchange of views feels unwelcome when presented with views other than her own.

Matt,

Respectfully, I don’t think that what I said is false—I never said that the “exception clause” was not original to Jesus—or that I was aware that anyone had written that—just that there are scholars (of whom I am definitely not one) who don’t think the discussion ends there. There are linguistic and textual issues, among others, that are grounds for different interpretations.

My point is simply that there are views other than the one stating that Mt 19:9 clearly states that Jesus thought and said that divorce is OK if the wife committed adultery.  Again, being no Biblical scholar myself, I haven’t studied the issue, but I do remember reading that there are Biblical scholars (not “revisionist activist heterodox scholars” either) who take a different position.  Maybe they’ve changed their position since I read the material.

I didn’t say I felt unwelcome at all—just that I misinterpreted a comment as opening up a discussion of a position that obviously is not open to discussion.  I can easily deal with being contradicted—it’s difficult to function as an adult in society without being contradicted! 

Again, respectfully, I don’t think I’m the one taking offense—I haven’t said anything negative about anyone—unless stating that a person’s position is not the only intellectually defensible one is negative.  Because that was my only point.

Unless there are any other questions about that one point, I will bow out of the discussion, which was tangential to the very interesting main discussion about the Meacham and Douthat pieces.

“but I do remember reading that there are Biblical scholars (not “revisionist activist heterodox scholars” either) who take a different position.  Maybe they’ve changed their position since I read the material.”

Clare, that is fine.  When you have a reference to them, then why not post on it?

I don’t know what more we can do.  You referred vaguely to a “rabbinical discussion”, then left it to me to work out what you might be referring to.  I came up with some quotes from the Hillel-Shammai controversy, but I still don’t know if that is what you were thinking of.

And then you referred to some other scholars, and so Matt+ is left to take a stab at what he thinks you may mean.

It does seem like we are the ones who are doing all the work!  If you want a discussion, come up with something (a quote, a summary of an argument, a reference to the person, anything really) and then we can discuss it.

Thanks, MichaelA—I’ll try to find time to look into it in the near future—will try to get the work Matt suggested regarding the “divorce OK if wife committed adultery” position (Richard Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”)—maybe as a result of recent discoveries the scholars are all agreed at this point that that is the only one possible interpretation of that passage in Matthew and the related passages in Mark and Luke. Sorry for asking y’all to do my research for me—I thought there were some professors in the group who would be familiar with the literature, but as I said, maybe there are no longer differences of interpretation among Biblical scholars.  Again, it’s not my area of expertise, just taking off from the post and Meacham’s reference to the relationship between the current issue of homosexual “marriage” and changing our views of scriptural proscriptions, for example, divorce, based upon “[choosing] to read and interpret the Bible in light not of tradition but of reason and history.”  It seeemed interesting, but apparently that’s not an issue for anyone here but me—so—sorry to take your time—have a nice day.